Justice League #49 Review and *SPOILERS*

Agendas

Written By: Geoff Johns
Art By: Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 27, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's so weird having only issue #49 coming out today after just having the Darkseid War Special.  I don't know if this story is just so big and epic that it stays a constant thought in my mind, but it certainly doesn't feel like it's two months behind everything else............ Which hopefully it can catch up quick because I hate the idea of this continuing when Rebirth comes out and changes the game the way I hope it will.  Anyway, in the previous issue..... and I guess the Darkseid War Special too, our heroes were waging a battle against Mobius in the streets of Gotham, while Cyborg and Jessica Cruz were trying to free themselves from within Volthoom.  If that wasn't enough, we also had Grail give Steve Trevor what appeared to me to be the Anti-Life Equation so that he can fulfill a prophecy about the first man on Themyscira causing the end of the world.  Yeah, it's all bad news bears for our Justice League, what with them teaming up with the totally untrustworthy Crime Syndicate and half our heroes not really taking part in the battle because they're too busy thinking about god things....... well, all except for Lex Luthor, who entered the scene in the previous issue's cliffhanger, rocking his Darkseid powers and an army of Parademons.  Let's jump into this issue and see if our heroes are any closer to saving the day or if things continue to look grim.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

The battle continues to be waged in Gotham as we start this issue and see that Lex Luthor now with the powers of a god finally has his opportunity to scratch "Kill A God" off his bucket list.  While that fight goes on, with the Green Lantern Corps trying to take care of Mobius' shadow demons, we see that most of our main players have their own agendas going on with the Darkseid War.  Wonder Woman is seeing to Super Woman, who we saw going into labor in the previous issue and it's at this point that we find out that this little bundle of joy that's on its way is actually the Crime Syndicate's secret weapon to kill Mobius...... somehow.  It's very odd because they were all tight lipped about the baby being their weapon of choice, until Batman came around and Mobius Chaired that knowledge to us, but what they aren't tight lipped about is the fact that when Mobius is dead, they're all going to kill the Justice League.  Yeah...... these aren't the best partners to have in this situation.  We gleam from this exchange though that Owlman isn't the father, but now we've got a new mystery on our hands because it's never revealed who the father is and if this baby has the power to kill a god, I'm thinking the baby daddy is someone a little bigger and badder than Ultraman.

So yeah, the baby is born, but it becomes a nonissue because while Lex and Mobius were fighting, Grail and her mother Myrina boom tubed their way back into the picture and Grail simply sicks Steve Trevor on Mobius with the power she gave him in the Darkseid War Special and what appeared to be our main threat of this title was simply gone in a moment...... Mobius, we barely knew ye.  At this point, Grail is still rocking the idea that Steve Trevor can be used to destroy the world, and maybe he can, but let's not focus on the negatives.  During the fight between Lex and Mobius we saw Superman expel all that cell destroying fire pit energy he had inside of him........ Well, that's the only piece of good news actually.  Hell, we couldn't even get anything nice out of Mister Miracle or Big Barda in this issue because Barda hightailed it back to Apokolips after seeing that the Lex and the Parademons were on Earth so that she could raid all the slave camps and start freeing everyone and while that might appear as a good thing on the surface, this is after Scot pleaded with her to stay and help the Justice League.  

In the end, I guess we're all just waiting to see what Steve Trevor will do with this power he doesn't seem to be able to control, but I wouldn't be too worried since in the Darkseid War Special Myrina tried to stop Grail from bestowing this power on Steve because apparently he wasn't the first man on the island.  

That's it for this issue of Justice League and man did we deal with a shit ton of characters in this issue, all doing their own things for the most part and in some cases, showing their true colors.  With so much going on in this issue you'd think that the story would be too stretched to be really enjoyable, but with most of the action taking place on or around the streets of Gotham, this issue actually maintained an excellent pace from all its shifting through characters in this story and stayed really exciting all the way through.  Yeah, I found some of the dialog exchanges between Mobius and Lex to be a bit laughable due to their over the topness, but it was still fun to see Lex be the Superman of the group and take the fight head on against a world destroyer type threat.  We still have a ton of questions that are left open in this........ and we actually acquired a few more and as annoying as that is at times, I had a good time reading this and can't wait to get the answers in hopefully the next issue.  With such a riveting story, I'm happy to say that the art was as fantastic as always and every character in this chock full of characters book looked great.  

Bits and Pieces:

The Darkseid War continues to impress with this issue as the characters just keep coming and the hits just keep getting bigger and bigger.  We've got a ton of characters in this issue and even though we spend a decent amount of time with them all, this issue never feels stretched too thin, which is a problem that happens a lot when dealing with stories of this scale, but this issue found it's groove and kept it all the way through.

9/10