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Mild Mannered Reviews - JLA Comics

Justice League of America #10 Justice League of America #10

Justice League of America #10

Scheduled to arrive in stores: June 20, 2007

Cover date: August 2007

Writter: Brad Meltzer
Penciller: Ed Benes
Inker: Sandra Hope

The Lightning Saga - Final Chapter: "The Villain is the Hero of his Own Story"

Reviewed by: Michael Bailey

Click to enlarge


The League and Society realize that the Legionnaires they are seemingly fighting are just illusions. Meanwhile the real Legionnaires take up their respective positions in Tokyo, Central City, Smallville, San Francisco and Gotham to await impact. The more mobile and powerful members of both the League and Society confront them and try to convince the young heroes that they don't have to go through with their suicide run. Despite their pleas the lightning strikes and in the aftermath Wally West, his wife Linda and their two children are back from whence they had disappeared to.

The Legionnaires escape and before traveling back to the future they leave Karate Kid behind. Wally reunites with his friends and the two teams part after making plans for the next meeting. In the future Brainiac 5 muses on the fact that in the end they had got who they had really wanted as he examines one of the lightning rods that appears to have a face trapped in the top of.

4Story - 4: Ah, that old conflicted feeling rears its ugly head.

On one hand this was a pretty explosive ending with the return of a character I have a lot of affection for. I like Wally. I've liked Wally since the summer of 1995 when I read the "Return of Barry Allen" story line written by Mark Waid. So seeing him back does my fanboy heart good.

But, and this is kind of a big but (insert Sir Mix-A-Lot joke right about here), this story seems like it started out going in one direction and ended up going in another one entirely.

I'm sure the whole Legion thing was part of the equation all along, so as far as the Legionnaires are concerned I'm relatively satisfied with how that side of the arc went. I rather like the way they reintegrated the Legion into Superman's back story, which to me gave the fact that the Legion betrayed him all the more resonance. It was also kind of cool that the Legion was involved in the first place.

So, the Legion end of this story? Good.

The return of Wally? Good. Not sure I like how it happened, especially with Bart Allen's supposed fate over in the pages of the FLASH, but still good.

The story as it stacks up against past Justice League and Justice Society team-ups? At the end of the day it ranks right up there with the best of them. Both Meltzer and Johns seemed to have had a good time and they did a good job of playing with the personalities of both teams.

I only have one real question; weren't there other villains in this story?

I mean I remember Per Degaton, Desparo and Ultra-Humanite. They were there. Both Johns and Meltzer seemed to make a big deal of them. Then they just...disappeared. It's possible that those villains are going to be major players down the road, but it seems kind of disingenuous to introduce such heavy hitters (yes, even Degaton) and not pay them off within the story arc.

Oh well, other than that I was satisfied with this issue and the story as a whole.

4Art - 4: More Benes and Hope goodness. It's not easy making such a large group of heroes look good, but this artistic duo pulls it off just fine. I also dug the little clip from CRISIS that they threw in. I sit in awe at the marvels of Photoshop.

3Cover Art - 3: (Standard Cover by Michael Turner and Peter Steigerwald) I didn't like this cover when I saw the teaser in Previews and I don't like it now. Even with the bit of breast reduction the art department did from the first solicit to here this is just a really boring and unattractive image. Sure Black Canary looks find but other than that I was not happy with this cover.

4Cover Art Alternate - 4: (Alternate Cover by Phil Jimenez and Rod Reis) Because the manager at my regular comic shop sold it to me at cover price I actually bought this variant cover. Not bad. Definitely action packed with a bunch of really hacked off looking super-heroes. More than that it wasn't the Turner cover, so right there it earns serious points in my book.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2007

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2007

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