Justice League #10 – Scott Snyder, Writer; Francis Manapul, Artist
Ratings:
Ray – 8.5/10
Corrina: Too Much?
Ray: As Justice League Dark continues its own event crossing the title over with the book of one of its members, Justice League #10 throws its own hat into the ring with Drowned Earth, a big-scale crossover with Aquaman.
Scott Snyder and Francis Manapul kick us off with this prelude issue, setting the stage and introducing the threat. After a brief flashback segment showing a young Arthur and his father fishing on the open sea, the story cuts to the present day with Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Firestorm on a mission to find a lost ship of Poseidon’s. I like that Snyder’s League is bringing in auxiliary members like Firestorm and Adam Strange (who helps Superman and Flash on a mission involving Volcano Man). I’m also amused that Snyder is still keeping Batman in the Bat-armor/brace for the second arc in a row after he was pummeled by the Legion of Doom. Maybe he’s lampshading the fact that a normal person like Batman would nearly get killed constantly in fights of this scale?
Snyder’s Justice League has often felt like a confusing but epic jumble of plot ideas, and they come fast and furious this issue as well. The introduction of “Jarro”, a baby Starro that the Justice League is keeping in a jar, is both hilarious and adorable. I want so much more of him, and possibly a team-up with Baby Groot. And then, of course, there’s the ship itself – a mysterious eldritch location that unleashes a mysterious space kraken. But it’s what comes with the beast that really shakes things up. A mysterious alien liquid that immediately transforms everyone it touches into a monstrous sea creature, starting with Firestorm. And as the Justice League finds themselves in a crisis situation as the world floods with alien seas, Aquaman is taken to another dimension, where a trio of lost Sea Gods from another world explain that they’re here to invade Earth. Does it really make sense that they have old-timey alien spaceships AND a world-transforming flood? Not really, but it’s thrilling enough that I’m more than willing to take the ride with Snyder.
Corrina: First, the artwork, like in The Witching Hour, is outstanding, ranging from the sparse, tense panels of Batman in the Hall of Justice, to the encounter with the Kraken, and the weird, creepy transformation of Firestorm and the others.
That said, the plot is thin. It pales next to the Witching Hour simply because these new alien lords of the sea are there and they’re one-note: we’re evil and we’re going to drown the world. Okay, then. So they do what they said and meanwhile, things are destroyed and people are killed and transformed.
I guess Snyder has a reset button, in that the population of the world hasn’t drowned, only been transformed. So the body count should be low enough. (Stanley: Hey, Mildred, remember that time we were crazy alien fish? Mildred: Yeah, that was cool. Better than when the Dark Metal Batman with spikes around his eyes turned us all evil.) But if you flood everything all over the Earth, the clean-up is going to be unimaginable. Heck, there are still parts of New Orleans affected by Katrina’s flooding.
In other words, my suspension of disbelief is broken. This is too over-the-top. The only answer to enjoying it is to be Mildred and Stanley, I guess.
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Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
