Another month, another reminder of the glory days of Keith Giffen and J M Dematteis' Justice League run.  Planetary Brigade is a two-part miniseries spinning off from their micro-selling Hero Squared miniseries, which will hopefully do rather better in reprint form.

It seems to be a standard rule that whenever anyone is creating a new superhero universe from scratch, the first thing they do is create a bunch of thinly disguised analogues for well-known characters.  The Planetary Brigade are the Justice League, and the cover makes sure you know it.  But on the other hand, Giffen and DeMatteis haven't followed the template too slavishly.  Captain Valor is obviously a generic hero in the Superman mould, for example, but he doesn't command the respect of the original.

After bringing in loose Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman figures - but only very loose ones - the rest of the team is rounded off with characters whose templates are less obvious.  The Mauve Visitor might very loosely be the Martian Manhunter, in that he's an alien, but he's really got nothing else in common.  He likes martini and hates getting his suit messed up.  Third Eye is a mystic who seems more drawn from Vertigo books than from traditional Justice League fodder.

As with their Justice League run, this works because although the characters aren't treated reverentially, they're still made to seem human.  Somewhat to my surprise, I'd actually be rather keen to see a monthly book with these guys.  There's nothing desperately original here at all, but that's completely beside the point.  It's Giffen and DeMatteis doing what they do well, and that's good enough for me.

The art is a little erratic.  None of it is bad, exactly, but the writers seem to have called in some favours and persuaded five different artists to contribute different scenes.  It's not the sort of book that really benefits from an art jam, and some of it is rather inappropriate.  Really, this sort of story calls for somebody who can do a somewhat traditional superhero style blended with character comedy.  So it's a bit of a shock when we get six pages of Mark Badger.  He's great and all, but what is he doing here?

A fun little comic, though.  I look forward with depressing certainty to next month's sales charts when I can find out how many hundreds of people bought it.

Rating: A

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