Greg Gildersleeve

Justice # 3-4 (DC). I didn't care for the first two issues of Justice. Reading yet another "apocalyptic" Justice League story on top of Infinite Crisis was just too much. Worse, this series is set in an alternate universe (the pre-Crisis universe, perhaps?), where Barry Allen is still the Flash and Aquaman doesn't have a prosthetic for a hand. Now, I'm as much a fan of the Silver Age DC heroes as anyone, but what's done is done. After spending the last 20 years of promoting this "one" universe, where all the heroes live on a single earth, DC is now producing a variety of comics set in its old multiverse (or multiple earth concept, to put it another way), without really committing to one version of the characters or another. DC wants to have its super-cake and eat it, too.

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But with issues # 3-4, Justice starts to get interesting. The premise is that Lex Luthor spearheads a group of villains who scheme to descredit the Justice League and launch an all-out assault on them. Nothing terribly original in concept or theme, here, but the execution is nevertheless riveting. Lex and his cronies manage to tap into the JLA satellite's computer and learn the heroes' secret identities. Then in a series of scenes reminiscent of the Godfather movies, a hit squad of villains marches out to assault the heroes when they least expect it. Superman, for example, is eating dinner in front of his TV when he Bizarro bursts into his apartment and drags him, still wearing his tattered Clark Kent shirt and glasses, into the sky. Green Arrow and Black Canary are in the middle of an intimate setting, when they are attacked by Scarecrow and Clayface, each preying upon the heroes' fears. These violent scenes are narrated Luthor and his cronies as they address the world at large, offering to take over as thei worlds' new protectors.

Parts of Justice are exhilarating and disturbing. Luthor's speech, for example, has enough of a ring of truth to it to be plausible: The JLAers do tend to behave as if the world revolves around them and their heroic deeds (a theme also explored in Infinite Crisis). But, in the end, Luthor is the worst kind of salesmen or politician, skewering facts to serve his own ends. It remains to be seen how much the public will buy into his version of events, or his own brand of justice.

Alex Ross's art is gorgeous, as always. The poster-like quality of his paintings almost makes any storyline superfluous, and, at times, the art does distract from the tale being told. Ross creates mythic-looking heroes and villains who seem to be more frozen in a moment as statues, rather than living, moving human beings. (This series also co-credits Doug Braithwaite as artist, but it's not clear what his contribution is.) Fortunately, the story by Ross and Jim Krueger (who also wrote the script) frequently holds its own.

X-Men: The 198 #1. More on the fallout of House of M is provided here. The X-Men have set up a camp at Xavier's Institute as a government-sanctioned (or -controlled; it's not clear which) refuge for the 198 mutants left. The first issue involves Magneto's erstwhile lackey, Toad, rescuing a fellow mutant named Lorelei from a gang of bigots and bringing her to the camp. Meanwhile, a psychotic mutant named Magma is running around, and a mysterious figure named Mr. M arrives and protects caterpillars.

It is, in other words, a fairly average setup, but an intriguing one, nonetheless. What works particularly well is the economy of the writing, which gets us into the story very quickly. We are told enough to keep us interested, but not too much info that weighs the story down (a problem with both Justice and Infinite Crisis).

What's also intriguing is how the House of M scenario continues to be explored from different angles. This series is very different from, say, X-Factor or Generation M (another well-done series, by the way), yet all three explore in different ways how the sudden transformation of so many mutants into non-mutants has affected people. Most of this is done on a small scale, focussing on only a few characters at a time, which is more refreshing than reading about mega-titanic battles for the takeover of the world.