Worst Con News EVAR!

Rucka leaving DC? Nah, because it is hard to call a creator moving on to prevent stagnation the "worst news". Sad that he leaves before he got to do everything with Batwoman that he wanted, but not the worst news.

This, though?

Will Robinson be on Justice League for a while? "I have ideas now for at least two years, maybe more. I can stay on the book until they drag me off," Robinson said. Sattler: "He's not going anywhere."

-shudder-

Terrible.

Steaming Pile of Shit #41

On Sunday, I read a comic book that single-handedly soured me on reading the rest of the books I bought that day, kept me from placing an advance order on DCBS and has me in a shit mood.

That comic book? Justice League of America #41.

I've been disappointed with a lot of what James Robinson has written without a partner over the last few years. His Atlas arc in the Superman books, the first few issues of Justice League: Cry For Justice and other bits here and there were just terrible. Filled with cliche situations, bad dialogue and exposition measured in metric tons (it's so heavy, get it? I didn't say I could write better).

Why did I give this book a shot? A friend of mine tweeted to James Robinson that he loved the issue and felt it respected so many previous versions of the JLA. My curiosity was piqued.

The result was that I wished I could take not only that issue back for a refund, but the rest of my $33+ purchase, as well.

Where does it go so wrong?

1. It directly picks up from stuff that happened in JL: Cry For Justice. As stated previously, the writing on that long-delayed, "originally supposed to be an ongoing series but shrunk down to a mini" series was horrendous. The manner of introducing the characters was cringe-inducing, particularly the need to have them all boil their situations down to a "cry for justice". It was as if it was written to be what some writer "slumming it" in comic books thought a comic book was supposed to read like. It read like the worst of 80s/90s comics. And they spend several pages doing a bad job of trying to establish the weight of what went on in that mini. It gives the book a mediocre-at-best start (and, honestly, it can't see mediocre from where it's standing). They, also, have this spin out of Blackest Night, but just barely. Even still, it is a sounder move to have this work with aftermath of the biggest selling DC project, rather than an ongoing that got downgraded to a mini and started ridiculously long after it was initially supposed to come out.
2. You have heroes quitting. No, I'm not talking about Vixen talking about leaving the JLA. That sort of thing has been done to death, but you can't necessarily knock it. If the membership is going to change, you'll need scenes like this. No, I mean Donna Troy quitting being a hero. I don't just mean deciding not to gather with other heroes to fight crime. I don't mean not going on patrols or anything like that. I mean showing up at the scene of an ongoing crime and telling the police present that she won't lift a finger to potentially save lives. Has this been done before? Possibly. Has it rang false most of the time? Yup. Does it come off as unbelievable here? You betcha.
3. In about five panels time, we have Donna Troy convinced to not only keep going as a hero, but join the Justice League and start recruiting others to be a member of the biggest super-heroing-show on Earth. Let's see...on one page we have "those people might die? fuck those people" and "I'll go convince others to help me save the Earth from evil-doers" on the next. Holy shit, that's bad.
4. In this book that couldn't manage to properly make you feel the weight of past events on the characters and had Donna Troy go from "fuck everyone else" to top JLA cheerleader so fast that my head is still spinning, we're given several pages of a poorly written flashback to 1777? If there have been a less enjoyable or useful four pages in a DC Comic book in the last 5-10 years, I haven't seen them (and I'm glad, as I can't imagine what my reaction to THAT work would be). Like so many of the problems I have with this book, I don't think I can say it better than "it reads like the worst 1980s comic book you ever read".
5. So far, the only purpose the flashback served was to introduce us to some possibly alien artifact that a scientist at the Smithsonian delivers the clunkiest exposition while examining. How clunky? The kind you haven't read outside of the worst 1980s comic book. What's worse is that it tells you that it is bad. Robinson writes the scientist as recognizing how bad the dialogue is. It is as if he realized he was writing shitty dialogue and, rather than fix it, had the character acknowledge it as if it made it cool and meta, rather than lazy and shite.
6. Donna gets her cheerleading on. She takes a half page to recruit Starfire and the other half to recruit Cyborg. One of the biggest problems I have with this book is that it makes all the wrong choices with how it chooses to spend pages on the story. I get that you have to be efficient and economical with how you dole out space in a book where you're throwing together a whole new JLA. But you have to do that smartly...and that is where this book fails.
7. Donna then recruits Dick Grayson Batman. And in the five pages used for this bit, Dick calls Damian a drama queen. I know Dick is so much more lighthearted than Bruce...but drama queen? Really? It seems a bit out of character and oddly placed. I can't explain why it should bother me so much as to rate its own spot in this list, but it does.
8. Please don't make me talk about how terrible the dialogue between Donna Troy and Dr. Light was. I don't think I could survive having to read it again.
9. Mon-El Superman gets recruited. Two pages/four panels of showing how heroic and stoic he is, followed by a monosyllabic Guardian asking him who he captured and confirming that he captured him and tied together with a bow by Dr. Light recruiting him by simply pointing out that Superman was in the JLA. Really, because we needed a splash page and a three panel page establishing Mon-El Superman so he could be recruited by saying, "you want to be like Superman? Superman was in the JLA." Pages wasted on bullshit and Robinson having the characters having to TELL everything and show nothing. He wants to spend pages on "cool visuals" for throwaway scenes, painting himself into a corner where he has to give you microwave character development and terrible, exposition-heavy dialogue.
10. I was about to say the Green Lantern/Green Arrow bit was the only part I didn't have a problem with. But then I re-read and caught the "what do I do that'll make the rage burning within go away?" line. Holy shit, this book can't even manage to handle a two page scene without having something hack fall out of a character's mouth.

I'd really like to refine my points above more. At the least, I should really come up with a paragraph or two that sums things up and makes a bit more of a constructive statement than the griping you see above. But I just can't do it. I'm trying to put this issue behind me. What I've shared here is an attempt at catharsis. I'm hoping it will set me free and I can begin reading any of the other comic books (possibly mediocre, but undoubtedly better than this one) that I bought last night. Maybe I'll revisit this next week and try to dissect the book with more care and thought. But I need to try to get away from it now.

Justice League: Cry For Justice

I was kind of hesitant to talk about this issue, because I bagged on James Robinson pretty hard at the start of his run on the Superman titles. He has since gone on to do much better work.

Justice League: Cry For Justice is not that better work. Reading Jamie Trecker's similar feelings about the issue encouraged me to express my thoughts about it.

This first issue is so formulaic and mechanical. I have a feeling it may have been written before Robinson got his comic book legs back under him. With the painted art and how long ago this project was announced, Robinson may have written this before he had shaken all the dust and cobwebs off.

The way he starts introducing the team's characters would fit better in an 80s book, not just an ongoing series as some have noted. It's, dare I say, hack. I mean, to have all of the characters come around to saying something about justice is just really bad paint-by-numbers stuff. The concept of being proactive (as this Justice League was billed as being when the project was announced) and wanting to focus on meeting out punishment on the criminals and villais of the world doesn't have to be summed up as JUSTICE! by everyone. It feels a bit lazy to do that...and a little too "on the nose" for the book.

The dialogue is really rough, too. I think, to some extent, James forced himself into this situation with some bad choices. He to quickly differentiate the members of this new league being more EXTREME! than the members they were ditching. Green Lantern's tirade seems to, continuity-wise, come from no where. I'm referring to his level of anger with his teammates. It, also, stems from a false premise. That he brings up finding Libra and his gang for what they did to J'Onn does NOT ring true as something that the rest of the league would be against.

It, also, is not "being proactive". In fact, none of the setups show heroes taking the initiative. They're ALL responding to somewhat fresh crimes. This is, of course, not something that makes the story bad. It is a neutral element by itself. But when compared to what the series was advertised to be and how we're to believe the main team wouldn't support going after these people, it stands out in a negative way.

All the heroes seem to be demonstrating is that they're going to be like a 90s "extreme" team. In fact, you might as well have named this Extreme Justice II: Electric Boogaloo. It would make more sense than "Justice League", when you have the leader of the team ridiculing the "League" and "Society" part of team names.

Look, I'm not saying this is how Robinson is going to write the whole mini. I do have some concerns, like others, that the pacing here is off for a seven issue mini. Two issues out of a seven to just introduce the team? Ugh. But if the meat of the story was written or updated after James Robinson got back into the swing of things, I'm virtually certain that the rest of the series will be much better.

These first issues might read better when they're part of a trade, but it won't improve the tactics Robinson has chosen to use. Hopefully, there will be something to demonstrate a believable reason as to why the same bad guys everyone else is going after would want to slaughter Congorilla's tribe...and that it won't just mimic what Gail Simone did with Catman for the Villains United mini.

The artwork is neither great or terrible to me. It is more than servicable to the story. Aside from maybe one panel of Superman, there's no point during the reading where I sit up and take notice. So...all you get about it is the preceding three sentences.

If I wasn't starved for some kind of Justice League story allowed to breathe better than they've let McDuffie or hadn't seen improvement from Robinson on other titles, this issue would NOT lead me to purchase the next. In all honesty, I still might not buy the next issue, but just wait for the trade. If the second issue is like the first, I can just see myself not enjoying it and then looking at $8 paid for misery, all in an act of faith that #3-#7 will be much better.

BleedingCool.com's JLA Scoop

Rich Johnston is reporting on DC planning to make Vixen the focus of one of the JLA titles, once they get to launch the Johns/Lee Justice League of America run (which will be the book boasting Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman).

 

My take, as posted in his comments section:

 

1. The previous times they had multiple JLA series, they were all filled with B Teams of heroes, for the most part. JL/JLI had Batman for a short time. They were successful despite having characters that generally couldn't keep their own series afloat (Booster, Beetle, Capt Atom, etc).

 

2. Other times when they have followed the "start with Big Seven, then begin diluting and replacing with minor characters", there was only one series and it became known to fans as JLDetroit. They had to add Batman back to the fold in a desperate move to boost sales, but it was too little too late.

 

3. This seems like, potentially, one of the best ways to try to popularize minor characters through the JLA brand. If Robinson stays on a JLA title after Johns gets his (or another writer that Johns has an excellent working relationship with), I can really see enough interweaving of stories and characters to help keep the B Team version from scraping the bottom of the sales barrel, much the same way that Johns/Robinson/Rucka/Gates have managed to have their tide raise all boats in the Superman titles.

 

I think this could work out really well, as I imagine even the title with the "Big Three" will have some "minor" characters peppered in. This bodes well for some underused characters that never really met their potential getting a chance to showcase in BOTH of the JLA titles. If Johns' run on JSA shows us anything, it is that he loves to reach back for old characters/legacies and reach forward for some, as well (Magog, Starman, etc). Robinson has shown a flair for the eclectic selection as well, given his Cry For Justice line up. Congorilla? C'mon...who can't get jazzed to see what off-the-wall pick either writer is going to strike gold with?

Justice League: Cry For Justice

Gotta love whoever comes up with these titles. But here's the "prelim" cover (though the file is named coverfinal.jpg) for the James Robinson originally-announced-as-an-ongoing-series-then-mysteriously-made-a-mini-series Justice League book that feels about a year late. The art is by Mauro Cascioli, who finished up the Trials of Shazam after Howard Porter was pulled due to injury, I believe.