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Mild Mannered Reviews - Justice League Adventures

Justice League Adventures #9

Scheduled to arrive in stores: July 3, 2002

Cover date: September 2002

Writer: Matt Howarth
Penciller: David Lopez
Inker: David Lopez

"Stepping Out"

Reviewed by: George O'Connor (mo442@nyu.edu)

It is night and as colored lights strobe through the club, Wally West and his pretty date dance to the tempo. For the Fastest Man Alive, this is a welcome break from defeating criminals and preventing disasters, even if the music's a little too slow to keep up with him.

Unfortunately, duty soon calls and West is forced to drop a quick excuse for his speedy departure from the dance floor.

Seconds later, The Flash races to the aid of Superman and Green Lantern in diminishing any possible damage done by a volcanic eruption. The Flash creates a wind tunnel to quench the flame while Superman dives beneath the earth and redirects the molten flow into another direction. Green Lantern, meanwhile, prevents the lava from flowing away from the volcano with a giant green shield. Before Supes and Lantern even notice The Flash's presence, the disaster is averted and they are left alone to discuss their theories on what might have caused the volcano to erupt.

Back at the club, Wally West shows up with some popcorn, but when another alert reaches him, he spills the popcorn on himself and promises to go get another box.

Batman, Hawkgirl, and a group of soldiers, meanwhile, await outside a military base for The Flash to arrive. When he does, Batman fills him in on the danger within the base: terrorists planning to detonate missiles if the heroes get too close. The plan, he explains, is for Hawkgirl and he to distract the terrorists while The Flash deals with them.

The three heroes speed off, and while Hawkgirl and Batman distract the terrorists by acting like complete idiots (don't ask me why), The Flash speeds into the tower and knocks them out. Even The Flash, though, isn't fast enough to stop a terrorist coming out of the men's room from hitting the FIRE button.

By the time The Flash races to the missiles, however, hoping to outrace the electronic signal, Batman has already disconnected the line.

Back at the club, West receives another signal from the JL, just in time to separate himself from his date in a giant crowd.

Wonder Woman and J'onn J'onnz are already doing a good job against a group of pirates on a ship at sea when The Flash arrives, nailing one guy just in time to prevent him from setting off an explosion. When The Flash brings the perp to Diana and J'onn, he recognizes the t-shirt as the same one that the other terrorists were wearing at the military base.

J'onn reads the man's mind to learn about the terrorists' evil plot to wipe out all human life on Earth. Having already sent missiles into an asteroid field, the missiles will return with asteroids to bomb the planet. One of the smaller asteroids has already hit, in fact, causing the volcanic eruption that Superman, Green Lantern, and The Flash quelled earlier.

With the disaster imminent, Superman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman race above the Earth to take out the approaching asteroid, while Hawkgirl, Batman, and The Flash round up the terrorists at their base.

By redirecting the asteroid's momentum, the world is saved, just as the last of the terrorists are defeated and arrested.

Moments later, Wally West returns to his date and they head over to a diner, where, Wally hopes, he and his date won't be interrupted anymore.

Story - 3: In "Stepping Out," there are two stories going on at once: 1) West and his date and 2) The Justice League vs. terrorists. Unfortunately, neither of the simultaneous stories is very well-developed, leaving the reader with two, fairly weak components that add up to an overall mediocre plot. Of the two, however, the terrorist part of the plot is the more interesting and it is given much more attention and importance, which begs the question: why even have the date part of the story? Sure, it gives us a laugh to see The Flash rushing back and forth, but eventually the timing is off by so much that it ceases to become believable. After West 'loses' himself in the crowd, The Flash rushes to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, takes out a bunch of thugs, sits around and talks to WW and JJ, waits for J'onn to read the terrorist's mind, listens to Batman yapping about their plan, rushes to Palo Alto, takes out some more crooks there, and waits to hear that the rest of the League was successful before 'finding' his date in the crowd. We're talking about at least a half an hour to do all that, even with the Flash's speed... and yet, despite that, when West reappears with his date, it's as if he's only been gone for two minutes. Hell, just listening to Batman talk takes longer than that! While we're on the subject of unbelievable, let's talk about the military base with the terrorists: somehow, five guys break into an entire military base and then they sit up in their tower and threaten to blow up the missiles if anyone comes too close. Of course, they're terrorists, so what are they waiting for? They were planning on setting them off anyway, so why don't they? Instead, they just sit there and wait around for The Flash to come kick their butts. And let's not even get started about how they got military stealth equipment and all that nonsense about rocket-powered asteroids... and especially that whole bit with Batman reciting Hamlet!!!

Art - 3: Overall, the art is solid, consistent, and pretty nice. Unfortunately, there's nothing that just leaps out as really cool. The art serves its purpose with well-done action scenes and good illustrations of all the characters. Also, a good interpretation of Wally West (we haven't seen him unmasked yet in the animated series) and his date... yowsa!

Cover Art - 3: Eh... I don't know. Doesn't really do anything for me... It's not bad, but it's not great either. The best part is definitely Superman's peeved off look. That's almost worth a higher mark right there.

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