So I had some time on my hands in the last couple days and decided “why not binge a series”. I was a huge fan of the original Keith Giffen Justice League International run, but I kind of took a break during the whole of New 52 so I have not read much from that era. So I decided to give this book a try. I knew it was written by Dan Jurgens and not Keith Giffen so I was not expecting it to be like the original JLI, but I liked a lot of the characters in it and Booster Gold is probably my favorite character, so I thought I would give it a try.
For starters I loved the artwork. I have always been a fan that can roll with artwork that is not really (my style) as long as I enjoy the story, but the artwork on this was just the style of artwork I like and it really enhanced my enjoyment of the book.
As for the story… well I didn’t not like it. For the most part I found the stories intersting and easy to read. But maybe I want to compare it too much to the old JSI but it just never entirely landed with me.
Part of the appeal of the original JLI was not as much the humor (although was surprised more of that wasn’t worked into a comic called Justice League International, but didn’t expect them to try and mimic Keith Giffen) but the character development and character moments themselves. A lot of the stories of the original had no villain and were really about the eclectic cast of characters interacting.
There were moments of that at times felt like that but with only 2 stories (Plus the weird annual which had them disband literally the issue after they decided not to disband) it never felt like it had time to settle into anything.
Will try to be light on spoilers. But the team formed, then after one story a good number of them got hurt, including Fire and Ice who were two of my favorites in the team, and Rocket Red got killed before we even had time to care (although to be fair the original JLI had the first Rocket Red become a manhunter after only a couple stories too) and the two UN officials who formed the team were written off before we got to know them well enough for it to matter. A couple new members join in the second story but then the book was over, except they decided to not disband until an annual which showed their new headquarters and brought in 2 team members… only for the team to mostly be defeated until a dues ex machina and then then disband again. Why even do that issue?
Not hating on the book, the 2 stories they told were good but I think some of it suffered from modern day comics problems that can come with “writing for the trade”. Most stories are around six issues now so it is hard to really have time to develip characters and really get a status quo especially on a short lived book. I know it is the way comics are and from a business stnadpoint it is obvious why they do it, but then it leads to things like the team being kicked out and brought into the UN over and over again so they barely even qualified as a team which if this was the old days of stories being shorter they probably could have done more and had more chances for character development and character interaction.
They did have some nice character moments thrown in. Booster and Godiva had good chemisty, and as a fan of seeing obscure characters featured it was fun having her on the team. Guy and Ice had some nice moments that felt like the Guy and Ice of old, and August General of Iron was well handled and actually got me to care about the character when at the start all I thought was “August General in Iron… yeah that’s not very exciting” props to Dan Jurgens for making a character I never cared for likeable.
Was also great seeing Booster Gold as a leader. The series ended without him having time to truly have a “becomes a leader” arc. But they were true to the character showing a glory hound who deep down is more of a hero than most people see him as.
The big thing I had was I could have been fine with the humor not being there, but with so much more emphasis on action then the original series it didn’t get time to fully develop the characters and establish their connection to each other. So without that it was just a team of D list heroes with a couple B listers thrown in… and Batman, with limited time to get them to feel like anything but the second tier heroes pretending to be the Justice League they kept telling us they were. So I kind of see why it didn’t last long.
Was wondering if anyone else had an opinion on thie book. Clearly it wasn’t popular given it didn’t last long. But was curious to see if I was the only one with a mostly luke warn opinion of it.
