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Mild Mannered Reviews - JLA Comics

Justice League: Cry For Justice #6

Justice League: Cry For Justice #6

Scheduled to arrive in stores: January 27, 2010

Cover date: March 2010

"The Game"

Writer: James Robinson
Penciller: Scott Clark
Inker: Scott Clark

"The Origin of...Batwoman"

Writer: Len Wein
Penciller: Don Kramer
Inker: Michael Babinski

Michael Bailey Reviewed by: Michael Bailey

Click to enlarge



"The Game"

Shazam is revealed to be Prometheus in disguise and in short order the villain takes down just about all of the League as well as the Shade who had arrived with Jay Garrick. Donna Troy despite being injured gets the drop on Prometheus and nearly beats him to death before Shade manages to talk her down.

The Leaguers restrain Prometheus and find that he is more than willing to spill the beans on his plan, which was to take the items he had been stealing and use them to encase the heroes' various home cities in a force field before sending them skipping through time and space. The population would live but the heroes would never be able to find them. Prometheus needed the satellite to harness the sun's energy to power his devices. Prometheus makes a simple offer; release him and he will reveal the location of the teleportation devices. Green Arrow has a fit and tells the League that they can't give in to Prometheus' demands, which the villain had planned for. Prometheus informs Green Arrow that to grab his attention the device in Star City was activated five minutes ago.

4Story - 4: There wasn't a whole lot to this issue story wise. This served as the big action piece as the team finally confronts the villain and overall it was really solid. Robinson obviously put a lot of thought into how Prometheus would take down each Leaguer, though taking out Supergirl and the other heavy hitters so quickly pushed even my willing suspension of disbelief. It was necessary for the story Robinson wanted to tell, though, so I put own private prejudices aside and enjoyed the ride.

Prometheus stood out to me and I saw him as an intriguing if not overly loquacious villain in this issue. His revenge scheme was rather cool though I wasn't sold on it during my first read through though the more I thought about it the more I liked it. It seemed like this story was treated more epically for what was a fairly simple plan. When he was willing to talk and revealed his plans my radar went up because it seemed like this was all way too simple and this was proven to be the case when he revealed the fate of Star City. I have to admit that the cliffhanger had a lot of impact even though I knew it was coming, which shocked the heck out of me. I may have liked it more if I hadn't read JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #41 first, but such is life.

And that's pretty much it. This series has been enjoyable thus far so I am looking forward to next month's conclusion even though I already know the ending. I am hoping that like this issue I will still enjoy it despite having the major beats spoiled.

4Art - 4: I have a confession to make.

I didn't notice that the artist had changed from the previous issues.

I know, I know. It makes me look like an un-attentive reader but really and truly a lot of artists have similar styles these days and given the fact that the book retained the painted look I really just didn't notice until I typed up the credits.

I think that this says something about Scott Clark's art on the series though because I thought it was just as good if not a bit better than Mauro Cascioli's work on this mini-series. I think Scott had more detail in his work and the action was very dynamic. It would be easy to write this off as a series of two page splash pages but in all honesty I thought Clark packed a lot into those pages and I really dug the art because of it.

"The Origin of Batwoman"

Kathy Kane was the lone survivor when she, her mother and sister were taken by terrorists. This led to a need to serve in the armed forces, which Kate did proudly until she decided that she needed to resign her commission rather than deny her sexuality. She drifted for a time until the night she was nearly mugged and found that taking out her attacker gave her a new purpose. When her father found out what she intended to do with her life he made sure she was properly trained. After several years Kate donned a dark costume inspired by Batman and became Batwoman.

4Story - 4: It's odd that I read this on the same day I re-read the origin of the first incarnation of Batwoman. While there are significant differences, mainly wrapped up in Kate's sexuality and the whole family taken by terrorists thing the characters, at their core, are pretty much the same. Both are women that were inspired in one way or another by Batman and adopted his motif to fight crime. I like that. I feel bad that I had to drop DETECTIVE COMICS for monetary reasons but I hope to pick up the trade at some point. Len Wein gave us another concise and enjoyable origin and for that I am grateful.

4Art - 4: Don Kramer's art was very solid on this two page origin. As I have said in the past artists have a serious handicap for two pagers like this and Kramer has followed in his predecessors' footsteps by capturing the essence of the character on a limited pallet in a dynamic and exciting way.

4Cover Art - 4: I really dug this cover. Prometheus looks very cool as this giant figure surrounded by the smaller, wounded heroes. The goldish coloring doesn't do much for me but I found this to be a very striking and exciting cover.


Mild Mannered Reviews

2010

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

January 2010

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