Seven months on, Justice League is still the second most-ordered book at Ground Zero Comics, after Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s red-hot Batman run. When’s the last time that happened? When’s the last time that a book has proven so popular, and kept up that popularity in such a fickle medium, where the average customer seems to want only to read the first issues of books, that it can still sell so well half a year down the line? Jim Lee’s X-Men? Bendis’ original Ultimate Spider-Man run? Even better, Justice League is able to share the spotlight with the aforementioned Batman. Two books, from the same publisher, from the same initiative, that have captured readers’ imaginations in a way that hasn’t been seen in a pretty long time.
Issue # 7 also marks the first issue without any Jim Lee artwork, and, by design or coincidence, the first issue since # 4 that has arrived to shelves on time. Gene Ha provides fill-in duties for Lee on this issue, and this was the perfect time for it to happen. The story in # 7 is a one-off tale, fast-forwarding us five years beyond the newly-formed League’s defeat of dimension-hopping New God-gone-bad Darkseid at the end of # 6, into the time-frame established by 49 of the other 51 books in the New 52 initiative, and serves mostly as a vehicle to give us the current state of affairs with the league, which is about what you would expect – at this point, the orbital watchtower featured in most incarnations of the League is operational, and from there, the seven charter members run around solving crimes and punching bad guys in the face in the name of saving the world. Meanwhile, the public loves their new saviors – so much so that they think the League ought to be taking on a few additional hats, such as fixing the economy and reforming education. Shades of Kingdom Come start to shine through as the citizenry yell and scream for an excuse to raise their heroes to the status of modern-day deities. Its a theme that doesn’t get touched on much, and the issue stops just shy of addressing the religious implications of it.
People need leaders. There’s just no way around that. People have also shown time and time again throughout history that they’re so eager to have leaders that they’ll overlook almost any far-reaching concerns in the name of security in the now. It strikes me personally as completely realistic that, if such beings as Superman and Wonder Woman were really to exist, our first order of business as a society would be to elevate them to Messianic and Theocratic God-Kings, which would, of course, be the absolute worst thing we could do. It should be highly interesting to see how this situation plays itself out over the next few months. They beat back Darkseid, but can the Justice League possibly save us from ourselves?
Meanwhile, in the back pages of the book, we have the first chapter of what, hopefully, will be a long-running feature in The New 52 – say it with me now, SHAZAM! A criminally underused and ignored character over the years, Captain Marvel seems to have shed his litigiously shaky moniker for good and adopted the magic word that transforms him from sulky podcaster to Captain Whitebread as his name. A whole lot of changes are in store for Billy Batson, including a much greater emphasis on the magical source of his powers, a beefier, much more Lex Luthor-y Dr. Sivana, and an attitude that isn’t in keeping with previous incarnations of the character at all. This last change is the most troubling, however, its also very skillfully introduced, as Johns introduces Billy as the intrepid, well-mannered, incredibly polite, and generally pleasant young man we’ve always known. Then, once the prospective foster parents leave, the facade drops, and Billy begins to sulk and mouth off to his attendant. Its disconcerting to try and reconcile this Billy with over 70 years of history – especially considering artist Gary Frank’s tendency to draw him like a young Donnie Osmond. This could be for the best, though, considering the difficulty that most creators have had making use of the character in times that only get farther away from the relatively cheerful and simple times in which he was introduced. Since this first chapter was extremely light on actual story content, only time will tell if the character can really adapt to today’s world. The fact that DC is putting the feature in the back of their flagship title, though, speaks well for the faith they have in the project. We’ll just have to find out together.
Be sure and check out DC’s official page for the book at http://www.dccomics.com/comics/justice-league-2011/justice-league-7, or purchase the book digitally from Ground Zero by using this link: https://comics.comixology.com/ret/383/Ground_Zero_Comics_DC_Comics_Digital_Store/#/issue/22160/Justice-League-2011-7
