Justice League 3000 #3 – Review

By: Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis (story), Howard Porter (art), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: Earth has finally become the disgusting cesspool we all thought it would.

The Review: After reading this issue, I’ve cobbled up a theory about how Giffen-DeMatteis are handling this series.  I don’t think they care much for the idea of a cloned Justice League in the 31st Century and either they’re putting in a minimum of effort into the story or they’re deliberately trying to sabotage it.  Otherwise, I can’t explain why Giffen-DeMatteis would seemingly go out of their way to make everything in this series as unpleasant as possible.

Out of respect for Giffen-DeMatteis’ chosen premise, I could stand a thoroughly unlikable League for a short while, so long as there was a payoff at the end of it, or if Giffen-DeMatteis would reveal some redeeming qualities to our supposed heroes.  Instead, the more time we spend with the League, the less appealing they become.  In that sense, it was a mistake to have an issue focused on the Trinity, who have been the most problematic members of the cast thus far.  Trapping them together without the buffers of Hal or Barry could only expose more of their worst personality traits.

Justice League 3000 #2 – Review

By: Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis (story), Howard Porter (art), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: The League faces its greatest enemy to date: a young woman with raging hormones.

The Review: As common as it’s become to open a story in the middle of the action, in monthly comics, this kind of narrative device tends to be more counterproductive than anything else.  Starting the reader off with only a minimum of context is a risky business; you better hope your characters or ongoing action are strong enough to keep the reader interested, or else they won’t wait around to have things explained to them.

With that in mind, Justice League 3000 definitely started off on the wrong foot by introducing us to our heroes at their least likable stage and repeatedly making excuses for them from there.  Most of the time, those excuses are as harmful to the characters as rehabilitating, as Teri discovers the hard way when she exasperatedly calls the new League “brain-damaged children” without realizing she’s still on an open channel with the team.  Repeatedly mentioning that this League is sub-par to its former incarnation may explain the members’ eccentricities, but it also reminds us that this is a sub-par League.

Justice League 3000 #1 – Review

By: Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis (story), Howard Porter (art), Hi-Fi (colors)

The Story: I actually can believe it’s not the Justice League.

The Review: Apologies for the lateness on reviews.  I had a couple grisly finals to study for the past few weeks and just when I thought I was ready to get to the comics, someone spontaneously invited me to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, to which I reluctantly agreed.  My thoughts on the film can be summed up this way: they are really scraping the bottom of the idea barrel for material to stretch this out into a trilogy.  Dwarf-elf romance?  Really?

Anyway, let’s move on from one cravenly exploitive series to another.  With the addition of Justice League 3000, that brings us to four Justice League titles.  While this is perhaps short of the seemingly innumerable X-Men and Avengers series Marvel has out, the trend is not a good one.  Justice League Dark had the excuse of taking on the Justice League name unwillingly, and Justice League of America had, at least, an entirely different roster.  It strikes you as bizarre that 3000 features watered-down clones of the real deals when the series as a whole is the same thing.

Magog #1 – Review

By Keith Giffen (writer), Howard Porter (artist), John Dell (inks)

The Story: A quick 1-page summary of Magog’s origin opens the book, but segues into a gruesome splash page that opens the book with a bang in Sudan. Magog is tracking illicit meta-tech that’s being used for nefarious ends. A mystery is in play. When he calls for Green Lantern (Alan Scott), he appears quick enough that Magog realizes he’s being kept on a pretty short leash by the JSA. Roots of a fracture begin appear…

What’s Good: Giffen, a long-time comic veteran, starts big with Magog in Sudan and keeps the tension rising. Some readers who don’t know much about Sudan might consider some of the gory images a bit over the top. The fact that some of this stuff is really happening in Sudan gave this opening sequence an added resonance.

Giffen also opened an interesting pandora’s box. Magog editorializes about how superheroes do not involve themselves in foreign situations. The logical inconsistency is as old as superheroes themselves. If you had the power of Superman, why not go stop the holocaust? Sudan is a very clear, modern example of a genocide no superhero is taking on, except Magog. Cool theme. I look forward to seeing where Giffen takes it, because he posed the question, but certainly didn’t answer it.

What’s Not So Good: Magog as a character is not very original or interesting. He’s just the Wolverine, Rambo, Punisher (take your pick) cliche, just in a different set of tights. He’s a lethal, sardonic, grim avenger we’ve all seen before. This isn’t Giffen’s fault, but he’s stuck with Magog now, so he’s going to have to figure out soon what makes him worth watching instead of any of the other clones out there. There are signs that Giffen is moving that way, but it will take time to see if the promise pays off.

In the exposition, we need to understand that Magog is brutal, but the level of violence he delivers in this issue is well into the gratuitous. Many stories have shown brutality without having to resort to slasher imagery. It unfortunately detracts from the quality of the book when something more subtle might have made a better point.

On the art, I’m not sold. It does an adequate job, but the faces and poses were a bit still and even generic (check out the panel with Green Lantern and Magog in the hotel room – they look like twins). Also, the skin tones in Africa bugged me. What on Earth was going on? The severed limbs clearly had caucasian skin, despite the fact that on the next page, the victims are clearly African. The skin tones of the brutal oppressors were also white, but with vaguely Asiatic features. That didn’t make a lot of sense, considering the Janjaweed of Sudan are also black. Given the courage Giffen had in locating the opening scene in the brutality of Sudan, I was disappointed that the art team held back on showing it more realistically.

Conclusion: I wasn’t wowed by this book and I can’t recommend it.

Grade: C-

-DS Arsenault