Justice League of America 80-Page Giant 2011

I love the JLA: as a concept, in that I love plenty of past issues, and in that I love many of the mainstays of the team. I always want a reason to read it, and rarely regret it. But oh my god this is fucking dreadful.

This is a series of linked short stories: nine feature pairs of heroes in some circle of Dante’s version of hell. In each, they are faced with some specific guilt of theirs. Some of these make a sort of sense: anger for Green Arrow, violence for the Demon (hang on, the Demon is condemned to hell? Isn’t that home?), but many seem utterly arbitrary, contrived and unconvincing: heresy for the Rocketeer (I am clearly out of touch with the current JLA line-up), gluttony for Oracle and Booster Gold (I couldn’t even spot an attempt to justify this one), lust for Wonder Woman and Supergirl (not for each other, in case that sounded exciting). Obviously they all have to overcome this alleged character flaw, sometimes in ways I have seen in detail before (compare the violence one with the JLA cartoon where Superman fights Wonder Woman, both magically hypnotised to see the other as an enemy until a reflection reveals the truth), mostly finally by hitting some sort of demon.

The finale is the most rushed story I have ever seen in comics (full of spoilers, but you shouldn’t want to read this comic anyway): it brings the whole 18 heroes together, introduces the demonic villain who has been putting them through this, explains why (each pair of heroes grabbed a fragment of a mask before escaping, for no clear reason), reveals the mighty power he is thereby gaining, introduces his rival in hell, reveals that Batman (of course) saw through some of it and has tricked him, has Plastic Man gain this ultimate power instead, who then loses control and abuses it, telling Superman to kill everyone, the Demon defeats Supes, Plas is talked down by Batman and then regains control, tells the rest to throw everything at him to destroy the weapon, sacrificing his life in the process, then the rest mourn him, then an angel brings Plas back as it wasn’t his time (a new record for fastest superhero resurrection, back on the same page he died on!), we sort out the aftermath and send the heroes home. This runs to a total of just 7 pages. (The overall story total is 70 pages, by the way, not 80.) I’ve never seen pacing anything like it – the scene of the whole JLA throwing everything at Plastic Man to destroy a weapon that could apparently get the best of God, up to the point it kills the hero, is complete within half a page; Superman is beaten in a single panel.

The other big trouble is, it’s all so badly done. The writing is cliched and stiff throughout, with especially painful poetry from the Demon. Since each story has to introduce two heroes, set up that they are in some circle of hell, have someone explain why they are guilty of the sin, have them partly believe it but then fight back and justify themselves, then have them defeat the presiding creature, every story feels much the same and has room for zero psychological depth. Compare this with for instance the Key story in Grant Morrison’s JLA, where each hero is thrown into a fantasy world of their own: imaginative, fresh, telling, in a few pages each.

To be fair, the art mostly ranges from okayish to decent, with much less variety than you’d expect from a squadron of artists. I quite liked Scott McDaniel, Joe Prado and the team of Marco Castiello & Vincenzo Acunzo, but it’s all rather tepid, without ever being very bad.

I’m also tired of misleading covers: 18 heroes inside (no idea if they are all really current members); five on the cover including the Martian Manhunter, who is not inside.

Fundamentally this was put together appallingly: they might have cut the hero count in half and/or shortened the lead-up episodes to extend the finale to a sane degree. Or they might have rejected the whole thing as a farrago of cliches and retreads executed by inept writers (I’ll name Adam Glass, writer of the first two tales and the finale, as a particularly astonishingly bad offender; he writes for TV’s Supernatural, so should be at least a bit less inept than this) to no significant purpose. I really wanted to enjoy this, and it is a crushing disappointment of major proportions.