Justice League #51 Review

Planet Sized Problem

Written By: Jeff Loveness

Art By: Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, Romulo Fajardo Jr., Tom Napolitano

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: August 18, 2020

It's time for another arc in our rotation of creators keeping this title afloat until it starts meaning something again and for this outing, we're going to see what Jeff Loveness brings to the table with his story of the Black Mercy planet, which could be pretty cool. Just the idea of taking something like the Black Mercy and upping the scale of it to a Mogo sized level should be pretty interesting, especially since our entire Justice League is going up against it........ Sadly though, our entire Justice League at the moment is just the Trinity plus John Stewart and Barry Allen. Let's jump into this issue and see what happens to the team that has everything. Let's check it out.

Like I said in my intro, the idea of a planet of Black Mercy sounds compelling as hell and almost ups the ante of the substance to a degree that feels like what Aliens did for the original Alien movie, but what we get here sadly is a bit of a bore. We spend the majority of this issue with our heroes just flying a ship through space while having conversations that don't really feel like the characters and throughout this, we have the Planet of the Black Mercy giving us narration that just kind of wears out its welcome because of how monotonous it is and how it really doesn't do anything new for our story.

Imagine this, you have a narration that I couldn't help but read as droll as Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey that just talks about our heroes being heroes while we see flashbacks to them throughout their lives. Thankfully though, once we get to the planet things start picking up because we actually see our heroes put in a situation that resembles a straight-up horror flick and it saved a bit of this comic for me because I actually found myself interested in how our team might actually get out of this one alive......... it's just a shame that it took so long to get to something interesting because a lot of this book just feels like padding.

All in all, the art in this issue is really great, but even with that a lot of it is just flashbacks of old moments that our heroes have gone through or just them sitting around. Like the story, it isn't until they reach the planet that things really start to shine because there's finally something to do. That's the biggest problem with this story, it takes too long to actually get started and relies on over narration to keep you interested, but sadly, it's not that interesting, not to mention that the voices for Barry Allen and John Stewart come off really odd to me in this issue. I do look forward to seeing what happens next here, but I just hope that it amps up the storytelling and gives us something exciting.

Bits and Pieces:

While I look forward to what this planet of the Black Mercy story will bring us overall, this first part came off a bit lackluster in that it took too long to actually get to the story, while padding out the first half with over narration that was just plain boring. The art is great here though and it ends on a strong note, I just wish that it had more of a story to tell in this first chapter.  

6.3/10