Justice League #36 – Scott Snyder, Writer; Francis Manapul, Howard Porter, Artists; Hi-Fi, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Spectacular. That’s the only way to describe not only Justice League #36 but the scope of the six-month-long storyline that’s wrapping up Snyder’s run on Justice League. He’s taking the reins on writing solo again for this issue (I’m not sure about the next few) and while I’m a huge fan of James Tynion’s writing overall, it shows. Snyder knows how to find the heart of any scene in a way few other writers do, even in the middle of multiversal chaos.
The heroes are at their lowest moment and Lex Luthor is at his highest, with Perpetua finally resurrected and the sign of Doom shining over the entire world. There’s a great scene right at the beginning as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman find each other in the League’s chapel right before addressing the crowd. At the same time, the segments featuring Lex Luthor and Perpetua are almost as strong. Perpetua has mostly not connected with me as a villain so far because she’s so often off-screen, but in one brief segment, she establishes herself as one of the cruelest villains in the DCU.
The fact that her targets are villains – the rest of Luthor’s Legion of Doom – doesn’t matter at all because it drives home how little she values anyone but herself and her tiny inner circle. Snyder is juggling one of the biggest casts in comics at the moment, with the top heroic teams of three eras uniting to stop Luthor, and he manages to get some great small moments in. Jarro hanging off Tim’s staff with the rest of his family is easily the visual of the year, BTW. Jarro > that other baby alien everyone’s going nuts over.
The only segment that didn’t quite work for me was the Hawkgirl and Shayne segment, which turned iconic villain the Anti-Monitor into a random heavy. But by the end of the issue, the final battle is looming and Batman’s debuted one last defense mechanism that had me jumping out of my seat with excitement. If you want a comic with all the thrills of Dark Nights: Metal but little of the darkness, this book has been delivering since its launch.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
