Justice League #1

[abysslord]

I finally read Justice League.

The thing that I noticed most about this issue is that it took eight minutes to read. For Four dollars. That's 50 cents a minute.

By comparison, a typical, $12, 2-hour movie is 10 cents a minute, and a $60 video game I play for 20 hours is 5 cents a minute.

Are comics really that much better than movies and video games to demand such a premium?

Compare the return for the comic company though. A typical movie will gross millions, a typical game ...I don't know, but they only have to sell one copy per 12 comics to have the same income.

So you have to take that into account too I think. Although if three times the people bought comics, I doubt the price would go down

[BobBretall]

The thing that I noticed most about this issue is that it took eight minutes to read. For Four dollars. That's 50 cents a minute.

This really depends on how much time you spend looking at the art and drinking in every page/panel. I think it could take longer to consume the issue for some people.

A typical comic is in the 8-12 minute range for me to read, so this for you, is in the ballpark. Comics in general are not the most cost effective form of entertainment. Heck, I just bought Seasons 1-3 of Breaking Bad for $35. That's a hair over $1 per episode, which run about 50 minutes each.

And I could have watched it on TV for free.

[JasonNewcomb]

Specific means specific. A specific reference to the Blue spotted Bluejay is not "birds."

Dude you are a freaking confusing individual.

So basically your problem with the book is that Batman has cars and Green Lantern should have known that and three lines of dialog are (bleep). And you expect a mainstream review outlet to mention this specifically in a review?

My head hurts.

And by the way Deacon my man, the average song on iTunes costs more per minute. So, yeah, perspective and all that.

[J. Farrell]

Dude you are a freaking confusing individual.

This is not confusing.

I think the dialogue is crap. I cited a specific example of dialogue I think is crap. in response, Bob referenced reviews that he said were positive about dialogue I "specifically called out", but the dialogue I referred to is not referenced specifically in any of those reviews.

Hassan made a similar claim that the "specific" dialogue I mentioned is talked about in those reviews.

Nowhere did I write that that dialogue had to be in the reviews, but if you're going to tell me that the reviewers "specifically" enjoyed the dialogue I said was bad, I'm going to point out that they don't reference it.

If anyone is confused, it's about the meaning of the word specific.

I'm done talking about it. I'm glad you guys like the comic. You can enjoy the dialogue all you want. I don't agree that it's good.

By the way, Jason, I looked at the preview pages of Action#1 on your site and they looked pretty good. I guess they're going for a brash, young Superman in that? Could be a lot of fun.

[Perry]

Because they didn't write an interim scene where that line could have otherwise gone?

Writing dialogue that is clearly intended for the reader and not the person who is being spoken to in the comic is a clunky, overly expository device that, IMO, doesn't belong in the modern age of comics. It's something that people who don't have much experience with comics make fun of about comics.

I get that GL hasn't met Batman before, but as an adult with normal intelligence, it might be assumed that he's at least heard of vehicles, and would at the very least not assume that Batman fights villains with a deep voice. Batman's deep voice, thanks in no small part to Bale's depiction of the character, has become a running joke in recent years, and this feels like Johns' awkward attempt to invoke it. It's more uninspired and unoriginal than anything.

Kudos to you sir.
Exactly.

[stardog]

Everything I need to know about this issue I got from this dialogue:

Batman: "You flew us to Metropolis in a glowing green jet?"

GL: "You can't fly, so how else were we going to get here? Talk in a deep voice?"

That's awful writing folks, on so many levels. It's cliche, it's unnatural (why would Batman wait until they landed to make a comment about the jet?) and it makes absolutely no sense (Batman has been known to have a vehicle or three.)

How was it cliche? Batman was asking a legitimate question. Especially as a hero who "lurks in the shadows." Flying in a glowing green jet would seem like a bad idea. GL's response, while maybe lacking in the humor department (admittedly it wasn't a great line), wasn't a cliche. And how much time would Batman have to react during a plane ride from Gotham to Metropolis? Especially in what I assume is an extremely fast trip in a GL construct jet. He might not have even realized what happened until they landed (along with taking in the GL powers for the 1st time in person).

And how would Green Lantern know that Batman had any vehicles beyond a car since he had stayed strictly in Gotham City to that point? He was an urban legend street vigilante. And wouldn't a Green Lantern construct jet be much faster than any automobile? Or conventional aircraft, for that matter? This discussion is way too geeky for my tastes (it's still a comic book where you accept a certain amount of things... same with action movies that make millions of dollars if you want to go to appealing to the mainstream / haven't-read-comics-audience), but I think you're nitpicking, to say the least.

As far as the book goes, I really enjoyed it. Was it innovative? Did it reinvent the superhero comic? Of course not, but too much is being made of that, and some of it is DC's fault (through their promotion), I guess. I don't think the idea of this relaunch is to necessarily change what they've been doing. Superhero storytelling isn't broken and the mainstream audience is interested (see the success of the recent Marvel movies which while very well done, are about as by-the-numbers as you can get), so DC is just simply trying to give people a perfect jump-on point and change the way the material is distributed using the new technology. Where they're trying to change is by offering a more diverse group of books, but even that isn't as much innovative as just trying to appeal to more people who enjoy genres besides superheroes.

Getting back to Justice League #1, I thought they did a great job of establishing Batman's and GL's characters through the dialogue along with building a chemistry between them that I want to see more of. I also think it's important not only to new readers, but to comic book fans, to build Cyborg's character slowly as he becomes a "Big Gun" for the 1st time, so they did a nice job with that. In the end, I don't see this 1st arc being a great superhero vs big bad story because it really has to build these characters and their relationships first. The villain is simply the vehicle for that. Moving forward (with #7, I assume), then you have your big time adventures with characters that the readers really care about (hopefully). And the final splash page? That was perfect, and just that small bit of dialogue helped establish that character's new attitude / status quo. My guess is that a 1st time reader would be pretty excited by that ending.

My one problem with the book was the amount of story pages for 3.99. There should have been more, especially with DC's hold the line pledge and this being the 1st offering from the new 52. I didn't have a problem with the amount of story in the pages they did give us, as they did their job, but on a pure "bang for your bucks" basis, they should have given more. I will say that it should have taken longer than 8 minutes to read the book, though. I thought Jim Lee and the art team did a fantastic job, and there was a lot there to soak in. Maybe I had begun to take Lee for granted, but I hadn't enjoyed his work like that in years. Again, they should have given more story pages based on their pledge, but I still felt like this book was worth it. Just amazing to look at.

[spid]

After letting this book sit in my thoughts, and hearing some other reviews, I think that I was hoping for something different, but that doesn't mean that this wasn't good.

Justice League was fairly well crafted, I'll give it that. The story that is being told was told well, I just feel like the story that is being told isn't that intriguing yet.

My hope was that DC would start to push away from the decompressed storytelling technique, but that didn't happen in this book. I felt like there was 12 to 14 pages of story in this issue that were drawn out to make a 24 page book.

I think part of the problem is the same problem I find when a crime show tells you who committed the crime at the beginning of the episode. We already know who is on the team they announced that months ago. So a story that seems to be built upon putting the team together seems like a waste at least in the context of the entire story arc. If the scene between Batman and Green Lantern were wedge between jumps to the present with the entire team assembled it might have meant something. Now you have a whole arc of decompressed filler until the real meat of the story kicks in. For me, that was enough to push this title to the trade wait category.

[80sJunkie]

I picked up Justice League #1 on Thursday and had some time to digest it.

It's certainly competently done, which you would expect from Johns and Lee, but I really wanted this issue to rock my world, and it didn't. Not by a long shot. If this is the first issue of the much-hyped relaunch, I'm not too excited about the other 51 issues I ordered. I know I'm reading way too much into things, but this issue was firmly middle-of-the-road for my tastes, and it really didn't live up to expectations.

I also picked up the Retro-90s issue of Justice League International by Giffen/Dematteis/Maguire, and I loved it. Did it knock my socks off? Well, not exactly, but I did get a couple of laugh-out-loud moments and it was a very satisfying read.

Comparing the two books, one thing stands out: The relaunched Justice League #1 is so incredibly sterile. Now, I've always felt that way about Jim Lee's art. Amazing as it is on all technical levels, it has never had heart, imo. I'm surprised that I felt the same with Johns' writing. All I know is that stuff happens, but I don't know why I should care about the events or the main characters.

I know Batman is a good guy, but nothing in this issue shows me that. Same with Green Lantern who does little but get p0wned twice. It's hard for me to believe that this is the first appearance of Superman, because he comes off as yet a third sorta jerky superhero. Cyborg interlude was the only part that did any character-building, but it was baffling to see that sequence in the context of the main story. And in the end, I had very little sense of what the main conflict of the story was. I mean, I know that it's about chasing an agent of Apokalypse, but the story reads as a three-way "Hi I'm superhero X. Who the eff are you?" The main plot is just a pretext, and there's nothing to sink my teeth into yet.

I know this is just the first book in a bigger story, but I did not come away with any kind of satisfaction given the creative team and the extra buck I had to pay.

In the Justice League International retro-90s issue most everyone is a jerk, and the main conflict serves only as a pretext. But the intent is partly to parody comics like the current Justice League #1. Even so, the main threat in this book is much more clearly laid out, and this creative team is able to produce less stilted interplay despite having three times as many (largely-unknown B-list) characters to work with.

I know this retro issue builds on a 20+ year history starting with a wholly different Justice League #1. But you don't need to know any of that to appreciate this story. Going back to the Justice League #1 of 1987, I did not know any of the characters except for Batman. I still loved that issue enough to keep following it, even through the recent mini-series and today's retro issue. This retro issue is just as accessible as that older #1, despite using a lot of largely lesser-known characters.

I'll have to dig up my old copy of JL #1, but I bet it read much better than the JL#1 launched last week.

[Webhead]

I was not over or underwhelmed with it.

I thought by staying away from all the hype would help so I did not read the preview that was in the DC comics and I rarely go to sites like Bleeding Cool or Newsaramma. The only thing I knew about it was it takes place in the past and it was the first time the heroes met and that Johns and Lee are the creative team behind it. I made sure I gave it a fair shot but after reading it I just went on to the next comic in my "To Be Read" pile.

There were a few good moments that made me chuckle and I loved Lee's art but after reading it I did not feel any overwhelming desire to read the next issue. I will give it a few more issues but unless the story drastically improves I won't be putting JL on my pull list.

To use John and Bob's scale I would give the book a 3

[HassanT]

I was not over or underwhelmed with it.

I thought by staying away from all the hype would help so I did not read the preview that was in the DC comics and I rarely go to sites like Bleeding Cool or Newsaramma. The only thing I knew about it was it takes place in the past and it was the first time the heroes met and that Johns and Lee are the creative team behind it. I made sure I gave it a fair shot but after reading it I just went on to the next comic in my "To Be Read" pile.

I made a new rule that I will not read preview of comics that I am already getting online. I am also going to stop going to new sites once a day. There is too much being spoiled on the new sites.

[abysslord]

I think this comic just didn't stand a chance to living up to the hype, it couldn't have won either way. All fight with flashbacks, people may say it's bad for new readers. The way it is people say it's boring. It just got too much attention and what comic CAN hold up to this amount of scrutiny? Granted, DC did a lot of the advertising but still ... it's one comic. If we all killed titles after one comic there wouldn't be much left I think.

[spid]

I think this comic just didn't stand a chance to living up to the hype, it couldn't have won either way. All fight with flashbacks, people may say it's bad for new readers. The way it is people say it's boring. It just got too much attention and what comic CAN hold up to this amount of scrutiny? Granted, DC did a lot of the advertising but still ... it's one comic. If we all killed titles after one comic there wouldn't be much left I think.

I do not think this is a matter of a book living up to the hype. I think this is more of a style choice. Some people like these slow build up stories for team books, and others do not. I did not think this approach worked very well when Bendis used it in New Avengers years ago.

[BobBretall]

Entertainment Weekly does a comparison between the original 1960 JLA #1 & last week's JL #1:

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/09/04/jus ... d-and-new/

Could have been interesting to include a couple of the interstitial JL re-books (like the Maguire & Morrison iterations)

[keith71_98]

It was a safe book but a fun book. I still think that it was impressive due to it's ability to be a fun, satisfying experience even with the ridiculous amount of hype surrounding the issue.

[JasonNewcomb]

So I had my friend Clint read this book (he actually asked me if he could read it after I wrote this article: http://www.stashmycomics.com/blog/?p=2498). He is a lapsed reader and now wants to come back to DC with the digital initiative.

Here's what he said after reading the book. I'll try to quote as best I can.

"Very satisfying read".
"I don't know this Vic Stine guy so that's intriguing".
He went on about Lee's artwork and marveled at how detailed and dynamic it is. He laughed several times and noted how it was a clever concept to have the JL members not know each other well. He seemed to find it accessible.

We then immediately went on to discuss which of the New 52 books he might like to try. We narrowed it down. To JL, JLI, Batman, Action, Batman and possibly Flash.