Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong 2 #1 // Review
Barry and Iris are getting married. It’s a big wedding in Missouri. Some of the guests are in their secret identities some of them aren’t. (It’s kind of complicated.) Barry hasn’t told his fiancee yet. He’s going to do so. (Really.) Something gets in the way, though. Lex Luthor has gone missing. Barry and company need to go to work. The big talk with Iris is going to have to wait in Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong 2 #1. Writer Brian Buccellato and artist Christian Duce return to a DC Universe of heroes and monsters with colorist Luic Guerrero.
There’s a complex deep in the Nevada desert. Lex’s power came-on. Now he’s gone. The Justice League goes to investigate. Barry does recon. The good news: it’s “just your average super-secure underground science facility.” (Not all that uncommon in most super hero universes.) The bad news? There’s a boom tube down there. There’s a portal to somewhere else that’s been used quite recently. If the Justice League is going to figure out what happened, they’re going to need to fire-up the tube and investigate. There’s no telling what they’ll find when they open the portal. They’re going-in blind.
Buccellato moves the story along with great efficiency from the opening wedding to the final cliffhanger splash page. There’s quite a lot going on in between. Buccellato keeps the scenes paced quite well as the Justice League finds itself on a trail of unscrupulous super-powered types working with matters far beyond their capabilities. They’re dealing with forces on Skill Island and there is dissension within their ranks. Buccellato moves around the action quite a bit in a well-modulated ensemble adventure that suggests that good things might be on the way as the second mega-crossover series makes its way across the rack.
Duce works well with some of the more iconic characters in the DC universe. Serious moments of interpersonal drama make their presence on the page in between moments of really intense action. The size and scope of the big monsters don’t feel quite as intense as they should. There IS a very dynamic fight between a kaiju-sized King Shark that doesn’t quite have the kind of impact that it could have had, but the action hits the page quite well even without a sense of the immensity of what’s going on.
The series opens with some very clever opening moments. There’s a lot going on that feels like it might be an interesting fusion between different genres, but it’s going to e kind of difficult (as always) for tiny superheroes and huge monster mega-stars to find a way to share the same narrative space. Things can get very, very complicated when differing elements of heroism, villainy and monstrous force are all made to share the same comics page. DC did a pretty good job with the first series It’ll be interesting to see if they can maintain momentum throughout their second series.
