Justice League #32

By: Geoff Johns (story), Doug Mahnke (pencils), Keith Champagne (inks), Andrew Dalhouse (colors)

The Story: Meet the Doom Patrol, superhero support group for the unsightly.

The Review: With the Metal Men, Johns showed off his unique knack for bringing old characters into modern times without losing their original appeal. At the same time, he’s not averse to updating characters with a much sharper twist. He proved that with the reintroduction of the Doom Patrol in Teen Titans, and especially with Niles Caulder’s transformation from altruistic paraplegic to emotional manipulator supreme.

Since it was Johns who made this sea-change in Caulder’s character, I suppose he felt an obligation to keep it in the new DCU. In some respects, it’s an interesting flipside to his genius. While feigning the deepest compassion for the Patrol, he simultaneously reinforces their insecurities: Robotman’s loss of body, the lethal risk of Negative Man’s negative form, Elasti-Girl’s gelatinous composition. It’d be quite ingenious if he went about it with a little more nuance.

Unfortunately, Johns not being the subtlest of writers, Caulder comes across almost like the witch from Tangled, controlling the Patrol with a combination of guilt-tripping (to Element Woman: “You’d still be nothing but orange and purple vapor if I hadn’t been able to gather your unstable molecules back together, Emily.”) and meanness (“And you haven’t heard a word I’ve said. The Justice League does not want you.”). Given that he’s not even passive-aggressive in his behavior, it’s a wonder to any reader with a decent amount of pride that the Patrol would just take Caulder’s crap so meekly. The man is almost comically outrageous, going so far as to threaten, “I gave you your lives. And you’re going to do everything I say or I’ll take them back.” With such lack of decency, even Lex Luthor looks positively saintly by comparison.

Besides the reintroduction to the Patrol, there’s not much going on in the issue. Sure, we have a lot of talking going on, all in the pretense of delivering new information, though little of it is actually new. Mostly, it’s regurgitation from Forever Evil, but you do learn a few things. Volthoom, voice of the Power Ring, reveals that the being that destroyed Earth-3 is out for Superwoman’s baby, which you suspect means that he’s another possibility for the father.* Volthoom also tells you that once, not too long ago, Jessica was a relatively confident, normal young woman, until a traumatic experience in the woods turned her into the sweating mess we know her as today. Perhaps there’s hope she can go back?

What I find most concerning is we’re getting back to the point where the League feels like no more than a cog in Johns’ storytelling machine, especially in this issue. We’ve never had much interaction among the group unless they’re speculating on their next course of action, and here, with the Patrol taking center focus, the only dialogue among them that has any personality whatsoever is Vic chastising Billy for hesitating to take action against Jessica. “I don’t normally fight girls,” Billy protests.

“Well, you’re sounding like one.”

“You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

The best part about Mahnke’s art is its gravity. It’s obvious that his work doesn’t have the showroom beauty of Ivan Reis’, but that only makes the characters look like they’re designed to rough it out in the field. That splash of the League swooping through a crumbling building, each carrying an innocent victim—the only word to describe it is glorious. Our heroes look rock-solid and powerful, not just like supermodels in costume.

Conclusion: Johns takes the reimagining of certain characters to the point of caricature, but the issue is pretty solid otherwise.

Grade: B-

- Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: * Although at this rate, the father may very well turn out to be Darkseid. Or the Anti-Monitor.

- Isn’t Rita’s last name Farr, not Starr?