Justice League of America #41: Writer: James Robinson. Pencils: Mark Bagley.
Last Issue: 6 out of 10.
This issue starts off with Donna Troy thinking about the sucky run of luck the DC heroes have been having lately, what with Cry for Justice and Blackest Night. While Donna is reminiscing(and filling in readers who may have missed out on those two events), Vixen tells Dr. Light that she is taking a leave of absence from the JLA, since she had suffered a broken arm and leg during Prometheus's assault. Light tries to convince her to stick around, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Donna heads to the hospital to recover the corpse of her infant son, who was resurrected as a Black Lantern during Blackest Night, and as luck would have it, some idiots had taken hostages in the children's wing of the hospital, and were looking for a ransom. Instead of a ransom, they get a righteous Amazonian ass-whupping from Donna instead. After Donna takes out the trash(so to speak)she is met by Wonder Woman who had just arrived on the scene. WW can see the toll the recent events had taken on Donna and tells her to join the JLA as a way to move forward as opposed to looking back at what Donna had lost. After WW's pep talk, Donna goes around collecting JLA teammates, starting with those she knows best, her former teammates with the (Teen)Titans. Anyway, after a quick recruiting run, Donna has Cyborg, Starfire and Batman on board. From there she heads to the Watchtower to meet up with Dr. Light(and the remains of Red Tornado)and introduce her to the new JLA. From there, we get a quick scene showing some weird super-villain murdering a man at the Smithsonian in order to acquire a mysterious alien artifact. Next we head out to Metropolis, where Dr. Light contacts Guardian and Mon-El and offers them a spot on the newly constructed League. This issue concludes with Batman and Hal Jordan(where the hell did he come from?)finding Green Arrow brutalizing some losers in an alley, and deciding to offer GA a spot in the League as well.
I had absolutely NO problem with this comic at all. It needed to set the stage for the new JLA, and it did just that. It introduced the new team members, it gave their reasons for joining, and it set up the next few issues by introducing the mystery villain from the Smithsonian. I mean, it's not like this was the most exciting comic I've ever read or anything, but it accomplished everything it needed to, so for that, I applaud it.
Score: 8 out of 10.
Oh no you're not you little horror!
Aha, so this is where my favorite comic book artist has been hiding lately...I knew Bagley did some work on Trinity and that he was scheduled to do JLA at some point, but I didn't realize he had already started. As great as I'm sure his DC work is, though, something about him makes it seem like Marvel will always be his true home, and I hope he comes back one day.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I close my eyes and think of Mark's work, I always see Ultimate Spider-Man. I don't think that'll ever change no matter what else he works on. Once he left that series, there was truly no reason for me to continue collecting it. And this is coming from a guy who barely notices artwork! There are only three artists whose work I could easily pick out of a line-up, Jack Kirby(of course!), George Perez and Mark Bagley.
ReplyDeleteI have a pretty good eye for comic artists, and whenever I'm with friends and notice a superhero poster or a T-shirt with a superhero on it, I always point out who drew it...mostly just to bug them with my nerdiness. :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, every time I pictured Spider-Man it would always be Bagley's version (today I either picture Bagley's or Romita Jr.'s). But now whenever I think of Bagley, like you said, I think of Ultimate Spider-Man. That was career-defining work, and the speed with which he produced it makes it all the more amazing.
Is it wrong that the first thing I think of when I see Damian asking that is "Fuck off you little snot"?
ReplyDeleteHaven't read this stuff yet - will wait for the collected edition...
"I have a pretty good eye for comic artists" I'm the polar opposite Marc. Unless it's somebody whose work is REALLY unique it all just blends together. It's always been story, dialogue and then art for me when reading a comic. Speaking of Mark's spped, just look at Trinity! I don't know HOW he managed to do that!
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's anything wrong with that reaction Nagash. Hell, sometimes I say way worse when I see Damian pop up in a comic! :p
I haven't read Trinity because I heard it wasn't that great, but I will at some point just for the Bagley artwork...although I've also heard that the book came out a little too fast even for him, and that his art occasionally suffers for it. Did you read it, and what did you think of the art?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think recognizing artists is something that I did from a very early age, so it's second-nature to me now. I didn't know the artists' names when I was a kid, but if you gave me a stack of comics I could easily determine which ones had covers by the same artist, or things like that. Today I find it really fun to familiarize myself with an artist and then watch the way their work evolves over time.
ReplyDeleteI have the whole Trinity series, but I haven't read it yet, it's actually WAAAAY down my list of things to read, mainly because I gave it to my sister to read first and she told me it was so bad she got about halfway and didn't even care to finish it.
ReplyDeleteI never developed that eye for art. All I know is what I like and what I don't like, and the only art I can pick out is(like I said before)those artists who are really unique. But as a kid I was HORRIBLE at art and stuff, so I gravitated more towards the words in a comic as opposed to the pictures.
To this day, I'll read a comic and somebody will say, "Did you see when such and such happened", and I'll be like, wait, when did that happen? I miss a lot of the background stuff in a comic because I'm so focused on the wordage.
I loved comic book art as a kid, but it wasn't until later that I really thought about the fact that there was an actual artist responsible for it. I used to trace and copy comic art, and there are indentations on the covers of quite a few of my older comics because of that. A lot of times I would pore over all the artwork in an issue before I even read any of the words.
ReplyDeleteToday I read comics the opposite way, much more like you do. But sometimes I still stop for several moments at a time to admire a particularly good drawing, interesting page composition, or something like that.
So I'm going to guess that you're probably a pretty decent artist in your own right then Marc. As a kid I knew I couldn't draw from early on, so I started leaning more towards the other side of the comic books, the writing. I used to write all kinds of stories based on comics as a kid. Whenever I had some spare time(that I wasn't spending on my SNES)I'd have a pen and notepad where I could jot down my various ideas.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could train my eyes to pick up more of the artwork though, because I know that I'm missing parts of the story by ignoring it.
I'm actually not that great of an artist, although I think I'd be all right if I actually put some effort into learning some technique. As a kid I was very good at copying other people's art, but not at creating my own. I loved drawing anyway though, and I would write and draw these really crude-looking comics and cartoons.
ReplyDeleteJust the other day I was going through some old stuff at my parents' house, and came across one of my old notebooks. It was filled with this story (words and drawings) about Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader and who even knows what else. There was also something in there about the Ninja Turtles fighting a Santa Claus robot...hilarious stuff. :)
That's awesome. I wish I could even copy art, but i can't even do that! Stick figures are about as good as it gets for me, and I even spent some money on a few comic art books two summers ago to try to learn, but that didn't really go anywhere.
ReplyDeleteMan was I into the Ninja Turtles as a kid! I used to have all of the toys, watch the cartoon, I can even remember spending my allowance on those cheap Ninja Turtles trading cards! Robot Santa? HA! Leave it to those sneaky robots to try to ruin Christmas!