So I guess watching the JLD animated movie earlier (technically yesterday for me but that’s closing shifts for ya), and immediately after and during breaks/lunch I finished the whole first arc!
- What are your thoughts on a supernaturally-charged Justice League?
Honestly, it’s one of those things where you look at it for the first time and think “Why the heck wasn’t this a thing before?” I mean, yes, you had stuff like Shadowpact as a supernatural team, but I think adding the “Justice League” label to it not only helps sell the scale, but frankly, it makes it an easier sell for new readers and the hardcore JL fans who collect anything under that title.
- Do magic and mystery mesh well with what the standard Justice League ideal is?
Certainly – like I said, there can be a certain scale to magical events in the DCU that I think are parallel to the kind of massive alien or multiversal or whatever threats the regular Justice League handles.
I guess the only thing that this team has that doesn’t mesh as well unlike most regular Justice League teams is that this team, at least by the end of this arc, just barely gets along with each other. Like it makes for great reading, but it makes you wonder just how the hell they’re actually going to get anything done.
- Who was your favorite character on the team?
Zatanna, without a doubt in my mind. She can be fun and over the top and action with her powers, but she also has a lot of great pathos that we briefly get to see even here.
Really, the only characters I’m not really into here are Shade the Changing Man and Mindwarp. Shade was odd, like I got his deal to a certain extent, but I didn’t understand why he was doing the things he was doing and he just slowed things down. Similarly with Mindwarp, I literally just have no idea not only what exactly he can do, but why I should care.
- Zatanna: Leather pants or fishnets (I vote both)?
Seriously, it’s hard to top the iconic and classic stage outfit, but the different outfits that Zee wears during this arc are all really stylish and fitting, if not a little lacking in personalizing flourish.
- Anything else about these issues (and the series as a whole) that sneaks, slithers, scratches, crawls and burrows its way into the sweet, gentle and evocatively dark recesses of your mind, good reader.
I don’t think I can really plunge into my darkest thoughts, but I will say this:
I think this first arc is a good pitch, an expression of what the book could be, but I feel like it doesn’t work in certain ways. Like the plot of these issues are kind of a mess. Literally, I do not understand what Xanadu did to June and why. Is she trying to stop this armageddon or not? Why these people? It just feels like Milligan needed another go at editing his plot or two before sending it to the artist.
Speaking of which – this was my first exposure to the work of Mikal Janin, and what an intro! While this book definitely feels darker and fuzzier, you can definitely see the blueprint of what he would eventually bring in books like Grayson and Batman.
) details:
Read:
Discuss:
