REVIEW: Justice League #4

Written by Bryan Hitch, art by Jesus Merino, published by DC Comics

I really like New Avengers. I’ve loved every volume, even the dips have been entertaining and this new run has had kaiju, giant robots, mystery, intrigue, foreshadow, even a bit of time travel and all with some proper emotion and character.

I’m telling you this because it’s a better comic than Justice League despite the stakes being higher and the team being the icons of their respective universe. The sense of “oooh shit what’s going to happen now” is palpable in New Avengers, it’s a struggle to give an “oooh…” in Justice League. It’s partly down to the dialogue choking the life out of the drama, the plot being as engaging as a four-day seminar on parsley and if you swapped out the characters for crash test dummies you wouldn’t notice the difference.

Facial expressions are so banal, I wasn’t entirely sure Lois hadn’t just had a stroke in one panel, but apparently she was upset over something according to her dialogue. Superman is doing something at the Earth’s core, punching a big ball of light apparently but there’s no sense of enormity and again Superman doesn’t look like he’s struggling, he just looks bored off his “S” shield.

The stakes are so high but there’s no sense of scale, we keep getting told there are Earthquakes but the art doesn’t show them the characters spend so long talking about nonsense any feeling of impending doom is nullified.

But New Avengers is really good fun.Â 0.3/5

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