‘Justice: Volume 1’ – Ross, Krueger & Braithwaite (DC Comics)

Last week I used ‘The Flash: Rogue War’ as an example of the pitfalls inherent in letting someone else go out and chose your comic book reading for you. Not wanting to sound ungrateful (I love that my wife gets me comic books from the library) but that’s just the way it can go sometimes. For every up there’s inevitably a down...
Well, this week sees my comic book reading shoot up in terms of quality. Another totally random read picked off the shelves but one that satisfied on all levels. So much so in fact that I went back to the library yesterday and picked up the other two volumes in the series. If ‘Justice: Volume 1’ is anything to go by then I’ve got some quality reading ahead of me...

Across the world, a select band of people are sharing one dream about an apocalypse that the famed Justice League of America is powerless to prevent. Is there anything that these people can do about it? When their ranks include the likes of Lex Luthor, the Riddler and Brainiac the answer is... maybe.
This band of villains has come together to do some good, proving to the world that the Justice League is no longer needed and, in fact, may even be to blame for the Earth being the target of various alien attacks etc. Is this their only motive though? The members of the Justice League are in no position to find out as they’re suddenly under attack from all sides...

One thing that I find disappointing about reading comic books is that the often gorgeous cover art isn’t continued inside. That’s fair enough as what’s inside is still usually quite cool and you can’t reasonably expect artists to turn out that kind of art for a whole comic with various deadlines to take into account. Or can you...?

Check out the cover art here, lovely isn’t it? Well, that’s the standard of art that you get throughout the whole book this time round and it’s great. We’re talking about pages and pages of artwork that I was happy to just lose myself in and let the story wait for a while; it all looks so lush and you can almost see the characters moving on the page. Braithwaite and Ross combine superbly to deliver scenes of action and introspection that grab you with no effort at all.

As lovely as the artwork is, I wouldn’t be planning on coming back if there wasn’t a decent story backing it all up and there certainly is here. There is a strong feeling that things will end up going the way they usually do but this is tempered by a delicious feeling of uncertainty that, perhaps this time, it could all be different. Are these villains looking to do something good for humanity or is there an ulterior motive? You can probably guess the answer. I’ve got a fairly good idea but I’ll still be reading on to see if I’m right. There are also loads of other questions all set up to answered in future volumes. Perhaps it’s a little too obvious what these questions are doing (moving the plot forward rather than adding to the story itself) but I found myself getting into anyway and I definitely want to see how things pan out over the next two volumes.

‘Justice: Volume 1’ is a rich layer of gorgeous artwork wrapping up a story that could go either way but is intriguing enough to have you hanging on for the ride anyway. I’ll let you know how Volume 2 goes...

Eight and a Half out of Ten