Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Justice League United #7 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Jeff Lemire
Art By: Neil Edwards, Jay Leisten, Keith Champagne, Jeremy Cox
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 10, 2014


A Shit Ton of Superheroes!


In the last issue of Justice League United we pretty much read an issue where there was a lot of fighting going on between a bunch of different people.  We had the JLU's team blonde fighting Byth and a brainwashed Hawkman while Martian Manhunter, Alanna Strange, Equinox and the freaking Legion of Superheroes fought off Byth's mercenaries that were after Ultra.  That's a lot of fighting right?  Well then listen to this.  Ultra and Equinox are teleported by one of Byth's men to the space portal where Infinitus is supposed to come from and when Ultra stares at it he makes energy demons come out................. Yeah, I don't know either.  So the fighting on Earth is over, but the fighting in space continues where our heroes continue to try and take down Byth and wait for Brainiac 5's reinforcements: The Legion Lost.  Holy Shit That's A Lot Of Characters!  Okay let's dive into this issue and see if the story progresses past a fight scene this month.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with........... You guessed it, more fighting.  Not only continued fighting but more people to add to the fight.  We've got the Legion Lost coming in to lend a hand but even with the Justice League United and their combined forces, they couldn't stop Byth from teleporting away with Hawkman and Ultra.  Luckily the Rannians were watching and before our heroes got overrun by.............energy demons......... they were zeta beamed back to Rann, where they met up with Martian Manhunter and the rest of the Legion of Superheroes.


Now it's time to come up with a plan to save the day from the terrorist Byth and after Martian Manhunter tries to connect to Ultra telepathically and Byth sends him packing with his mind powers, it looks like using telepathy isn't going to be a part of that plan.  That bit there might not sound like much, but up until now everyone thought Byth was just a shapeshifter and now Manhunter realizes that there are way more aspects to Byth than we originally thought......... telepathy apparently being one of them and another thing I really didn't think about during the fight, the ability to go toe to toe with Supergirl.  Yeah, that's a pretty big deal.  Okay so telepathy is out of the "save the universe: plan, but do you know what's in?  Everyone gets Legion flight rings and I'm immediately jealous.  If I ever choose to get married do you think that a Legion flight ring is more inappropriate or a Lantern ring?  


With their flight rings on, the gigantic team of heroes make their way to the portal to the future so they can fight off the............ energy demons........... before they reach Rann or Thanagar and if that didn't sound like enough on their plates, they need to stop Byth's spaceship from reaching the portal and causing the end of the known universe.  In the end we're back to a massive fight taking up most of our heroes' time, but Mon-El, Supergirl and Wildfire make their way to Byth's ship but before they could simply catch it and save the universe, they were blasted back by the brainwashed Hawkman, who's decided to join the fight.  Oh and he's got a pretty sweet Nth metal space suit going on too.


That's it for this issue of Justice League United and while we kind of got away from the simplicity of reading an issue that only consisted of fighting, it's still real hard to get excited by this book because it feels for every step forward the story takes it also takes two steps back.  I mean we're constantly just teleporting back and forth between Rann, Earth and the space port when our heroes aren't fighting and it seems we've been doing this for most of the series now.  While I'm not exciting when reading this book like I am for most titles, I do have to say that it is one of the best written series that I read and I'm actually pissed at myself for not enjoying it more.  It's just the simple touches that make this series great, like in this issue where Timber Wolf shows up and Animal Man and him begin to sniff around one another or when Star Girl and Wildfire remark about how they hate time travel stuff and really anything having to do with Green Arrow and Animal Man is just gold.  Here they need to go into space and Animal Man asks Ollie if he has an extra space suit arrow and Ollie asks him why he doesn't just use his space dolphin powers.  Gold, just gold.  I have really strong feelings about this book both ways and I wish I could be more focused about it but as of right now I really like it and I don't really care about it................  I love all the characters involved and yet I feel this story is too big for them.  Just a bunch of contradictions from me but I can tell you that Neil Edwards art is spot on month after month and I love opening this book to see his renditions of my favorite characters.  See you next month as we continue the Infinitus story and see if our heroes can save the universe.......... and if I can finally get a bead on how I feel about this series.

Bits and Pieces:

While I love the character interactions in this series I can't help but feel that the story is lacking simply because it doesn't seem to go anywhere.  Fighting, teleporting back and forth, that's all we really get.  While this works for me getting those character moments I love, it doesn't do much to move the story along and even though I feel that this is a perfect title because of the characters involved, I get bored while reading it.  I'm really just looking for this story line to finish so I can see these characters shine in a different environment.  Space is not for the JLU.  

6.8/10

No comments:

Post a Comment