Justice League Of America

Justice League of America has proven to be a very, very mixed bag. Brad Meltzer started off the series with a very slow, heartfelt story…that didn’t really feel like the Justice League at all. Enter Dwayne McDuffie. Veteran comic fan, TV series writer, everyone thought he would know just what the JLA needed, and would knock it out of the park.

Has it? Not really. Each issue of JLA isn’t bad. They all feature good characterization, pacing, and art. But as you look at the collection of all the issues, you begin to realize just how much JLA lacks a sense of purpose and centralized storyline.

Nothing seems to be holding this book together. While they try to build subplots with some of the lesser known characters – Red Arrow, Red Tornado, Hawkgirl – none of these, in my estimation at least, have panned out. And certainly none of these – started back in issue #1 – have reached anywhere close to a culmination.

The main storylines have proven to be fun, but short and very superficial. Some of them have done little more than feed off of storylines from other books (such as Salvation Run and Final Crisis), and some are just that interesting.

I think another big mistake that has happened with this book is that they’ve tried to have the focus of the book fall square on the shoulders of the lesser known characters, while leaving Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as out of the picture as possible, and it just hasn’t worked. They haven’t written the lesser known characters anywhere near well enough to be captivating and interesting, and thusly quality of the book falls back onto the Trinity’s broad shoulders. Unfortunately, since they’re not supposed to be the focus, they’re all quite thinly characterized and always lack face time in each issue.

Overall, Justice League of America isn’t an offensively bad book. It isn’t the type of book where one issue will tell you its crap, but it definitely lacks a purpose, and a direction, and a soul. Which is really a shame as there are a lot of very talented people involved in the creation of this series, and there are some very good characters featured in it.