Justice League #44 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Geoff Johns
Art By: Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 30, 2015

Clash of The Titans

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Holy shit, if you aren't reading this book you better have a damn good reason for it because it's amazing.  Yeah, it's the usual Johns' type story where a whole bunch of shit is going on at once and it's all over the top.......... but what the hell is wrong with that?  Johns is like the Midas of comics to me because everything that man touches just turns to gold.  I really think it's because he takes these characters that we all love and he actually gives us what we want....... and what he wants because he is the ultimate super fan in my opinion.  Okay, that's enough stroking Johns, let's get to this.  In the previous issue, we had Batman atop the Mobius Chair saying how he had to go to parallel worlds in order to find out who the Anti-Monitor was....... because even though the Mobius Chair knows everything, it wasn't spilling the beans on what the Anti-Monitor's Mama calls him at home.  On top of that, we had Superman go all dark as shit when he absorbed the solar energy of a fire pit and the rest of the Justice League joined the battle between Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor...........even though they don't really have much to do.  Let's get into this issue and see where this crazy ass story takes us next.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with everything going crazy.  Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor are duking it out like Rocky and Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you who the Rocky of this fight is supposed to be.  On the ground level, Grail takes on Kalibak and scares the hell out of me when she totally makes Kalibak look like a chump when she burns his eyes out with whatever type of laser/omega beam vision that she has.  Everyone is fighting as best they can but really, I don't see anyone winning this fight when it's all said and done.  It's all pretty epic and I could go on explaining it all damn night, but I'm not going to do that to you nice people out there in interwebs land. 

We go all over the place in this issue.  We have Lex Luthor on Apokolips, wishing to anyone who will listen that the Superman that is with him was the depowered Superman from the Truth story arc because the Man of Steel has gone dark as shit from his fire pit recharge and the only thing it seems he wants to do is stick his hand through Lex's head.......... I bet Lex also wishes that he built a helmet for his power suit.  Over on Earth-3, Batman and Green Lantern see the devastation that the Anti-Monitor caused on the world so that he could power up for his fight with Darkseid, before they travel to the Anti-Matter Universe's planet Qward to get the lowdown on what and who the Anti-Monitor actually is.  Now, I don't know if the Mobius Chair is location locked with it's information, but after Bruce and Hal get to the planet and unlock a secret chamber under the ground, the chair finally decides that it wants to help out in the info department and begins telling Batman all about the Anti-Monitor.......... like how he built the chair, was an explorer and was cursed for his exploration into this different Universe.  

In the end, Darkseid decides that he's done holding back and summons the Black Racer to his aid...... and I'm sure a lot of you love this character, but he does nothing for me because he's just a death dealing dude........with skis...... It's just a terrible design and I've never liked him and luckily for me, we don't have to see him that much here because in order to take control of the Black Racer, the Anti-Monitor must make him merge with a host.......which somehow he does by making Flash run into him... So yeah, even though I'm not sure about how the Anti-Monitor took control of Flash and got him to merge with the Black Racer, I much more prefer Barry as the Black Racer because now he finally looks bad ass........ stupid skis.  With the power of a speed force-ed up Black Racer at his command, the Anti-Monitor orders the Black Racer to kill Darkseid as he tells the god that he has the Anti-Life Equation within his veins.  When we leaves this issue, we see Darkseid fall to the ground with a giant hole through him and everyone on the scene goes quiet as they witness the death of a god.  You see that?  That's some epic shit right there.

That's it for this issue of Justice League and this story is such a spectacle that it's hard to say anything bad about it because it just keeps delivering epicness after epicness with each installment.  The most that I can really say is that we're dealing with so many characters in this story that a lot of them don't seem to have much to do now that the action is on between Anti-Monitor and Darkseid, but even with that it doesn't matter because we have........Anti-Monitor Vs. Darkseid.  Okay, okay, I can say that some of the scenes like Anti-Monitor taking control of Flash and merging him with Black Racer seemed a little off and that just might be from me not knowing all I should about Black Racer or the Anti-Monitor and their relation to the speed force...... or it could just be a off scene where that happened because Geoff Johns needed it to, but either way, I would have liked a little explanation.  The rest though was thoroughly enjoyable and the art was impeccable the whole way through. This is just a great story that I look forward to every month and like I said at the beginning of the review, if you aren't reading this series, you better have a damn good excuse.

Bits and Pieces:

This story is a spectacle that all should be witness to because Johns is delivering everything that the fans have ever wanted to see and more.  There really isn't much to say besides for get off your ass and go get this issue because the story is great and the art is fantastic and if you miss this, I'm sure you're going to regret it.......... or you'll just go get the trade when it comes out, but then you'd have to go all those months without being able to yell at total strangers about how great this story is and nobody wants that.

9.3/10