2018.042 Justice League Vol 5: Legacy

Justice League Vol 5: Legacy
Written by: Bryan Hitch
Illustrated by: Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Andy Owens, Batt, Mick Gray, Scott Hanna
DC Comics

2018.038 Justice League Task Force Vol 1: The Purification Plague

Justice League Task Force Vol 1: The Purification Plague
Written By: David Michelinie, Chuck Dixon, Dennis O'Neal, Peter David, Jeph Loeb, Michael Jan Friedman
Illustrated by: Sal Velluto, Gabriel Morrissette, Greg LaRocque, Jeff Albrecht, Dick Giordano, Aaron McClellan, Kevin Conrad, Robert Jones
DC Comics

2018.019 Justice League United Vol 2: The Infinitus Saga

I was excited for this book when it first came out because Jeff Lemire was writing a JLA book.  Unfortunately, it didn't click with me like I wanted it to.  It was way too New 52-ey.  That's the biggest problem.  I didn't like what he did to one of my all time favorite characters, Adam Strange.  The team he picked was fine, but not these incarnations of the characters.  But...

I loved this story.  The Legion had been given a back seat at DC by this point and Jeff was free to play with them.  For the most part, we got the Legion as they were before their book was cancelled, but he tweaked the characters a bit, included some of the Legionnaires from the various "Legion of 3 Worlds" book.  But it's okay.  It was still the Legion of Super-Heroes and I'm good with that.

It's a cliched story.  It's a twist on the "going back in time to kill Hitler before he turns into Hitler and destroys everything" story.  But he gives it fresh life and makes it a lot of fun to read.  I enjoyed it much more in this hardcover than I did when I read it monthly when it was first published.  I picked this book up at my local Ollie's Discount Outlet.  Part of their massive DC liquidation sale.  I keep popping in and grabbing some books, so look for write ups of those when I get time to read them.

Justice League United Vol 2: The Infinitus Saga

Written by: Jeff Lemire

Illustrated by: Neil Edwards, Jay Leisten, Keith Champagne, Jed Dougherty

DC Comics

177 Justice League Vol 4: Endless

This felt more like a collection of inventory stories than anything.  Not sure what's going on with this series.  Hopefully it was just a stop gap so they can settle the schedules of whomever is taking over the series.

Justice League Vol 4: Endless

Writer: Bryan Hitch, Shea Fontana, Tom DeFalco, Dan Abnett

Artist: Bryan Hitch, Tom Derenick, Philippe Briones, Ian Churchill, Daniel Henriques, Andy Owens, Scott Hanna, Trevor Scott, Andrew Currie, Paul Neary, Tony Kordos, Batt

DC Comics

175 Justice League Of America Vol 2: Curse Of The Kingbutcher

Not Steve Orlando's strongest work.

Justice League Of America Vol 2: Curse Of The Kingbutcher

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Felipe Watanabe, Jamal Campbell, Andy MacDonald, Neil Edwards, Scott Hanna, Sandu Florea

DC Comics

147 Wonder Woman And Justice League America Vol 2

DC should really be ashamed of itself.  Justice League should be the company's flagship title.  A book featuring the biggest and the brightest heroes banded together.  By this point in the company's history, Justice League was a group of D-List, at best, characters.  And not just one book of D-Listers, but three full series full of the worst of the worst.  I understand how this happened.  When the JLA was revamped into Justice League International, it had a solid creative team that took a lot of B-Listers and turned them into the premiere DC Superteam.  As time went on, the creative teams got worse and worse and the roster reflected that.  Luckily this is getting to the end of that era.

This book collects a big crossover between all the Justice League books.  It's an awful crossover that culminates with the death of Ice.  Booster Gold also dies, but only kind of dies.  But his Tony Stark Iron Man suit keeps him alive until a new creative team can fix the disaster they made of him.

This book is just not good.  It's everything that was wrong with the 90s all collected into one handy volume.

Wonder Woman And Justice League America Vol 2

Writer: Dan Vado, Mark Waid, Gerard Jones

Artist: Marc Campos, Chuck  Wojtkiewicz, Sal Velluto, Ken Branch, Kevin Conrad, Bob Dvorak, Robert Jones, Rich Rankin, Jeff Albrecht

DC Comics

145 JLA: A Midsummer's Nightmare - The Deluxe Edition

I just realized it's been nearly a month since I've posted anything.  Time has been at a premium lately and I really haven't read much.  This will be the first of six or seven posts.  That's all I've managed to read this month.  It's kind of sad because I have such a big backlog of books.  My October shipment was only four books, which meant I could delve into my backlog.  Or not, as it happens.

Anyway, the first of the six books I'm going to briefly talk about is JLA: A Midsummer's Nightmare.  Originally a three issue mini series back in the 90's, it set the stage for Grant Morrison reviving the JLA.  By this point in time, the JLA was a giant joke (see the next post).  This mini-series served to bring the big guns back together, something that was sorely needed.

I remember loving this series when it first came out.  This time around, however, I just found it to be okay.  Maybe I loved it so much because it was the first time in years that the REAL JLA got together again?  Maybe it was just in that time this book was top notch.  Styles and trends change over the years.  Reading it this time, I thought it was a solid story, definitely rooted in it's era, but that era kind of tainted it just a touch for me.  I thought the art was good, but somewhat generic.  Nothing stand out for a series that served a bigger purpose.

I do love these Deluxe Editions DC is putting out.  The pages are just a little bit bigger, the art is just a little clearer than originally published.  It's a really nice way to reprint these books.

JLA: A Midsummer's Nightmare - The Deluxe Edition

Writer: Mark Waid, Fabian Nicieze

Artist: Jeff Johnson, Darick Robertson, Jon Holdredge, Hanibal Rodriguez

DC Comics

142 Justice League Of America: The Nail - The Complete Deluxe Edition

DC has finally collected both Alan Davis mini-series into one beautiful deluxe edition.  What an amazing book to sit and soak in.

Alan Davis wrote and drew a love letter to DC's Silver Age.  It doesn't quite get the love that something like Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier does, but it should.

Quite simply, Ma & Pa Kent get a nail in their tire the night they were supposed to find baby Kal-El.  They never leave the house and Kal-El gets adopted elsewhere.  He never becomes Superman.  So the story follows the DC Silver Age with that one alteration.  And what it turns into is a scene that is very reminiscent of what's happening today in America.  Except replace minorities with meta humans.  Meta humans are no longer trusted and they're feared.  There's a giant conspiracy against them, but the heroes do get their shit together and take care of matters.  It's a very compelling story.  It grabs your attention and doesn't let it go.

A follow up story was done called Another Nail.  This one I struggled a bit with.  It starts off going further into detail an event that happened in the first book, which leads to the new story.  Or so I guess it does.  The second book felt like it was a lot of plot points, but I was waiting to figure out what the actual plot was.  If that makes sense. 

Both series are some of the best work Alan Davis has ever done.  He's amazing.  I could look at this book for the rest of my life and never get tired of it.

Justice League Of America: The Nail - The Complete Deluxe Edition

Writer: Alan Davis

Artist: Alan Davis, Mark Farmer

DC Comics

126 Justice League Of America Vol 1: The Extremists

DC has high hopes for Steve Orlando.  They gave him two high profile books (this and Supergirl) to write with the Rebirth initiative.  So far, he's falling slightly short for me.  And I don't know why.  I love love love love love his Midnighter work.  It's been one of my favorite books from DC in a long time.  But dealing with mainstream DC stuff, it's just not clicking with me yet.

This books has two stories.  The first is the modern day reintroduction of the Extremists.  Lord Havok and his bunch.  While the story itself wasn't bad, reading it all in one fell swoop didn't do it much justice (pardon the pun).  The timeline of the entire story is unbelievable to me.  Things happened entirely too fast for them to seem (even in comic books) plausible.  

I am enjoying the interpersonal exchanges between the characters and look forward to a lot more of that going forward.  It's an interesting line up for a team and I'm anxious to see it succeed.

The second story was my least favorite of the two.  It felt like the team was dealing with a Maxie Zeus knock off.  Yawn.

Justice League Of America Vol 1: The Extremists

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Ivan Reis, Felipe Watanabe, Diogenes Neves, Andy MacDonald, Joe Prado, Oclair Albert, Julio Ferreira, Scott Hanna, Ruy Jose, Marc Deering

DC Comics

114 Justice League Vol 3: Timeless

I'm continuing to enjoy Bryan Hitch's Justice League book.  As I've stated before, his Justice League stories are very cinematic looking to me.  The artwork is gorgeous.  The action is HUGE.  If this was a big budget movie, the budget would have been enough to feed a third world nation for a year.  It's big, it's bombastic.  But after reading this, it feels like there's something missing.  I'm not quite sure what, though.  I'm starting to feel this book is 85% looks, 15% depth.  And I'm dazzled by the looks, so whatever depth I'm missing is lost on me.  Does that make any sense?

This book starts off with a done in one tale, which I loved.  The League is trapped together and spend the entire issue talking to each other.  This tale felt like it had the depth I feel I'm missing from the bigger stories.  I loved it.

The rest of the book is the classic separate the team, do their parts, get back together.  I like that format.  It reminds me of the old JLA/JSA team ups where a member from each team would go off and accomplish what it is they needed to do to defeat the bad guy.

What I like about this story is we have a bad guy (or is he) and a good guy (or is she), but they're both kind of rotten.  An old comic book story device, but used effectively here.

Justice League Vol 3: Timeless

Writer: Bryan Hitch

Artist: Fernando Pasarin, Bryan Hitch, Matt Ryan, Daniel Henriques

DC Comics

090 Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I went on vacation in mid-June (and that's when my posts stopped.)  I had a layover on my way to Austin, Texas, but because of bad weather, my flight was delayed.  By hours.  Thankfully I had a big stack of books to read during my travels.  This book I read cover to cover during my delay in the Baltimore Airport.

I'll be honest.  I wasn't expecting much out of the book.  And maybe because the bar was low, I really enjoyed what I read.  Well, most of it.  This book collects the complete mini-series as well as the crossover issues from each team's regular series.  The mini-series was a lot of fun.  The crossovers were nothing more than pointless money grabs.

The book is basically the JLA vs. the Suicide Squad, then the JLA teaming up with the Suicide Squad against the greater enemy.  Your basic super-team crossover.  But more specifically, all this is is a set up for the upcoming Justice League of America book.  The Batman lead team.  Killer Frost is a member of the upcoming JLA book, and this story is very much about her redemption, however temporary or permanent it's going to be.

While I'm not a big fan of the Suicide Squad, I've been warming up to the during the whole Rebirth thing.  I had a good time with this book.

Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad

Writer: Joshua Williamson, Tim Seeley, Rob Williams, Si Spurrier

Artist: Jason Fabok, Tony S. Daniel, Jesus Merino, Fernando Pasarin, Robson Rocha, Howard Porter, Christian Duce, Riley Rossmo, Scot Eaton, Giuseppe Cafaro, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Sandu Florea, Andy Owens, Matt Ryan, Wayne Faucher, Jay Leisten, Daniel Henriques, Oclair Albert, Francesco Mattina

DC Comics

072 Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Even without Bryan Hitch drawing this book, it still has this great, cinematic feel to it.  He continues to write this book like it's a big, widescreen movie.  I love the whole feel of it.  This volume, although still very cinematic, has a lot of smaller moments.

This book collects two stories, which makes me happy.  I like that we still get occasional two-part stories.  There's a two-parter and a four-parter.  Not everything needs to be six issues.  The first story focuses heavily on Jessica Cruz, Earth's newest Green Lantern.  The League battles and defeats an alien invader, or so they think.  The creature managed to infect the League with fear.  They defeat the creature, but at the end, Jessica doesn't think the League is the place for her and leaves.

The second story is kind of silly to me.  The League gets hacked.  Hardcore hacked.  By a hacker that makes Oracle look like an amateur.  I know this is just a comic book, but this story was even a little too far fetched for me when we find out who the hacker turned out to be.  Read it and tell me if you agree.

Justice League Vol 2: Outbreak

Writer: Bryan Hitch

Artist: Neil Edwards, Jesus Merino, Matthew Clark, Tom Derenick, Daniel Henriques, Andy Owens, Sean Parsons, Trevor Scott

DC Comics

063 JLA Vol 9

This book was a real mixed bag for me.  It's the final volume in this era of JLA.  I believe it leads right into Infinite Crisis and then into the Brad Metzler run of JLA.

We have three big stories here.  And I see each of them differently.  One I loved.  One I hated.  One I liked.  The book starts off with the end of Kurt Busiek's run.  I love Busiek.  I think he's a fantastic writer.  His run of Avengers was my favorite run of the book.  Astro City is a book that is amazing to me.  But for some reason, Busiek and the DCU just don't gel together for me.  At all.  I don't know why.  The characters don't seem right to me.  The stories just don't grab my attention.  And this book starts off with a big story.  Nine or ten parts, I think.  It's massive.  And, for me, really hard to get through.  I did not enjoy it then.  I didn't enjoy it now.

The next story was my favorite.  It's a six part arc that sort of served as a sequel to Identity Crisis.  It was the beginning of the end of this era of JLA.  The team was falling apart.  Hard.  The Secret Society was going after the JLA and their loved ones.  Mind wipes were discussed.  It was a big mess for the team.  And although there was one more story arc, for all intents and purposes, the JLA was done.

The last story features the team pretty much packing it in, but before they can officially close this chapter, The Key strikes.

Despite my feeling towards the Busiek story, this is a really good collection of JLA tales from the early 2000s.

JLA Vol 9

Writer: Kurt Busiek, Bob Harras, Allan Heinberg, Geoff Johns

Artist: Chris Batista, Tom Derenick, Ron Garney, Mark Farmer, Dan Green

DC Comics

052 Wonder Woman And Justice League America Vol. 1

This volume follows up Superman and Justice League America vol 2.  Dan Jurgens left as writer of the book with the end of that collection and hopefully he took the awful storytelling with him.

Dan Vado took over as writer and it becomes crystal clear almost immediately that either DC just didn't care about the Justice League anymore or they had the worst editor on the book they could find.  This volume is just awful.  I think the book might be worse than when I originally read it back in the nineties.  The direction of the book is laughable.  The stories are not good.  And we're missing some important continuity.  In the last volume, the League recruited some new members because they were lacking in might after their run-in with Doomsday.  Black Condor, The Ray and Agent Liberty were recruited.  We also found out that Bloodwynd was not who he said he was.  He was actually Martian Manhunter in disguise.  The last volume ended with the big reveal.  This volume starts off with the real Bloodwynd as a member and no Martian Manhunter, Black Condor or Agent Liberty in sight.  No mention.  No anything.  

We also have Guy Gardner acting as one dimensional as possible throughout most of this book.  I don't remember if that was how he was written in the rest of the DCU or just in this book.  We do find out that it's not actually Guy, but that's neither here nor there.

This book is a real stinker.  Consider yourself warned.

Wonder Woman And Justice League America Vol. 1

Writer: Dan Vado, Chuck Dixon, Bill Loebs

Artist: Kevin West, Greg LaRocque, Mike Collins, Chris Hunter, Rick Burchett, Ken Branch, Romeo Tanghal, Terry Beatty, Carols Garzon, Robert Jones, Mark Stegbauer, Bob Downs

DC Comics

050 Superman And Justice League America Vol 2

Oh boy.  Dan Jurgens is better than this.  At least that's what I keep telling myself.  I don't think he's the greatest writer out there, but he's solid and reliable.  But after reading this, I really have to rethink that.

This book focuses on a dark era of the JLA.  This is a shadow of what the Justice League once was and will be again.  This Justice League isn't even D-List and that's counting Superman on the team.  The group has fallen apart and the only members left are Superman, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Maxima, Bloodwynd, Fire, Ice and Guy Gardner.  Then Doomsday shows up, killing Superman, nearly killing Beetle, destroying Booster's uniform and Fire loses her powers.  Ice quits.  The team is even sadder than before, so they recruit new members.  The Ray, Black Condor, Agent Liberty and Wonder Woman.  This is so not the JLA.  I'm sorry.

There's a fairly decent (in relation) story with Doctor Destiny, and we get the startling (not) truth about Bloodwynd, but for the most part this run of the book is pure dreck.  And Dan Jurgens leaves at the end of this collection.  Hopefully the next writer can take what he's left with and spin it into gold.  Stay turned to find out....

Superman And Justice League America Vol 2
Writer: Dan Jurgens, Dan Mishkin
Artist: Dan Jurgens, Dave Cockrum, Rick Burchett, Romeo Tanghal, Jose Marzan Jr, Bob Smith, Sal Velluto
DC Comics

037 Justice League Vol 1: The Extinction Machines

Here's Bryan Hitch's second shot at writing a Justice League book.  His first attempt was kind of a mess.  Delays plagued the book almost from the start.  That's the problem when he tries to write and draw a monthly book.  Even with a head start.  This time around he's just writing, though he drew the Rebirth special, too.

I'm trying to figure out why I liked this book, but didn't love it.  The longer I think about it, the more I'm sure it's because he over thinks things.  The story he told was going along fine, but then it kind of started making less sense.  I think this is something an editor should have stepped in and helped smooth out.  But otherwise, it was a fine book.  They're easing the new Superman onto the team, they've added two new Green Lanterns.  Everyone is feeling out the new dynamic.

What I love love love about Bryan Hitch's storytelling is how cinematic it seems.  I thought we'd see less of that in this volume with a new artist, but this story also had a big screen, cinematic feel to it.  He does this extremely well.  I'm anxious to see what else he has in him.  Justice League is supposed to be a big book.  I hope he's able to deliver.

Justice League Vol 1: The Extinction Machines

Writer: Bryan Hitch

Artist: Tony S. Daniel, Bryan Hitch, Jesus Merino, Sandu Florea, Daniel Henriques, Scott Hanna, Andy Owens

020 DC Elseworlds: Justice League Vol 01

Another Elseworlds book.  The last one I read focused solely on Batman.  This one (supposedly) focuses on the Justice League.  I say supposedly because it's a real mixed bag.  The first story is a Superman/Batman story, there's a Teen Titans story in here, a Wonder Woman story and a Supergirl/Batgirl story.  There are two proper JLA stories, but I guess that's enough to call it a Justice League book. 

Like any book like this, it's going to be a wildly mixed bag.  I've read some of these stories before, while others were new to me.  The first story is a pulpy Superman/Batman adventure which was a lot of fun to read.  Justice Riders, the second story and the cover feature, was also a lot of fun.  Wonder Woman is the sheriff in the old west and teams up with a bunch of super-folks to bring down the villain.  There wasn't a terrible amount of story in that tale, but it was still highly enjoyable.  The next tale was League of Justice, a two part story I couldn't even get half-way through.  It was dreadful.  It was unreadable.  Next was Wonder Woman Amazonia.  I'd read this years ago and forgotten all about it.  It's my favorite story in this volume, both storywise and artwise.  It's set back in the era of Jack the Ripper and is the origin story of Wonder Woman.  Fascinating to me.  Next is Titans: Scissors, Paper Stone.  It's an anime type Titans story that is just as unreadable to me today as when it was first published.  Don't ask me what happened, because I can't tell you.  The volume rounds out with a Supergirl/Batgirl story.  I loved this story when it was first published.  I have to say that it doesn't hold up as well for me today.  It's a great concept, it just needs to be fleshed out some more.  This story might have benefited from being a two part story rather than a done-in-one.

All in all, it was a fun book.

DC Elseworlds: Justice League Vol 1

Writer: John Francis Moore, Chuck Dixon, Ed Hannigan, William Messner-Loebs, Adam Warren, Barbara Kesel

Artist: Kieron Dwyer, Hilary Barta, J.H. Williams III, Mick Grey, Ed Hannigan, Dick Giordano, Phil Winslade, Adam Warren, Tom Simmons, Matt Haley, Tom Simmons

DC Comics