Brad Meltzer, Thanks For Making JLA Great Again!

With the third issue of Justice League of America (Vol III? IV? V?) that came out last week - also known far and wide as comic # 26,000 in my collection - author Meltzer has continued to push that title up toward the top of my current faves list. His four issues so far (there was an issue 0 to start it off... and somewhere Jim Hinckley is laughing his ass off) have each been wonderful character studies, just like his Identity Crisis mini-series of a few years back. Anyone wanting cover to cover action in their JLA stories has probably already dropped the book, but I personally love it when writers show what makes the heroes tick instead of just having them punching things. The framing sequences each issue, in which Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman review photos of pretty much every DCU hero and heroine, commenting on their suitability for being invited into the new JLA, are fascinating more for what they reveal about the Holy Trinity doing the assessment than anything related to the various lesser lights being assessed. Twenty plus pages of that each month wouldn't really suffice, though, and so Meltzer has several other threads underway, including one revolving around the Red Tornado, a wind elemental, being tricked into taking on a human body so that the mystery villain can get his hands on Reddy's original android body. Another subplot has Black Lightning trying to figure out why certain super-villains have been paying the Parasite to temporarily drain off their powers. And then there's Vixen, having her animal totem stolen, making it hard for her to take on the abilities of any animal she thinks of. Lots going on, and every word of it written masterfully.

And yet, I can't help but worry about what's going to happen after Meltzer's run is done. We know he's only doing 13 issues, as he's posted elsewhere that he'd already handed in all of the scripts before embarking on his book tour to promote The Book of Fate, his latest novel. So what will we get in issue # 13? Will this be like what happened on the last JLA series, after Grant Morrison left?

Who can forget what a thrill it was when Morrison re-vitalized DC's flagship title in the 1990s? After several decades of high scores on the Blah scale, DC had cancelled the previous Justice League title and let it rest in peace briefly before unveiling what would go on to become possibly the greatest set of JLA stories since the Silver Age. When I heard, way back then, that Grant Morrison would be writing a new JLA series, I had serious doubts. I knew he was a brilliant writer, from such titles as Animal Man and Doom Patrol in the late 80s. But in both of those cases, Grant had shown that he really couldn't stay effectively within a superhero environment. Though each series started off somewhat normally, it wasn't long before Morrison took Buddy "Animal Man" Baker into strange territory involving animal gods and breaking down of the fourth wall, and had the members of the Doom Patrol interacting with a sentient street named Danny, a schizophrenic character named Crazy Jane, and an ape-faced girl with strange powers. So imagine my trepidation at this talented loon getting his hands on my beloved JL of A!

But it only took a couple issues for him to make a believer out of me. The first storyline of the new JLA revealed that a race of superpowered Martians had been operating covertly on the Earth for awhile, and now they were making their move by taking out the most powerful superheroes so that any resistance they might face would be gone. So quickly and effectively did they strike that virtually all of the big guns were incapacitated within an issue or two. Superman was hooked up to a green kryptonite ray that was killing him, and dozens of other heroes were captured or missing in action. As one of the Martians gloated in front of Kal-El, the Man of Steel painfully uttered words to the effect of, "You haven't gotten Batman yet..." Hearing this, his captor laughed and pointed out that Batman was the least significant of the bunch, having no superpowers! And then Superman said, "You're wrong... He's the most... dangerous man.. on the planet..." and I knew Morrison had struck gold! And sure enough, it wasn't long before the Dark Knight had turned the tables, and outsmarted these invaders who'd been planning their conquest for months or even years. In one four-issue storyline, Morrison showed why Batman would be in the JLA, alongside men and women who could throw tanks, run around the planet several times in a second, and fly to alien worlds under their own power. He was smarter than all of them combined, and could out-think any opponent on the field of battle.

The other brilliant thing the writer did was to re-establish, for the first time in three decades, the concept of the Big Seven. This appellative stems from the fact that, when the JLA were first introduced way, way back in The Brave and the Bold # 28, in 1960, there were seven members. The membership of this group, intended to remind long-time fans of the Justice Society of America from the 1940s and 50s, had a similar editorial policy that All-Star Comics had employed for the JSA: the JLA would include only those heroes who had their own titles or recurring series. So the charter members of the JLA were, in decreasing popularity: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. The first five all had at least one title of their own, while Aquaman was appearing in Adventure Comics and Martian Manhunter in Detective Comics, each month. As time went by, and other heroes like Green Arrow, the Atom and Hawkman received their own turns in the spotlight, the membership would grow. But initially it was just those seven, and a pretty darn powerful group it was, too! (Except for Batman who always seemed out of his league, but as noted, Grant dealt with that right up front.)

So now it's the 90s and Morrison launches a new JLA title with a huge Earth Invasion storyline, after which he settles in to tell tales mostly involving the Big Seven. A little nod to the history of the group, and monthly threats powerful enough to warrant all these heroes joining forces to fight them. All is right in the world again.

But eventually Morrison left, and each writer who followed over the nine or ten years of the title's life seemed to get it less and less. About halfway through the 100+ issue run, I started losing interest, and before it was over I'd already dropped the title for being unreadable.

So now I wonder: what will the legacy of Meltzer's baker's dozen of issues be? Will it be a brief burst of brilliance that can't be sustained by whomever comes after him, or will he set the table so well that there'll be plenty of material there for the next writer to draw from? I guess I'll know in a little less than a year, unfortunately...