Justice League Origin

When it was first released in September 2011, the relaunched #1 of the Justice League comic was spearheading a game-changing revamp of the DC superhero universe known as The New 52. And I mean ‘spearhead’ literally; on the week of release, it was the only comic that the company put out (compared to the usual 13-15 titles) so as to absolutely maximise it’s visibility.

Put simply, the first volume by superstar writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee retells the formation of the League, pulling all the estabished players of ‘The Big Seven’ together (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman) whilst also providing an origin for it’s newest member Cyborg. It’s a lot of content to pack into 6 issues, and although the end-product certainly delivers on crowd pleasing action, it was also quite a bit more vacuous and contrived than your standard superhero adventure, so wasn’t an outright success for me at the time.

Geoff Johns is actually a favourite writer of mine, with his lengthy turns on The Flash, Justice Society and Green Lantern being amongst my top comic runs, but his plotting here just falls a bit flat for me. In order to deliver on reader expectations as quickly as possible, Johns cooks up an alien invasion by Darkseid and his Parademons from the planet Apocalypse. And although this creates some immediate urgency, and provides a driver for introducing the various heroes as quickly as possible, there is very little space left for character development, or for explaining the threat in any particular detail. The plot can basically be summarised as a continuous battle for 6-issues that various people join and leave along the way. It hurts the story as well that very few of the heroes are portrayed as being particularly likeable, with the overall interaction coming across like early episodes of reality TV show The Apprentice, only with more collateral damage. Upon recent re-reading though, I noticed that Johns did quite nicely capture a few moments where the various heroes are starting to learn about each other’s powers/capabilities/limits, and I did appreciate some brief mentoring between the more experienced Batman and the relative rookie Green Lantern.

The artwork by Jim Lee is spectacular, as would be expected from possibly the most beloved superhero artist of the modern era. It’s easy to see why Warner Brothers were keen for this particular arc to provide the basis of the upcoming blockbuster Justice League movie; the action is cinematic and Darkseid is, visually, a seriously imposing foe for the League.

I could sit and pick a dozen more faults in Johns’ story and script; but he was laying a foundation here, and it’s important to note that the volumes directly following this origin had an almost immediate improvement as they jumped 5 years down the line to a more established League. Despite the global scale of the action, this really was just an initial baby-step in terms of characterisation. And yet, I’ve got to admit, it does deliver more than it’s fair share of thrills, and so is still worth a read for fans of these heroes.