Justice League United #3 – Review

By: Jeff Lemire (story), Mike McKone (art), Cam Smith & Guillermo Ortego (inks), Marcelo Maiolo & Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Dealing with a traumatized child is a lot easier if you have psychic powers.

The Review: Last month, I suggested that Justice League United may be the least enjoyable part of Justice League United, which I meant only partly in jest. Acknowledging that team chemistry is probably a difficult thing to generate from scratch, it must be said that the JLU has very little of it. That’s not totally unnatural, given how new the team is and how unformed their personalities are, but it does make for a duller read, and there seems to be little improvement in that respect on the horizon.

Lemire’s so distracted with carrying the plot forward that we get few interactions among the cast in the first place that isn’t exposition-related, and what few we do have rise to a very tepid degree of liveliness. After Kara socks Lobo into the stratosphere, Buddy remarks, “Wow. Nice punch, kid.”

“Hey, what about my arrow?” Ollie complains, referring to the shaft he just earlier put into Lobo’s shoulder.*

Buddy, unbothered: “Meh.”