Review: Justice League Dark Vol. 3: The Death of Magic trade paperback (DC Comics)

There was a team book I used to like. The characters didn't "go together" necessarily but were thematically tied, such that it was always interesting to see who'd walk in the door. The team had many adventures in the book, but somehow the series always seemed to avoid those adventures turning into over-hyped "events." Instead, storylines began and ended, usually fantastically, and then maybe there would be a quieter issue or two before the next big adventure would start. It was a book that just did its thing, and did it better than many others I've read.

That book was Geoff Johns's JSA. And some might think it blasphemy, but when I was reading Jeff Lemire and Ray Fawkes's Justice League Dark Vol. 3: The Death of Magic, there were times I couldn't help but be reminded of JSA.

[Review contains spoilers]

The titular "Death of Magic" story collected here takes place on a big canvas. Lemire and Fawkes shunt the Justice League Dark to an alternate dimension (not unlike JSA: Stealing Thunder) where science rules and magic has gone underground; part of the team leads the magic-wielding rebels in battle while the other members must fight their way out of the government's captivity. Still a third set of events take place on Earth as Steve Trevor and Johnny Peril have to deal with the backlash of magic energy coming from the portal to the other dimension, Epoch, and as a fourth we get the perspective from a noble-hearted soldier on the government side. The writers flip between the various storylines rapidly, sometimes back and forth on the same page; even as the team only has six members, the audience gets the sense of a whole lot going on.

Lemire and Fawkes make a curious choice in positing the four-part "Death of Magic" as more of a sci-fi than supernatural story, at least at the outset. I have often felt that the supernatural works best in the DC Universe in small, easy to digest doses, and the writers accomplish this by following the more ardently magic-based Justice League Dark Vol. 2: Books of Magic with "Death"'s futuristic landscape and then a superhero story, the three-part "Horror City." The next volume gets into Trinity War and such, but I feel the writers have cleaned our palates, as it were, for supernatural stories to come. It's only a shame Lemire and Fawkes aren't sticking around on the book for longer, leaving after this volume, because it's with Death that they duly hit their stride.

Staying on the title, fortunately, is artist Mikel Janin, whose long run on this title evokes similar by JSA's Leonard Kirk and Don Kramer. Janin has offered a style so far with elements of comic book animation and fluidity, but some more photo-realistic aspects and backgrounds that help ground this supernatural book in a more "true horror" base. With "Death," however, it seems as though Janin has begun to ink himself, and his lines get an attractive boost of roundness and warmth (not unlike Kirk and Kramer). Janin especially shines in the "widescreen" pages of war or when computer-generated elements help convey the impending apocalypse on Epoch. The first one-off chapter is drawn by Victor Drujiniu with layouts by Graham Nolan and "Horror City" is drawn by Vicente Cifuentes from layouts by Janin, and both guests' styles match Janin's well (Cifuentes especially evokes Scott Kolins when he draws the guest-star Flash).

Despite that Dark Vol. 2 ended on a cliffhanger that leads right into Vol. 3, Lemire (sans Fawkes) slips in a "quieter" initial chapter (a la JSA) that follows Black Orchid, Amethyst, and Frankenstein exploring the House of Mystery. Amethyst leaves off-panel before "Death," so it's nice that Lemire gives her one more issue in this book, especially with Sword of Sorcery cancelled; of course, Lemire writing Frankenstein is always a treat. But the winning moment this issue is when Orchid discovers the Batman-esque secret files that Constantine is keeping not just on some of his own teammates, but also the Justice League, Stormwatch, Shazam, and others. From these early pages (and especially once the Phantom Stranger makes his cameo), the coming of the "Trinity War" crossover can be felt pretty heavily in this volume.

Character-wise, I continue to think that Lemire and Fawkes write a good DC-light John Constantine, especially as compared to Peter Milligan's Justice League Dark Vol. 1. At the same time I didn't much like that in the alternate dimension, Constantine's "opposite" attribute was that he couldn't lie, and expressed his care and admiration for his teammates. My "ideal" Constantine is one who does what he thinks is right, damn the consequences, and whose teammates are for the most part a means to an end (like Vril Dox, for example, but with better taste in trench coats). Revealing that Constantine does truly care, so to speak, cheapens the character for me; I'd rather see Constantine remain unique by virtue of his lack of conscience than see him portrayed as a more traditional hero.

I found "Horror City" not as strong indeed because it was a more generic superhero story as opposed to "Death"'s far-flung adventure. At the same time, I appreciated the point Lemire and Fawkes make by pitting the Justice League Dark against classic League baddie Dr. Destiny, that the Justice League Dark is truly a Justice League in their own right, a sentiment even made overt by Flash later in the story. And even despite a slower, more predictable story, Cifuentes offers a particularly chilling Dr. Destiny.

The writers' conceit that Flash Barry Allen might feel more at home with the "freaks" of Dark than with the Justice League felt forced to me and not in line with Barry's portrayals in other titles (also there were some "Impulse" moments that I didn't think rang true for Barry). Cyborg might not be as much a Justice League headliner as Flash, but possibly Cyborg would have worked better here, since Cyborg, like Frankenstein, can't hide his "difference" in the same way the Flash can simply take off his costume. I did apprciate the appearances by Flash, Swamp Thing, Phantom Stranger, and others as being somewhat JSA-esque as well, when you never knew which Golden Age hero might walk through the door next; the writers do the same with DC's magical characters.

After Justice League Dark Vol. 3: The Death of Magic, were Lemire and Fawkes staying on this book it would move to the top of my reading list; I consider volumes two and three together just about perfect. I haven't read much by upcoming J. M. DeMatteis so I'm a bit wary of how he might affect this title just as it's hitting its stride, though I remain quite glad Mikel Janin is staying on the title.

[Includes original covers, as well as "WTF" cover two-page spread; cover sketches; information on Face Off/Infernal Core contest winner]

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Review: Sword of Sorcery Vol. 1: Ameythst trade paperback (DC Comics)

Sword of Sorcery Vol. 1: Amethyst is a pleasant surprise, a book whose main story is quite good, and then as a bonus, whose backup stories are also impressive. I'm as much to blame as any other reader because I wasn't very interested in this series when it started, but now I'm bummed to know it was cancelled quick as that.

[Review contains spoilers]

Chalk it up to a combination of factors that turned me off of Amethyst originally: a general aversion to "sword and sorcery"-type books versus sci-fi and superheroes; that the other-dimensional setting suggested less interaction with the rest of the DC Universe; and that "Amethyst," as a concept, felt too much like a Rainbow Brite/Jem mash-up to me -- very pink, very 1980s (though I did like the Amethyst cartoon shorts that aired on DC Nation). So I was inclined to put Sword of Sorcery toward the bottom of my reading pile and only take it out to read before Amethyst's (really Princess Amaya's) appearance in the next Justice League Dark collection (fortunately I needed something to read in a jiff).

Christy Marx's story addresses all of my concerns. First, this is of course a fantasy story, but Marx gives it a firm rooting in "reality" -- "Amy"'s high school troubles, the fact that both Amaya and her mom are "from Earth" even as much of the action takes place on the "gemworld" of Nilla, that all the Nillans are actually descended from humans, and John Constantine's appearance right at the beginning all keep the book from becoming too esoteric. Constantine's presence equally promises that the DC Universe proper isn't too far away, and this is enhanced by Marx's choice of villain for the piece, none other than Eclipso (had Sword of Sorcery continued, one could have imagined Amaya fighting Felix Faust and other such mystic DCU foes).

What I enjoyed most, however, was Marx's conception of the "Gemworld" itself. Nilla is ruled by various "houses" that correspond to the different stones -- Amethyst, Citrine, Diamond, Turquoise, and Onyx, to start. The heads of each house gain different powers from their respective stones, and then additional abilities are released when the powers are combined (often through marriage between the houses and the production of children). It's all reminiscent of when Geoff Johns rolled out the various-colored corps in Green Lantern, and equally interesting in terms of the personalities and powers of the houses (there was a time in DC Comics circa Final Crisis when I'm sure actual ties would have been suggested between the various gem-houses and the various Corps, as was the case in Legion of Super-Heroes and Flash at that time, among others). I'm not a long-time Amethyst reader so I have no idea how well Marx's iteration of the character adheres to what came before, but I found it fascinating (and not too treacly or "pink").

With the various Houses and powers comes an fun band of characters. Marx hews to predictable fantasy tropes here with a thief, a thinker, a bruiser, a knight, and so on, but I liked seeing how each corresponded to a different gem and that gem's anthropomorphized characteristics. I thought Marx was wise in keeping Amaya's mother in the story; this preserves Amaya's youthful perspective -- she is the princess, not the ruler -- and gives Amethyst a different dynamic than other comics, focusing on the relationship between mother and daughter; even as Wonder Woman and her mother sometimes interact, Hippolyta is rarely a regularly-appearing character like Lady Graciel. There's also a nice twist at the end when Marx moves the book's initial antagonist, Lady Mordiel, to the side of angels (if begrudgingly) by the end; I appreciated the sense that, if the book had continued, Marx has built a good rogues gallery for Amaya including Eclipso, Mordiel, Lord Reishan, and others.

Really Marx's only stumble is an odd fifth chapter (issue #4) in which Amaya, transported back to Chicago, fights a power-hungry CEO; Marx never names the woman, though Marx even goes so far as to have the woman ask Amaya, "Do you know who I am?" -- if perhaps the woman is supposed to resemble some real-life person or such, the implication isn't clear. I did like that this issue brings Amaya back to Earth for a bit, demonstrating the series' ability to switch between telling stories on Earth and on Nilla had it continued. The rougher villain here is also well-balanced by Marx's strong use of Eclipso, including positing a new origin for the character.

Aaron Lopresti provides most of the art for the "Amethyst" story. I have enjoyed Lopresti's artwork over a number of titles -- including Wonder Woman, Justice League: Generation Lost, and Justice League International -- and his animated style works well for this story; Lopresti keeps things appropriately light most of the time, but delivers a scary Eclipso as well. The pages by fill-in artists closely resemble Lopresti's, giving Marx's self-contained story a general feel of a whole-cloth graphic novel.

Inasmuch as I didn't have high expectations for the "Amethyst" story, however, mine were even lower for Tony Bedard's Beowulf backup. Even despite that Jesus Saiz is one of my favorite DC artists ... c'mon, Beowulf? I was sure I'd be in for lots of bad "old style" dialogue and barbarians in furry loincloths. Instead, Bedard sets his Beowulf story in the future, a kind of techno-wilderness that reminded me of Greg Rucka's Lazarus, and posits Beowulf as a feral killing machine (whom Saiz draws, maybe not coincidentally, to look something like an aged Wolverine). Moreover, Bedard sets his story not just in a potential DC Universe future, but one that's part and parcel of the New 52, referencing new universe concepts like the Rot, Basilisk, and Amanda Waller's Samsara project. I thought the backups in the first volume of All-Star Western were a letdown, but here I enjoyed Bedard's backup story just as much as Marx's (even if it never delivers on the promised Beowulf vs. Justice League fight). Saiz's Grendel is also flat-out terrifying.

Marc Andreyko's "Stalker" story is less impressive largely because it has no such ties to the greater DC universe (also I'm fairly sure a dozen other writers are going to re-write Andreyko's portrayal of Lucifer); it's not badly written, but it lacks the other two stories' spark. Artist Andrei Bressan's work is uneven, with the characters looking distorted at times. "Stalker" is more what I expected from Sword and Sorcery's backups, though impressed as I was with both "Amethyst" and "Beowulf," "Stalker" couldn't lessen my esteem for this book.

On occasion I'll recommend "airplane books" (Tony Bedard's Blue Beetle Vol. 2: Blue Diamond and Batman: Night of the Owls are others), collections that are both long and self-contained, good for reading on a lengthy plane flight. Sword of Sorcery Vol. 1: Amethyst is another one of these -- ten issues, many of them oversized, and three complete and engaging stories. I didn't think I'd like this one, but I did; it makes me more eager to read Christy Marx's Birds of Prey, and hopefully she'll get another shot at Amethyst at some point, too.

[Includes original and variant covers, reproductions of two "WTF" covers, character sketches]

Earth 2 coming up later this week.

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Review: Justice League Dark Vol. 2: Books of Magic trade paperback (DC Comics)

Second acts are tough, especially in the DC Comics New 52. Neither the second volumes of Green Arrow nor Red Lanterns improved over their first. Superman Vol. 2's creative team left with the end of that collection. So it is with great pleasure, though not much surprise, that I found Jeff Lemire's Justice League Dark Vol. 2: Books of Magic is a significant improvement over Peter Milligan's first trade, and one that clearly demonstrates how Justice League Dark can continue successfully into the future.

[Review contains spoilers]

Lemire delivers a consistently excellent product on the horror comic Animal Man, so it's no shock that his supernatural-themed Justice League Dark should also be good. But what Lemire does early on that helps the book immeasurably is to pull it somewhat out of that "magic" realm. Whereas Milligan's book opened with the Justice League outclassed against a magical force, Lemire takes the supernatural Dark team and depicts them in a rather "regular" superhero mission, matching wits with long-time Justice League villain Felix Faust.

The biggest impediment to these supernatural team titles is that in depicting magic they tend toward the flowery, and instead Lemire makes the title immediately more accessible and familiar. There's even an unusual aspect of espionage action to this supernatural book; ARGUS's Steve Trevor recruits John Constantine to head a kind of "black ops" group of mystics, and a key sequence in the book takes place wholly within one of ARGUS's secret bases.

Second, not to be overlooked, Lemire benefits Dark by making it "cool." We saw a ragtag team in Justice League Dark Vol. 1, essentially lead by Madame Xanadu and with less well-known characters like Shade, the Changing Man and Mindwarp. Lemire wisely puts Constantine in the lead (after all, who's cooler than John Constantine?) and benches Xanadu for most of the issue, spotlighting instead more recognizable characters like Zatanna and Deadman. New member Black Orchid also isn't as well known, but Lemire and artist Mikel Janin fit her naturally with the team on a number of levels -- Orchid is visually interesting and more traditionally superheroic-looking than Shade, for instance; she stands in for the reader as the "skeptic," someone not as versed in magic as the rest of the team; but additionally, as we learn by the end of the book, magic is not so foreign to Black Orchid as she may pretend.

All of this serves to sweep the reader from a fight with Faust to the team's new headquarters, the House of Mystery, and then to a magic-fueled battle inside ARGUS's Black Room. Books like Dark, Shadowpact, Primal Force, the "Sentinels of Magic" stories and others have suffered in my opinion from being too esoteric and fantasy-driven in their magic superheroes; what Lemire presents here is a book that a fan of Justice League or Justice League of America could pick up, as well as fans of these magic characters, and and not be put off by too many pages spent on flowery incantations.

I also appreciated that even as Lemire's story is a break from Milligan's that came before, Lemire preserves what happened in the last volume and moreover, it matters. Constantine and company gained Steve Trevor's attention because of their earlier fight against Enchantress; moreover, Xanadu is still having the same apocalyptic visions that she had in Milligan's story, and Lemire further co-opts these as the doings of the story's villain. One can pick up this second volume without having to read the first, but I appreciated that the first still counts and that Lemire keeps the characters basically the same as they were before (something less true between the Dan Jurgens and Ann Nocenti Green Arrow books, for instance). It helps immeasurably that DC kept Janin on this title; I'm glad they didn't sweep the entire original team out, but kept Janin, whose pseudo-realistic style is just right for this title.

I worried in reading the first volume of Dark that John Constantine, newly released back to the DC Universe, came off toothless; he cracked wise and smoked a bunch of cigarettes, but wasn't in all the legendary bastard I'd been lead to expect. Lemire solves this too, whether it's Constantine telling Zatanna a pretty compelling lie in the beginning to gain her help, or Constantine snapping young Timothy Hunter's neck in the end (a ruse but entirely believable). I only paused a bit at Lemire's suggestion that Constantine truly (rather than just another of his cons) has feelings for Zatanna; obviously this doesn't keep him from using her to his own ends, but I felt it was perhaps a bit out of character for Constantine to "love" someone, and especially so early in this series.

Justice League Dark Vol. 2: Books of Magic ends on a cliffhanger, and just as one of my favorites, Frankenstein, joins the team, too. No question Jeff Lemire has won me back for a third volume, and it's this volume, more than Justice League, that has me excited for Trinity War, too. I don't know how this title will change when J. M. Dematteis comes on, but I'm eager for what Lemire does in the meantime.

[Includes full covers, Mikel Janin sketches]

Coming up ... Superman!

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Review: Justice League Dark Vol. 1: In the Dark trade paperback (DC Comics)

In DC Comics's announcement of the New 52 initiative, Justice League Dark emerged as one of the most compelling reasons for the reboot -- a title that would spearhead the reintegration of many of DC's classic supernatural characters from the Vertigo imprint into the DC Universe proper. No less, the book would be written by Peter Milligan, a long-time Vertigo writer with celebrated runs on Shade, the Changing Man and John Constantine's Hellblazer, both characters Milligan would write again in Dark.

The joy of a comic that includes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and then also Constantine, Shade, Zatanna, and Deadman, among others, remains. And Justice League Dark: In the Dark's final cliffhanger and the fact that DC superstar writer Jeff Lemire comes on as writer in the next volume both warrant checking out this series' second collection. But Milligan's first arc on Dark is overlong and fails to effectively use the Dark characters, ending up more like "just another" team book than the site of Vertigo horror in the DC Universe.

[Review contains spoilers]

In terms of where to find "the Vertigo" in Justice League Dark, Milligan brings it forth most clearly in the characters of Deadman and Shade. The each have a troubling relationship with the women in their lives, as Deadman tries to entice girlfriend Dove to have sex with a random man while Deadman possesses his body, and Shade has created his companion from the ether without telling her she's not "real." That the only way the book can show a character to be disturbed is to have them victimize a woman is problematic, but the result is that Milligan gives more depth to Deadman and Shade than the other characters in the book.

That Milligan even addresses Deadman's sexuality falls squarely on the Vertigo side of things. Milligan's conclusion that Deadman must essentially violate a person in order to be intimate is only logical, most likely the reason no other writer has approached it until now; to Milligan's credit, what he's done is to take an obvious but unseemly aspect of Deadman and bring it to light, thereby building on the character in a faithful way.

Later, Milligan mitigates it all by suggesting the Enchantress's dark magic spurred Deadman to sleaziness, though the character might be all the more interesting if left his own flaws. Either way, Deadman is a good example of how Milligan tries to present the darker side of DC Comics's dark characters here.

The rest of the characters receive far less spotlight. Milligan would seem to bank on John Constantine's reputation to make his impression in the book, since fabled louse Constantine does nothing untoward nor really terribly controversial in these pages. It becomes almost a running joke that the Justice League-level sorceress Zatanna's spells fail in this story, rendering her nearly useless. And Milligan brings back new character Mindwarp from Flashpoint: Secret Seven, though Mindwarp's role in the book is fairly minor.

Indeed, In the Dark's greatest problem is that the first five-issue arc consists almost entirely of the characters moving from place to place, maybe bantering, maybe fighting something, before they move again and repeat. The story's antagonist is apparent almost from the beginning, and so there's little suspense as the various characters are introduced and argue with one another, until enough issues go by that Milligan brings it all to a close.

That close, even, peters out -- for all the running around and worrying that the Dark characters do, ultimately Constantine speaks one spell by himself that ends the Enchantress's mad rampage. Similarly in the sixth issue epilogue, Deadman possesses Shade and suddenly Shade's wild golem disappears. That Milligan's focus is more on the characters than on the action isn't a detraction, but neither side has quite enough heft here.

Part of In the Dark's rooting around might be attributable to the fact that the final issue leads in to a four-part crossover with Joshua Fialkov's I, Vampire in the next volume. If Justice League Dark did have to mark time so Vampire could get in place alongside it, Dark was the worse for it. The main plot of In the Dark could certainly have been two or three issues instead, and then perhaps that extra space might have been used to convince the reader how the DC Universe's new Constantine and new Zatanna stand up to their old iterations.

Again, however, there's a simple joy in reading about a team that includes Constantine and Zatanna and Shade, and the fact that Jeff Lemire -- who wrote perhaps the best DC New 52 debut so far with Animal Man -- is taking over only portends good things for the book. Artist Mikel Janin does fine work throughout with a detailed, almost photo-realistic approach to the book's various decaying ghouls, and it's good news he's sticking around, too. Justice League Dark: In the Dark is not a strong debut for this much anticipated series, but there's evidence better things may be in store the next time around.

[Includes original covers, Mikel Janin sketchbook pages]

We'll stay on the "Dark" side of things with the Collected Editions review of the New 52 I, Vampire coming up later this week.

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