Comic book review: Justice League #33- Negativity and fear, a toxic real world combination.

Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Doug Mahnke
Colourist: Andrew Dalhouse
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 3rd September 2014


Batman thinks that he can control Lex Luthor by bringing him into the Justice League, but Superman is not so sure that this is a good idea. Batman shouldn’t be that stupid, but he has to be for the sake of future story-telling opportunities. Writer Geoff John’s is sacrificing plausibility to create drama. It’s like a soap opera where characters do ridiculous, implausible things just to make things more interesting for the viewers. Sometimes these moments cannot be explained, and you just have to ask your viewers/readers to go with it, because after all, this is all about creating interesting stories, right?

Geoff John’s tries to explain his moment of incredulity away with the old ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer,’ cliché and to pretend that a whole lot of dumb isn’t dumb at all. It doesn’t quite work. It’s almost like he’s apologising for what he has to do to make the story more interesting. He knows it’s dumb, but rather than admitting it, he’s throwing in a cliché to try to explain away what he has to do.

I want my comic books to be a bit cleverer, a bit more original, or perhaps even just a little bit more honest than that. Be dumb if you have to be dumb. The readers will understand that you need to do it to make the story more interesting, but don’t use a lame cliché to try to cover your tracks. It’s insulting, and it really does stand-out as a moment when the writer doubts what he is doing and is trying to perhaps even make excuses to himself about what he has to do to move his story forward.

I’m not going to spend all of this review complaining about Geoff John’s though, because I really do find him to be a consistently enjoyable writer.  I love the way he writes characters, and even if the way his plots comes together seem a bit contrived they are always enjoyable nonetheless. This issue is a good example of that. The plot is not that great, and the end panel doesn’t make sense when you factor in what happens during the book, but there’s an emotional resonance in the story, showing how fear and negativity acts as a force of evil in the world.

John’s writes characters with personality defects very, very well. His comic book evil is a very recognisably real world evil. His characters are convincingly human and far more realistic than many of the simplistic heroes (save the civilians) and villains  (I want to see the world burn) that you often get in lazier comic books.

I really enjoyed some of the colouring in this book as well, and I’d recommend you pick up a copy just for the panels where Batman helps Jessica Cruz overcome the negative, fear based emotions that are causing her so much pain and anguish. The green colouring here is gorgeous, and together with the strong empathic writing from John’s it’s a standout part of the book that will long linger in the mind, even though the overall plot is a bit weak and unconvincing to me.

Pick up this book for the emotionally resonant character writing from Geoff John’s and the gorgeous colouring from Andrew Dalhouse. Some of the pencils look a bit off and the plot is contrived, but I can take the flaws, as there’s plenty within this book to enjoy.

Rating: 7/10