JLA #91

December 26, 2003

Quick Rating: Fair
Title: The Coming (Extinction Part One)

An alien creature comes to the JLA Watchtower to find something unique to planet Earth.

Writer: Dennis O’Neil
Art: Tan Eng Huat
Colors: David Baron
Letters: Rob Leigh
Editor: Mike Carlin
Cover Art: Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen & David Baron
Publisher: DC Comics

With this issue, JLA begins its new status quo as a book with rotating creative teams, and the first of these teams includes one of the revolutionary writers of the 70s taking the Justice League and telling what he’s most famous for – a “relevant” story. An alien spacecraft comes into Earth orbit, accompanied by a meteor shower that does damage to the Watchtower and sends Plastic Man into a panic until help can arrive. (He gets the best line in the issue here, calling for help from “One of you super-guys who can do more than stretch…”)

Predictably, the alien seems benign when actually recovered, and is only interested in studying a species of mammal indigenous to Earth, but near extinction. Always helpful, the JLA agrees to help the alien find the species he seeks… but will they arrive in time?

For a writer as revolutionary as O’Neil once was, this is just an “okay” issue. Granted, it’s a step up from the severely lackluster JLA we’ve been treated to for the past year or so, but it’s not really anything special. O’Neill has a pretty good handle on most of the characters, but some of Green Lantern’s dialogue seems too flippant – almost as though he wrote it as Kyle Rayner but the penciler drew him in as Jon Stewart – and the team as a whole seems a tad naive. Okay, granted, two of their members are aliens, but don’t you think they would have learned to be a bit more skeptical by this point?

Tan Eng Huat’s artwork, like the writing, is okay. His backgrounds are solid, and he does some imaginative stuff with Plastic Man, but most of the other characters seem sketchy and unfinished. I can’t tell by looking if this book was inked or colored straight from the pencils, but either way, a good inker could have greatly improved the artwork.

This is a decent start for the next chapter of the Justice League, but it’s not spectacular, and that’s what this title needs right now. Hopefully, for the rest of this arc, O’Neil will deliver.

Rating: 6/10

Green Lantern (2005 Series) #56

August 1, 2010

Title: The New Guardians Part Four

Writer: Geoff Johns
Penciler: Doug Mahnke
Inker: Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen, Keith Champagne & Doug Mahnke
Colorist: Randy Mayor, Gabe Eltreb & Carrie Strachan
Letterer: Nick J. Napolitano
Cover: Doug Mahnke & Hi-Fi
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Publisher: DC Comics

Hector Hammond has always been one of those villains who drifts closer to the pathetic side of the spectrum than the really dangerous. Okay, so he’s a really powerful telepath, but he’s also a runt with a ginormously disfigured head, making it kind of hard to take him seriously as a threat. Fortunately for him, one of the things that Geoff Johns has always proven himself great at is taking loser villains and turning them into people to be feared.

This issue Hal Jordan goes in search of Larfleeze, the Orange Lantern, to find out how he managed to trap the Orange Entity inside his power battery. Some of the other Entities that embody the various Corps have been cut loose on Earth (or so Hal thinks) and he needs to track them down. Hal doesn’t know the Entities  have actually been taken prisoner by a mysterious figure who’s been having a conversation with Hector, and is helping him to really cut loose.

At the risk of an obvious pun, in this issue Johns really does run the entire emotional spectrum. We look into Hammond’s mind to discover what it is he really wants (which really isn’t much of a surprise, and in and of itself is a little sad), we shift to the scenes with Larfleeze – a character who never fails to bring the funny – and then we bounce into a final sequence that actually pulls out some genuinely scary moments. There’s a little hope in here as well, with Saint Walker finishing the mission he’s been on since Blackest Night ended, and giving him a really good scene with the Question. Although this issue has a lot of action and a lot of plot advancement, pretty much all of it is built on character, on who these people are, and most importantly, on what exactly they want.

Doug Mahnke’s art is perfectly suited for this issue, giving us some nice alien creatures, some Earthbound monsters, and some good character on the faces of our heroes and villains. The color and ink teams that work on this book deserve a lot of credit too – the artwork looks pretty consistent despite the fact that there are four different inkers at work, and the colors have really never been as important to this title as they are now.

This story feels kind of removed from what’s going on in the core Brightest Day title, but it’s telling a very solid story in its own right.

Rating: 8/10

JLA #90

November 23, 2003

Quick Rating: Fair
Title: Perchance…

Wonder Woman accepts a Martian dream-treatment to explore the possibilities of her feelings for Batman.

Writer: Joe Kelly
Pencils: Chriscross
Inks: Tom Nguyen
Colors: Chris Sotomayor
Letters: Nick Napolitano
Editor: Mike Carlin
Cover Art: Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen & David Baron
Publisher: DC Comics

This issue finally comes back and addresses the ill-conceived Batman/Wonder Woman romance that’s been hovering around this title since the “Obsidian Age” storyline. With the help of the Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman immerses herself in the Transconsciousness Articulator, a Martian invention that allows her to explore multiple dream-worlds where she and Batman act upon the kiss they shared to help her determine whether to pursue the relationship. (Incidentally, for someone who was teleported to Earth from his home planet accidentally, J’onn J’onzz seems to have an awful lot of Martian technology lying around doesn’t he?)

The dream sequences are probably the strongest point of this issue – it’s interesting to see an eternally-young Wonder Woman at the side of an aging Batman, or seeing Diana don a Batwoman costume to fight along his side, or seeing a future where their disappointment at a turn in their life is mitigated by what has happened to Gotham City as a result of their union. Chriscross, always a solid artist, does some good work here, and the alternate costumes he designs for our star-crossed lovers in their various forms are a lot of fun (not that I would advocate making major changes to these two costumes permanently, of course). Sotomayor is one of those colorists who really makes artwork stand out, with the glow effect on Wonder Woman’s lasso and the energy effect from Green Lantern’s ring.

This is one of the better issues of Kelly’s run on this title, when you dismiss how tired an idea he starts with. He does a decent job from a bad starting place, and he tells a mostly entertaining story with a highly predictable conclusion. This book is best for people who enjoy alternate universe/what if sorts of universes, because that is where most of the enjoyment herein lies.

Rating: 6/10

JLA #89

October 25, 2003

Quick Rating: Average
Title: Trial By Fire Conclusion

The Justice League makes a last stand against the incendiary monster that was once their teammate, the Martian Manhunter.

Writer: Joe Kelly
Pencils: Doug Mahnke
Inks: Tom Nguyen
Colors: David Baron
Letters: Ken Lopez
Editor: Mike Carlin
Cover Art: Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen and David Baron
Publisher: DC Comics

I have not been an enormous fan of Kelly’s run on this title, and this issue reflects exactly why. He often brings good ideas to the table, such as the Martian Manhunter attempting to overcome his weakness to flame only to unleash a far more dangerous threat, but then the climax seems to fall short. The ending of this storyline is similar to a hundred other “psychic battle,” “man against self” conclusions we’ve seen before.

One of the few things I did like about this storyline, the good use of Plastic Man, also fell flat in the end. In previous issues, Batman built up Plas as the only one who could stop Fernus, but in the end it’s hard to tell what he brought to the table that was really so unique. Not to say he wasn’t valuable, but there are a dozen other JLA-affiliated metas who could have done the same thing.

I liked Nguyen’s artwork back in his Superman: The Man of Steel days, and he still does a good job here, but there’s really nothing that stands out.

I’m looking forward to a few months down the road, when this title will (for at least two years according to editor Mike Carlin) switch to a rotating creative arc structure. True, books like that are often hit and miss, but somehow I prefer that to a book that’s so consistently average.

Rating: 5/10

(2010 note: As it turned out, the “rotating creative arc” didn’t do much for this book either.)