Justice League Dark #24 Review

Daddy!

Written By: Ram V

Art By: Amancay Nahuelpan, June Chung, Rob Leigh

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: July 21, 2020

With magic changed, but back in action and the Parliaments of Life put back into place, it's finally time for our Justice League Dark to get back to taking on the Upside Down Man.  Is the team ready though?  At every turn, the Upside Down Man has spanked them hard and with John Constantine going off on his own after his actions in the last issue, we're down a member and down in morale, even with Swamp Thing's return.  Let's jump into this issue and see what our JLD's plan is going forward.  Let's check it out.

It's time to get everyone back on the same page this issue because the Upside Down Man is out there...... and only the Justice League Dark can stop him.  We don't really get that though.  Everyone is going through their own personal crisis or off just doing their own things and the only real thing that we really deal with in this issue, besides for seeing people doing their own things is Zatanna trying to open a doorway to the Upside Down so that she can get her father back.  Beyond that, we have Wonder Woman standing on top of the Hall of Justice sulking because of her actions or her inactions to everything that's gone down in this book.

It's weird though because Swamp Thing seems to be new to the point that he has all the other Parliaments working within him and he seems to be on a mission and we're not dealing with this aspect at all.  This seems strange as hell because it totally seems like the coolest thing we could be dealing with right now....... and the idea that it's brought up, only to have it tugged away from us feels kind of cruel.  Ultimately all we do this issue is have Wonder Woman and Zatanna go to the Upside Down after an entire issue of showing us what everyone else is up to.

All in all, I liked the art in this issue a lot, but while we have a cast of characters who are all doing something or dealing with something, there's not enough within these events to actually make up an entire issue because we just get a progress report through Detective Chimp and focus on Zatanna's daddy issues in a strange way that represents Zatanna to be dealing with some serious depression that all kind of goes away with a hug from Wonder Woman in the end.  We'll be finally doing something against the Upside Down Man in the next issue, but here, we just kind of stand around in the end while the rest of the JLD are up to some interesting things.

Bits and Pieces:

While I dig the art here and the idea that we will finally be moving forward with the Upside Down Man in the next issue, we kind of sacrifice this one by standing around and doing nothing until the end, while the rest of the JLD are off doing interesting things.  Hopefully, going forward things start picking up when dealing with the big bad of this series or we start focusing on Swamp Thing because these aspects desperately need addressing.

6.5/10