The New 52! Justice League #1

DC decided to reboot their comic book universe, so I decided to blog along with it!

First up, Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.

Serviceable. This is a good start. Not a great start, but it has its high points. We get the first meeting of Green Lantern and Batman. We meet the human side of Cyborg. We get a few moments of a different Superman. We get hints of a major villain with Darkseid. It's Easter eggs and starting points. You don't get nothing fancy, but you don't get anything that seems new or groundbreaking.

Essentially what this reboot gets to do is to give creators the ability to make some major changes for DC properties that aren't doing well and get to keep some of the character beats that work well. With that, we see that the world fears superheroes. They are starting to pop up everywhere. Green Lantern has problems with Coast City. Batman is hunted down by the police. Not necessarily new territory with these two characters, but these two characters were doing pretty good before this reboot, so we don't need to change too many aspects of them.

We do get two different takes on the other two heroes in this issue. Cyborg is in human form and is an emo teenager. His daddy didn't come to his football game, and that makes him sad. Johns does good at writing emo teenagers, so having one on this team makes sense. With Superman we get the sense that this is Superman as an inexperienced kid, which is an interesting take on him. Not the well mannered kind (he knocks out Green Lantern with an eye beam shot when they first meet) and seems kind of cocky.

Despite having Wonder Woman on the cover of the comic, she doesn't make an appearance in this comic. In fact, the only female appearance that is clearly visible is a background character in a cheerleader outfit. Sigh. I'm not saying that we need to have a minimum number of female or minority characters in the book, but if this is the first issue that you are using to entice new readers to start reading DC comics in this New 52 world, it wouldn't hurt to represent a little.

I get the impression that this new world will be one that has Batman's take on how superheroes should be viewed in the world - hated and feared. In the old DC everyone had Superman's take on superheroes -they are loved and respected. Maybe this will change as this universe unfolds, but it is interesting how it all starts out.

Fun moments: When Batman pulled Green Lantern's ring off without him knowing it and Green Lantern's powers began to fade. Even in this DC, Batman is quick to find out your weakness and can beat you, even if he has no powers.

Words: 7/10

Pictures: 7/10

Recommend: Yes

Buy Next Issue: Yes, but this hasn't made my monthly pull list yet.