Justice League Dark #1

Title: Justice League Dark
Issue: 1
Date: November 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Mikel Janin
Colorist: Ulises Arreola
Letterer: Rob Leigh
Editor: Rex Ogle, Eddie Berganza
Cover: Ryan Sook

Interesting. This was the title that I had the highest hopes for among the "New 52". I loved Milligan's writing on Shade: The Changing Man for Vertigo, and this title pairs him back up with Shade and also lets him play with John Constantine. Upon reading the comic I found that it managed to hit several pet peeves of mine, but the writing was good enough in parts to leave me feeling good about the book overall.

We open with Madame Xanadu, who has a surprisingly bored expression for a person who's just had a vision of future doom. Tarot cards are scattered through the scene with pictures of characters on them: Zatanna (wit pants!) as the Magician, Enchantress as the Hanged Man (actually, just "The Hanged"; which, of course would be different from "The Hung"). Deadman is Death. You'd think Death would be Death, but I guess they decided not to bother getting the courtesy okay from Gaiman. June Moone is the Fool. Some dude I didn't recognize is the Sickness. Apparently we're not playing with the standard Ryder-Waite deck here. Shade is the Madness. And John Constantine is... cut off at the bottom of the page. Tease!

June Moon is walking around reciting rhymes while dozens of clones of her commit mass suicide via highway.

Scene with Shade and Kathy follows, and it's a total continuity-rewriting sucker-punch, but it's handled so well and is such a shock that I was okay with it. Some Shade fans are not going to be (although Milligan wrote in some wiggle room).

Scene shifts to Enchantress, who's in a farmhouse in the midwest and she's spreading madness out to the surrounding countryside. This is the kind of thing that Milligan is awesome at, and his madness effects are sick, twisted, and clever.

But then we hit one of my big pet peeves in comics. The idea here is that the regular Justice League can't handle this kind of threat, so the Justice League Dark has to get formed. Unfortunately this idea is conveyed in a throwaway scene where Enchantress' magical defenses thoroughly trounce Superman, Cyborg, and Wonder Woman. I don't like scenes that arbitrarily have the bad guy easily overpower the most powerful forces on the planet just to convince the readers that they are a major threat. This does nobody any good. Superman, Wonder Woman Cyborg, and the Batman (who's watching the scene from the JLA monitor room) all look like chumps, but the reader knows that this is just a plot device, so it really doesn't actually do Enchantress any favors either. And when it comes down to it, the book didn't need this scene. It could simply have been Zatanna on duty and she decides to call in magical talent to handle a magical threat.

It also didn't help that Zatanna decided to do a bit of backwards-talking (backtalk?) to keep the Batman from trying to help her. Because, when given the choice between going into a dangerous situation with or without the Batman on your side, the clear answer is to do it without. I'm somewhat hoping he punches her in the face when this mission is over, but that seems unlikely (even though he'd totally do that to Guy Gardner if he pulled the exact same stunt.

Another interesting detail. Apparently they can show Superman and Cyborg getting cut to a bloody mess (in a storm of magical teeth!), but Wonder Woman doesn't get a scratch, just a concerned expression before the scene fades and a caption informs us the battle's over and the good guys lost.

The story then very quickly introduces Constantine (used for comic relief here) and Deadman (barely used at all) before we end on Xanadu with Shade and predictions of doom.

Okay, that was a lot of griping. And the story barely got started.

But Milligan is so good on the small details and the creepy touches, that I was still feeling good about this in the end. I think what I love about the potential of this book is summed up in the following exchange:

Xanadu: I saw a gathering of men... And women. Each with their own specialty. You must find these men and women. You must...

Shade: You've finally lost it, Xanadu. The only people I know these days are half-insane or... or damaged goods. Most of them are a danger to themselves.

Xanadu: Exactly.

There is a lot of really awesome stuff here, and I think that once the book is allowed to grow on its own without relying on useless guest appearances by the regular Justice League (or maybe just the occasional reminder that we're still in the DC Universe), that this could get really great.

Rating: 7.5/10