Justice League #8: OK, after eight issues, I have to say, I feel like Johns has missed the boat. Despite the sass both showed in their initial appearances (in issues #2 and #3, respectively), Superman and Wonder Woman have been reduced to complete non-entities. Clark appears to be an extreme form of the Boy Scout that I've always found to be crushingly dull and Diana appears to be a lobotomized version of her former self. Aquaman and Cyborg do little more than mutter to themselves, though Aquaman at least gets to add "mildly threatening" to his attribute list after this issue, given that he and Green Arrow appear to have some sort of (not-so-friendly) history. Johns essentially leaves all the character interactions to Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, but this interaction unfortunately is as one-dimensional as Superman and Wonder Woman's portrayals, consisting of Hal being a jackass and Batman and Flash responding to his jackassery with outright disdain to mild amusement. You can see why it's hard to understand the assertions in this book that the Justice League are such super friends. They barely seem to like one another, let alone trust one another. Johns somewhat wisely choses to play up the humor in Green Arrow's appearance this issue, and it makes it more fun than this series has been in a while. However, I'm left wondering what exactly Green Arrow brings to the table if he's just going to be another Hal, overconfident and snarky. I honestly don't think that I've ever read a comic with Green Arrow in it, so I have to say that I'm not entirely sure how faithful this portrayal is to his DCU character. But, he seemed really, really Hawkeye to me here, something that surprised me, given that I thought he was supposed to be all brooding and lefty. Johns has now essentially wasted two issues where he could've (and should've) been showing us how the team works together in the present, instead of focusing on the way the world views the team. Johns has everyone tell us that the Justice League are heroes, but he needs to actually show us that.
On a more positive note, Johns manages to get me to care about the Shazam back-up story, something that he didn't accomplish last issue. I spent that issue mostly annoyed that I had no idea who this character was, but Johns reminds me in this issue that the beauty of the "New 52!" is that no one does. As such, I realized in this issue that I didn't need to know anything about the Billy Batson who existed in the DCU (and whose role in "Flashpoint" greatly confused me), because I was getting his origin story in the DCnU right here. I was able to relax and enjoy the story, which I did, more or less. Billy's interactions with this caseworker are great, and I'm always a fan of a good redemption story. So, surprisingly, this back-up story saved the issue a bit for me.
That said, though, I'm not sure how much longer I'm getting this title. $3.99 is a lot of money to be spending on tepid characterization and boring plots.
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