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Alex Ross' stunning answer to mass-hyped and lauded events like Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis comes to a slam bang of an end with the third hardcover volume of Justice. The final issues collected here finds the Justice League back on top, united, and storming against their foes as the series comes to a dramatic and quite satisfying close. Scripted by Ross and his Earth X writing partner Jim Kreuger, and drawn by Dougie Brathwaite with Ross' paints, Justice ends up being a thoroughly entertaining ride that reminds us why we started reading super hero comics in the first place. It's stories like what we find in Justice that make us want to run away to the fantastical worlds of heroes and villains that didn't turn quite so dark once the Silver Age came to an end. Ross' love for the characters and the Silver Age in general shines through as well, which also helps make the entire Justice series a true winner. Though there really isn't anything we haven't seen before, Justice is a real treat that longtime comic readers and DC fans should love and cherish. If you haven't read any of Ross' Justice work, you're missing out.
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Been waiting for this ending for a while. All three volumes are definately worth any comic book fan's time. I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone... just trust me.
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Reprinting #s 5-8 of the 12-issue Justice limited series, plus bonus pages featuring brief synopses of some of the characters (written as if by Batman himself) and awesome, full-page artworks of various characters (some color, some black and white), Justice Volume II continues one of the most epic of all Justice League tales.
Quasi-Elseworlds in nature (that is, it doesn't concern itself with lining up precisely with DCU continuity, but it doesn't go as radical as most Elseworlds projects, such as having Superman having landed in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas (Superman: Red Son (Elseworlds)) or placing Batman in 19th-century London rather than Gotham (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (Elseworlds)) The previous volume (spoiler alert...) ended with many of the DCU's biggest guns in a dire situation, and with the villains led by Lex Luthor aparantly well on their way to succeeding both in their effort to crush all their main foes in one series of strikes, and in their seemingly benevolent plans for the world's future. Here, although the picture Luthor and allies are painting continues to be an attractive one, you begin to get a sense of the potential for abuse by those who would be left holding the reins of power in this new world order. In keeping with the series's "not cut-and-dried or black-and-white" theme, this is subtle, and it's left to interpretation whether even the villains are even conciously aware of all this. Also, the question of who was behind the various supervillains's recurring nightmares of global annihilation, and the question of whether there's another party pulling their strings, begins to dawn.
In Volume 1, the villains - Luthor, Bizarro, Grodd, and a ton of others - took center stage much of the time, and here it's a larger array of heroes entering the fray. Some in a major role, others in the back, in supporting roles, we see characters like Zatanna, Metamorpho, Captain Marvel and the Metal Men taking active roles. All the characters here are DC classics, in that they've been around for decades, and the series is bringing in most of the significant characters who were active before, say, the mid-to-late 80s, including some who are seldom seen nowadays. (To digress a bit, I'd really love to see the Ross/Krueger/Braithwaite team do another big epic where the relatively recent additions to DC's pantheon: guys and girls like Bane, Monolith, Stargirl, the current Mr. Terrific, the Cassandra Cain version of Batgirl, the Hate Furnace {now There's a modern creation who's seriously under-used}, Breach, maybe even Doomsday, those kind of characters, play big roles. In addition to players like Superman and Batman, not instead of.) If you've got some favorite characters, or favorite incarnations of characters, from a long way back, you've got a pretty good chance of seeing some of them in Justice.
As with the first one, the art is phenomenal, the writing excellent, the story riveting, and the list of characters irresistable. And if you look up 'epic' in the dictionary, they might as well just put a picture of one of the Justice volumes in there. The Justice saga may not tie directly in with continuity, but it's essential reading for the DC fan. Highest rating.
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Great story, Great concept. Incredible art. Particularly liked the direction taken for Aquaman.
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I am not embarrassed in the least to acknowledge that I did not give Justice: Volume I a rave review. I enjoyed it, but I frankly claimed it was more of the same and didn't break any new ground in terms of originality.
Let me be the first to admit that Justice: Volume II more than exceeded my expectations. Everything that I didn't like about the first volume has evaporated with the second. In this volume, we finally see the heroes being treated as interestingly as the villains, and we finally get to see them taking some action and proving why they are CONSIDERED heroes in the first place. And best of all? We finally get to see the heroes interact in this volume.
And interact they do! It's obvious Alex Ross, one of the plotters and cover artist and general superstar, has an affinity for the silver age mythos of the DC Universe, and he's doing his best to intersperse them throughout this entire storyline. We've got some wonderful dialogue between characters we love to see talking with each other, though we normally wouldn't think of them being in the same room. And, what really rocked me hard, Aquaman is presented as a man who actually COULD be a king of seventy-five percent of the earth.
Okay, so this volume is far and away better than the first, which makes total sense considering it's the second installment of a three-volume storyline. The art is very attractive, the plot is interesting, the dialogue is entertaining, but if you're a DC Geek like me, the sheer number of characters intermingling is a joy.
~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant
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