Justice League #5

Credits:

Geoff Johns Writer
Jim Lee Penciller
Williams, Hope, Irwin and Weems Inkers
Alex Sinclair with Gabe Eltaeb and Tony Avina Colorists
Patrick Brosseau Letterer
Darren Shan Assistant Editor
Brian Cunningham Editor

I find interesting that Jim Lee always gets a bad rap for being slow and missing deadlines and the such, but through all these Justice League books he was the only penciller, while Alex Sinclair and now Scott Williams have had to bring in extra help. Seriously, four different people had to ink this? Was Williams sick or something? Although I can tell a difference in the inks and especially the coloring, the most important part, the pencils, have been consistent.

This cover is by Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair. Nice, heroic poses for everybody, but I'll never understand Lee's fascination with putting Cyborg in front of the American flag. He did it several times in past issues, and now here he is on the cover, acting like Captain America. Why? Anyway, my biggest problem with this cover is the lack of Batman and the Flash. There's just not enough love out there for the Scarlet Speedster.

This is the first black-and-white cover that came across sideways on my iPad. I don't know why this is. Otherwise, it would be fine. In the future, I won't show the sideways black-and-white covers here. They're just to hard to see and appreciate.

This variant cover is by Eric Basaldua and Nei Ruffino. It's pretty good, but I find Superman's heat vision almost comical. What's going there? But at least the entire Justice League is shown here. See, Jim Lee, it's not that hard! Just don't draw gigantic American flags and you'll have room for everybody.

The story starts immediately after Darkseid knocked out all the heroes. The Flash is the first to recover and he sees Darkseid blow up some fighter jets with his omega beams. Darkseid stares Flash down, who says, "Uh ... guys? Anyone else awake yet? I'm not that good at making chitchat." Superman then wakes up and Darkseid fires an omega beam at each of them. Flash picks up Superman and starts to outrace the beams. The two separate and each tries to outrun/fly the beams. Flash gets rid of his by finding a parademon and vibrating through it so it is destroyed by the beam. For the first time in his heroic career, Flash has to catch his breath. He look up and sees Superman wasn't able to get away from his beam and took it hard in the back. A parademon then swoops in and takes Superman to the tower.

Flash runs back and tells the others what happened. Green Lantern then tries to take on Darkseid one-on-one, but he gets his arm broken in the fight and the other heroes are buried under rubble as a result of Darkseid's powerful punches. Darkseid walks away and Batman has a heart-to-heart with Green Lantern. He says that they're the only two normal humans there and they need to realize that this fight is bigger than them. To illustrate this point, Batman tells Lantern his origin story and takes off his cape and cowl, but Green Lantern doesn't know who Bruce Wayne is. Batman then tells Green Lantern to get out of his own way and start to lead the other superheroes. Batman also takes off the bat symbol on his chest and allows himself to get captured by a parademon so he can go save Superman.

Green Lantern digs out the heroes and they put together a plan to take out Darkseid's eyes, with Lantern acting as a decoy. He picks up all the heroes with his ring and flies them toward Darkseid, yelling out, "We got this!" Flash makes fun of Green Lantern's stupid battle cry, and is surprised, but impressed with his sudden change in attitude.

The parademon then delivers Batman to the tower, who breaks free and sneaks in himself. He goes through a boom tube and ends up here:

The Good:

The art. It feels like we've been waiting forever to see Jim Lee draw the League fight Darkseid, and now it's finally started. Every other issue also had good action scenes, but this one had some of the best, which is how it should be. The fights should continue to get bigger and better as the story progresses.

Flash outruns omega beams. For the first time since Issue #2, the Flash actually had something interesting to do. I loved that he was the first to recover from Darkseid's initial attack, that just makes perfect sense. Sadly, we didn't get to see Flash try to fight Darkseid by himself, but saving Superman from the omega beams was exciting and heroic. And vibrating through a parademon was pretty neat, too. So as a Flash story, I recommend picking this one up not just for the art, but a great Flash moment, as well.

Final score: 7

Next time: Justice League Part Six