Justice League of America #24 review

The Blood Dimmed Tide: The Second Comics part three

Amazo is still kicking everyone's ass, but the team starts getting their shit together and mounts a relatively affective defense. Zatanna keeps Amazo from killing Vixen just long enough Red Arrow to start in. Then Hawkgirl and Black Canary come in with Black Canary shrieking into Amazo's ear, causing his head to explode. However, he recovers too quickly and puts the team on their asses again. Hal Jordan is pretty out of it, but shields the team long enough for Superman to come in and get beat down. Then Wonder Woman, who seems ridiculously powerful and manages to hold her own against Amazo long enough for Zatanna to scrawl some words backwords in her own blood to recover her mouth. From there, it's basically a Wonder Woman/Zatanna tag team until they can get Amazo into the slideways portal and send him off to Antares, a red supergiant star. With Amazo's threat neutralized, the JLA go about getting Red Tornado back into a new body while Firestorm, Vixen, Black Canary and Red Arrow visit Buddy Baker, Animal Man, at his home in San Diego to discuss the recent changes to his powers and how they relate to Vixen's problems. Baker thinks the problems aren't related but it's pointed out that something serious has to be up cause he starts eating a chicken leg. Buddy's a vegetarian you see.

Aaaaaaannnnddddd.....it's okay.

The cover bears no relation to the events of the issue. McDuffie is supposed to be introducing a new villain called Anansi, a spider trickster god, but aside from the mention at the end he isn't in this issue. Animal Man is also on the cover in costume, but again, only the small cameo at the end. The blurb on the cover states, "Puppets of Anansi." This is just dumb on DC's part. Having Wonder Woman on the cover slugging it out with Amazo on the cover would have been a better visual and relevent to the contents. This cover is nice enough on its own, but it's a silly mistake that DC should never have made.

The story is.....so so. It's not bad like issue #22, which was horrible, but it's not quite as good as #23. It's more of the same, Amazo kicking everyon'e ass basically. There's some cool stuff, Black Canary exploding Amazo's head, the whole teleportation into Antares, Wonder Woman's offensive in general. But the whoole Red Tornado thing is treated as an after though. Like, "Okay, we're done with Amazo, let us put Red Tornado back in his body now." Too bad he won't be able to watch people have sex anymore. Or he'll have to watch from the closet like every other decent pervert.

Batman...man, he's rendered totally useless in this issue. At first, he's with Steel saying they gotta stay out of the fight cause they would be useless and in the way so instead the re-program the Slideways device. Then, when Amazo gets near, Batman jumps in only to have his ass put to the floor. Great job there, man.

But ya know, it's an action issue. Not much to right home about. It's pretty well done I guess. Kinda forgettable. It can be summed up in three Words, "League beats Amazo." And...that's it.

The action, pencilled by Allan Goldman, flows nicely enough. Probably lays the action out cleaner than Benes, actually. Sometimes Benes gets too involved with the splashy money shots that he relegates the relevent action to obscured background stuff. This guy, not nearly as flashy, but serviceable and easyt on the eyes. For a fill in artist, he did the job well.

Will I be picking up the next issue? Maybe, maybe not. I haven't decided. This Amazo stuff seems wrapped up, and honestly I'm not that invested in Vixen as a character. This stuff with Animal Man and Anansi could be really cool, but I've been ready to give up this title for a while now and now seems as good a time as any.