Justice League International 1

BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG

Remember the underwhelming, yet massively-hyped Justice League 1? Well this is the opposite – in that the entire team gets together in five pages, they interact with each other and actually do something! Yes! That’s still possible to accomplish in a comic, in 2011!

Jurgens has proved he can write solid, perhaps slightly retro, superhero stories with his run on Booster Gold, and it looks like we’re in store for more of the same here.

‘Head of UN Intelligence’ Andre Briggs puts the team, which he imagines to be a more controllable version of the Justice League, together using very flimsy comic-book reasoning. “Confidence in every level of authority is at an all-time low” he says, explaining, unsuccessfully, why getting half the cast of DC’s unlamented Global Guardians back together is just what the international ‘community’ wanted.

Anyway, he does so, dragging Vixen, Ice, Fire and (best of all) Godiva out of DC’s comic book limbo and superhero adventuring commences.

As with every reboot there’s the slightly annoying prospect of having to sit through stuff we’ve seen done before. The exchange between Guy Gardner and Ice suggests a rehash of their original relationship in the 1980s JLI is on the cards – but hopefully Jurgens can deliver that without turning it into the bafflingly unfunny ‘comedy’ book its predecessor became.

Aaron Lopresti’s art is a big attraction here too. The best thing about Gail Simone’s unfortunate run on Wonder Woman, Lopresti is a solid story teller and his art’s very attractive. A definite plus point.

Sadly, even his pencilling powers are no match for Jim Lee’s pretty dreadful redesigns. Apparently all DC character designs were ‘tweaked’ by Lee – perhaps explaining why Booster Gold now has a whopping distracting “W” around his collar bone while Ice has added random bits of fur to her ensemble.

Godiva, renamed Dora Leigh here in a surprise Dolly-Parton-in-Nine-To-Five-themed twist (she was originally called Dorcas Leigh), may prove a slight irritation to British readers. Jurgens has stuck a random ‘mate’ into some of her dialogue and she also tells Batman to ‘sod off.’ Plucky!

If you’ve been left traumatised by any of the other DC relaunches you should buy this. So far it seems like a traditional superhero team book, which is no bad thing with a creative crew like this on board.