Justice League #38 Review and *SPOILERS*

Stepping Down

Written By: Christopher Priest

Art By: Marco Santucci, Alex Sollazzo, Willie Schu

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: February 7, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Goddamn, this story is turning into something along the lines of Identity Crisis because as we saw in the previous issue, The Fan as he's being called, knows all about the Justice League because he was one of the men who helped build the Watchtower and is willing to do his damnedest to make sure that anyone who opposes his heroes are taken down.  Now, back to the Identity Crisis angle, it seems that even if the Justice League capture this villain, they don't know what to do with him because of all the things that he knows, but that will be a worry for another day because at the end of the previous issue, The Fan teleported the Justice League away with their own technology so that he can continue his fandom another day.  Let's jump into this issue and see if the Justice League can recover or if the team continues to fall apart as we've seen in previous issues.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Cyborg going around and picking everyone up he can after the last issue because apparently, not only did the fan teleport everyone away, but he sent them all to different locations around the world and now the Justice League has to regroup.  While that's going on, the Flash is trying his hardest to repair the Watchtower, but as he tells us over and over again in this issue, he's a scientist, not an engineer, so it's not going as smoothly as one would hope. 

Now that the team is back together, it's time to discuss what they're going to do with Batman after he made that bad call a few issues back and the League appoints Superman to do the talking and while that's going on, Flash is about to be killed.  That's right, while everyone is standing around talking, the Flash is on the Watchtower by himself and has to rescue a Lexcorp shuttle that tried to dock with the Watchtower........ for some reason, that didn't stick the docking procedure and now it's pilot is about to be pulled into space.  With that, Flash suits up in a space suit and talks on and on about things that I'll never know because while he may be a scientist........ I most certainly am not and what all of this comes down to is Flash is a dummy who over thought the whole situation in a bad space suit.

In the end, while Flash is trying to save both himself and the pilot of the shuttle, the team come back to the Watchtower, unaware about what's been going on, where they vote Batman out as Chairman of the League.  For some reason then, Batman takes off his costume, Jessica starts making out with him and Flash does a Flash thing that saves the day........ and while I was left thinking that this pilot was The Fan the whole time since Priest made it a point that Flash couldn't see who it was through the helmet...... it just turns out to be a regular pilot.  As our issue closes, Batman comes back in his civilian clothes and appoints Cyborg as the new leader of the Justice League.

That's it for this issue of Justice League and I'm fully expecting to get a bunch of shit for this because I just got done saying in my Batman review how that book is severely underwritten and now I'm about to say here that Justice League is just too damned overwritten.  That's right, apparently, I can't be happy, but the dialog of Flash with his science jargon is just too much and really just bogs the issue down and makes it unpleasant to read.  So yeah, overwritten.  Besides that though, this issue did move us into interesting territory with Batman leaving the team, I just don't understand all the steps in how we got there or why a lot of what went down here actually went down.......... like the Lexcorp pilot...... Jessica kissing Batman....... and Simon's shit talking on the rest of the team because they're not the trinity so that means that they don't matter.  It was just an odd issue overall with some decent moments thrown in to make this story bearable.  I really enjoyed the art, but it feels like Priest is just overthinking these characters as he goes into each new script.

Bits and Pieces:

While there are some decent moments in this issue, I find that the majority of it came out of nowhere and was really overwritten to the point that a lot of the fun was sucked out of the book.  The art in this issue is great and I still care about where our League will go from here, but a lot of this issue wasn't fun to read and I hope that changes going forward.

5.8/10