A horned super-powered grumpy alien from another world portals to Earth and starts fighting the Justice League. No, I’m not recounting the Justice League movie, I’m describing the premise of Bendis’ super-original take on Justice League! Oh wait, the movie didn’t have his character Naomi in it. Yup, that makes all the difference. So the Justice League portal over to horned alien’s world to tell him to stop portaling over to theirs. Riveting stuff, eh?
So I think it’s fair to say that Bendis’ move to DC was underwhelming. His Superman was so generic, his Batman outing forgettable and Event Leviathan was the usual loud event comics nonsense. Add to this the wholly unremarkable Justice League, Volume 1: Prisms, a book that underlines how little Bendis had to offer DC’s characters.
It’s Justice League punching a Steppenwolf clone called Brutus, and then Darkseid-lite, Zumbado. It couldn’t be a more boring, uninvolving storyline. They’re also on another world that’s not on the Multiverse map because DC doesn’t have enough alternate worlds already!
It’s not just a bad book because Bendis isn’t great at team books in general (they all sound like every other team he’s written - “funny” dialogue and brainless punching), but because Justice League is such a hard title to write well. This is because Superman usually makes the rest of them superfluous, but this line-up includes Black Adam, who’s basically another Superman, AND Naomi, who’s potentially even more powerful than Superman. So this is a team with essentially three Superman characters, making them practically invincible. But the latest alien world’s atmosphere is making them slightly less invincible - well, I’m definitely on the edge of my seat now ohdon’tworrytheysavethedayasalwayswhatafuckingsurprise…
It’s not a complete bust. Bendis does have a decent handle on the characters - his Superman is effortlessly likeable, and I don’t dislike Naomi - and David Marquez’s art is always excellent. It’s just the story is so lacklustre and throwaway. The book seems to be setting up a larger storyline for Naomi but, now that Bendis has jumped ship for Dark Horse, I feel like that’s not going to go anywhere and all this setup will be completely pointless.
Even in the hands of an experienced creative team like Bendis and Marquez, Justice League remains leagues away from being a remotely decent title.
No comments:
Post a Comment