Justice Society Of America #29

I normally don't get hung up on the quality of a book. I've stuck through some hard times on books, but came out for the better. I need only mention Chuck Austen X-Men for most comic fans to understand what I'm saying. I struggled through that run because I'm a huge Havok fan, it didn't turn out so well. JSA has been a clear 4-5 star book week-in, week-out for me since first I encountered them in the OWAW JSA Oneshot around '02-'03. Picked up the main series with #32 and had one of the best runs in modern comics. That ended 3 issues ago, I stuck through two "okay" issues of Jerry Ordway and landed on this issue heralding a new creative team. I want to preface this by saying I probably was setting myself up for disappoint and that I am a fan of Fables/Jack of Fables: This issue was atrocious to a long time reader of JSA. Perhaps new readers will like it, I don't know. The way this issue was written reminded me why Johns run was so good. It took older characters, and a large team, and kept them fresh and proved why they needed to be around. In a matter of seconds, the team has been reduced to whiny teens and old-men who seem to not know when to shut-up. Indeed, none of the non-teenage women on the team speak the entire issue, including the leader of the group! Liberty Belle, Judomaster and Powergirl are incidental to the plot. Much of the dialogue seemed hackneyed, dull and, quite frankly, perfunctory. That is to say, nothing a character said had to be said by that character and could have been shifted to someone else easily. Indeed many bits of dialogue don't seem to work with their speaker. Jay Garrick's narration comes off as dull and as if someone were struggling to describe the issue. Stargirl, who was shown to be an integral part of the team mere issues ago, is relegated to the role of ignorant teenybopper for some unclear reason. And Mr. Terrific... wow. He's billed as the Third Smartest Man in the World. He runs the UN's secret espionage organization! He is not the kind of man to say "Go kick some righteous hind end..." I also highly doubt he would pontificate about Dr. Mid-Nite being "The world's best medic" for no reason. And he's too smart to be caught in that dumb of a trap. Hell, he was talking to the person who was obviously deranged and looked at them and just ignored him. I wanted to smash my head against a wall reading that. The two new characters don't seem to add anything to the book and quite frankly cramp the book's already full roster. All-American Boy quipping about "Children being sent to all wars" made me cringe. We get it, comic book writers have read "Slaughterhouse Five." As well, I don't see the difference between King Chimera and Damage. They're both arrogant and don't want to be on the team. I don't get it. Did Willingham need a magic character? He does know Alan Scott's powers are magic based and not light based right? While I'm sure it will be touched upon later in the arc, I can count at least 4 villains in that fight scene who are dead. And one of them is reformed and working for the DEO. That no character commented on this during the entire 10 page fight scene seems odd to me. As well, I'm glad Willingham watched that episode of the 90s X-Men cartoon before writing this issue; the fact that Dr. Polaris delivers more or less the same one-liner to Lightning about being able to control her power that Magnetos says to Storm felt so forced and unnecessary. As for the art. I thought Jesus Merino was far better than this. Don't get me wrong some pages were great and he has certain characters down. But there were some odd choices going on here. Wildcat II looks like a cat standing on it's hind legs. Jay Garrick is drowning in his helmet. Some characters look just like the models Dale Eaglesham used (Liberty Belle, right down to the hair.) Others seem needlessly wrong. I will admit his villain splash page was very good. But I was underwhelmed. The whole package was just disappointing to me as a long time fan. Consider this book dropped.