Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Justice League 6, originally released February 29th, 2012.

Shelby: I can appreciate the appeal of tradition. There is something very appealing to me about doing things “the old-fashioned way.” This isn’t to say that I can’t appreciate innovation, either, far from it. I just enjoy the comfort of doing things the way they’ve always been done. To me, this issue of Justice League is definitely a “classic comic book story.” Two parts action, one part cheesy dialogue, it’s precisely what you expect, and sometimes that’s what you want. There’s a fine line, however, between the enjoying the comfort of a classic and being frustrated by the same nonsense you’ve seen again and again. A very, very fine line…

Issue 6 opens with some guy and his family running for their lives through the ruined city as laser blasts vaporize people around them. We have a touching moment of tears as they huddle awaiting death, and then BAM, they’re dead. No, just kidding, the Justice League shows up and hits Darkseid with everything they’ve got. Wonder Woman tangles him in her lasso of truth, and we find out he’s on Earth “for her.” Punches and explosions, and Cyborg figures out he can “hack” into the motherboxes from issue 1 and spy on the destruction on other worlds. Pan to Batman (or should I call him Bruce when he’s without his cowl), who’s on one of those worlds, watching as a couple minions torture Superman. The end goal: transform him into some different sort of super soldier so he can find…BUM BUM BUM, the daughter of Darkseid. The plot, it thickens indeed. Back to the Darkseid fight, where Wonder Woman blinds him in one eye, and Aquaman in the other. Cyborg figures he can link with motherboxes and use them to create another gateway and send Darkseid back from whence he came. He opens a door to right where Batman and Superman are, Superman gets pissed about the torture and all, and slams into Darkseid on the other side of the portal. More fighting, Darkseid grabs Supes, and Cyborg somehow closes the gateway manually with an explosion or something. Darkseid get sucked through, and civilians are cheering for the team and calling them super heroes, including our random guy from earlier. We get a cute little thank-you ceremony (which I will touch on more in a bit), and then a couple of dark figures meeting in an equally dark London alley, deciding they would become known as super villains. Interestingly enough, there’s a sort of epilogue, featuring The Stranger and Pandora. That’s right, the Pandora: the curious one, with the box. She plans to break the curse she’s under after she imprisons The Strange (not The Stranger), and figures the Justice League will help her, whether they want to or not.

Now, I was rather enjoying this title. There was a lot of exciting action, and it was nice to see the team finally working together and playing off each other’s strengths. I liked a lot of the art showing the team together, especially the shot of them holding on for dear life as the world seemingly exploded around them after Cyborg destroyed the portal.

There was a lot of exciting art in this issue. One could argue Lee used too many big one-and-two-page splashes, but I disagree. I think they served as a good way to break up a lot of visually complicated action sequences. Plus, turning a page to see something huge and awesome is, well, awesome. I also really enjoyed the little exchange between the heroes during the ceremony: Hal and Aquaman saying they wear uniforms, not costumes, Hal again bitching about how they’re NOT a team, everyone complaining that they have way too much on their to-do lists to play nice and fight crime, etc. It was a little cheesy, but not in an overdone way; honestly, I thought it was a kind of cute. While this is going on, we see Random Guy from earlier typing up the story, so I figured he worked for a newspaper, or something. Then, we get the “big reveal.”

NO DON’T DO IT, GOD DAMMIT. I am not interested in any of that hokey, meta crap. Why, why, why? “But Shelby, that’s a book, not a comic book, things will be different this time, baby, I promise.” Oh yeah? I thought that image of the team fighting some sort of cephalopod looked familiar, and look what I dug up.

That’s right, that’s the first official appearance of the Justice League in DC cannon. I don’t know, man, things were going fine with my good ol’ fashioned comic book read, and then Johns just…crossed a line with this. It went from cutely cheesy to straight up hokey, and just left me frustrated. Not only is it winkingly overwrought, it speaks HUGELY of  some sort of Earth-Prime situation, and I DON’T WANT THAT. I know DC is relaunching the multiverse, we even have Superman mentioning it in this very issue, but please don’t start that silly meta nonsense!

Ok, I think I got everything off my chest. To summarize, a fun read with some nice, splashy art, spoiled by a too self-aware reveal at the end. Patrick, your thoughts?

Patrick: Good catch, Shelby. I mean really, great catch on that first-official-appearance-of-the-Justice-League reference. I hadn’t ever seen that cover before, so I was actually getting a little bit of a Watchmen vibe from that cover of the book-within-a-book. Which was a presumption that irked me more than what’s actually sort of a clever nod to Justice League past. If it makes you feel any better (as it does me), the character David Graves does not appear to be a real life comics writer. Makes the whole thing a little less Earth-Primey to me.

However, there’s so much in this issue heralding the return of the Multiverse. Not only does Superman call it out by name, but we get our first-ever Pandora action. Now, you’re quick to point out that this is Pandora Pandora, as in the literal little girl that opened the box with all the evil in it. We’ve talked privately talked about how we love it when other mythologies show up within the pages of DC Comics. Wonder Woman’s current run? Love the Greek gods. Blackest Night/Brightest Day? Love the Biblical references. So here is Pandora, which is a compelling idea as it is, but there’s obviously something more at play here.

Pandora is that purple-caped woman that showed up in every single #1 of the New 52. She also appears during the big conclusion of Flashpoint, as the various DC continuities merged into what we now call the DCnU. It’s a character that presumably Means Something, but DC management has been tight-lipped on what her role would be. Pairing her with The Phantom Stranger and teasing the existence of a “Third Sinner” is so tantalizing. This is exactly what I want to see from Geoff Johns’ writing: an exploration of some yet-unexplained corner of the mythology. Phantom Stranger is a one of those super-weird DC cast members that is a semi-religious, semi-science-fiction character that doesn’t appear to be bound to any single time or version of reality. The idea that there are three of these things out there (one of which has either yet to be introduced or yet to be revealed) makes me really happy. Honestly, the Pandora/Phantom Stranger stuff excites me on such visceral, lizard-brain level that I have a hard time focusing on anything else in this issue.

Oh, but there was some big-dumb action in this issue too. And good lord are there a lot of splashy spreads in this issue. There’s something about Jim Lee’s art that seems freer here than it did in the past. It seems like more of his expression-lines are getting inked, which busy-up the faces of the characters. Generally, the extra lines would bother me – I love simplicity in design – but there’s an unpolished personality that shows through in this issue that we haven’t seen in the previous. Dig this close-up on a brooding Bruce Wayne:

And there are little touches in here that make me happy. Like Flash throwing Aquaman to jab a pointy weapon in Darkseid’s other eye. That’s even sorta funny. There’s a sense of fun here, even if it becomes a little too mean-spirited when the heroes start razzing each other. But over all, I really had a good time reading this one.

Oh and the double-blinding of a character ALWAYS makes me think of King Lear. It’s undeserved and no one in their right mind would call the Darkseid fight a Shakespearian reference, but damn it all, the blinding of Darkseid was epic.

This series functions best when it manages fun. Mind you, there’s a lot of stupid stuff in this – basically Batman’s plan was to show up at Superman’s side and do… nothing? And then he helps the Cyborg by… telling him he can do it? I’m trying not to worry to much about silly characterizations of Batman – and not just because I spent our entire Detective Comics write-up complaining about it. You identified some cute moments, I identified some cute moments, there’s a bunch of splashy art that somehow retains the artists’ personality, and there was some crazy mythology in the epilogue: color me satisfied.

For a complete list of what we’re reading, head on over to our Pull List page.  Whenever possible, buy your comics from your local mom and pop comic bookstore.  If you want to rock digital copies, head on over to DC’s website and download issues there.  There’s no need to pirate, right?