Small Comics Can Be Good, Too

During this period of "event comics", when DC and Marvel are battling it out to see who can publish the biggest intra-company throwdown - House of M, Civil War, Infinite Crisis, 52, JLA/JSA/LSH, Countdown, Amazons Attack and World War Hulk, just off the top of my head - a little standalone gem like JSA Classified # 25 comes along and really impresses the Hell out of me!

I'm sure part of it is that I'm a sucker for the JSA to begin with, although most of the tales in this particular spin-off title have thus far managed to only bore me silly. And it may've helped that I had no particular expectations about a story written by Tony Bedard - recent successor to Mark Waid on Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes - and drawn by Dennis Calera - who I'd never heard of before this. But whatever the case, I thoroughly enjoyed this comic!

The story's full of human interest angles, as the original Green Lantern pays a visit to a long-retired ex-villain named Johnny Mimic. Mimic's game, for the short period of time in the Golden Age when he was still active, was that he'd recreate famous crime scenes... though we're not exactly sure why! He'd been caught in the act by a much younger GL, decades ago, as he broke into the JSA's HQ, but promised the hero that he'd quit if he could just avoid jail time. Both men had been as good as their word, until today, when Lantern has to ask him to use his abilities once more to help solve a classic "locked room mystery." I was drawn right in from about the second page on, because both Johnny and Alan "GL" Scott are so strongly characterized by their moral codes. The resolution of the mystery also pays off big-time, which isn't always the case (some of Paul Dini's recent "done-in-one mysteries" in Detective Comics have left me scratching my head, for example).

The cover sports a strking image (shown here), and the interior artwork by newcomer Callero is just beautiful. Chances are this comic flew under the radar of most comic fans, but that's a shame, if true. This is one of those books you can read and enjoy without having ever encountered any of the characters before, because everything you need to know is right there, on the printed page. In some ways, this is an example of a comic that you almost wish could be someone's first. Except, of course, that the next one they'd read would probably be part 3 of 7, and involve another series, as that's a lot more typical these days. (And, as I've blogged about previously, that's not necessarily a bad thing.)