Justice League #40

I clearly don’t learn my lessons. I’ve been stung so many times by false hopes about the new 52 easing back on its new grim continuity, and here I go again, hoping that this time it is actually going to happen.

This issue of Justice League is the first new issue I’ve bought since issue 3 or 4. (I have been reading Geoff Johns’ series in trade paperback from the library. I’m working through a library of Forever Evil books right now.) Interestingly enough, I don’t think a single member of the Justice League appears in this title.

Instead, our focus is on Metron of the New Gods. And believe it or not, he looks pretty much like he’s supposed to look. Maybe Kevin Maguire has modernized him a tad, but there aren’t any obvious new 52-isms going on in his uniform. That alone had me smiling in the opening pages. The fact that Kevin Maguire is drawing the opening scene just made me even happier.

Through the pencils of different DC artists, we follow Metron as he recaps the origin of Mr. Miracle and Orion (by Kevin Maguire), Crisis on Infinite Earths (by Phil Jiminez), Zero Hour (by Dan Jurgens), Final Crisis (by Jerry Ordway), and Flashpoint (by Scott Kolins). And my friends, these pages are glorious. These classic artists capture the tone and look of their particular eras perfectly, sometimes in less than a page of work! Jurgens’ Zero Hour piece in particular made my day. (And I’ll also say, I wish Kolins had gotten a better assignment than the boring Flashpoint). There were long periods where I preferred DC to Marvel, so seeing these characters again was a real treat. Jason Fabok and Jim Lee provide the art for the closing chapters that tie in to the upcoming Darkseid War storyline.

The book finishes up with Metron facing down the Anti-Monitor. Metron ominously declares that “Reality cannot survive another Crisis.” Well, that gives me hope, cause I’m crossing my fingers for another one! Especially after the Anti-Monitor and Metron explicitly state that the new 52 reality has “yet to solidify.” I’m sure that statement is music to the ears of a lot of readers.

So, with my sublist lightening up for the summer, I think I’ll see this one through. I’m back on Justice League, with the hope that somehow, Geoff Johns is going to give us back some aspect of the DCU that we lost at the end of Flashpoint. The potential alone made this comic a GOOD one.

I’m a super-hero fan, right? I can’t help but be an optimist. 

(Oh, and we all think the Anti-Monitor is a future version of Metron merged with the chair, right?)