Denouement: Justice League #6 Review

Justice League #6 is the most memorable and remarkable of the title’s relaunch for two reasons, the first being that it is packed with the kind of cover-to-cover superhero action that you want from a team comic book. The second is that it contains a splash page depicting Cyborg with a stance and facial expression that, minus any context, looks like he’s taking a savage and angry dump so terrible it might alter his religious beliefs. Which is as good an example of the schizo feeling this book has instilled in me for the past six months.

Let’s start off for a change on a positive note: this is one hell of a superhero fight. Writer Geoff Johns establishes the stakes early, showing a desperate family trying to escape the Armageddon that is occurring as Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg battle Darkseid in the middle of a city. The battle is visceral, the feeling that the heroes are throwing every Goddamned thing they can think of at Darkseid, who is drawn by Jim Lee as solid, giant and implacable. This is the kind of epic throwdown that I’ve been wanting from Justice League from the word go… which is a damn good thing because many of the characters still act as if they’re recovering from a partial lobotomy.

Johns’s characterizations have been problematic throughout this arc. Yes, I understand this is a reboot, but the youngest character in this book, in terms of creation date, is Cyborg, who has almost a third of a century of previous characterization history behind him. And sometimes we get glimmers of the long-established behaviors of the characters, but other times they act like they were created by Rob Liefeld in a 1990 cocaine twitch. Sometimes within two panels.

Case in point: in this issue, Wonder Woman breaks away from her characterization in prior issues as Madison from Splash only with legs and a glowing rope to deliver a rousing speech reminiscent of her longtime depiction as an ambassador for worldwide peace:

Too many people believe that. That’s the problem here. The world belongs to no one.

And everyone.

And then she stabs Darkseid in the eyeball. While shrieking, “HA!” And I firmly believe that if Lee had given himself more than a splash page to depict the scene, it would have been followed by Wonder Woman teabagging Darkseid. Possibly while cackling, “GHEEEE!” Or perhaps, “DOINK!”

The point is that Johns’s character depictions are all over the place. In the last issue, Batman did something that was so completely out of character I literally put the book aside and said, “Nope.” And yet in this issue, we see Batman that is totally back to business: giving inspiration to Cyborg, seeing before anyone else how being part of a team can help his own P.R. problems in Gotham, and telling Superman, who is reeling over Darkseid’s visions of torture, conquest and destruction, that he “need[s] to get your head on straight.” When Johns’s characterizations work, they are awesome. When he decides to mess around, be it in the name of the Spirit of Reboot or Just Dicking Around, it just rings false.

Jim Lee’s art continues to be, well, Jim Lee’s art… which is a damn good thing for a book like this that is shooting the moon to be epic in scale. you can say what you want about Lee’s art – and I sometimes have – but the man draws spectacular and glorious superheroes in action. I didn’t see any of the minor inconsistencies I noticed in the last issue, and the only issue I might have is the number of splash pages in this story… but to be honest, this is a 22-page story depicting a massive superhero battle, so the splashes are generally appropriate and welcome. Generally.

And then there is the aforementioned Cyborg splash page. You haven’t read the book yet, you don’t know what Cyborg is doing here, so just look at it. Does it not look like Vic Stone is triumphing over a week of eating nothing but beef, cheese and airport cuisine? And that’s the kindest misconception of the image; the unkindest misconception is that Vic Stone is abjectly forfeiting in the prison shower. What Cyborg is actually doing in this scene is hacking a Mother Box, and if that’s how Jim Lee views people who work with computers, I shudder for his local Geek Squad guy. But I digress.

The bottom line on this issue is that it is an exciting and good-looking ending to an uneven and somewhat disappointing story arc. If you’re looking for an old school, excellently drawn superhero punch-up, you could do a damn sight worse than this issue. If you want a classic Justice League story? Well… wait for the trade. Sorry, had a brain fart – Grant Morrison’s New World Order 1997 arc on JLA is available now.