Trinity War Event: Justice League of America 7

Justice League of America 7
Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire, Doug Mahnke

Trinity War Crossover

Spoiler alert! You have been warned!

This book, along with Justice League Dark, has always been a mystery to me. Why there is a need for more than one Justice League title is beyond me personally, but the fact that they are all finally starting to interact and intersect in what is turning out to be one of the slowest, most disappointing crossovers in recent year, isn’t helping their cause. Perhaps at the end of all of this “epic” crossover madness, maybe in a few months-or-so, I’ll get my wish. But until that day, I suppose I’ll just have to deal with the fact that DC wants me to pay twelve bucks a month for what is consistently just one issue’s worth of story drawn out into three.

This issue is essentially two things in one, but don’t take that for a compliment. It’s part recap of the last issue of The Phantom Stranger, a title which most people buying this book probably skipped over, and it’s part lead-in to the next issue of Justice League Dark, which will undoubtedly be a poorly-written (but with good artwork) continuation of this issue. We get a scene with Lex Luthor in prison being confronted by Pandora. Which is neat, but cut short so we can spend more time recapping the Phantom Stranger’s life-and-death mission in Heaven, Plastique’s meddling with the body of Dr. Light, the disappointing introduction of the New 52 version of Dr. Psycho (who, believe it or not, is nothing more than a plot device to move the story from point A to point B), more Superman being crazy-looking, and the Atom finally revealing that she’s in fact a spy. All of this comes to a head when Pandora, in the middle of a conversation with Luthor, is interrupted by Wonder Woman, who seizes control of the artifact that is probably the cause to all of the recent events, and turning into a scary three-eyed version of herself. I’m assuming the entire next issue will be a fight that is meaningless with a cliffhanger that we should have gotten three issues ago.

But I will be completely honest. This is far from a bad issue. It just doesn’t have a lot going on. The artwork has improved vastly over the last issue, the dialogue between characters seems to be more organic and believable. And the storyline, although moving at a relatively glacial pace, is not poorly executed. Perhaps we’ve just been spoiled in the past with previous events (mostly written by brilliant superhero architects like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison with the help of very few bright yet more-or-less forgettable fill-in writers). Maybe it’s the fact that seeing Jeff Lemire’s name on so many titles that I should enjoy has given me an unfair bias. Or maybe it’s the fact that I just don’t seem to see how they are going to tie all of the loose ends up with only a few more parts left in a storyline that seems so grand in scope that it will be almost impossible to satisfy the readers in time. So take my gripes for what they are, but know this: if Johns doesn’t pull out all of the stops for the finale, I’ll be dropping the extra two Justice League books that really don’t seem to serve any other purpose than greed at this point.

My Rating: 3/5