21Six.net

The Justice League of America is one of the top organizations in the DC Universe. It’s contained members such as Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern as well as minor people that you may not care about. Each incarnation of the team has always had strengths and weaknesses that tend to be exacerbated by a particular author, and sometimes these work out for everyone for the best. Other times, it may not be so nice. This current run, is one of those instances where it’s not so nice.

I’ve been following the Justice League since I first got into comics in 2005. The first JLA books I read were “Year One” and the “Tower of Babel” arc from the actual series “JLA”. It was a piece of art, to say the least. The wonders that Batman had come up with in an effort to take down his teammates, and the fallout in “Divided We Fall” were all wonderful to read and I was completely engrossed with every incredibly epic (used here in the sense of “dealing with this on an epic scale” not in the sense of “EPIC WIN!”) page and story. I followed it up until the Crisis of Conscience, and the Infinite Crisis connections. The last issues of the book were disappointing to say the least, and the not the kind of thing that even really FELT like the Justice League.

That’s when I found out that Brad Meltzer, who had written one of my favorite arcs in the Green Arrow book, as well as Identity Crisis, would be doing the first several issues in the newest JLA book, and it would go back to the name “Justice League of America”. I was excited. I anxiously read through issue #0, taking in the different aspects of the Yesterdays and Tomorrows of the different artists under him, wondering which aspects would be true. I hoped that, while it would not be the same creature of Morrison and Waid, that it would hold its own well.

Then I read the first issues. I was blown away with The Tornado’s Path. The agony of the tragedy of Red Tornado is something that still, ever so slightly, makes me feel for him. Meltzer’s characters have always had a human quality about them that I found particularly enjoyable. I felt for Reddy, as he went through a number of new experiences in his human body, only to have it all ripped away from him by a newly developed Solomon Grundy as his friends attempted to beat an Amazo who hadn’t quite had all of his memories of Red Tornado removed.

And in the end, Reddy was a robot with a soul again, but now he had the knowledge of what it means to be a human. And he really would never recover. Meltzer made a point of showing that. He had seen the other side, and he was slowly becoming detached from it all. Perhaps a kind of depression.

“The Lightning Saga”, combined with the wonder Geoff Johns’ Justice Society was another fantastic story that also brought the human emotions that DC characters sometimes lack and that Johns and Meltzer can sometimes bring to a story. Watching the Legion talk, and recover, and wondering just who it was they were going to bring back. And seeing the disappointment in the eyes of the old leaguers whenever, once again, Barry Allen stays dead, is something that strikes me.

However, Meltzer really left after all of these. He moved on to other things and other writers took over. We were introduced to a new Injustice League, and while it was nice to see a new Injustice thing, for the sake of the story, it felt kind of out of place compared to the rather personal stories that had just taken place. And on the whole I feel like this was the beginning of the end of the League.

The one arc that saved it, in a unique was, was the Anansi arc that took place just before the big stuff that’s going on now, if memory serves. Vixen (who had recently had a number of issues with her powers) met up with the African trickster entity Anansi, here declaring that he was the one who developed her powers, and had connections to Animal Man. Reality was being altered by the Spider, because all stories are Spider stories, to indirectly quote Neil Gaiman.

The Anansi arc was interesting in different respects. There was no Luthor or anything, and it felt a bit like “Divided We Fall” in the way it was. Anansi shifted the truth into new stories, and we watched as characters changed. And sometimes in rather interesting ways that I would actually like to see done.

In particular: Bruce Wayne underwent a rather drastic change. As we all know, following visit to see The Mask of Zorro, Bruce’s parents were killed. Well, in the New Story, it was a western, I believe. And Bruce, in turn, killed the person who murdered his parents. Instead of Batman, he became Paladin. And he was a killer.

He was a fugitive, a kind of Punisher in old-west gear and it was interesting to read and I wondered just how much more you could work with a man who killed his enemies. You would need a mini series, obviously.

Other characters changed, Superman and Wonder Woman married, and so forth. In the end, this storyline ended much too soon.

Of course, it’s not just storylines that have had issue. Black Canary, at the beginning, was made the chairwoman of the JLA, something that she took great pride in, and something that was slowly subverted by the Trinity (one of the given names for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman) with the three of them going so far as to develop a pocket dimension wherein they could hold meetings. Canary found out about this, and this, along with general poor writing and wishes for various paths, led to the breakdown of the League almost completely after the events of Final Crisis.

The original team was gone. Black Canary still led the team, but it wasn’t entirely something worth leading. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and a few others were gone. They had left for various reasons. Instead, the team still contained Vixen and Red Arrow (Roy Harper, who was once Arsenal and Speedy. Not my favorite choice, as I thought Arsenal was a fine character type, but there’s been a need for Johns and Meltzer’s stories to kind of bring Kingdom Come into continuity despite it being a part of the multiverse) however they were greeted with the arrival of the female incarnation of Dr. Light and a few other people.

The team was no longer the A-Team or even the B-Team. It was a collection of B and C level characters, some of them who had last existed in a League book whenever was the Justice League International. The only major characters who were involved were Green Arrow, Green Lantern, and Black Canary. But even then there was trouble, as Arrow and Lantern defected and gave us the wholly forgettable mini-series “Cry for Justice” wherein we watch as a bunch of wonderfully drawn panels tell a story that I honestly can’t remember anything about after having read all that’s come out.

Things have gone on in this book for a while, and I’m hoping that, soon, things will work out and the League will turn into what it was. However, what it is happens to be something that’s barely worth reading. The most recent issue of the book is issue number 40 as of this writing. It consisted of Vixen, Black Canary, an incredibly deformed Plastic Man (I actually missed issues 37-38, and have difficult remembering before then, so I’m not sure what Eel is doing there), Doctor Light, another female I can’t remember, and then Zatanna all being attacked by the various Black Lanterns that have formed from the old rogues.

One of which is your friend and mine, the original Doctor Light. Dead-Light decides that the best course of action would be to attempt to rape Living-Light because obviously the guy does nothing but want to rape women, talk about rape, and do rape-y things because this is character development as opposed to beating a dead horse. So the issue ends with a bunch of broken Black Lanterns, a naked Living-Light, and all of the other people from there looking all distracted and worried and serious and in all honestly it’s something I would have rather not read, however, I keep hoping that this series will start to get better.

I don’t know when I’ll stop following it, if I will. The stories are incredibly disappointing anymore, with, as I said, the Anansi arc being the best one that existed after Meltzer left the book. I don’t expect Meltzer to join back onto it, but can we at least get something worth reading again?

Zatanna and Black Canary are both supposed to be incredibly strong characters. Not necessarily physically, but Zatanna is one of the greatest magic users in the DCU. Canary is a fantastic martial artist and was part of the Birds of Prey setup for a while. Vixen has the ability to call upon animal spirits and so forth to give her the ability to PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH AMAZO. Why are these women being written like helpless little girls?

Why has Doctor Light been written like a housewife who can sometimes make bright things happen with her hands? These aren’t these characters.

Is it too much to ask that the characters be written like superheroines?