I feel the urge to talk about failed gimmicks, for some bizarre
reason. So...
Let's talk about the JUSTICE LEAGUES skip week event. For those
with better things to do than keep track of DC's high concept
atrocities, that's four one-shots this week - Justice League of
Amazons, Justice League of Atlantis, Justice League of Arkham and
Justice League of Aliens. And don't those titles just fill you
with enthusiasm?
This is real high concept stuff. The high concept is that
everyone's memories of the Justice League of America have been
wiped, but they remember that there ought to be a Justice League
of something starting with A. So everyone forms separate teams
all based around a theme starting with A.
Now, if you're saying "That's the stupidest idea for story I've
heard in weeks", that's probably because you're sober. This has
all the hallmarks of a story that seemed like a good idea after
a few pints, and which should have revealed itself as a very
bad one in the cold light of day. Sometimes, sadly, people have
such fond memories of their drunken evenings that they fail to
recognise the glaring badness of the idea, and publish it anyway.
That, at least, is the only explanation I can think of for why
DC bothered with this nonsense. What point, exactly, are they
trying to make? I mean, I thought JLApe was stupid (and it was),
but at least that had some kind of story idea (characters turned
into apes - how do they react?). The premise here is "random
superhero teams based on words beginning with A." This is a
parlour game, not a storyline. What does it tell us, other than
that the English language has numerous words beginning with A
that can be used to bracket some DC characters together into
arbitrary groups?
God knows, if there was a story idea here, nobody seems to have
bothered explaining it to the writers. The overreaching plot is
that there's an alien invasion of Earth for which the Advance Man
is carrying out preparations. Each team fights him and achieves
some kind of meaningless semi-victory. The audience is duly
bored.
For christ's sake, people, let's go back to basics here. Basic
story construction: your story should be particular to the
characters involved. If the protagonists are interchangeable,
it's probably a bad story. The "letter A" gimmick and the
arbitrary teams have zero relevance to the Advance Man and the
alien invasion, meaning that every issue is reduced to an
arbitary selection of interchangeable heroes fighting the
same villain. The effect of this is not merely to guarantee
bad stories but to hammer the point to even the most casual
reader by demonstrating it over the course of four interchangeable
issues.
About the best you can do with a mess like this is try to
salvage the individual issues by playing up the character
interaction between the random teams. Judd Winnick's JLAliens
at least has a stab at that, although it doesn't really make it
work. Len Kaminski's JLAmazons and JLAtlantis don't even try,
in favour of trying to establish some bizarre and ludicrous
point that Wonder Woman and Aquaman have each recruited teams of
B-list heroes who are a bit like them. (Well yes. And?) Paul
Grist seems utterly bemused by the whole concept of JLArkham,
in which Batman recruits a team of mentally ill supervillains,
and seems to be trying to sweep the whole idea under the carpet
in favour of telling a Batman story.
The Aliens one-shot is the only one that can be accorded even a
partial success, largely due to Judd Winnick at least
acknowledging the contrived nature of the premise and going
some way to suggest that his characters have put some proper
thought into the situation. The rest, frankly, are train wrecks.
Grist just can't get the JLArkham gimmick to work at all, which
isn't surprising because it's incredibly stupid. Kaminski's
two issues are hideously banal, and the simplistic anti-
corporate rhetoric in JLAmazons is actually insulting to the
intelligence, making a strong early bid for the prestigious
Most Cretinous Book of the Year award.
I have heard reports of retailers actually warning regulars off
buying these books. Frankly, I am not surprised. They really
are that bad. Silly high concept ideas like this may appeal
to those who like the freedom from logic of the Silver Age DC
Universe, but when you see the actual story, you're fairly
clearly reminded of why they stopped making them in the first
place.
Sadly, the artists are lost in the mire here. None of the art
here is stellar, but it's all at least acceptable. It's also a
shame to see the genuinely talented Paul Grist being given a
turkey like this for his first high profile project, although
he doesn't really make the most of what little he's given. The
fact that Judd Winnick manages to salvage something from the
gimmick is at least promising given that he's coming to the
X-books shortly.
My first bet for the ending of this storyline was that everyone
would get together and we would be told that America was a melting
pot which could embrace all these wonderful concepts beginning
with A, at which point the characters would engage in some
flag waving and I would reach for a vomit bucket and a match.
I am informed that in fact the final issue doesn't go for that
route, so thank god for small mercies. Apparently it's just
another banal issue and there was never any real point to the
exercise at all. Quelle surprise.
It was immediately obvious that this set of books would be
mediocre, but this far surpasses expectations of badness. Unless
you want to see a dumb idea going down in flames, steer well
clear.
