Magic, Broken Human Beings And Sacrifices On The Altar Of Revenue – Review Of Justice League Dark #2

Something dark and malevolent is afoot in the DCU, and it’s not just the continued employment of Rob Liefield despite any evidence of an ability to utilize symmetry or feet in any of his attempts at artwork. No, I’m speaking of magical nasties that defy even the efforts of the heavy hitting Big Three to put down. In Justice League Dark, magically powered individuals have to join together to defeat an out of control, seemingly insane villain, the witch known as The Enchantress. But is she really the Big Bad that is causing reality to come undone or the victim of some other, similarly damaged, reality challenged, spelling slinging powerhouse?

Spoilery goodness after the jump!

Let’s start with this:

Wait a minute - is this book about me and Rob? Awesome!

In the first issue of Justice League Dark written by Peter Milligan with art by Mikel Janin, a drug abusing Madame Xanadu sends Shade The Changing Man to gather together magical, similarly broken individuals to defend the world from a bloody, shattered future that appears to stem from the mental decompensation of The Enchantress, who is holed up in a barn somewhere out in the sticks. She has become separated from her physical body time share, June Moon, and is now out of control. Superman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg don’t get very far in taking her into custody. Milligan describes the scene as smelling like “skinned babies and sliced eyeballs”. I bet he’s a lot of fun at parties. Janin draws the botched containment attempt like the finger of God descended from the heavens and exploded into a cloud of crooked teeth. Sanitary. Meanwhile, Zatanna, recently back on the Justice League’s active roster after some sort of…”issue”, independently goes after The Enchantress, despite Batman’s warning that she’s not “stable” enough to go after The Enchantress. She responds by magically rooting him to the floor. Probably not a good long term career move for her future with the Justice League but, what can I say – kids these days, you know?

So, that’s all first issue. Now, on to the second issue. Zatanna finds The Enchantress and promptly has her ass handed to her by the mad witch, who is unseen, but is using a car radio to give voice to her thoughts. How she got into the car’s audio system from the barn, I don’t know. Maybe in the fight with Superman and company in the previous issue she exploded into the world through their defeat. Milligan could have been a little clearer on this story point. Later, June Moon shows up at the apartment of Deadman and Dove looking for assistance. I know, I know – why does a dead guy need an apartment? Presumably, it’s so Deadman has a place where he has the excuse to take over June’s body on the premise of “looking for evidence of The Enchantress” living inside June, but, really, it’s more so he can do this:

C'mon, Dawn! Love means never having to say you're sorry...that you had sex with your boyfriend while he was inhabiting the body of a woman. Totally not arbitrary wish fulfillment. He promises.

Ultimately, I’m finding these books uneven. As a long time reader of Hellblazer, Shadowpact and Madame Xanadu, I know that the world of magic draws to it emotionally dark characters with baggage that would give the average TSA agent post traumatic shock, if not full on catatonia, if he or she ever made the mistake of randomly checking their suitcases. On the other hand, between the decompressed story telling and the 20 pages of actual story, this plot is taking a long time to warm up and leaving me with more questions than answers. 20 pages – your comic book, now in Fun Size! Right now, I’m interested enough to keep reading it, but not enough to officially add it to my pulls and I typically enjoy Peter Milligan’s work, particularly on X-Statix, which had more than its share of weirdness. On the other hand, Mikel Janin draws well nuanced depictions of the supernatural, well utilizing fine, fluid line work and shading with expressive facial characterizations. Check out this John Constantine (who is on a mission to save Zatanna, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of not entirely explained worms):

Pain. Smoke. Divination. It's like a Goth hat trick.

Here’s the bottom line – I want to like this book, but there are too many characters and not enough pages to tell all of their stories in a way that does justice (ha, ha – see what I did there?) to each of their stories. Come on, Mr. Milligan – step the pace up a little bit. Or lobby Dan DiDio for more pages in the books. Do we really need another Batman: Noël promo? I think every individual who has picked up a DC book in the last two months, who has possession of a working pair of eyes, is aware this damn book is coming out. Can’t we use this space to go back to telling short, but complimentary back-up stories that spotlight individual characters? What the hell happened to that initiative? Sacrificed to the angry God Of Advertising Revenue, I guess. Too bad. Any of the characters in this book would tell you that a sacrifice is only meaningful if it gets you what you want. I supposed DC will get what it wants and folks will buy the Batman book, but I personally wish they’d sacrifice the pages for the greater good of the story the comic book is actually supposed to be about. That would be magical.