Justice League of America #5 Review and *SPOILERS*

Weapons Of The Gods

Written By: Steve Orlando

Art By: Andy MacDonald, John Rauch, Clayton Cowles

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: April 26, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Here at Weird Science, we've come to say that the first arc of any Rebirth series is something of a way for the writer to get their footing for what's to come because besides for a few instances, the first arcs have been a bit rough and with that in mind, I really hope that that's the case with this series because goddamn did the last arc not really go anywhere that I wanted to go.  Yeah, it started out with some promise and some cool ideas, but by the end it petered and left me just wondering....... why?  So yeah, when last we left our heroes, they had defeated the Earth-8 Extremists and brought freedom to an entire country.  Let's jump into this issue and see where our next arc takes us and see if the series can get better than it's been.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with the JLA opening the doors to their Sanctuary in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island to whoever would like to see what the heroes are up to and that includes a press conference all about it, where after the fact a reporter goes up to The Ray to ask him about what the League plans on doing about a Pennsylvania town that's been taken over by a black market weapons manufacturer.  Well, since they know about it now, the League apparently plans on going to Penn City and taking the baddie out, while alluding to Lobo's membership on the team as being something of a fleeting thing....... not to mention the forced distrust among the team, that never really works for me.

As our issue progresses, we see that the villain in charge of selling weapons in Penn City and essentially taking over the poor, dwindling town by getting the desperate people to work for him is none other than Aegeus............ Yeah, don't feel bad if you don't know this character, essentially he's a Wonder Woman villain, who we did see in the New 52, but this iteration is more of his Post Crisis version....... which really chaps my ass because there goes more continuity out of this series.  Anyway, Batman plans on using the JLA to systematically strike at Aegeus' base of operations, while sending Lobo in as pretty much a living battering ram to take out all the troops.  

In the end, we see that the Atom is already at Aegeus by the time that Lobo gets there and even though we see earlier in the comic that Batman wants him to take out Aegeus' power grid, it doesn't seem too weird having a hero taking on a bad guy, but after Lobo gets shot out of Aegeus' stronghold like a goddamn rocket, we learn that the Atom wasn't supposed to be there and now it's up to the team to save him, but first they have to take on an army of Aegeus' troops, riding chimeras, which apparently means that The Ray has to arm them up with light constructs to do it.

That's it for this issue of JLA and where I was hoping that the first arc was simply a way for Steve Orlando to get his footing and start telling some decent stories as he went along, after reading this issue I now realize that we're not going to get that.  I know the point of this book is for mortals to inspire mortals and take a team of superheroes to the streets and do some good on a less world threaten-y scale, but it just ends up coming off preachy about the woes of the world and how shitty life can be for ordinary people, while forcing this whole distrust among the team that never really works for me more than our characters just bringing it up over and over again.  Nothing is really shown to reflect that aspect and what we're left with is a book that comes off boring and with art that doesn't really do it for me.  Yeah, there's a few moments that give you the whole inspired feeling that it's going for in helping the common man, but for the most part it just falls flat.

Bits and Pieces:

JLA continues to disappoint with not only its dialog, but with its forced anti-trust among the team that never seems to come off like it should to me.  I wasn't a fan of the art in this issue and besides for a few moments where I started to feel what I think I'm supposed to reading this, the whole thing fell flat and continued to omit continuity from the New 52.  I'm getting tired of that.  

5.5/10