I always liked comic books growing up. What red-blooded American boy wouldn’t? When I was little, X-Men seemed like where it was at. Probably because of the cartoon on the Fox network and prevalent Arcade game. There was even a short period during middle school when I picked up the comic every couple of weeks off newstands — quite a feat for someone without a car. However, as I’m sure I’ve made apparent by now, I owe my current addiction to comic books and obvious allegiance to DC Comics to the allstar superteam that is the Justice League of America, more specifically the writing of Grant Morrison and Mark Waid.

Back in the late nineties and early part of this decade, JLA (and an embarrassing number of ill conceived, related miniseries) the book I followed (if in trade paperback form from the local media megastore in my hometown of Richmond, Ky). These high years of the Justice League title experienced by me in between the waning days of middle school and the first half of high school were super-influential in forming what I expect out of superhero comics. That is to say, superhero mega-epic that shakes the foundations of reality with a twist of the absurd to keep things interesting. The pages of JLA read like contemporary myth always pointing out that the Justice League was the Justice League, iconic and without equal–heroes as or more mythic than Hercules, Beowulf, Hiawatha, Lancelot, El Cid, or whoever you got. THEY WERE THE JUSTICE LEAGUE and it was bad ass.

That’s why with each quotitidian and mediocre issue of this now 16 issue deep new volume of Justice League of America, I sigh with disappointment. I don’t completely blame Dwayne McDuffie for the mediocrity of his four issue run on the series, continued this week in Justice League of America #16 (above). I like Dwayne McDuffie. His writing on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon ruled. It’s not his fault Brad Meltzer ran the series into the ground. There’s a certain amount of institutional inertia every writer picking up where someone else left off has to deal with. However, I question whether the world needed yet another Injustice Gang/Secret Society of Supervillains storyline after the still fresh Villains United storyline and the second season of the Justice League Unlimited cartoon. This week’s post-Injustice Gang issue continued the lameness. Black Canary, Red Arrow, and Green Lantern responded to a break in at Guy Gardner’s storage unit to deal with some kind of lame assmultiverse tie-in shit followed by a stand alone story by Alan Burnett about Red Arrow feeding people in a soup kitchen that devolved into an advertisement for Salvation Run. To quote the guy at the comic store, it was “readable.” I just expect better out of Justice League comics and Dwayne McDuffie’s writing. Alan Burnett takes over writing the series soon. Hopefully, he can do something epic and save my heart from breaking once a month.

It amazes me that the best thing I picked up this week was the third issue of the ill-conceived Countdown: Arena miniseries. Thanks to Keith Champagne’s writing, this issue featuring a three-way title bout between the Wonder Women of three different worlds has been propelled to Pick of the Week status. He made the right decision to have the Stargirl of another world accidentally win her fight, sad to have killed her opponent, and had Wild West Wonder Woman use the phrase, “Get Er Done.” I only question why he had Earth-3’s Johnny Quick have to compete for a position in Monarch’s army, because he would have seemed to already secured a spot in it when the whole Crime Society joined up a million weeks ago in Countdown. I’ll let that discrepancy slide since he’s actually managed to give the miniseries a plot with a now vampiric World War II era Batman leading a revolt against Monarch. I really can’t wait to pick up the final installment next week.

Also, shame on Countdown for putting the Earth-51 tag on an issue visiting Earth-11. LoL.

Have I really been doing this for twelve weeks? I want to thank everyone at the Daily Dose for letting me write this column. It’s been a blast and has sparked me to start writing an independent ‘blog, mostly about comics, where my pure geekiness shines through. Merry Christmas everybody.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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