I shall now begin my review series on the Great DC Reboot of 2011. Because of lack of money and also interest I won’t be reviewing all 52 titles but rather I’ll picking the ones I had something of an interest in. If you need a refresher of which ones those were click here and here. As the DC reboot began with Justice League #1 it’s only fitting that I begin my coverage there...but since I don’t give a crap about anything going on in that book let’s take a look at Justice League International #1 instead.
JLI isn’t a new concept. Since its debut in the 60s the Justice League of America always seemed to get rebooted every few years, getting major changes in the roster and setting. Following a blundered re-launch fans have nicknamed “Justice League Detroit” DC gave the reigns of the book to Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis who, after being told they couldn’t use most of the company’s biggest names (Ironically due to a companywide reboot following Crisis on Infinite Earths) they decided to use several lesser known characters and take the book into a more comedic route. The title was dubbed, of course, Justice League International. While this would severally damage several characters over the next twenty years by typecasting them as comedy characters who kept getting their character development reset to match their portrayal into that book it did create a very strong cult following for several of the team’s more prominent members to this day. Those members included (But not necessarily limited to) Booster Gold, Blue Beetle II (Ted Kord), Fire, Ice, and Guy Gardner and his bowl cut. They’re have been a lot of call backs and reunions featuring the majority of these characters over the years, most of them not taking itself terribly serious (Such as the Giffer/DeMatteis created Formerly Known as the Justice League miniseries). But finally in 2005 following the awesome yet terribly infuriating death of Ted Kord in Countdown to Infinite Crisis this started to change as DC attempted to move Booster Gold away from his comedic “sellout” persona once and for all which they did successfully in 52 and Booster’s follow-up solo title where he became basically the most badass character in the DC Universe. Following the trend in the pages of Justice League: Generation Lost Booster, Fire, Ice, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle III aka Jaime Reyes and eventually a new Rocket Red teamed up to accidentally form a new, more insanely awesome version of the JLI. While I never got to finish that book what I did read of it was some of the best superhero comic writing I’ve ever read and cemented my status of a fan of the various characters that appeared. This book was supposed to lead into a new ongoing series featuring this new revamped team where Batman and Booster teamed up to start the team in earnest. That didn’t happen, presumably because it would have been too much awesome for our space time continuum to handle.
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| The JLI we deserve, but not the one we need right now? |
The comic I'm looking at today was written by Dan Jurgens with art by Aaron Lopresti (Pencils) and Matt Ryan (Ink) and is titled “The Signal Masters Part 1”. So if this isn’t a follow-up to Justice League: Generation Lost then what the hell is it? And what’s the point?
Click below for the full review…and answers!
