Pulling The Pin: Justice League of America #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe – here in this great Hall of Justice – are the most powerful forces of spoilers ever assembled.

This isn’t like The Suicide Squad.

– Steve Trevor

Actually, Justice League of America #1, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by David Finch, is a lot like Suicide Squad, in that it’s got Amanda Waller making unique and intriguing personal offers to fringe people with super powers to join a team controlled by the government to perform missions for the government’s purposes. It’s also a lot like Keith Giffen’s and J. M. DeMatteis’s early issues of their late 80’s Justice League, in that it is attempting to lay the groundwork for and justify a Justice League packed with second-stringers and also-rans. It’s also a lot like Brad Meltzer’s post-Identity Crisis run on Justice League of America, in that it’s got as many sequences of people looking at pictures of, and talking about, superheroes as it does sequences of people actually, you know, doing stuff.

Two of these similarities are good things.

Look, as an opening issue of a book trying to justify the creation of a second Justice League when there’s a perfectly good one that’s only a year and a half old, this is a perfectly acceptable story that delivers the necessary exposition required to justify the concept and to introduce characters who are either relatively new since the New 52 reboot, or who have been around in their own titles, albeit with sales numbers low enough to warrant a whole new introduction (I’m looking at you, Hawkman). And it does it with enough mysterious teases and interesting secrets to justify their willingness to join this team to keep things intriguing… with one exception. In one case, using a single word balloon, Johns shows himself to be playing with some serious fire. Fire that, if he handles it well, will thrill anyone who read comics through the 1990… and that conversely, if he screws it up, will make a fairly significant niche fanbase turn on him like he insulted their mothers, and make the attempted rehabilitation of Vibe seem like a low-risk venture.

Let’s be straight: there is no Justice League of America yet formed in the first issue of Justice League of America. This issue focuses on Amanda Waller trying to convince Steve Trevor to lead this as-yet purely theoretical team, and then each trying to convince the other to accept particular members on the team. And this is done by alternating between sequences of Waller and Trevor looking and file photos and talking about the heroes, and short, couple-of-page sequences of some of the heroes in action. The action throughline is an unknown figure dressed in black, fleeing from what damn sure looks like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and being beaten almost dead before making his way back to A.R.G.U.S. headquarters and conveniently flatlining after revealing that he was Green Arroow undercover, and before revealing the mastermind behind the attack.

As a fan of the Giffen / DeMatteis Justice League, this is a very intriguing introduction to that kind of team: a team of second stringers and The Other Guys who are being thrown together by something other than choice, and who have to learn not only to work together, but to overcome their own limitations and (sometimes) feelings of inferiority. The problem is that that interpretation of the team and their interaction is purely my inference based on the expository introductions here – again: The Justice League of America does not appear in this book. So while it seems that we’re in for an 80s-style Justice League here, it’s purely a guess.

The main problem here is that the book is almost exclusively exposition describing the team. There was no lack of complaints during Brad Meltzer’s early issues of Justice League of America that they were nothing but people looking at pictures of superheroes and talking about whether or not they should be issued invitations to join the team, and that is really pretty much all this issue is. And while it’s pretty clear that Johns is getting these preliminaries out of the way in a single shot, it means that all we get is Waller and Trevor talking about people who are going to wind up on the team; we don’t even get snippy commentary about someone they both decide they don’t want. It makes the issue a weird, expository double-edged sword: you need some kind of explanation as to how a team built for a purpose by third parties is put together… but it doesn’t make for the most exciting reading. Looking at pictures of people looking at pictures feels strangely masturbatory… and me sitting here talking about pictures of people talking about pictures of people is weirdly like cranking off in public. And I can’t get caught doing that; they throw the book at you on the second offense. But I digress.

Johns does do a solid job with the sequences showing the heroes actually, you know, actually doing stuff, and he drops some interesting mysteries as to what Waller and Trevor have dangled in front of some of them to get them to agree to join. For example, we learn that someone has stolen Selina Kyle’s identity and that Trevor claims to know who it is, and Katana is enticed by the promise to put her in front of the people who killed her husband. So he does solid work in setting up future story points to bring the reader back…

…but then there’s Stargirl. And the one word balloon that implies Johns has something in mind that will either make him a hero to fandom, or will lead him to learn that all it takes is an Aquaman baseball cap to make an effective Geoff Johns effigy.

In this post-New 52 introduction to Stargirl, she is a teenager in Los Angeles who is beloved by the public, with a star on on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a big Q Score. She is seen as humble, and as a true clean hero for America’s youth, albeit being haunted by something that makes her want to sleep with all the lights on (Please be a Webcam, please be a Webcam…). Which is fine, and makes complete sense, but then there’s the word balloon:

Because of what happened to the previous owner of the Cosmic Staff, we’ve had her under surveillance for a while…

Before the New 52 reboot, the previous owner of the Cosmic Staff was Starman. Specifically, Jack Knight, the protagonist of James Robinson’s classic 90s series, who gave the Cosmic Staff to Stargirl after he decided to retire peacefully with his child and girlfriend, never to be seen again. Supposedly, Robinson has a deal with DC that prevents anyone but Robinson from writing Jack Knight, so for Johns to effectively namecheck Knight, and some heretofore unknown thing that “happened” to him that required surveillance on Stargirl, is one hell of a bold statement. At face value, it can only mean a few things: that Johns has a Jack Knight Starman story in mind with Robinson’s blessing (or, please God, Robinson’s participation)… or that he has one in mind without Robinson’s participation. Or worse: that he intends to retcon Jack Knight out of Stargirl’s existence. One of these options would whip Starman fans, who’ve been waiting since Starman ended in 2001 for a new Robinson Jack Knight story, into a frenzy. The other options would also whip Starman fans into a frenzy… the primary difference in that frenzy would be that it includes fire.

But even though that comment about the staff’s previous owner was one hell of bold move, it was effective, in that despite the slow pace of the first issue and the inclusion of Vibe (which, despite my co-Editor Amanda’s general, if muted, enthusiasm for his new solo title, will take a hell of a lot to convince me is even remotely a good idea), there isn’t a force on Earth that will keep me away from this book for the immediate future in the hopes of seeing a good new Starman story… but it also puts Johns in the position where he has written a check that had Goddamned well better clear.

David Finch’s art is, as it normally is, extremely realistic and highly detailed, with plenty of 90-style crosshatching details on the faces – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if every line on the face adds five years, then Vibe is about 700 years old. The crosshatching doesn’t do a lot for me, but unlike most art that uses the technique, Finch’s errs on the side of realism, if idealized realism. His people look like people, albeit people with access to a plethora of performance enhancing drugs, and his faces are extremely expressive and realistic. What action this book has is well choreographed (with the exception of a flying leap from Catwoman in one panel where she lands in a completely different position than gravity and physics would imply in the next panel), and his storytelling is clear insofar as it can be made when a large chunk of the book is comprised of two people talking across the desk. The only place where Finch’s art really falls down is in his drawings of machinery: he draws computers like they were once described to him by a five-year-old. It’s a small part of the issue, but once you notice that every computer keyboard looks like a box of giant Scrabble tiles with a few letters missing, you will not be able to unsee it. On the whole, this is a good looking comic book, with only a few issues that are really nitpicks, if I’m honest about it.

Justice League of America #1 is a slow-paced, exposition-heavy book that has the thankless task of explaining the bureaucratic construction of a superhero team, introducing some new characters, and setting up when there will be an actual team, eventually. But it is generally effective setup; there is enough implication here that we are in store for a scrappy team of second stringers, which is something that, given Johns’s excellent work in the pre-New 52 Justice Society of America, I am looking forward to seeing. If you’re hoping to jump headfirst into action, this isn’t the right issue for you, but as an explanation as to why the team will someday exist, it’s effective.

And, as a Starman fan, Johns hooked me with that one word balloon, man. Even the chance of a good Starman story is enough to keep me on board for at least a little while… but Johns has really pulled the pin on a grenade with that move. If he throws it right, it could blow us all away, but if he doesn’t? Well, after you light your torches and grab your pitchforks, just look for the only guy at Comic-Con wearing an Aquaman cap unironically.