Justice League #35 Review

For What It's Worth

Written by: Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV
Art by: Francis Manapul, Hi-Fi, and Tom Napolitano
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 6, 2019

Justice League #35 is here and for all of you who bet on Justice in this whole Justice/Doom War thing, I have some bad news for you.  It looks like Doom took it after all.  I'd love to make you feel better by telling you that it was a photo finish, but it was not.  Sure, Justice went down swinging, but this contest was over at half-time if you ask me.  What, you aren't asking me?  Oh well, then on with the review...



The issue starts off with a guy walking around carrying signs, but these do not say "hooray for our side"...unless of course, you are on the side of Doom.  Personally, I don't like to take sides, I am more of a Middle Melvin kind of guy, but Justice has Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman and Doom has a genius gorilla with a baby!  That's a tie in my book!

The fanatics out front of the Hall of Justice seem to change their minds a bit when they see Luthor's Doom sigil light up the sky and even though I may be a bit desensitized by it by now, I still think the homeless-looking guy with his Luthor sign should grow a pair!

Inside the Hall, Superman does think it was a photo finish and wants to know what went wrong and the only real answer is that Will Payton bit the dust...or got squashed up by the Mother of all our problems, Perpetua.  After Jarro gets all Last Supper and Kamandi shows us all that he had way to much free time on his hands without the imagination to match, we catch up a bit with the team.  Aquaman and Mera have an awkward moment, the JSA announces they are here to stay and Batman rains on Superman's parade by wanting to go and save Hawkgirl, not join the fight with her.  I know that all this is pretty quick, but at least we get the idea the JSA are at least sticking around for now.  I could do with more Wildcat in my life right now, for sure!

We continue with Miss Martian acting almost exactly like Obi-Wan when Alderaan blew up and the DCU (and us) getting to see how widespread the Doom Sigil really is.  I half expected Mick Jagger and David Bowie (too soon?) to come out "dancing in the streets" and announcing all the locations we see!  Listen, I know that the current continuity is twisted up like a pretzel, but Earth-3 looked way off to me!  Other than that, everything else was cool and I'm with Calvin Ellis...a Crisis is coming!

It's obvious that just showing us some cool characters isn't enough for Snyder and Tynion, there needs to be stakes here and that means someone is going down!  I won't spoil the who and the what, but there are now only 51 Earths in the Multiverse. 

After a tiny hint that Perpetua isn't fully charged yet, she gathers the team (Luthor and Mobius) and draws up the gameplan.  She seems to be going the route of Bill Belichick...cheat, even when you're winning!  Hey, she may not play fair, but since when would you think Doom would?

Things wind down with Kendra blaming herself for everything (as she should) and once again when you think the good guys might get even a minor victory, it's snatched from them at the last second.  Lex doesn't have time to revel in any of this, though, as the cliffhanger shows that he is all too willing to finally prove himself to his new mother!

I liked this issue way more than the last couple and while I would still like our heroes to win at least a little bit, seeing Perpetua's evil plan makes sense and I can't wait to see what Lex has got planned coming up.  I still am counting on him to be a crazy wildcard in all of this before it ends.  On top of all that, we will have to update our Multiversal maps and that's big.  Finally, with all the talks of a Crisis coming up that will lead us to the next big thing at DC, this is all pretty exciting to see.

Francis Manapul's art is exciting to see as well and he is one of my favorite artists so it's no surprise I like the art in this issue.  It's less about the Justice and Doom teams and more about the Multiverse here and Manapul handles it with ease.

Bits and Pieces:

After being a bit underwhelmed lately, this issue gets me back on board.  Snyder and Tynion up the stakes and finally show us what Perpetua is capable of doing.  Plus, we find out how she plans to keep her power and it all makes sense in such a devious way.  Throw in Francis Manapul art and there is a lot to like in this issue.

8.8/10