The wave of throwback properties continues this week, as the animated Justice League makes its return in a new comic.
Justice League Infinite 1
Written by J.M. DeMatteis and James Tucker
Pencils and Inks by Ethen Beavers
Colors by Nick Filardi and Francis Manapul
It’s a big week for nostalgia. First we had the first issue of a new MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE miniseries and now we’re going back to DC Comics’ early-2000s Justice League for a brand new story featuring the world’s greatest heroes from that corner of the multiverse.
Justice League and its successor, Justice League Unlimited, brought a lot of DC Comics’ vast catalogue of characters into the animated world, but it was the core 7 characters introduced in the main series that are the main focus of this series. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern John Stewart and Wally West as the Flash are front and center here. But the seventh member of the original animated team, the Martian Manhunter, is off on his own when the series starts. J’onn J’onnz has decided he no longer wants the life of a costumed superhero and has taken on a new human form to live among the people without getting into epic battles.
As J’onn has always been the heart of the Justice League, he’s also clearly the heart of this new series from writers J.M. DeMatteis and James Tucker. J’onn serves as the narrator here, bringing readers up to speed as his former colleagues first throw a birthday party for Wally West and then get attacked by two different armies from Apokolips. It seems that with Darkseid out of the picture after the end of the animated show, there’s a power vacuum. Both Granny Goodness and Kalibak hope to fill it, and they’ve decided that the first to lead an army to destroy the Justice League will be the hell planet’s new ruler.
Coalition governments don’t seem to work well on Apokolips.
J’onn also narrates a check in on the DCAU’s Amazo, who is out in deep space exploring the farthest reaches of the galaxy. I’ve always liked the streamlined animated Amazo, who bears little resemblance, at least in his look, to the comic book version. I’m actually surprised that over the last 15-plus years, no writer has tried to reboot the Amazo android – which can adapt his powers to use all the abilities of the Justice League – into the comic book continuities. We’ve had a handful of reboots and restarts since then and not once did the gold version of Amazo get reintroduced, until now.
Amazo’s recon into space causes a fissure at the end of the universe, which leads to what J’onn calls “the world turning upside down.”
I guess it’s not a modern DC Comics epic without an evil version of Superman showing up out of nowhere, right? At least within this particular continuity, I can have faith that the true version of Superman will be back relatively quickly.