Justice League Unlimited #21 // Review
Batman is addressing everyone everywhere. (Kinda. Okay: so it’s an exaggeration. He IS addressing every available member of the team, which is a LOT of people.) Brainiac Queen is on the loose and there’s no telling where she could be or what she might be doing. So things have gotten really, really dangerous for everyone on the Earth in Justice League Unlimited #21. Writer Mark Waid juggles a whole lot of different characters in another entertaining issue that is brought to the page by the art team of Dan Mora and Fico Ossio. Color comes to the page courtesy of Tamra Bonvillain.
And while most of the team is dealing with the intense threat of a powerful villain who could literally be anywhere at any time, there’s a smaller contingent of the team that’s still stuck on a planet populated by an entire ecosystem that they’ve accidentally given superpowers to. Hawkgirl and Guy Gardner are at each other’s throats, but Metamorpho is there to keep them from killing each other. Meanwhile, Mr. Terrific is convinved that they’re best course of action would be some kind of a tactical retreat. There’s an issue with that...and it comes in the form of one of Justice Leagues oldest foes.
Waid is juggling a hell of a lot in this issue. The two main plots come across strikingly well. There are, however, a lot of characters that don't get anywhere near the kind of time that they really should if they're going to be in an issue of this series. The pacing is really impressive. The pages just fly by. It's remarkable that the plot is capable of coming across as being coherent given how quickly everything is moving. Waid’s a veteran, though. He knows what he’s doing. Everything is very sharply and clearly defined in the script without going into a whole lot of lengthy exposition or anything like that.
And, of course, it would really take George Perez-level artist to bring across this many characters this quickly without it all blurring together into a big, hopeless mess. Mora and Ossio are a really good team with respect to this. The patient of the script is pain's taking. We brought to the page in a way that feels fresh and original without obstructing the overall rhythm of the script. Bonvillain’s colors mix quite well on the page. There are A LOT of different elements in play that could have all clashed horribly on the page were it not for Bonvillain’s rather precise work.
Waid continues to do impressive work with a large, open-ended series with a ridiculously large number of characters. There’s no one plot element in the issue that feels terribly original, but Waid and company bring it all to the page with the kind of speed and precision that keep it all so entertaining that it doesn’t really matter how many times these characters and plot elements and themes have it the page in the past.
