Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Doug Mahnke
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 30th July 2014
There are a couple of ways to read this book. You can read it as a silly childish comic about wacky people in silly costumes and try to pretend that you are a twelve-year old again, or you can be all adult about it and get angry at the statist assumptions and wilful ignorance of it all.
I’ll split this review into two main sections. The first will look at the book as a silly childish adventure playtime slice of sickly sweet cake, and the second will look at it from an adult’s perspective. Here goes:
The narrative follows three groups, with an interdimensional evil threat lurking in the background. The first group is headed by a character called, ‘The Chief,’ and consists of psychologically damaged weirdoes with super powers. The second group is the Justice League, who are really brave and selfless, and spend all of the time saving poor helpless civilians, and the last group is headed up by Lex Luthor, a man who wants total power, and is prepared to do anything to get it.
The story of Justice league #32 involves the later two groups struggling to gain control over a conflicted villain called Power Ring. There are fights, nice green art and the Justice League themselves don’t do a lot. I guess they’ll be more of a factor later on after the groups headed up by the Chief and Lex Luthor have a bit of a tussle next month. The best parts of this issue are the characterisation of a deeply insecure Elasti-Girl and some background information on the evil force hidden in a ring. There’s not much else happening, but the art is big and colourful and I guess more interesting things might happen later on.
Okay, time to put my adult-head on and look at this book with a bit of common sense. What we have in this book is three teams of government agents fighting amongst themselves for control. Lex Luthor is the corporate wing. The Chief and his band of misfits are the warped and untrustworthy intelligence agencies, and the Justice League are the order following boy scouts in the FBI, thinking they are saving the people, but largely unaware of the power struggle going on amongst the other two teams. As a comic about the Justice League this is a bit weak, as it means that they are the least important people in their own book.
The best thing about this issue is the unintentional hilarity of the front cover, with Lex Luthor holding the costume of Batman amidst the headline-' Lex Luthor knows one secret. What will he do to learn them all?' I have an answer for that. He’ll join the NSA, and then he’ll get to know whatever he likes, and if anybody questions him he’ll call them unpatriotic and they’ll have to escape to Russia or spend the rest of their lives in prison. Well, that’s America in 2014, is it not? If Lex was in charge, that’s what he would do. Will we see this reflected in this comic book, a comic book that was written in 2014? What do you think?
Gathering both reviews together, and looking at this book in some kind of collective sense, I cannot completely leave my adult mind in the bathroom and enjoy it just as a silly comic book for a twelve-year old mind. The cover screams unreality, so it’s difficult to do that from the onset. However, as a comic for the very young, or the ignorant hipster type who likes to pretend that reality doesn’t exist, there are moments of humour and a couple of the female characters are quite interesting.
I cannot help but read the book as a silly cartoon though. I know it’s written primarily for adults, as very few children read comic books in 2014, but this really is a child’s comic book. It has big bright colours; silly characters and an overall feel of disconnection from the harsh realities of our time. It’s a ridiculous comic book. It’s stupid, it’s about funny cartoon characters, and it’s staying a billion miles away from any of the real issues and concerns that are happening in the real world today.
Lots of comic book fans will love it of course, but that says more about them, their own mind-sets and priorities in life, rather than the objective quality of this book itself, and everybody knows they just put up those 10/10 review to get retweets on twitter. I’m giving this book a slightly below average rating, not just because of the adult concerns I had with it, but because it’s not much fun, not very memorable, and the Justice League are a background team of uninteresting super idiot cops in their own book. It’s a blah book about government teams fighting for control, with the least interesting characters being the Justice League themselves. That’s not good, for a twelve-year-old mind or a 32-year-old feminist liberal hipster either.
One last point. If Lex Luthor actually existed in the world today he’d be working deep within the US intelligence network. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s a smart guy and it would be the obvious thing for him to do. If he worked within the US intelligence network he’d be above the law, above prosecution and above suspicion. He could do whatever he liked, and further his corporate interests shielded by laws that he could write himself. That’s how it works today. If you have corporate power you are above governments, and certainly above super hero cops in their silly little uniforms. They work for you, and they are happy to do so. It would be nice to see that reality reflected in comic books today, but perhaps I’m asking for too much from comic book writers comfortably working within large corporations?
If the Justice League cared at all about human freedom they’d be tackling corporate/government complicity in crimes against the people, not rescuing cats from burning buildings as they do in this particular comic book. Is that harsh? Probably, but it’s the truth, and as I’m writing on my own blog here, and couldn’t give a toss about retweets on Twitter I’m going to say exactly what I think, and talk about realities that far too many people deliberately ignore.
Rating: 5/10
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