Justice League #39 Review and *SPOILERS*

Not All Publicity Is Good Publicity 

Written By: Christopher Priest

Art By: Ian Churchill, Alex Sollazzo, Willie Schu

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: February 21, 2018

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

The People Vs. The Justice League continues with this issue, where the trust of the people has been severely damaged after a nun was killed during a Justice League operation.  To make matters worse, our heroes are also up against The Fan, a man who's the biggest fan of the Justice League, who is willing to do anything to maintain their roles as heroes....... including murder.  The biggest problem with this is...... you know, besides the whole murder thing, is that he is a master of disguise and goes about his dirty work while looking like our heroes.  He's smart, dangerous and worst of all, he knows everything about our heroes so even if the Justice League takes him down, what will they do with him.  Let's jump into this issue and see if The Fan strikes again and if the people start changing their minds about the people who have protected them for years.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a flashback, where Aquaman is wondering the dessert after The Fan teleported him away two issues ago and in this flashback we see The Fan approach our hero and tell him that he isn't like the rest of the other heroes because he has nothing to lose from the information that he's acquired over the years of watching the League........ It's also funny that The Fan's disguise is that of Jason Momoa's Aquaman.  Once that's all said and done, it's time to get back to the court hearings at the US House of Representatives, where Cyborg, now the acting Chairman of the Justice League is taking the stand and being introduced to the Justice's League's lawyer, Regina Cole.

While Vic is in court it seems that Batman and his JLA are in over their head when a derailed train full of various chemicals threatens a nearby town.  After calling in for backup......... and after Vic is confronted by the human persona of Martian Manhunter.......... where at the same time Jessica is confronted by Martian Manhunter proper, we have the Justice League go in to help the JLA, sans Simon and Jessica, who Cyborg sent on a mission with our favorite Martian.  It gets kind of confusing at this point, especially since The Fan is a master of disguise and also that Priest refuses to hold your hand during any of his writing so I'm taking everything at face value here.

In the end, The Justice League and the JLA handle the situation with the derailed train and seem to save the day, but while all of this is going on, the tweets about how the Justice League is only helping the rich, white part of town are flying and by the end of the issue, I'm left wondering if the Justice League saved the day or not because between the writing and the art, I'm not sure.  One thing I'm sure of though is that Cyborg should have really checked out the credentials of their lawyer Regina Cole because when our hero teleports down to the scene, we see that she's really The Fan in disguise.

That's it for this issue of Justice League and it seems that my dislike for this arc continues here because while I really enjoy Christopher Priest's style of storytelling in Deathstroke, here it just feels off and ends up feeling way more confusing than it should ever be.  Not to mention that we go backwards and forwards through time due to the storytelling, with a guy who can look like anyone of the Justice League.  I really enjoyed the art in this issue, but by the end, I'm not sure if it was able to convey what was happening here because I felt very confused about what actually went down during the big threat that our heroes had to face in this issue.  All in all, I'm not a fan of this arc and this issue didn't do anything to get me on the trolley.

Bits and Pieces:

I continue to be disappointed with this title and I don't know if it's all in the writing or a combination of that and the art because by the end of the issue I wasn't sure what had actually gone down in the story and the flashbacks thrown in don't help the situation either.  One positive of this issue though is that the voices of the characters are starting to feel right, but besides that, this series continues to be underwhelming.

6/10