Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky
Finished reading 15 oktubre 2006
When I started reading Marvel's Essential and DC's Showcase Presents collections, each containing about 500 pages of Silver Age comics, I wasn't overly optimistic. Good writing in mainstream comic books is a relatively new thing (some might say it's yet to arrive in any meaningful measure). But I love DC's old Silver Age line-up (Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter), and have heard such great things about Jack Kirby and the early Marvel runs, that I was intrigued by the whole thing sufficiently to test the waters.
I read Showcase Presents Metamorpho, which was great; Essential Classic X-Men, which was fine; Showcase Presents Green Lantern, which was fine; and Essential Fantastic Four, which was good. It was with much eagerness that I bought and dove into Justice League America. After all, here was the entire DC Silver Age line-up in one book.
To my utter chagrin, the writing here was abominable. Every episode goes like this: there are three items to find, each in a different spot on Earth (one of them is always underwater). The team splits up into three groups, and they each go to find the items, having to fight some sort of creature at each point.
Green Lantern always manages to go to the item where the creature is yellow (his powers don't work against yellow), Martian Manhunter always manages to go where there's fire (his weakness), if Superman is in this issue (Superman and Batman are in less than half the book, being busy on other cases for some bizarre reason), he goes where there's Kryptonite. The book has the most extraordinary coincidences, usually in the opponent's favour (such as things happening to fall on the Flash when he's moving at top speed, knocking him out), and the team is completely incapacitated (but saved by a Deus ex Machina) in at least half of the issues.
One thing I should mention, actually, is that the art by Mike Sekowsky is pretty good. It's not especially beautiful, but it certainly does what it needs to, even to the point of showing the team in their civilian identities, and it being clear who is who, despite the fact that they're all white males.
Rating: 1/5