Justice League of America #2 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Bryan Hitch
Art By: Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Andrew Currie, Alex Sinclair
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: July 8, 2015

I'll Be Damned

*Non Spoilers and Score At Bits and Pieces*

Wow, did we get a lot thrown at us last issue.  We had the Infinity Corporation invite Superman to New York, so he could witness a great big room full of dead..... hims.  At some point in the future the world was going to be destroyed and it all hinged on the death of Superman........ Which the Infinity Corporation knew because they kept pulling dead Supermen from different future timelines to double check their hypothesis...... So yeah, room full of dead Supermen.  If that wasn't enough, we also had the rest of the Justice League invited to a location to fight Parasite, Wonder Woman disappearing, Hal and Barry getting sucked in a wormhole to Oa......possibly and the Infinity Corporation disappearing completely before the god Rao showed up on Earth........... I don't care who you are, that's a lot of shit!  With the ancient god of Krypton making his appearance on Earth, we ended the last issue with Superman getting all worship-y, so let's get into this issue and see how the people of Earth feel about someone coming to their planet and telling them that they're the true god..... because that always works out well.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with Superman flying up to Rao with open arms and getting all sappy, when right before he could touch the god he never knew, Clark's powers seem to leave him and he falls back down to the street........ but this is a god  we're talking about so of course he catches Clark before he falls.  It's at this point where everything starts moving really fast in the comic.  Batman sees all he needed to see and Cyborg and him head back to the cave and we jump down to Atlantis where in the last issue we saw a prophet waiting for Aquaman to talk to him about the church of latter day Kryptonians.  Since it's Atlantis, this prophet believes that the people worship Poseidon, but after Aquaman tells him that the Atlanteans gave up on gods a long time ago and that he doesn't have the time to deal with this nonsense, the prophet is going to stay and talk to the people about letting Rao into their lives and Aquaman being the busy sort, swims away while telling the prophet to go for it but not to expect too much.......... yeah, I don't think Arthur is going to recognize Atlantis when he comes back.  

We jump to the Batcave, where Batman wants to get to the bottom of everything that's going on.  After searching for the Infinity Corporation and coming up with absolutely nothing, he downloads every attempt, plan or idea that has ever been created to stop/kill Superman and gives it to Cyborg to sift through and see what he considers viable options in case they should have to take down Rao.  With Cyborg squared away with busy work, Batman gets to trying to find Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash......... and that's about all we get of our Justice League doing Justice League type stuff here.  The rest of the issue goes into Superman vouching for Rao all over the world and Rao's prophets going around and healing the sick and injured in hospitals all over the world.  Of course Lois Lane is on the story and I have to agree with her sentiments in her article titled: Do We Need Another God?  After all the hurt and pain that people have caused throughout history and even today in the name of a god, having one come out of nowhere in the flesh doesn't bode too well for the warring religious factions of world........ But to my surprise, it seems like most people during Rao's coming out party are for the most part, Rao boosters........ I'm sure the miracles being performed around the world didn't hurt though and the fact that someone we saw as a physical embodiment of a god: Superman is all on the Rao trolley was sure to get some people on board.

In the end, Rao and Superman talk about how much they can do for this world, when Rao asks Kal-El for forgiveness for leaving Krypton and letting it be destroyed as he wandered the stars collecting knowledge.  Not being one to let god kneel before him, Superman told him not to worry about it and flies off......... and then talks to Diana in his head about how he's sorry he didn't go off searching for her, Barry or Hal.  This last part is just odd because we get a strange look into Superman's thought process, like now that his god is present, he can simply pray for forgiveness to Diana for him not worrying about her and everything will be okay because at least he prayed.  As the issue closes though, we see that everything won't be okay because we jump to a empty void where Diana is being held, full of pieces of Olympus.......... If I was a Negative Nancy I'd say that Rao doesn't like sharing his toys and Aquaman did real good by his people by saying "The hell with Poseidon".

That's it for this issue of Justice League of America and man did I enjoy this issue a lot more than the first........ mostly because I didn't feel overwhelmed by the end.  This issue was really interesting because it brings up decent questions about how the people of Earth in the DCYou would react to a god like figure coming to the planet and offering salvation, since they've pretty much been dealing with god like figures saving/invading their world for years now.  I have to say that originally I thought Rao would be like Jasmine from Angel Season 4 and anyone who laid eyes on him would simply be enamored....... a lot like Superman was, but by the end I have to go another geeky route and say that Rao is more like the Ori from Stargate SG1........ If you don't know what either of those things are, well you have a lot of TV to catch up on.  I was a little wary of this series after the first issue, but this one really came together and since it threw so much at us in the first issue, it still has a lot of cards to play down the line and because I liked how well Bryan Hitch handled this issue, I'm really optimistic for the future of this story.  Hell, I even liked the art more in this issue.  Maybe Rao has touched me here too.

Bits and Pieces:

With so much thrown at us in the first issue, I really had my doubts that this would be something that I could get behind, but to my surprise and delight, Bryan Hitch has pulled together a really interesting story dealing with the ancient Kryptonian god, Rao and how the people of Earth react to a god coming to them in the flesh.  While there isn't a lot of action going on, it was really a good story and it certainly peaked my interest in going further with the series.  So yeah, watch out or Rao will touch you.

8.5/10