Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Big Seven are back!, January 28, 2001
For several years, DC Comics allowed one of their most venerable and hallowed team books to languish. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, the last comic to tell the stories of DC's premiere super team, had become populated by castoffs, also-rans and never-will super heroes who would do much better sitting in the back issue bins than they would on the racks posing as Earth's mightiest defenders.Now, in JLA, DC has brought back the core seven: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter. Most of whom comprised the original Justice League way back in BRAVE AND THE BOLD #28 in the early Silver Age of Comics. Avant-garde comics writer, Grant Morrison takes the helm in this new JLA series and begins his run of wild, over-the-top, blockbuster epics featuring DC's mightiest. I don't want to spoil the secrets of this first tale, but suffice it to say there are some great twists and turns in the story. Morrison draws the reader in by pitting our heroes against a menace that seemingly can't be beaten because the public at large doesn't WANT them to! Anyone who's ever wanted to fly like Superman, worn a bath towel around his neck to play Batman or loved the DC heroes in any way shape or form will love this book. Morrison has an uncanny ability to pull the reader's strings with these characters. You find yourself rooting for them uncontrollably as they face down a menace that only THEY can see and understand even in the face of widespread disdain by the public. They're heroes because they choose to be. Not because of the fame or fortune, but because it's in their very being. Howard Porter, while not my favorite artist by any stretch of the imagination, is good at visually telling Morrison's epic story and great at conveying the personalities of each and every JLAer. If you missed out on this series when it came out, here's a cheap way to get the back issues (they're getting more expensive by the day!) and read one heckuva terrific comic story.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Almost as good as a super-hero comic can get!, July 30, 2005
"JLA: New World Order" reprints issues 1 to 4 of DC Comics' monthly JLA series. For those who might be new to comics, the Justice League of America has been published in one form or another since 1960, and was usually composed of the best and brightest of DC's superhero stars. Pick up most any issue of the old "Justice League of America" comic, at least from its first two decades of publication, and you could expect to find some combination of DC's most recognizable characters -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern -- plus a few of the tried-and-true second-stringers (Firestorm, Red Tornado, Zatanna, et al.) taking on some mind-boggling menace to time, space, and the American way that no single hero could stand against.
That was how it was, that was how it should be, and that is how Grant Morrison made it again, only smarter, snazzier, and more mind-bogglingly menacing than before. You see, from the mid-1980s on, many of DC's writers and editors developed a parochial, territorial view toward the company's top tier of characters, which cut them out of JLA membership: "Batman fights street crime, not starfish-shaped aliens, so he can't be in the JLA," or, "Nobody knows how to write Wonder Woman but me, so she can't be in the JLA," were actual policies governing which heroes could appear in which books, believe it or not. By 1983, Aquaman (!!!) was the biggest star in the JLA line-up. One of the "big guns" might stop by as a guest star for a few issues, but that was about it. Sales plummeted. No one seemed to wonder why. It just somehow became a fact of life that the freakin' JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA was perennially a third-rate title.
In 1996, however, the Justice League's savior arrived in the form of Scottish writer Grant Morrison. Previously known for writing "mature" (i.e., artsy and pretentious) comics such as "Doom Patrol" and "Arkham Asylum," Grant stepped into mainstream superheroics with a bang by reuniting the original seven JLA members, pitting them against a big league outer-space menace (this story's villains, the Orwellian would-be superheroes known as the Hyperclan), and letting the story roll with the speed of a cosmic treadmill. The readers responded deservedly with dollops of their hard-earned cash and made JLA one of comics' flagship titles.
"JLA: New World Order" is quite possibly a Justice League fan's ultimate story. It has all the best features of a smart sci-fi action movie (think "Terminator" or "Aliens"), stars the World's Greatest Super-Heroes, and was written under grey, Scottish skies by a writer who publicly condones the use of psychedelic drugs. I would not be able to praise it enough, but for two things: artist Howard Porter renders his figures somewhat stiffly (though he has improved with time) and writer Morrison can never think of anything cool for Wonder Woman to do -- almost a case of criminal neglect in my opinion. Nevertheless, "New World Order" gives a spark to DC's characters and a frenetic style to superhero action that has not been seen in comics since the 1960s. I recommend this to all superhero fans WITHOUT RESERVATION.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New World Now The Seven Are Back, July 26, 2002
The magnificent seven: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern, united again to face the dangers too big for one sole superhero to fight.Before this story arc, it's pretty safe to say that the Justice League was in the dumps. Far from its glorious days of yesteryear, it had divided into things like Justice League Task Force and Justice League Europe, stripped of most, if not all its cool characters. None of the heavyweights were on the team until Grant Morrizon decided to inject new life into the series.
They restarted it and this is the first arc.
This is what defines the Justice League nowadays: world threatening danger, each bigger than the last, all put down by the world's mightiest superheros. The first time I read this, it blew my mind. It deals with the appearance of several alien superbeings of incredible goodness, who seem to surpass even our own heroes. But it doesn't take long to see that they are in fact staging an alien invasion. Once again, the heroes band together to form a new league: The Justice League America, JLA. There are limitless nuances to the characters, and this is where I fell in love with Batman. This is truly a guy who could take out Superman. The first in a great series. Don't miss it.
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