Sorry I skipped another week. Let's just say I was on "vacation" for the holiday weekend...
Justice League Volume 6 collects two story arcs,
Injustice League and
The Amazo Virus. The first basically serves as set-up for the second but it was originally published as two separate arcs. In trade, it basically reads like a two act story, albeit one with an overly long first act and rather rushed second act.
Injustice League opens with Luthor and the League taking down the Secret Society, who are still at large after the events of
Forever Evil. The rest of the story takes place before this point, and details how Lex came to join the League. After helping to save the world from the Crime Syndicate in
Forever Evil, Luthor is now seen as a hero by the public. Realizing that a threat is coming which is beyond his power to handle by himself, Lex now hopes to use his newfound positive public perception to join the League, so he can prepare the world for this looming threat. Despite subjecting himself to an interrogation by Wonder Woman, who uses the Lasso of Truth to determine that he is being genuine, the members of the League, and Superman in particular, still don't trust Lex and refuse to let him join. He reveals to Batman that he knows his secret identity, but Bruce still turns down his offer.
Meanwhile, Jessica Cruz has been overtaken by the Power Ring, which now uses her to attack innocents and the Doom Patrol shows up to stop her. Dr. Calder, the leader of Doom Patrol, wants to obtain the ring for his own ends. Lex Luthor and the Justice League also show up and there is soon a conflict between the various factions. Eventually Batman is able to reason with Jessica and she regains control of her faculties.
Batman proposes that the League should allow Lex to join them, so that they can keep an eye on him. Reluctantly, Wonder Woman and Superman agree. In the meantime Flash has begun to help Jessica control the ring and Shazam has also joined the League, at Luthor's suggestion, and has formed a friendship with Cyborg. Luthor has also hired Leonard Snart as his head of security at LexCorp, a position Snart hopes to use to pull "the biggest job of his life". It is also revealed, at the end of the story, that Luthor is secretly working with Owlman for some undisclosed agenda.
The Amazo Virus begins with Lex Luthor officially joining the League and LexCorp beginning a partnership with Wayne Enterprises. In exchange for his entry into the League, Luthor has agreed to give Bruce full access to LexCorp's files. He finds out that Lex is trying to recreate Bizarro and he meets Lex's sister, Lena. On the day of his induction into the League, Luthor is attacked by Neutron, who has been hired by a mysterious figure to assassinate him. During the fight a canister of the Amazo virus, which Luthor originally developed to take away Superman's powers, is released.
This virus becomes airborne and spreads throughout Metropolis, eventually mutating and infecting the human population, who gain metahuman abilities from it. Flash, Cyborg, Shazam, Aquaman and Jessica Cruz are all infected while trying to evacuate the city, leaving Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to deal with the outbreak. Lex tries to synthesize a cure but is unable to do so without the first infected human, Patient Zero. While fighting off some infected criminals in downtown metropolis, Batman and Superman encounter patient zero, who can mimic metahuman abilities, and they fight him. Batman becomes exposed to the virus while trying to extract Patient Zero's blood but, before succumbing to it, he and Superman subdue Patient Zero.
Meanwhile the same man who hired Neutron now hires an assassin named Bullet to kill Luthor. He attacks him at his lab and Snart shows up to stop him. Having survived the attack Luthor tells Superman and Wonder Woman that Patient Zero's blood has failed to help him synthesize a cure for the virus. He then reveals that he infected Superman with the virus four years ago but that it had no effect, meaning that Superman's blood may hold the key to finding a cure.
The virus then becomes sentient, controlling all the infected, including most of the League, and sending them to destroy Superman and Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman fights them off while Superman and Lex try to formulate an antidote using Clark's blood. Steve Trevor and Snart come to Diana's aid along with some A.R.G.U.S. soldiers and they eventually discover that Patient Zero is vulnerable to the freezing cold. Wonder Woman sends for Superman and he and Snart freeze Patient Zero. Lex then synthesizes a cure and the virus is stopped. Dozens of people have died but billions more are saved.
Patient Zero has become brain dead, allowing the virus to take over his body completely, and Lex is ordered by the president to keep him for study. Meanwhile, many of the people who were cured have retained their metahuman abilities, meaning the League now has many new metas to deal with. The story ends with Neutron agreeing to tell Luthor who hired him and Hal Jordan returning to earth to train Jessica Cruz.
I'm quickly becoming convinced that Lex Luthor saved this run. After his appearance in
Forever Evil the book became much more consistently well written and engaging. He lends a really enigmatic presence to the book. You can never quite be sure what his true intentions are or where his loyalties lie. Shazam's a fun addition to the team, even if he doesn't get much to do, and he and Cyborg have great chemistry together. There is also a lot of good interaction between Luthor, Snart and the various League members (especially the Trinity). Jessica Cruz's struggle to overcome the influence of the ring is also interesting, though it's a little underdeveloped and feels like a departure from the main story.
Injustice League is a pretty solid arc overall, though it's a little inconsequential and mainly serves as set-up.
The Amazo Virus on the other hand, feels rushed. After the virus is released in the prologue we jump forward in time and only find out that the League was infected through a voice-over by Lex Luthor. After Patient Zero is defeated during the climax, we jump forward
again to find that everyone has been cured, despite the fact that Lex said it would take weeks to synthesize enough of the cure for everyone and the situation seemed pretty urgent up to that point.
Doug Mahnke drew most of
Injustice League, assisted by Ivan Reis in the first issue, and he does a decent job. His facial work is a little crude for my taste but he does draw some dynamic action scenes. The first issue is a little inconsistent, it's easy to tell which pages were done by Reis and which were done by Mahnke, but that's pretty much par for the course for this run at this point. The epilogue of
Injustice League was penciled by Scott Collins. His art style is far more exaggerated and cartoony the Mahnke's. He provides the book with some of it's more quiet, human moments and it works fine on it's own but is a little jarring as a part of the larger story. The first issue of
The Amazo Virus was, once again, penciled by Mahnke and Reis, with similar results. The rest of the arc was penciled by Jason Fabok and it's pretty great. His art style is perfectly suited to the twisted, sickly visuals that accompany this story. There are some pretty epic splash panels (particularly with Wonder Woman) and the action is incredibly dynamic.
Justice League Volume 6: Injustice League is a bit of a mixed bag. While the characterizations are stronger than before, particularly in the first half of the book, the second half is a little rushed and unfocused. In the end it's an inconsistent penultimate volume in an inconsistent run.
Score: 7/10
Next week (hopefully): Darkseid War!
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