Broken Frontier

The diabolical Solomon Grundy is revealed to be the culprit behind stealing Red Tornado’s android body, so what will our heroes do about it?

The revamping of DC’s premier super team continues to weave an intriguing tapestry around past stalwarts like the Red Tornado. We’ve also been reintroduced to mainstay villains like Amazo and now you can add Solomon Grundy to the list. What this all signifies is still anyone’s guess, but this issue proves that fireworks are indeed in the offering.

So with that in mind, the aforementioned Solomon Grundy reveals to Green Lantern, Black Canary and Arsenal his true intentions for wanting the vacant body of Red Tornado. It seems Solomon is sick and tired of dying and returning again to start afresh, and he seeks a means to solve that troublesome dilemma. He proposes to the trio of heroes that they team together in order to retrieve the body from Amazo (who has stolen it). Our heroes refuse Solomon’s offer and decide to go after Amazo on their own, despite knowing the odds are stacked against them. Luckily enough, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman (along with Black Lightning and Hawkgirl) arrive on the scene to finally fill out the roster of the new Justice League of America and unite the full team for the first time.

It’s about time that we finally get to see the full team gathered together after waiting four issues for this monumental moment to come to fruition. It certainly seems like writer Brad Meltzer is taking his time to set this all up, but the payoff here has been well worth the wait. As a novelist, Brad intrinsically understands the need for multi-layered plotting, so he obviously applies a similar structure to this storyline. My only beef of contention is that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and in this case I find myself getting confused at times with the plotting here. But beyond that, the man does his homework and writes with conviction and adheres closely to previous continuity, so I can overlook the plot contrivances because of it.

I also liked the art in this story and I am feeling as if after four issues in the can artist Ed Benes is settling in nicely. For my tastes I found some of the panels in previous issues to be erratic at times, but every panel here is solid from start to finish. I especially liked the myriad of close-up panels used to exploit some of the action sequences, and that was balanced with several pages of solid pencils, drawn tightly in some instances and endowing the story overall for maximum effect. I can’t wait to see how the next issue will turn out given that all the principle characters are now united as a team for the first time.

All I can say is that this new inception of the Justice League of America has been a slow build up until this point. I think this is mostly due to the intricate plotting techniques of Brad Meltzer, so readers should take that into account when reading this series. If nothing else, this new era of the Justice League is intriguing given the influx of the big three joining a relatively new crop of minor heroes, so this has made for an enjoyable read for the most part.