Justice League Dark #12 Review

Believe In Belief

Written By: James Tynion IV

Art By: Alvaro Martinez Bueno, Raul Fernandez, Brad Anderson, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 26, 2019

It's time to get Dark in here as we jump into another installment of the Justice League Dark, where we previously saw the majority of the magical wielders in the DCU held captive by the Lords of Order.  Their only options, die or have their magic and all memories of magic taken away from them.  Not much of a choice really, but for some it seemed like the only way out.  Thankfully, we also saw Wonder Woman and Zatanna confront Mordru in an attempt to get the power to fight against these so-called Lords of Order and with Mordru's magic and the Ruby of Life, we saw these two heroes transformed into the new Lords of Chaos.  Hopefully this new aspect will allow our heroes to turn the tide of battle.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

For anyone who's read comics for a bit, I'm sure you understand that some comics read fast and some are a slog to get through, while other times you just get a comic that feels just right..... and very rarely, you'll get a dense comic that just has a lot to say and you find yourself hanging on every word.  Thankfully, this issue is the latter and for all the aspects of magic and story that this issue brings, it just seemed to up the ante with each turn of the page.  

For this issue of Justice League Dark we continue the story of our heroes taking on the Lords of Order, with their new power of Chaos and it's just a sight to behold.  All the members of our team get in on the action and we finally have the end to this long bump in the road that once on the other side we can see the fight of the Otherkind coming.  With that, we also have this story told with flashbacks to when Wonder Woman first decided to take on the responsibility of leading a Justice League that deals with the magic of the world and how this is inter-played between the action of the present is done really well.  Yeah, it's long winded at times, but the strengths of this storytelling completely outweigh its weaknesses and I found myself on the edge of my seat as I was soaking all this power of belief and the breaking of the rules of the Universe in.

All in all, I loved the art in this issue and found the pacing to be something that really sucked me into the story, while the reveals and outcomes to fights wowed me along the way.  Yeah, it took us a year to finally come to the end of this story, with all of its bumps along the way that led us in different directions, but now that it's here, this is a very satisfying conclusion, but my biggest fear is for all the feels that this issue brings, its only going to be short-lived as we now have to go after the real threat in this book, the Otherkind.  My biggest complaint about the issue overall is that the Lords of Chaos angle seems to be gone going forward and that's a shame because if that's the case it was only here as a prop.  With that being said though, this was still a great issue all around and probably one of my favorites from this series.

Bits and Pieces:

It's a little cliche, but the art and story come together to completely compliment one another as we're given a damn fine conclusion to our Lords of Order story line, that had me holding my breath in between pages as the intensity of the battle rose.  I had a great time this issue and can't wait to see where we go from here.

8.5/10