Justice Society Of America #14

Sit back and enjoy the destruction...if you can find a chair.

The Justice Society of America is running out of chairs at the conference table and has taken to using barstools, beach chairs, and big purple love-seats. This issue tackles a major point of contention for readers: the ever expanding waistband of the Society itself. Eaglesham is tasked with drawing more involved splash pages of the assembled heroes and Johns must juggle the characters in a script which centers around a really crowded meeting. For now it's working. The months of talking and planning and introductions never really bothered this reader; it's good stuff. But for many, this issue hopefully delivers the action they've been waiting to see from all these bulky, heavy-hitting meta-humans.

And it's big action too, appropriately destructive and filled with lofty language. This is attempted deicide we're talking about here.

But what struck me most about this issue was just how big a visceral impact the sneak attack by Gog really had. After 14 issues, I have a lot invested in the lives and happiness of these characters. Maybe not Dirk Roosevelt, but a lot of these kids and vets alike. There's weight to this battle, and I'm pretty anxious to see who's still standing when the smoke clears. Johns has established a big family of heroes, developed them carefully. We've seen the quiet before the storm--a kind of buffer that a lot of comics don't indulge in nearly so much--and this should give him license to tell an earth-shaking story with real resonance. The kind of resonance other books might achieve after 3 or 4 times this issue count.

There are other factors contributing to this, of course. Alan and Jay, and Ted all bring decades of continuity from previous series. They're substantial. But there's also the insubstantial. Wildcat Jr. Cyclone. Citizen Steel. These are characters introduced only in this book. And if a major crisis is approaching, it's easy to see them as fodder. But I don't want them to be! I love these guys. And knowing how fragile they are makes me care about them all the more. The Kingdom is coming, and there's not much I can do about it.

So, there it is, Johns. Heart pinned to my sleeve, flapping desperately. Don't break it. Or do. Just keep this up.

Thy will be done, I guess.