Justice League of America #4 Review and *SPOILERS*

FREEDOM!

Written By: Steve Orlando

Art By: Ivan Reis, Scott Hanna, Joe Prado, Marcelo Maiolo, Clayton Cowles

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: April 12, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

We've come to the end of our journey when it comes to this first arc of the JLA and in that time we've seen........ Well, we've seen the Extremists come from Earth-8 and seriously kick the shit out of our heroes before teleporting to the country of Kravia, where they quickly took over with the approval of the government and in the previous issue, we saw the JLA lead a resistance to take back Kravia from these invaders from a parallel dimension.  Yeah, I thought that the JLA entering foreign soil would start a damn war, but apparently none of that matters because they've split up to take on each of the Extremists and with that freeing areas of the country, while Batman, Vixen and the freedom fighter leader named Bogna take the fight to Lord Havok himself.  Let's jump into this issue and see how our heroes plan on winning the day.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with us getting a little recap about what went down last issue, with our heroes fighting individual Extremists.......... and well.......... our heroes win.  Yeah, for what we get here, it's really that simple.  The JLA take down the Extremists and we move on to our feature bout with Batman, Vixen and Bogna against Lord Havok.....  Yeah, Bogna doesn't really do much in this fight.

So yeah, in the previous issue we saw Batman grab that shield with Miss Liberty's face imprinted on it and it seemed like that was going to be a big deal when it came to defeating Lord Havok, but that never really happened.  We get Lord Havok ranting on and on about what Kravia needs and what the world needs really and that thing is control and he intends to be the man to bring that control to the populace.  Eventually, the rest of our JLA team show up, except for The Ray, who's having a heart to heart with Dreamslayer, before the villain decides to change sides and teleport off to go and do some good, but we have the rest of the team showing up to take on Lord Havok.......... and they don't really do much.  

In the end, Vixen takes down Havok with the power of a poisonous frog and Bogna reclaims her country and puts the Extremists into custody.  Back at The Sanctuary, we see that Batman's still keeping mementos because he's hung the Crusader Shield and the axe that Havok used that formerly belonged to the hero Wundajin of Earth-8 in the base.......... and seems to somehow know all about them.  Yeah, I don't get it and from this continuity it seems that Grant Morrison's Multiversity ain't shit anymore, but we end this issue with seeing the events of Havok killing American Crusader and that his teammate Blue Jay shrank down small enough to what looks like the Microverse, where Ray Palmer is still missing.

That's it for this issue of JLA and boy let me tell you, some of this dialog is just terrible.  The characters say strange ass things at strange ass times and come off hokey as shit with their holier than thou speeches.  Even without that though, this issue really plays off pretty weak after having such a setup.  No consequences to our heroes for invading a foreign land, no real payoffs with the shield, it totally messed up the continuity of Multiversity and besides for the great art and the idea that something big is coming at us in the future, there really isn't much to be happy about when it comes to this issue.  

Bits and Pieces:

Wow, did this conclusion to our first arc leave me wanting more....... I mean way more.  The dialog was terrible, the fights were lackluster and all in all these Extremists don't really come off as the threat that they did in the first issue to this arc.  At the end of the day the only real thing that you can be happy about is the promise of big things coming at us in the future and the fact that the art looked great.

4.8/10