Old Gods In The Machine, or: Because, MAGIC!: Justice League Dark #23 Review

Comic crossover events are built on a tight timeline. Because of all the various comic titles that are involved in any big event, everything needs to go off like clockwork. Because when it doesn’t, it throws all the other titles involved into a scheduling nightmare, and that could really fuck up their ability to tell a coherent story… not to mention fuck up their ability to get their shit together in time for the next event story that is inevitably hammering down the pike.

So sometimes an issue needs to move a lot of plot and characters around quickly, to make sure everything is in place for the next issue in the story pipeline. And Justice League Dark #23, the penultimate chapter of DC’s Trinity War crossover, is one of those books. Writer Jeff Lemire and artist Mikel Janin have just 24 pages to get characters from the House of Mystery, Washington D. C., New York City and other parts unknown all together to deal with Pandora’s Box and face down whoever the dapper gentleman running the Secret Society happens to be, all so the players and pieces are in place for the finale in next week’s Justice League.

The good news is that they do it with a fair amount of action, pitting heavy hitters against lower-level heroes, with everyone in sight being affected by the corrupting influence of Pandora’s Box. The bad news is that they make a lot of these moves based on forced coincidences, characters popping up from out of nowhere at just the right time, and a serious over-reliance on Zatanna and her backwards Pig Latin magic.

The result is an exciting story, but as befitting a story with magic at its core, one where you can see The Man Behind The Curtain. Characters don’t move in this comic. They are pushed.

We pick up where the last crossover issue left off: with Wonder Woman possessed by the power of Pandora’s Box, and various members of the Justice Leagues trying to pry it from her hands. As this happens, the box is corrupting everyone close to it, making the battle less about disarming Wonder Woman and more about claiming the box for themselves. Into the fray comes Captain Marvel (Yes, I know, he’s Shazam now. But I am old and fear change) from out of nowhere, to take out Wonder Woman and seize Pandora’s Box, becoming corrupted by it. He shouts his magic word which, rather than turning him back into Billy Batson, instead causes a great global magic disturbance, which conveniently causes Deadman (trapped in the House of Mystery with Batman and several members of various Justice Leagues that I just had to go back and look at, because none of them do anything) to learn the location of Madame Xanadu. Meanwhile, in Washington, Superman, Green Arrow and the remaining Leaguers have confronted Amanda Waller over her creation of the Justice League of America specifically to take down the regular Justice League, just as John Constantine arrives at the scene of the original battle just in time to get his hands on Pandora’s Box and magically teleport away… to the site where Madame Xanadu is, right as Batman, Deadman, and Leaguers-To-Be-Named-Later-When-They-Say-Or-Do-Something arrive, and they are told that the box isn’t what they think it is.

So a lot of stuff happens in this issue, but very little of it feels truly organic. Shazam shows up to get his hands on the box because, well, I don’t know. He’s just there. And he yells his magic word causing this magical earthquake, why exactly? Well, considering that it doesn’t seem to have any effect other than to show Deadman where Xanadu is, I’m guessing it was purely for plot advancement. Constantine makes his way to the scene of the battle how? Got me! And how does he touch the box without being corrupted? Well, he says it’s because he’s already corrupt, which makes complete and total sense so long as you have had enough beer to forget that, in the first issue of the crossover, Pandora said only Superman could handle the box because she believed he was without corruption!

This issue is simply filled with stuff that happens because it needs to happen in order to make it to the final chapter. As such, it feels forced and more like filler than any issue of the event I’ve read so far. Sure, it’s fun seeing superheroes punch on each other – that kind of thing is always fun, and Lemire keeps the issue action-packed so that the pacing sort of masks the fact that things are just happening for no real apparent reason – but that just isn’t enough to overcome the sheer arbitrariness of the stuff that’s going on.

And Zatanna is a perfect example. repeatedly through this fight sequence, she uses her magic to overcome whatever gets thrown at her, from making people stop feeling the corrupt effects of Pandora’s Box, to moving everyone away from the thing, to turning Hawkman’s wings to lead. She is able to do whatever is necessary get to the next panel… but that in and of itself causes problems. Such as: why not teleport everyone into the next adjoining state or republic? Or put everyone but her into a low-level coma until she can get away? Or teleport the box into the fucking sun, while we’re at it? Making Zatanna as powerful as she needs to be to get out of a jam makes not showing her even trying to do something more straight-ahead to solve the problem permanently a glaring omission.

But where the issue really lost me was in getting characters into the same room as Madame Xanadu. In order to accomplish this, Lemire has Deadman just suddenly know where she is in the aftermath of Shazam’s magicquake, and he has Constantine’s teleportation spell arbitrarily misfire and drop him and Zatanna there. Both of these plot points were real Deus ex Machina moments, dropped in quickly to put certain characters into certain places, without making a hell of a lot of sense at all. It felt forced and kinda cheap, done only because Geoff Johns needed or wanted Batman, Deadman, Constantine, et al to be with Xanadu in the final chapter. It felt like a lazy move to me.

Thankfully, one place where the issue excels is in the visuals. Janin does some pretty realistic-looking art here, with expressive faces, realistic and proportional figures, and as such, adds a level of realism that grounds the story, which I liked in a comic where magic is such a strong force. More importantly, while there is a realism here, it doesn’t seem to reach the level of lightboxing, which I always feel robs the images of dynamism. He gets the realism / fluidity balance just right for my eye. Janin goes for double-paged spreads a bit more than I like (although he makes it clear in each of them that it is a double-pager, so the reader doesn’t get confused), and he clearly has fun with his panel borders – when Shazam arrives, Janin drops in three small panels that form the shape of Shazam’s lightning bolt logo, and uses non-standard, “magic” borders now and again to keep the visuals interesting.

Look: in order for a story to have a truly great climax, every character and plot element needs to be in place. I get that. But Justice League Dark #23 seems like it is willing to accomplish those final moves over any other consideration. Constantine can handle the box because Lemire and DC Editorial needed someone to get it to Greece. Zatanna can take on all comers but not destroy the box because the story would be over. Shazam sends a quake through magic because having Zatanna send Batman a text with the location would be boring (and the cell service at the House of Mystery truly sucks). And it all needed to happen in this issue because Justice League #23 is out next week, and if they have to delay it, well, all those 3D Villains Month covers are already at the printers.

So Justice League Dark #23 did what DC needed it to do. Unfortunately, it didn’t do what it needed to do very well at all.