Justice League of America #31

I honestly don't understand how a comic can get this messed up. The opening page has Zatanna talking to Dinah, the Black Canary, only artist Shane Davis has Wonder Woman there instead. Who messed up? That is a pretty dang huge disconnect, and one that makes me think that this book does not actually have an editor. The problems go on from there. McDuffie does a great job of writing from Black Canary's point of view, showing how she feels betrayed by Hal and Ollie going and forming James Robinson's upcoming Justice League mini (See Justice League: A Cry for Justice mini coming this summer!) Heh. Ridiculous. At that point, the original inspiration for that team, J'onn J'onzz, will be a zombie maniac in Blackest Night.

Back to this issue, Canary does look ineffective. All of her good team members are going off to other teams, sure, the reasons are editorially driven, but man, this book is a SHELL by the end. The only remaining members are Canary, GL John Stewart, Vixen, and Zatanna. I know I'm not a fan of any of them, so there goes a major motivation to check out this comic. At this point, I'm not even sure why Superman and WW are actually leaving, since I don't read their titles, but it seems Supes is moving away and WW is too busy for the league. Red Arrow is off to go sleep with bartenders and feel sad in Titans, and I guess Hawkgirl and Hawkman are back together and doing... something? I thought Morrison said they died in Infinite Crisis? I honestly can't tell what is going on in the DCU these days. The continuity is way beyond sloppy here. And a good writer like Dwayne McDuffie actually posted that he doesn't like writing the JLA. Why should he? It's bad.

I see Len Wein is doing some work again soon, I'll be passing on those. Due to McDuffie's past great work (see the JL cartoon and Static), I will continue to buy issues he writes, but mainly just to commiserate with the poor guy. It shows how good he is that I still think this issue is average even with all those problems.

Shane Davis' artwork is fine, but has a few disconnects from the story, the worst being that example with the Dinah/Diana mix-up. That type of problem should not happen in professional products.

Average