Justice League #75 Review
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A review by Jesse Baker
Justice League #75
A Review by Jesse Baker
With the clusterfuck that is the current DC Universe, how can DC salvage the shit show which is stymied by residuals of the abortion that was DiDio’s (thankfully) aborted “5G” reboot? Why another Crisis!
So after a year of Bendis crapping up the place on the Justice League title, writer Joshua Williams comes in for a special anniversary issue that ends the current series and leads directly into “Dark Crisis”. Justice League #75 offers a vague recap of the events of Infinite Frontiers #0–6, Justice League Incarnate #1–5, as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, John Stewart, Zatanna, Hawkgirl, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Black Canary, Green Arrow, and Black Adam are summoned before a battered and beaten Justice League Incarnate.
For those who did not read Infinite Frontiers #0–6 and Justice League Incarnate #1–5: Darkseid, restored and renewed following the events of “Death Metal”, has sought out “The Great Darkness”; which is not connected to the Legion of the Super-Heroes story from the 80s featuring Darkseid, but the sluglike creature that turned into a hand who was described as the “original evil” in Alan Moore’s “American Gothic” story line in the pages of “Swamp Thing”. Darkseid seeks the power of the “Great Darkness” for himself. But in a showdown against a rival multiversal threat, “Multiversity” villain “The Empty Hand”, the monstrous universe corrupting “Empty Hand” reveals himself to be a part of the Great Darkness. And so was Darkseid, who is enslaved by the all consuming shadow of the Great Darkness and it’s harbinger of death: the former scientist and cursed hero Pariah from the original Crisis, “Crisis On Infinite Earths”.
At the end of Infinity Frontiers, Pariah revealed one of the biggest mysteries left unsolved from Grant Morrison’s “Multiversity”: What was “Multiverse 2”? In Infinite Frontiers #6, we learn that “Multiverse 2” was the lifeless worlds that made up the original pre-Crisis DC Universe. Reduced to planet-wide necropolis worlds, Pariah has become the Great Darkness’s henchman supreme in hopes of bringing about the end of all existence and stop the endless cycle of death and rebirth of the multiverse.
Meanwhile, in the last two issues of “Justice League Incarnate”, Williamson overwrote Scott Snyder’s own creation Perpetua, declaring “The Great Darkness” to the true architect of much of the carnage and misery that the DC Universe has suffered with past crisises and near crisises. Having broken Darkseid to the will of the “Great Darkness”, Pariah is ready to finish off all of existence.
And the Justice League dies…..
Not all of them, mind you. Black Adam survives and escapes to warn the rest of the DC Universe of the coming holocaust. But the Justice League summoned to help Justice League Incarnate fight Pariah die at the end of the issue. Not just by Pariah’s hand, but at the hands of his army of allies.
Not only does Pariah have the power of the Empty Hand and Darkseid at his command; but a legion of villains ranging from Eclipso, Neron, Ares, Doomsday, and Nekron at his side. A veritable “Who’s Who” of “End of World” level villains reduced to henchmen for the “Great Darkness”.
DC gave Justice League #75 much hype as the lead-in to Dark Crisis. But most fans know that the deaths of the Justice League will be temporary. Already people are comparing their deaths to that of the deaths of the Justice League back in the early 2000s story line “The Obsidian Age”; which featured a similar “Justice League dies” twist that is undone at the end of the story with the League restored to life.
Will Dark Crisis fix the damage of the post-Death Metal DC Universe? Does Discovery, new owners of DC Comics, have the balls to fire and blacklist cancerous hacks like Brian Michael Bendis, Tom Taylor, Tom King, Andrew Wheeler, Geoffrey Thorne, and other garbage writers who have been producing garbage and character assassination filled books since Death Metal wrapped up? I doubt it, but since DC is so quickly breaking glass one can only hope that DC realized how badly they fucked up and will purge these cancerous franchise ruining hacks from the company and restore the damage they did to the post-Rebirth status quo. But only time will tell if DC can save itself.
