Book Review: Justice League 3000 vol #2 (New 52)

Book: Justice League 3000 volume #2: The Camelot War (issues #8-15) by Keith Griffen and J.M. DeMatteis

Illustration by Howard Porter (issues #8-13 and 15) and Andy Kuhn (issue #14) and color by HI-FI


Edition: Single Print Issues

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

What a vast improvement in writing this was compared to that pitiful first volume but the artwork continues to be awful. There are still a lot of problems with this series however what made this a much better read was that most of the stupid infighting that plagued the first volume was drastically reduced. They were still arguing but not like they were before.

In the previous volume, Teri was killed by her twin brother Terry who also revealed that he was the leader of The Five. Terry then proceeded to take over Cadmus and imprison the Justice League and scientist Ariel Masters. Firestorm already pledged his allegiance to The Five and took off for a mission for them.

Terry's main reason for capturing Ariel instead of killing her was for her to perfect the process that created the Justice League but instead of doing what he wanted Ariel brought back Teri. She infused Teri's DNA with Barry Allen's making her the new Flash. All while that was going on Green Lantern figured out a way to trick the surveillance system so the team could come up with a way to escape without The Five finding out. To further the teams escape, they had Teri distract her brother to keep him from detonating the cellular bomb inside the members of the Justice League.

Meanwhile, Green Lantern sent the team away prior to squaring off against Locus. With the Justice League which now includes Teri all finally safe and sound, they plan to lay low on another planet, Camelot Nine which is a King Arthur type world.

While the League waits for The Five to make their way to Camelot Nine they set up a trap to finally help them stop the villains. The inevitable fight ensued between the Justice League and The Five leaving the most powerful members of The Five held in stasis but for reasons I still don't understand Terry was allowed to return back to Cadmus. An once there, he proceeded on to his next step for revenge against the Justice League by creating an Injustice League bringing back some of JL's biggest enemies and one that never was. The Injustice League members are Bane, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, Sinestro, Zeus and Lois Lane. Why was Lois made to be a villain? I really don't get it but since I can't stand this version of Superman and the rest of the Justice League it might be more fun to root for this version of Lois especially if she gets to take down the entire team.

The story sort of jumps track a little bit with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold woken up from the cryogenic chambers they were found in. The original heroes are now in the 31st century and are stuck on the prison planet Takron-Galtos (formerly known as Earth) but they had no desire to stay there. Besides exploring the area, the duo decided to find one of Beetle's hidden lairs to find his airship and perhaps get off that miserable planet. The plan didn't quite work out because they were ambushed by the 31st century's lame version of the Blue Beetle. After Booster was saved from mutated rats, the duo was then eventually tricked into traveling to Cadmus where Terry awaited their appearance.

Meanwhile back on Camelot Nine, Wonder Woman was working with King Arthur's knights to stop Etrigan the Demon's army. There is only one area that neither King Arthur or Etrigan can invade and that is the frozen area belonging surprisingly to former Justice League International member Ice.

After Ice encountered Wonder Woman, Superman and the new Flash, she then joins the Flash and Superman to head back to the Justice League's new headquarter where she proceeds to tell her story of how she survived the long years and how she as well as Etrigan wound up on Camelot Nine. She also informed them of how Fire (another member of the JLI) is now working for Etrigan.

With all of that out of the way it was now time for Etrigan and his army to invade the now empty castle that Ice was residing in. If they take the land then it will lead to King Arthur's downfall, but standing in Etrigan's way is the Justice League with Ice accompanying them. A battle breaks out but somewhere in the middle of it all, Fire and Ice somehow become friends again.

However, a surprise comes when Ariel at the Justice League headquarters was ambushed by the Injustice League leaving a cliffhanger to this cancelled series. But despite being cancelled this series returned with a slight title change, Justice League 3001.

I was really surprised that this turned out to be a somewhat good read. I guess sooner or later I'll start reading JL 3001 hopefully it will still be worth reading.

Currently Reading: Justice League 3000 vol #2 (New 52)

Not much to say about this except I hope this will be a much better read than the first volume.


Book: Justice League 3000 volume #2: The Camelot War (issues #8-15) by Keith Griffen and J.M. DeMatteis

Illustration by Howard Porter (issues #8-13 and 15) and Andy Kuhn (issue #14) and color by HI-FI


Edition: Single Print Issues

Description:

The Justice League 3000 joined by a new Flash battle the fury of The Five, face the coming of the frost queen called Ice, and put up with the return of the team of Blue Beetle and Booster Gold.

Book Review: Justice League 3000 vol #1 (New 52)

Book: Justice League 3000 volume #1: Yesterday Lives (issues #1-7) by Keith Griffen and J.M. DeMatteis with illustration by Howard Porter and color by HI-FI

Edition: Single print issues

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

Wow, this was a total mess. Reading this made the second volume of Supergirl look like a masterpiece. Most of the story was filled with non-stop arguing amongst the team and arguing between the twins Terry and Teri which overall became really annoying. What made this a disappointing read was the writing, it was both bad and repetitive with the story being extremely predictability. You can easily see where the story was going.

In these seven issues, Cadmus was in need of a way to stop the encroaching enemy The Five who have been quickly taking over the galaxy. A plan was created to bring back the original members of the Justice League from DNA samples. However, scientist Ariel Masters no longer wanted to go through with the plan and took off with Cadmus attempting to bring her back.

The experiment although defected was conducted by the twins had Batman (who had all the skill but lacked the knowledge and wisdom acquired by Bruce over the years), Wonder Woman (who is angry and bloodthirsty), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, who doesn't have access to all of his power without the lantern ring), The Flash (Barry Allen, a pessimist who is lacking his speed friction aura) and Superman (who is an angry arrogant egoistical meathead who is without many things including flight, intelligence, humanity and heat vision) in the 31st century. This group of famed heroes can barely get along to complete a mission but are apparently the only hope to save the galaxy.

Going in for another mission which the team was unprepared for, they wound up fighting an alien villain named Locus who was pretty much a Harley Quinn knockoff with the ability to do anything she wants with only a thought. She killed The Flash, captured Green Lantern and sent the other three off to some random planet called Takron-Galtos.

On Takron-Galtos, Batman, Wonder Woman and Superman besides constantly arguing found themselves on a prison planet which used to be Earth. They also found an ally who could help them meet the one who is responsible for them being in this new century, Ariel Masters. After a revelation about how they were really created, they were soon fighting against members of The Five and trying to figure out a way to escape the planet.

Back at Cadmus, another Flash was created along with Firestorm and now the two were tasked to rescue the Justice League. Meanwhile, Green Lantern was being held captive by Locus who is too far gone to be reasoned with. Finally with a chance to escape it resulted in his death.

The group on Takron-Galtos wasn't faring any better but stood a little bit of a chance once The Flash and Firestorm showed up. That little advantage didn't last long they were soon captured and taken to The Five's headquarters where The Five tried to find out everything they could about the Justice League.

Help came from Green Latern (who remarkably wasn't dead), after he was brought to The Five's headquarter when Locus showed up. Hal had been biding his time until he could get away and once he met Ariel Masters, he learned the truth about his powers and how they were affecting him.

After GL broke them out, the league came up with a plan to escape, however they have yet to stop arguing. They took out their main threat by sidelining Locus before escaping. The league and Ariel took refuge on one of the preservation planets as they try to find a way to be rescued by Cadmus.

The league's status quo of fighting was only temporarily interrupted when they found out they had been double crossed by one of the twins with The Flash being killed yet again. With no way out of their current predicament, the league had no choice but to agree to the demands and return into the clutches of The Five.

This had so much potential to be an amazing group of issues, it had a good premise but was poorly executed which ruined it. What is it with making these characters so unlikeable? I get it they are nothing like the original. But the writers had the opportunity to create a unique version of these characters instead all that's shown is nothing but a bunch of angry characters who can't get along. There was a slight improvement with Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman's personalities as the story progressed but they were still unlikable. The only characters I liked throughout the entire story were Green Lantern and The Flash.

I wonder if the writers had something against The Flash because it makes no sense to keep killing him off. Was that supposed to be some kind of running gag? If it was a joke it wasn't very funny.

I hope the second volume will be a vast improvement over this one. Here's hoping it can't get any worse.

Currently Reading: Justice League 3000 vol #1 (New 52) and Hawkeye vol #2 (Marvel Now)

I was going through my book shelves yesterday and found two I wanted to read: Justice League 3000 and Hawkeye.

The thing is I read the first issue of Justice League 3000 two years ago, and I'm just now finally getting around to reading the rest of the issues. Now as for Hawkeye, I read the first volume that I got from the library and I loved it so much that I ended up buying the first three volumes of the series.

I'm really trying to break my habit of waiting until forever to read my books it's a slow start but I am getting there.

Book: Justice League 3000 volume #1: Yesterday Lives (issues #1-7) by Keith Griffen and J.M. DeMatteis with illustration by Howard Porter and color by HI-FI

Edition: Single print issues

Description:

In the far flung future in the year 3000, the Justice League still exists and they're more familiar than you could imagine. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern comprise the League, but how could these heroes still exist a millennium from now?

Book: Hawkeye volume #2: Little Hits (issues #6-11) by Matt Fraction

Illustrations by David Aja (issues #6, 8-11), Francesco Francavilla (issue #10), Steven Lieber and Jesse Hamm (issue #7), and Annie Wu (issue #8)

Color by Matt Hollingsworth (issues #6-9 and #11) and Francesco Francavilla (issue #10)


Edition: Trade

Description:

Ace archer Clint Barton battles Superstorm Sandy, digital doomsday, dog detectives, lady problems, murder for money and more as Matt Fraction and David Aja continue their exciting, adventurous reinvention of the arrowed Avenger! Plus: The tracksuits are back, and they're aiming to kill!

Book Review: Justice League 3000 #1

Book: Justice League 3000 #1 by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis with artwork by Howard Porter

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

This first issue was just okay, it felt more like a filler instead of a first issue. There was nothing spectacular about this story, that's for sure. I thought the writing was kind of blah, there was nothing that captured my attention. I also thought the artwork was horrible. It didn't really feel like there was much of a story. This is set in the 31st century and opened with a character Ariel Masters trying to escape from Cadmus goons to avoid having to go back. After that the reader is introduced to the twins Terry and Teri followed by seeing the Justice League.

When I heard that DC Comics was going to create Justice League 3000, I was really interested.  Because the first thing I saw (from all the promotions) was the red hair on The Flash and I guess I got my hopes up that Wally West was finally going to be in the new 52 even if it's in the future and maybe that Wonder Woman was Donna Troy. But it turns out all of the characters are the original: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Diana, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan only they have been altered due to an experiment.

The experiment is a project managed by twins Terry and Teri or as they call themselves "The Wonder Twins". The new Justice League is plagued with problems, none of them get along and are constantly fighting. They might have the same names as the original characters but they are very different characters, which would be really interesting if we got to see more than just them being angry and fighting each other. I really hope that's not going to be a constant thing because that's going to get really boring really fast. I'm so tired of seeing superheroes fighting, I think writers need to find new ideas instead of going to what has become a regular thing of superheroes fighting each other. I expect there to be conflict since they are just getting to know each other but I do hope it doesn't last too long.

Even though the first issue wasn't that great, I'm going to pick up the second issue to see if the writing and artwork improve.