Justice League Dark #2

Title: Justice League Dark
Issue: 2
Date: December 2011
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Peter Milligan
Artist: Mikel Janin
Colorist: Ulises Arreola
Letterer: Rob Leigh
Editor: Rex Ogle
Cover: Ryan Sook

This issue was impressive visually, but I had a lot of problems with it story-wise.

First there's Zatanna. Remember how last issue she hexed (dexhe?) the Batman because she thought she'd be better off handling Enchantress on her own? Well, in this issue she gets to match sorcery with Enchantress and Zatanna accomplishes essentially nothing. Or, as she would say, she gets ylhguoroht decnuort.

(Aren't you glad the New 52 didn't include a Zatanna solo comic? I would SO be writing the entire review sdrawkcab).

On to a much more serious problem.

Then there's Boston Brand and Dove, who are apparently dating. Actually by the end of this they're pretty much reset their relationship status to "it's complicated". Why? Because Deadman keeps wanting to engage in some fooling around while in possession of someone's body. Okay, I get what Milligan is going for here. Brand is cursed with his ghostly, invisible status and the only way he can think of to actually get some physical affection is to have a convenient possessed body on hand.

Except that there is a word for forcing someone to unwillingly engage in sex. It's called rape. And you know what? If you do it by spiritual possession using superpowers, it's still rape.

I haven't followed Deadman's adventures all that much. I get the impression that Boston Brand isn't exactly Lawful Good on the old alignment chart. But nothing I've ever read about him before suggested rapist.

And no, I don't care that he doesn't actually go through with it. He tries it TWICE, and the only thing that stops it from happening is that Dove actually has a bit of morality.

I'd feel better about the scenes if I thought that the full implications were really going to get addressed, but the impression I got was that this was all a ploy to make the Deadman character somehow "edgy", and that it will all get glossed over or never mentioned again. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but that looks like the direction the story is heading in.

Constantine gets the one really good scene in this issue, and it ends with one of those "shocking" twists that seems to come out of left field, because, well, it pretty much DOES come out of left field.

The overall plot is developing fairly well, but the business with Deadman (and to a lesser extent the uselessness of Zatanna) really ruined this one for me.

Rating: 4/10