Justice League: The Villain’s Journey

As contradictory as it sounds, I hate soap operas, but I apparently love soap opera storylines. The entire Star Wars movie saga is basically one big family melodrama; my favourite Star Trek movies start with Kirk losing a friend and gaining a son; and even the best wrestling grudges involve a healthy dose of heightened drama (it doesn’t get much soapier than the Undertaker coming face-to-face with his long lost brother Kane, who was hideously scarred in the house fire that ‘Taker started as a child!). So when Geoff Johns retooled the Justice League comic from a noisy blockbuster into a gloriously daft soap opera for the second New 52 arc, my enjoyment took a serious step up.

Starting from #7 to #14, the storyline jumps 5 years on from the origin of the League, and Johns’ writing immediately seems much more comfortable. The threats are far more compelling, with brand new supervillain Graves quite literally forcing the heroes to confront their own personal demons. There’s also a sense of self-awareness, with the heroes getting a harsh lesson in the collateral damage of their super-battles. Even the character comedy is more successful than previous attempts (see the Aquaman umbrella gag in #7). But Johns’ masterstroke is to introduce a love-square of sorts between Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor; it all unfolds quite naturally, and is a huge improvement over the awkward characterisations of the first arc.

The artwork is as impressive as ever, with Jim Lee and Gene Ha providing explosive action. And it gets even better in #13-#14, when Tony Daniel steps in to illustrate some luscious jungle settings as the League attempts to chase down Wonder Woman’s nemesis Cheetah. Previous to this, I had only ever seen Daniel’s work in the gothic styled Detective Comics; these two issues showed me that he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the top superhero artists in the business, and it’s a real shame he didn’t work on more of the series.

Note: it looks like #13-#14 are collected in a different volume from the others mentioned above, which is daft, because they immediately follow on from the earlier events, and wrap things up with a cliffhanger ending that the Eastenders writers room would be jealous of!