Justice League: Cry For Justice #4 – Review

By James Robinson (writer), Mauro Cascioli (artist), Eddie Berganza (editor)

The Story: Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Freddie Freeman, the Atom and Supergirl pull themselves out of the wreckage of last issue’s cliff-hanger explosion and decide to follow Prometheus’ trail through the torture of the other villains they’ve captured. Jay Garrick is running around the country, checking up on all sorts of people, while Congo Bill and Starman fight for their lives.

What’s Good: Mauro Cascioli continues to knock this book out of the park. In evaluating comic art, I always do a gut-test first: How long do I want to linger, looking at the pictures? Cascioli’s art really keeps the pages from turning because there’s so much in each panel. Every expression is brilliant. The clothes wrinkle, the lights shine, and the shadows are moody and real. And as I said in my review of issue #1, Casciolo’s rendition of Congo Bill is stunning.

Robinson kept me guessing throughout the story. Freddie’s analysis of Prometheus (using the patented wisdom of Solomon) was fun to watch in a Bourne Identity sort of way. And Jay Garrick’s mysterious investigation is drawing in some pretty interesting people, like Mon-El, the Shade, and a bunch of second string heroes. I’ve been following some of DC’s podcasts and in a couple, Robinson talks about how Cry for Justice is going to tee up his run as the writer for the JLA, a team he intends to refashion. I don’t know what he’s doing with these second-stringers now, but I would be interested in seeing him try to make some of them first-stringers. That, however, is just a bit of idle speculation on my part. Robinson is nonetheless using the large cast of the DCU to good effect.

What’s Not So Good: Cry for Justice is losing its way. It started with an effective bang in issue #1. Since then, it has started repeating itself. This is now the fourth issue where the Green Lantern orders the Atom to torture some (or many) hapless villain. The Atom, same as before, jumps out of some guy’s nostril, as if he’s put in a tiresome day’s work. Hal Jordan doesn’t flinch. And Freddie and Kara continue to be non-entities in the central debate of this series. There is some character growth in Green Arrow (“Torture is wrong”), but it comes off as contrived because it just begets more violence. I know Robinson is going for a ‘Now do you see what you’ve been doing?’ moment, but we’re talking about some of the most powerful and perceptive personalities in the DCU – they’ve taken bigger punishments than this without surrendering their values.

Conclusion: The story is suffering from a few missteps, but a powerhouse set of characters, a promised change in the status quo of the DCU and the art make this book worth the buy.

Grade: B-

DS Arsenault