Justice League!

Oh my goodness you guys, I read this bad boy earlier in the week, and it was just awesome! I’ve been reading a variety of these New 52 titles recently, and had bought this one in an effort to become more schooled in the DC Universe. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, but I was going to see what it was all about.

I am so glad that I did!

The story, like all the New 52 books, is a soft reboot of the DC Universe, and as the title suggests, it’s an origin story of the team, so we see how they first teamed up. Knowing nothing about the Justice League (though I have watched at least one animated movie in the past, not taking a lot of it in!) I was all for an easy-entry storyline.

So we follow Batman investigating some weird flying guy who plants a strange metal box in Gotham. Green Lantern shows up, investigating the alien activity going on, and the story really builds from there. The two travel to Metropolis as Green Lantern suspects it might have something to do with “that alien”, Superman, and later calls in Flash to help investigate the box. It’s interesting to see the group dynamic at this point – Flash and Green Lantern obviously know each other, Superman is suspicious of everyone, and Batman is almost the butt of everyone’s jokes (“so, what can you do?”) The story shifts to follow the “birth” of Cyborg, linked to his father’s investigations of these alien boxes, before moving on again to Wonder Woman as she rushes off to a fight with the flying aliens in Washington DC. In the capital, the others turn up and are soon joined by Aquaman, who has been fighting the aliens underwater. It soon turns out the boxes are essentially extra-dimensional portals, which are used to allow Darkseid to arrive on earth in search of his daughter. The aliens capture Superman in what feels almost like a side-story – they intend to make alien supersoldiers from his genetic material? – but Batman shows up to rescue him. In a final move, the super heroes all work together to defeat Darkseid, earning the support of the people at last.

The story is really good, but the characters are done so damn well that I was in love with this book pretty much from the get-go! I particularly loved Green Lantern, a character in whom I previously had no interest – he was generally pretty funny, which I was surprised at as I usually dislike the smart-mouth types. In fact, I’ve since bought the first books in both the Green Lantern and Aquaman series to see what I’ve been missing out on! Superman was also a really cool character here, and I’m really interested in this whole thing with Darkseid, who I believe has some sort of history with the Kryptonian, so that’s interesting.

The whole story was just so great, I am really impressed with all of these books so far, and can highly recommend this one in particular to anyone who is a fan of superheroes!