An alien threat has laid low the entire Justice League in moments… Now what?
Your Major Spoilers review of Justice League #14 awaits!
JUSTICE LEAGUE #14
Writer: Bryan Hitch
Penciler: Bryan Hitch
Inker: Daniel Henriques
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Richard Starkings And Comicraft
Editor: Brian Cunningham
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Previously in Justice League: A massive alien ship has arrived on Earth, prepared to attack. The Justice League moved to intervene, only to be blown out of the sky en masse, and are now presumed dead…
REGROUP
After long moments, the shattered Earth moves, and Jessica Cruz and Wonder Woman rise. ‘Who’s not dead?”, asks Princess Diana, as the League slowly awakens, one by one. Cyborg’s teleport is off-line for at least a few minutes, meaning that our team has time to sit and talk about what has happened. Baz and Jessica finally address the sudden way they replaced Hal on the team, Cyborg talks about what it’s like to be the new kid, and Batman finally addresses the fact that their Superman isn’t this world’s original, but another Kryptonian from a lost universe. The forced downtime allows them to hash out some of their issues, including a BIG moment that I’ll get to in a bit, but unfortunately Hitch’s writing isn’t quite up to the task, leading to page after page of the heroes saying exactly what they’re thinking and making incredibly obvious statements that feel very heavy-handed…
I LIKE THE GENERAL CONCEPT, BUT…
Given that my biggest complaint about this book has been the frenetic pacing and armageddon-to-armageddon plotting, I feel like I should really love what this issue does, but the complete lack of subtlety here is offputting. The biggest issue of all comes when Superman reveals that his Batman, pre-Zero Hour, kept files on all the Leaguers with details on how to defeat them, and point-blank asks Batman if he does, too. Batman replies that he does, states that it’s safe, and before anyone questions him, the conversation turns to something else, as if someone hadn’t just set off an interpersonal bomb in the middle of the League’s team culture. From an art perspective, I like most of the issue, but find the coloring used to show us that they’re trapped underground by Green Lantern light to be incredibly muddy and hard to parse, making for a very frustrating read…
THE BOTTOM LINE: KIND OF AWKWARD AND TALKY
In short, though I want to like this issue and appreciate what they meant to do in these pages, there are a number of problems with the material that undermine the best parts of the story. Also, I hate that this Batman makes the greatest mistake of the other Batman and now that story will end up being told somewhere, but that’s another complaint entirely, leaving Justice League #14 with a still above average 3 out of 5 stars overall. It’s nice to get some quiet character and dialogue moments, I just wish it hadn’t all been so very obvious…
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