JLA #94

By: Tony Whitt
Review Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2004

All around the country, someone is kidnapping teenagers possessing the metagene. In Gotham, Batman discovers a symbol at the site of the murder of one such teenager. In Keystone City, the Flash discovers the same symbol left behind by a kidnapping victim. And in Metropolis, Superman is overpowered by a creature helping the kidnappers, mind-controlled by one of the teenagers herself, and then - brace yourself - bitten by a vampire. What is the nature of the threat the JLA faces in their latest adventure?

Oh, hell if I know, and I'm even less sure that I care. I fear this will be the reaction of all those comics fans like myself who were eagerly anticipating the start of the six-part "Tenth Circle" storyline written by John Byrne and Chris Claremont and drawn by Byrne and Jerry Ordway. It seemed like the very recipe for success that this book has been needing. But in retrospect, so did Denny O'Neill's contribution to the book, and I haven't heard any hurrahs about that, either.

For one thing, this hardly seems like an issue of JLA at all. The book opens with a three-thousand year old Native American shaman named Manitou Raven - I kid you not - prophesying a great evil hunting across the land, just before he's swallowed up by a swarm of shadow bats. Having just panned the first issue of the new ALPHA FLIGHT series last week, I couldn't help thinking that this played out like an opening scene from an issue of Byrne's original ALPHA FLIGHT series, even down to the character's penchant for wasting his last words on exposition. It could equally have fit into the opening of an X-MEN book from the 80s - the exposition at the beginning is certainly wordy enough for one. It sets an odd tone for the rest of the book - even as the scene switches to Gotham and encounter Batman discovering the aforementioned murdered girl, you get the feeling that you're not reading JLA but the first issue of some crossover in which the Marvel side of the team-up has not yet shown up.

Probably best that they don't show, though, as they'd be signing on for an overly complicated and somewhat illogical story, with characterizations that are just that little bit off. (Ray Palmer, for example, doesn't know what ViCAP, the federal criminal database, is. How long has he been in this biz, anyway?) The JLA's activities are being watched by some mysterious group but we're given no clues as to who they are, which is bad enough. Even worse: the only way I knew they were watching all this is from the advance press for this storyline, since there's nothing to indicate this in the script itself. And then there's the villain of the piece, a vampire named - wait for it - Crucifer. And just when you think things couldn't get worse, the mind-controlled Superman is bitten by said Crucifer because, as the vampire explains, Superman is vulnerable to all things mystical. Now I know how all those Thor fans felt - not only does this stagger credulity, it's simply dumb.

The only real positive here is the artwork, but even that is uneven. There's a certain amount of pleasure in seeing Superman drawn by Byrne again, for instance. Readers of the JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE WITH JOHN BYRNE CREATING ROBIN will have trouble shaking off flashbacks to that book, though, especially when the purple clad teenagers in Crucifer's cult (if such it is) show up. Additionally, many of the layouts have to compete with the excessive amount of verbiage on each page - another element of those old X-MEN books that long-time fans conveniently forget when they wax nostalgic over them without actually rereading them. In short, this first issue of the "Tenth Circle" saga is a confused mess, and it doesn't bode well for the future of the storyline. Oh, well - at least we'll only get six issues of it. Perhaps the hundredth issue will finally bring something worth reading this series again for.

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