Young Justice

Preview of the upcoming Young Justice cartoon series. Looks like it could be fun.

Justice League: The New Frontier

This is the trailer for the Justice League: The New Frontier, the DVD adaptation of Darwyn Cooke's wonderful comic book series, DC: The New Frontier. The DVD is due out later this month.

Everybody's Talkin' at Me...

Superman…Wonder Woman…Batman…Green Lantern…The Flash…the Justice League of America boasts a membership featuring “the World’s Greatest Heroes”.

With the firepower that the JLA can muster the comic is, to borrow a movie term, most often a big, widescreen action-adventure blockbuster of a comic. And that makes sense…why else gather a powerful team of heavy hitters who are already formidable on their on except to tackle something so overwhelming that even Superman would need partners to watch his back?

Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America team is as powerful a lineup as the team has had: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Black Canary, Black Lightning, Red Tornado, Red Arrow (it’s literally and figuratively a colorful lineup), Vixen, and Hawkgirl (with Geo-Force hanging around as an apparently unofficial member and the newly-returned Flash (Wally West) having been invited to join the club.) But instead of feeling like a big action blockbuster (to continue to flog the movie metaphor) Meltzer’s run has felt more like a navel-gazing “indie” movie filled with more talking (and talking and talking and talking) and not as much action as one might have expected from the JLA.

It’s an…um…interesting way to go.

The arc has been more about nostalgia (the fact that the team has two clubhouses…a “Hall of Justice” like from the old cartoons and an orbiting satellite like from the team’s 1970’s days) and relationships (everybody is chummy, which is cool, but I’m still having working on accepting the fact that the teammates call each other by their civilian names even when they’re in the field…hearing them call Superman “Clark” and, especially, calling Batman “Bruce” is still kind of jarring.)

But too often during Meltzer’s run, the team seems to spend a great deal of its time standing around talking (and talking and talking)…the crossover with Justice Society of America and the Legion of Super-Heroes just added more guys to spend a lot of time standing around talking (and talking and talking).

The most current (as of this writing) issue, #11, is a prime example of this. The claustrophobic story features just two members of the team, Red Arrow (an awkward name I think…he had a perfectly workable codename in Arsenal and I’m not sure that changing it to honor “the family business” was necessary) and Vixen (who is the subject of a plot curve ball that Meltzer won’t be around to resolve), trapped under a collapsed building trying to get out. That’s the whole story. Is it a suspenseful character study? Yep. Is there a lot of talking? Oh yeah. Does it work? Yes it does…but it’s not a Justice League story, it’s a Red Arrow story (Roy is shown as the focused strong one, Vixen, who’s been doing the super-hero thing for a while, is presented as panicked, insecure woman who needs to be bolstered up by her partner’s resolve.) Nothing wrong with that, I guess…but as the whole run has been on this same “small screen” vibe it doesn’t have the same impact it would have had if it has been a change of pace from some more expansive JLA adventure.

And leaving after setting up...but not resolving...mysteries and subplots is, to my mind, uncool...but there you are.

Meltzer’s run…bolstered by some sweet artwork art from Ed Benes and, in #11, Gene Ha…has been kinda okay (not great by any means, to be sure, but kinda okay) but I do hope that incoming JLA write Dwayne McDuffie will take the foundation that’s been laid down and craft some adventures worthy of a team with the scope and power of the Justice League of America.

Something Sinestro This Way Comes

I’ve never been much impressed with Sinestro. Maybe it’s the mustache…that long, pencil thin mustache thing he’s into doesn’t really do much to make him seem as terrifying and imposing as they tell us he’s supposed to be.

Or maybe it’s the name. “Sinestro” seems a bit on the nose (as smart as the self-appointed Guardians of the Universe are supposed to be you would think that somebody named “Sinestro” was going to turn out to be a bad guy but they took him on as one their Green Lanterns just the same.) Of course the name comes from the great, cheesy Silver Age tradition of on the nose super-villain names (Dr. Doom, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Evil Star, the Legion of Super-Villains, Evilbadguy…okay I made that last one up but you get the point :-) so I guess I should cut the guy some slack there (we suspend disbelief…see what I did there?...in regards to so many things in super-hero comics we can and do live with silly monikers on super-villains and disregard the fact that here in real life most “evil” people don’t really think of themselves as being evil and so don’t usually pick a name to brag about how sinister they are.)

But I digress (sorry about that, Peter, but I couldn’t help myself.) The Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps Special is the proper introduction to a concept that was, in hindsight, long overdue: a corps of yellow power ring wielding brigands being brought together to terrorize the universe and to do battle with the recently-revived Green Lantern Corps. As the title gives away this assemblage of evil is called the Sinestro Corps (on the nose once again but what else were they going to call themselves?) and their rings feed off fear.

Sinestro (who apparently has been watching Disney’s Aladdin a few times and has decided to invoke the spirit of that movie's villain, Jafar…he refers to Kyle Rayner as “alley rat” a couple of times during the course of the issue) is still a bit less than terrifying (though I do like the snazzy new uniform…certainly his best look ever) but the Corps he’s bringing together is as horrifying and deadly a bunch as could be imagined. The Sinestro Corps assault on Oa, the homeworld of the Guardians and the Green Lanterns, to retrieve a couple of recruits being held prisoner there is brutal (much Lantern blood is spilled in the process) and promises much mayhem to ensue.

Geoff Johns gives familiar good guys…Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, the new Justice League…interesting turns but the day belongs to the bad guys as the war (that will rage in the pages of Green Lantern…and maybe, given the revelation of Sinestro’s Guardian, in Countdown and elsewhere) is given a taut, suspenseful kickoff. (We will give a pass to the fact that an extremely powerful character is beaten and turned with surprising ease and that some of the supposedly noble Green Lanterns behave like petty school children.)

The art is top notch all the way through with Ethan Van Sciver delivering the goods on the main story and Dave Gibbons doing the same on the backup story that recaps Sinestro’s origin.

It’s a very promising beginning to what could a very cool storyline. We shall keep a good thought.

Images © and ™ 2007 DC Comics, Inc.