Justice League of America #3 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Bryan Hitch
Art By: Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Alex Sinclair
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 26, 2015

All Over The Place

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Okay, it's time to jump back into JLA with all it's intricate stories going on.  In the previous issue it seemed like we got a reprieve on the brain busting when we simply dealt with Rao coming to Earth and blessing everyone of us.......... No, really!  That dude came down and his profits and him went around the world to all the hospitals and cured everyone.  Of course, Batman was wary of this living god and he put Cyborg to task to find a way to stop Rao through the many contingencies that he's collected over the years and Superman went around spreading the good Kryptonian word.  I know we're dealing with story over continuity here, but it's funny to me to think that this went down in the same world that the Truth is going down in.  As the story ended, it looked like Rao doesn't like to share his worshipers though because Wonder Woman awoke in a destroyed Olympus...... so it looks like the other gods aren't going to be any help here when shit goes bad.  Let's jump into this issue and see if the story is all over the place again or sticks with a single piece to this story.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Oh boy, it's going to be a doozie!  Even though we haven't dealt with this since the first issue three months ago, we get flung right into Green Lantern and Flash's story where if you remember, Hal's ring opened up a wormhole to Oa because he was unconscious and low on power and Flash all supercharged up tripped and fell into the wormhole with Hal, causing an anomaly.... and boy what an anomaly it was.  We open this issue with Hal and Barry falling onto an alien world, where the gravity is heavy as hell and two warring factions are about to tear our heroes apart.  Barry quickly tries to take out as many as he can while Hal recharges his ring, but by the time that the oath this said and Hal can think of a boxing glove, Barry is gone.  It's a lot like when Wonder Woman disappeared, but apparently it's completely different......... don't worry we'll get there.  So this strange planet is Krypton and somehow Barry and Hal traveled back 250,000 years and if that's not enough, after the Kryptonians suddenly decide "War, what is it good for?" they tell Hal that it would be a great honor for a Green Lantern to meet their god Rao......... Oh, I see what you're doing Bryan Hitch...... wrapping things around, all back and forth..... yeah, I don't really get it, but I'm sure that all will be revealed in the upcoming months.  

Continuing with the time travel theme, we see that the Infinity Corporation, who mysteriously disappeared in the first issue after plucking dead Superman after dead Superman out of a future timeline, is somehow now in 1961........ because some "infinity" stones made them...... which happens I guess....... none of this really matters though because the only thing that we get out of this part is that they pulled Flash away from Green Lantern....... so yeah...... that happened.  Well, it's not time travel, but we also take a peek in on Wonder Woman, who's trapped in a destroyed Olympus....... and all we find out here is that the gods fled before Olympus was destroyed and that they won't be of any help in the future.......... So I guess this just means that Wonder Woman is out of the picture for awhile........ okay.

In the end, we head back to Earth during our present timeline where Rao just seems to be answering people's prayers now and one such prayer was to help the starving people of Africa, which he does by creating a paradise and then tearing down the corrupt government that oppresses the people.  Obviously, this gets the attention of the United Nations who understandably want to know how far Rao will go with his pursuit of what he believes to be right....... and speak of the devil, Rao appears and tells the U.N. that he'll do whatever he damn well pleases.  Luckily Batman is still out and about being pessimistic as ever and now that Rao has shown his true colors, I'm sure that he'll be right there to take him out........... except, I hope that the people that have had miracles performed on them will rally behind their true heroes........... yeah, we're all screwed.

That's it for this issue of JLA and besides for the part of the story that actually deals with how the government and the people of Earth would actually react to Rao and what his presence means to the world, the rest was.......meh.  It was just a lot of back and forth that at this period doesn't mean too much.  Wonder Woman's out, Flash is in the 60's, Green Lantern is in Krypton's past, Superman is all worship happy, Batman is wary and Cyborg and Aquaman were completely absent.  Who would have thought that the most boring part of a Justice League book would actually be the Justice League?  As with the story, I can't say that I'm a fan of Bryan Hitch's art style here either.  I didn't mind the previous issue, but this feels a bit rushed and it leaves me thinking that maybe being the writer and penciler on a book is just a little too much for one person.  I'm just not really digging this title yet and if I was only reading these books, I'd probably ditch this from my pull list.

Bits and Pieces:

This book is all over the place and nothing is really being explained as we move along.  I mean, going in it initially looks like you'll be dealing with a lot of development, but by the end you realize that the story is at a standstill and that the most interesting part of the book doesn't feature the Justice League at all.  Having both writing and penciling duties seems to be hurting Bryan Hitch's style and since we're still dealing with setup to things that we don't understand, it may be hurting the writing as well.  

4.5/10