Justice League, Vol. 1: Origin First I need to address the whole 'New 52' reboot. Personally I never understood the need to rrestart the entire universe all over again. From a Superhero mythology point of view, it's totally unnecessarily. At it's heart, the whole idea of doing this is strictly monetary. Launch
52 new titles with all new #1 issues and watch the money role in, especially when most, if not all comic book readers buy multiple copies of the same issue, speculating that the books will be worth something in a few years. This mentality is what killed the comic book boon of the mid to late 90's and now we are back to the same idea.
So, with that said, I was very curious to see what
Jim Lee would be able to do with
Justice League. He has been a favorite artist of mine going all the way back to his
X-Men days. The guy just knows how to draw and do it incredibly well. I may not have liked the new Costumes he created for all the Main Characters, but I was still looking forward to
Justice League anyway. I finally got my hands on
Issue #1 when it first came out and I immediately hated it. Not the art, but the writing by
Geoff Johns, who for some reason has been labeled "one of the greatest writers in the business". Well, after just this one issue, I threw in the towel and never bothered to go any further, skipping all the subsequent issues.
Fast-forward a year and I decided to check out
Justice League, Vol. 1: Origin from my
Library. And you know what, the book sucks.
Johns writing gets worse as the story goes onward. The dialogue is beyond childish and the story itself is weak. There is nothing in
Volume 1 that is worthy of the praise he gets. I've read his other stuff as well and I just don't get why he is considered the best. He is seriously overrated as a writer. But what really surprised me about
Volume 1 is the art. Normally
Jim Lee can always save a sub-par book with amazing art. But this one did not have it. Sure, it's got his imprint all over it, but the art itself seemed very rushed with a lot of shortcuts and in more than a few places throughout, very sloppy by his standards. I also couldn't believe that he resorted to basically drawing '
Rob Liefeld-Grimacing Faces" using
Liefeld EXACT style. It was off-putting to say the least. But there were a few money shot pages with
Wonder Woman that I did like, but that's about it.
I can give
Jim a pass on the art for the simple fact that he was the Top Dog at
DC Comics, overseeing all the titles as well as having to do PR for the launch with countless interviews, appearances and signing's. Something had to give. You can't stretch yourself that thin and expect to make deadlines on a monthly book and not have the art affected by it one way or another. So I get and understand why this isn't anywhere near his best stuff. Hell man, his worst drawing will always better than everyone else out there. But this doesn't help the book and it's certainly not a book that I will ever read again and I never thought I'd say this about a
Jim Lee book, that I have no desire to ever look at again.
Justice League, Vol. 1: Origin is a
Skip for anyone contemplating Buying this. Save your money.
2 Stars out of 5.