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Mild Mannered Reviews - Justice League Adventures

Justice League Adventures #21

Scheduled to arrive in stores: July 3, 2003

Cover date: September 2003

Writer: John Ostrander
Penciller: Min S. Ku
Inker: Rob Leigh

"Sanctuary"

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

In the Watchtower, the Justice League watches in fascination as a fleeing spaceship attempts to escape its attacker. A telepathic SOS from the fleeing vessel brings Green Lantern and J'onn J'onnz to its aid, and soon enough, the action is over, and the arguments begin.

On one side is a blonde woman who was trying to escape a society she claims imprisoned and performed experiments on her and other humans.

On the other side are the alleged captors, hideous aliens who claim that the girl is an outlaw from their society, having killed a large number of their kind.

The League remains split on who to help and eventually tempers raise to conflict as the League members pit themselves against each other.

Batman, in the Batcave, is the only one who remains outside of the Watchtower conflict, and he recognizes that the members who sided with the aliens have become more aggressive, provoking attacks from their fellow JLers. He reasons that the aliens have taken over their minds and are causing the melee.

Using her telepathic powers, the girl combines with J'onn J'onnz to break the spell set upon the JLers. She then shows them a telepathic image of what the aliens have done to her and her people.

The League responds to the horrifying images by uniting against the aliens and defeating them.

Later, the girl decides to return to her home world rather than flee. Inspired by the Justice League, she decides to begin a revolution on her world that will eventually bring about the Legion of Superheroes.

Story - 2: Unfortunately, what looked to be a very promising story turned out to be anything but. I'm still scratching my head over why half of the League sided with the aliens when they readily admitted that they did perform human testing. In the end, the girl's telepathic images showing the tests performed on humans provided no new information. Yet, for some reason, the League decides to unite against them at this point. I was also disappointed by the fight that broke out between the JL members. Didn't we just see this last issue? And, I might add, it was brought about by the same thing - telepathic stimulation of pre-existing emotions. My main complaint, though, is that the issue was just too predictable. What might have been intriguing was a story where the aliens were in the right, and the female fugitive was the actual villain. That might have led to a much more interesting turn of events.

Art - 3: You can't really blame an artist when he doesn't have a good story to work with. Besides some decent battle scenes between the JLers, the art's primary focus is on progressing a lacking story; thus, it's doomed to fail. There is one gorgeous page in the issue, however, which was most likely the inspiration for the cover: page 17 looks terrific!