Justice League 3001 #6: The Storm!
Written by: DeMatteis and Giffen
Art by: Howard Porter Guest Artist: Colleen Doran
Colors by: Hi-Fi
Cat’s TidBits: This week’s issue we’re encountering new characters that involve the Scullions, android servants of the “Lord of all Beings and Things” trying to take down Batman, for what reason? We shall find out. Harley Quinn appears in this issue to entertain us with her Harley ways; We also meet Tina, a bratty teenager, who is getting on Supergirl and Batman’s last nerve and is best friends/enemies with Harley?
I’m going to start with the art of this week’s issue and how it was refreshing, maybe not in the best way, but it was still nice to see guest artist Colleen Doran alongside Porter to give us a slightly different look to our beloved characters. If I had to pinpoint one of the things that I loved about this issue, was how great their facial expressions were accompanying to DeMatteis and Giffen’s writing. It was overly-dramatic, but I think sometimes you need that in a comic book, not only to laugh at it, but also to appreciate the seriousness of it all.
Now to get to the juicy stuff, we find out that Tina Sung is somewhat related to Batman as she teases him and calls him “Uncle Batsie”, I don’t know if this will play out in later issues where we’re going to need her help or the direct descendant from Batman will be needed at some point. Either way, I agree with Supergirl as she is getting to my last nerve, but then I realized that these writers tend to exaggerate the way that teenagers are portrayed in DC Comics to differentiate the way that our ‘adult’ characters are. It was also pretty funny to see Supergirl stoop to her level and especially with the way that the artists gave us distinct facial expressions, I couldn’t deal! It was pretty good.
If we don’t like the story of a comic book, we’ll stop reading it, obviously right? I have a love-hate relationship with Justice League 3001, as their storyline jumps from bad to really good throughout the issue. Finding out that Tina Sung was a descendant from Batman was on the good side (only because it could be used for something later on), but then we find out that Harley Quinn (who really isn’t Harley Quinn) is trying to team up with the Scullions to take down Batman and Supergirl which felt like a filler story. I don’t like filler stories. There are many comic books that include them and they are perfectly set into the story where it can be analyzed as a complement to the full story, but then there are these where you think “Why did they even include this?”
Poor Harley, I hope they can use her perfectly at another point through Justice League 3001. The colors are amazing! Like usual. I do enjoy seeing Hi-Fi’s work and he’s pretty good at what he does. There’s a big spoiler that happens at the end of this issue which I’ll post a picture below, but I wonder where they are going to take this story. Coming from last month’s issue, we completely did not follow-up with Green Lantern’s identity issue and also Bane who had made an appearance when speaking to Lois Lane. I hope we can see more of that soon.
I am loving the facial expressions, see what I mean! You get so into the story that you react in this way: HOLY MOTHER OF OH MY GOSH, WHAT JUST HAPPENED? Did Superman really die? HIS HEAD is TOTALLY blown off. Then you look at that last frame with his smug face and you think… Well, he had it coming. What do you guys think? Dead or Alive?
The Good:
Storyline is flowing pretty nicely right now, without the filler stories that I mentioned above, but the art was on point. I’m glad they took a break from the whole Lois Lane taking down the Justice League, because now we really have some conflict. These Scullions are going to be an issue as they regenerate pretty darn quickly too, so I’m excited to see where they’re going to take that.
The Bad:
Honestly, I don’t have much bad right now, other than the fact that Tina Sung has her typical teenager rebel attitude and I don’t know how I feel if she’s going to slowly integrate into the Justice League team, but we don’t have that information yet. We’ll see. Hopefully not. But we’ll see.
Overall:
This comic book is slowly progressing into one that I am enjoying to read. It’s new. The creative team and writing team are working hard to give us these characters that are not the typical ones we usually know. Batman is not serious, Superman is basically a jerk, and we still have a nice balance between female-male ratios. I know I mentioned in last month’s issue review that there is a high feminine dialogue throughout the beginning issues of Justice League 3001, but I don’t feel like it dominates the story in any way. The ending is going to give me a headache if I don’t find out soon what happened, but I’m waiting just like you guys.
Score: 6.5/10
