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Mild Mannered Reviews - JLA Comics

JLA: Scary Monsters #1

JLA: Scary Monsters #1 [of 6]

Scheduled to arrive in stores: March 19, 2003

Cover date: May 2003

Writter: Chris Claremont
Penciller: Josh Hood
Inker: Sean Parsons

"Scary Monsters"

Neal Bailey Reviewed by: Neal Bailey (baileyn@attbi.com)



Abel Carmody is a buffalo soldier in 1877, in a largely black troop charged with following a white OIC in the ritual slaughter and taking of Native Americans and their land. He is resentful of his duty, but he believes following orders is all he can do, until the day taking place...

After burning an Indian village, the commanding officer tells Carmody to stay behind while he follows the fleeing villagers. He tells Carmody to kill everyone left.

Carmody pretends to go along, but really saves an old man and a young woman. He soon learns that the old man is attempting to prevent what he believes to be a great evil from coming across the world. The don't believe him, until monsters start springing from nowhere and killing everyone.

After the fiasco, only Carmody and a few others are alive. The old Indian man tells them to leave, and fire erupts over the cold as they ride off at top speed. A battle is fought on what appears to be the spiritual plane, and the monsters are put at bay, for the time being.

2003. On the Watchtower, the lives of the JLA are explored. Wonder Woman is in New Zealand on-call. Batman is on-call battling robbers in Gotham. Martian Manhunter is saving an innocent from zealous police officers while on-call in Denver. Superman is battling a robot in Vladistok, bringing supplies to Rwanda, saving a cat from a tree in Rhode Island. He is then in Hong Kon, Paris, New Orleans, Manhattan, and finally, Metropolis. His status is active.

Lois thanks Clark for making her breakfast from all over the world.

Green Lantern is on-call at the Spirit Lake resort, as is Flash. They admire the sizable hotel with their respective girlfriends, then move in to enjoy the scenery.

Inside, several forest firefighters are prepped by the hotel manager to watch the local timber.

Relaxing outside, Lantern and Flash realize that there is smoke in the distance, and go to investigate. They find the firefighters taken over by the monster force from before, and the power ring is ineffective in stopping them. They endure attacks, finally retreating to a protective Lantern-bubble, and the fire disperses, taking the seemingly immune firefighters with it. The rest of the JLA has arrived, prepared to help.

3Story - 3: A decent start. This story had a fairly large paradigm shift, however, and it was enough to lull me nearly to sleep at the beginning, but then get me begging for more at the end. Carmody is an interesting character, but his actions are drawn out, and I wonder at his relevance later in the story. Then we have our heroes, who we expect, enjoy, and are used to, but they don 't show up until the end of the issue, and only after some minor, not-so-difficult battle between demon-like monsters and Lantern and Flash.

There's nothing special, so far, but the story is interesting. I reserve my judgment overall for the next issue as to how things are going to come along, but for now, it was boring, then anti-climactic, because we didn't even get to see our heroes in action.

4Art - 4: The art was pretty nice in this issue, nice and bright, dark where it had to be, and everything had a distinct characteristic. I particularly like this Superman. The cat in the tree was nice, as was the breakfast montage. I didn't see the necessity of the big Spirit Lake resort opener, but maybe that will make more sense later.

4Cover Art - 4: This cover depicts the actions that will occur next issue, which makes me feel kind of cheated, but that's a plot cheat, really, not a cover cheat. The dark is sharply contrasted by the JLA's idealistic look, which I like. Wonder Woman is just HOT! (fanboy blush). The format is pretty well used, and the background, though absent, adds to the whole picture, because there' s so little of it in the visible spectrum. Nice.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2003

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2003

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