Justice League: Darkseid War Special #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

A Tale of Two Women

Written By: Geoff Johns
Art By: Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Oscar Jimenez, Paul Pelletier, Tony Kordos, Alex Sinclair, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: April 6, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh, the gods must be crazy.......... crazy in the fact that they put out a Darkseid War Special before catching this series up to even issue #49.  Oh well, at least we get some Justice League going on and the fact that this issue tackles some backstory to Grail and what's going on with Jessica Cruz inside of Volthoom........ well, I have to imagine that the Darkseid War is just too epic and too big a deal to contain in just the Justice League title alone........... not to mention all those one-shots that we got.  That's a lot of books!  Really though, I'm just trying to pad this opener more than Patty did her bra in Elvira Mistress of The Dark because there isn't much to say going into this that you should know, besides that Jessica Cruz' consciousness has been suppressed by Volthoom and Grail has acquired the Anti-Life Equation, not to mention Steve Trevor........ What?  You're still wondering who Patty is?  You people are a bunch of heathens!  Elvira Mistress of The Dark was a young Eric Shea's voyage into manhood and that is just a gross as it sounds.  Okay, that's enough padding for me and possibly Patty, let's jump into this issue and see what's so special about this Special and find out where our Darkseid War story is going.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins in the deep recesses of Volthoom, where we see that Jessica Cruz' consciousness isn't alone.  That's right, it seems that everyone who wore the ring at some point has their soul trapped within it still and after a voice calls out to Jessica, telling her that she needs to get towards the light in the center of the void if she wants to escape this hellish place, we find out that these other trapped beings aren't about to let her go.  We see a bunch of poor bastards here, but the one who is most adamant about Jessica staying is Harold Jordon, the former Power Ring........ Really though, I think it's more about him making sure that someone else doesn't succeed where he can't........... He's a sore ass loser like that.  Ultimately though, we see Jessica trying to get to this light that is supposedly Volthoom's main Power Battery, while Harold tries to tear her down and get her to give into her fear, but Jessica is beyond that at this point and even though we haven't seen a lot of this character, her main bit seems to be to all about her fear and overcoming it.  So even though it's really cool to see more of Jessica Cruz, I feel that I need more from her at this point because like Dave Attell, we're just rehashing the same old shtick.  Anyway, to put a pin in this section of our book, we see Jessica make it to her brightly lit destination, where she finds that the voice who was calling out to her is none other than Vic Stone, who like our Power Ring hero, is stuck inside Volthoom........... since he was dumb as hell and tried to hack the ring again.  

Now we'll move on to the story of Grail and even though we get a bit of this where it's stuff we've seen before, like Myrina giving birth to Grail in the forbidden mountains of Themyscira, this is pretty interesting because we see that Grail has always been a goddamn psychopath........... It's also interesting because we have a new mystery in front of us here because after Myrina gives birth to Grail the same night that Hippolyta gave birth to Diana, we see that Myrina snuck back down into the jungle to witness Wonder Woman's birth, but something else occurred besides for gross women stuff........ or actually from my own dummy ass opinion, more gross women stuff because it seems that off panel, while Hippolyta is about to name Diana, she goes back into labor......... So yeah, this could just be me but it seems like there might be some twins action going on............ if that's the case hopefully Diana didn't get all the good genes, leaving her twin looking like Danny Devito.  

In the end, we move throughout Myrina and Grail's life after they fled from Themyscira and how even though Myrina taught her daughter that she was born to save the world by killing her evil father, it appears that she's more of a daddy's girl than not because not only does she have Omega Beams, but a blood lust to boot.  Eventually, mother and daughter track down the last of the three blind witches and use their seeing eye as a way to find the means to kill Darkseid, leading Grail on her quest to find the Anti-Monitor............ and I know that she's the daughter of a god and all, but I still don't understand how Grail traversed the Multiverse to find Mobius and get him on the path to kill Darkseid and free himself of his Anti-Life Equation curse.  As our issue closes, we see Steve Trevor chained to a wall and Grail smooching on him and it appears to me at least that she might have put the Anti-Life Equation into him because of some prophecy about the first man on Themyscira is supposed to save or destroy the world, but we also find out from Myrina's protests that Stevey boy might not have been the first man there.  

That's it for this Justice League: Darkseid War Special and ultimately it was a decent read even though we had a lot of stuff rehashed at us.  While we do get a bit more of Grail's story and a tiny bit at the end to move our story forward, this seems to act more as a refresher than anything else or even just something to keep us in a holding pattern so we don't riot because of how delayed Justice League has been.  While the new bits of information were small, they were still pretty epic in what they'll mean for the future of this story and I'm glad that we got this issue even if it was just to keep me up to date with what's going on in the story, while holding a carrot out in front of me to keep me interested...... because it worked.  Like you'd expect from Justice League, the art in this issue was awesome and even though the Power Ring stuff seemed short to me, it was made larger than life because of the creative team involved.  

Bits and Pieces:

Have you been thinking to yourself that we haven't gotten enough Power Ring and Grail in our normal Justice League title?  Well, if that's the case than this issue is for you.  That's right, we get these characters running the show for this special and while some of it seems old hat, there's enough new stuff here to keep you interested and with fantastic art all the way through, at least you know you'll be giving your peepers some pleasure.  

7/10