Welcome to the third edition of “This Week in the Multiverse.” It was a pretty slow week in comics for me, so I’m going to take this opportunity to have a column-length look at the new Justice League of America series.

This week we saw #14 of the series and the penultimate part of Dwayne McDuffie’s Injustice League Unlimited storyline. But up through #12, the series was written by Brad Meltzer, the author of the universe-shaking Identity Crisis miniseries that began setting the stage for the altered DC Universe we have today. Everyone loved Identity Crisis. One guy at the comic book store back home referred to it as “our generation’s Watchmen.” And while I wouldn’t go that far, Meltzer’s first foray into the DC Universe was quite impressive. This is a man who managed to make the Silver Age ally of the Flash, Elongated Man and his wife interesting.

We all had high hopes when Meltzer started writing Justice League. In the introduction to the hard cover of his introductory eight-part Tornado’s Path storyline centered around the android/elemental hero Red Tornado and his Pinocchio-esque quest to become a real man, Meltzer states that growing up Justice League was always his favorite book. That’s pretty promising. The story picks up in the aftermath of Geoff John’s Infinite Crisis. Instead of returning to his rebuilt 30th century android form, his spirit decides to inhabit a human body. It was really touching to ssee him get to hug his adopted daughter and really kiss his wife for the first time. The series was full of nods to classic Justice League stories and characters and had really great cliffhangers at the end of each issue.

Next was a crossover story arc with Geoff John’s Justice Society of America involving members of the 30th century’s Legion of Superheroes. It was completely personality-driven and full of nice allusions to DC Comics history. I hate the Legion of Superheroes, but other than that, it was very readable.

Here’s the problem, though: the climaxes of his only two story arcs were centered around personal, internal struggles of the heroes. This is well and good. However, at the same time, Meltzer never threatened the Earth with destruction and humanity with mass extinction. Both capers took place completely within the realm of heroes and villains and their personalities and did not affect anyone outside this realm. Red Tornado was sad when he had to go back to his robot body. The Justice League and Justice Society were scared and upset when they found out that a member of the Legion of Superheroes was going to sacrifice his life to bring the Flash back to life. While I am sure Brad Meltzer loves the Justice League, his run on the series overlooked what makes Justice League great: a sense of the epic. Earth’s greatest heroes don’t get together just for the hell of it. They come together to face alien conquerors and galactic cataclysms that require their combined strength and skills. When executed properly, the result is modern-day epic.

A great example of Justice League done right is Grant Morrison’s late ‘90s Rock of Ages storyline. Morrison managed to fit an Injustice Gang tale, cosmic exploration, the threat of global devastation, and an eerie alternate timeline where Darkseid conquers the Earth all in to one story. After reading it all those years ago, I felt shaken and in awe. In his year on the book, Meltzer never did that for me.

Meltzer also tried to make the book more interesting with a little bit of forbidden romance between Green Arrow’s former sidekick Roy Harper and Hawkgirl (not the one from the cartoon that you’re thinking of). Since Green Arrow and Hawkman hate each other for being a kneejerk left-winger and an authoritarian conservative respectively, it was supposed to be edgy. It wasn’t. He never went anywhere with it, it didn’t make me long for the next issue to see what was going to happen between the two, and when action finally took place, it took place on camera in issue #12 and he went right to them sleeping together without making the reader have to work for it.

A better example of how to do romance in a Justice League storyline comes from Joe Kelley’s Obsidian Age storyline (Pt 1, Pt 2) from earlier in this decade. He teased us for 10 issues with the possibility of a Batman/Wonder Woman romance, never gave us the meaty follow through, and didn’t make a big deal about it. I’m still giddy when I think about it. Roy Harper/Hawkgirl was overhyped and wasn’t even exciting.

Now we have Dwayne McDuffie and his Injustice League Unlimited storyline. I don’t like that it’s not called the Injustice Gang, because if it’s going to be a cheesy name at least Injustice Gang sounds better, but I’m probably just being a lame ass fanboy. The story has kept a good pace, but I think everyone who reads DC is a little bit Injustice Gang-ed out after the Villains United storyline of the past couple years. Let’s hope that after this next issue finishing up the storyline McDuffie gets some of the epic up in there. He better kill Geo-Force!
Peace.

Check back next week for more Sinestro Corps War and some info on the Flash and Action Comics.

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