Trinity Civil War: Justice League #22 Review

Look: I am never gonna hate too much on a comic book that gives me Superman fighting with Captain Marvel. And yes, I know that DC wants me to call him Shazam now. But I am old and crochety, and frankly? I am proud of the self-education I gave myself, back in the days of the 1970s Shazam! Saturday morning TV show, to call the character “Captain Marvel” rather than “Shazam.” Because I didn’t want to look stupid to the older comic book fans who lived on my block. And they did call me stupid when I called that guy “Shazam.” You hearing me, DC Comics? You listening me to digress like a sonofabitch?

Anyway. Justice League #22, the opening of the long-teased The Trinity War crossover event, gives me a good couple of pages of Superman and Captain Marvel tuning each other up. And as someone who remembers, as a young kid, waiting feverishly for Justice League of America #137 to show up in the spinner rack of my local corner grocery store (where they knew me by name and asked me to stop pretending the lime Ring Pops were Green Lantern power rings if I wasn’t gonna pay for one), seeing that makes me remember my youth and makes me predisposed to like a comic book.

And I did like Justice League #22… up to a point. As a kickoff point for a big crossover, it gives us a few examples of solid and believable characterization (and a few that aren’t – would someone at DC decide what kind of person Superman really is in the New 52?), it drops enough groundwork to let us believe that we’ll finally get the full story on Pandora – the mystery woman from all the initial first issues of the New 52, remember? – and if gives some good, solid, hot, sweet, superhero-on-superhero action.

If it has an Achilles’ Heel, it is that it is currently 2013. Which means that any continuity-wide story that features half of its superheros kicking the crap out of the other half is doomed to feel kinda like a lift from Marvel’s Civil War, or last year’s Avengers Vs. X-Men.

Some easy rube has ventured to Madame Xanadu’s fortune telling storefront, looking for some advice on some particularly vivid nightmares she’s been having. So Xanadu starts throwing down tarot cards from a deck she must have picked up as an exclusive at Comic-Con, since all the cards correspond directly to members of the DC Universe. Such as “The Boy,” which gives Xanadu a vision of Billy Batson deciding to fly into Kahndaq to give Black Adam a decent burial because, well, he’s a kid. One time I gave a Luke Skywalker action figure a decent burial because it lost its lightsaber insert. Besides, Black Adam wasn’t a common wino or hooker, but this is all beside the point. Anyway, then Xanadu gets a Superman card that shows her Supes and Wonder Woman arguing about whether some criminals deserve to die, and then a card for Amanda Waller, who’s getting ready to add Doctor Light to the Justice League of America to help take down the Justice League if necessary. Then we get Pandora suddenly appearing in front of Superman to hand him her box (The actual Pandora’s Box; get your mind out of the gutter) which turns him into a real dick for a minute because it turns out Superman isn’t as pure of heart as Pandora or Mark Waid might believe. Then the Justice League flies to Kahndaq to stop Captain Marvel from starting an international incident, and then the Justice League of America flies to Kahndaq to stop the Justice League from starting a bigger international incident, and then Superman kinda kills a guy.

If my plot summary sounds like it’s making fun of the story, it’s only because there is one hell of a lot going on in this book. In 34 story pages, we jump from Xanadu to Shazam to Superman to Pandora to Amanda Waller to The Question and back to Xanadu, which is a lot of plot for the reader to digest. But it’s not an overwhelming experience (except for, say, someone trying to summarize it in less than 500 words); writer Geoff Johns does good work weaving various characters and settings and points together to get most of the key players together in Kahndaq to, well, kick the shit out of each other.

The tricky part is, I think part of why I was able to keep up with what was happening and why was because I’ve been reading a lot of DC Comics since the New 52 started. There are story elements here that won’t make a lot of sense to anyone grabbing the book off the shelf to take a shot at DC’s first big event since the reboot. It makes total sense for The Phantom Stranger and The Question to make appearances along with Pandora if you’ve been following along with DC for a while… but for Joe Blow in off the street, when it comes to DC Comics, the word “Trinity” implies Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. And while I recognize that the name “Trinity War” is meant to be a cool, double-meaning title, Senor Blow isn’t gonna have the faintest idea why Pandora, The Stranger or The Question are around. So while there’s some decent meat here for the DC fan, it’s not what you’d call all that inviting to someone new to the line.

And then there’s the elephant in the room,,, which is as good a way to describe Superman killing a guy as any other way. First of all, seeing Superman flat out and in cold blood kill a guy and see the consequences might have been an interesting enough plot point to keep even non-DC readers on board for future issues of the crossover… but that ain’t what happens here. Johns and artist Ivan Reis give us one big old splash panel of Superman incinerating a guy’s face with his heat vision… but then Johns only gives us about four panels for it to sink in before telling us that it’s a big con and that Superman didn’t really kill anyone. It’s a strange choice; like I said, the image of Superman executing someone is unexpected and arresting, but to eliminate all ambiguity almost immediately seems like a huge storytelling opportunity just left on the table. Seeing a few comic books where Superman is wracked by guilt over losing control sounds as interesting as hell… but you let half of the air out of the balloon when the reader definitively knows that it’s just a grift.

But you know what worked, and was enough on its own to keep me coming back to this crossover? Billy Batson’s characterization. Simply put: I bought it. Johns delivers a really believable kid who’s just trying to do the right thing in the middle of politics and posturing and treachery, and I think I can already see Billy and his innate belief in simple fair play winding up being a key point in this story. The tricky part is that, having a character who, in a childlike manner, just wants to do the right thing and believes in fair play, makes everyone else look like a real fucking dick. Even before Superman apparently executes a dude, we see him suckerpunching Shazam before he even does anything. Which is, in fact, a dick move. And to see Billy’s childlike glee over actually landing a punch on Superman, followed immediately by Superman and Wonder Woman getting all pissy and threatening, makes the Justice League look like, well, jerks. Again: an interesting choice, but I liked Billy enough that I’m willing to tune back in just to see him eventually call Batman a dink.

Ivan Reis’s art is in his usual style: fine-lined and with a ton of detail. His up-close facial expressions are detailed and full of obvious emotion, although at a distance, they tend to flatten out a bit. In general, Reis’s pacing is solid and his panel layout easy to follow (although there was one panel, close up of Shazam and Superman, where it took me a couple of reading to recognize that Wonder Woman was just off-center and actually contributing to the dialog), even through a couple of souble-page layouts. And you’d think that a book like this, with a cast of dozens, would fall outside of Reis’s wheelhouse, but you’d be wrong: I saw at least three full on female ass shots in there! Look, I make fun of the cheesecake stuff I see in some of DC’s more detailed artists’ work, but Reis doesn’t let it get in the way of the storytelling, and from generally good, solid comic art… but man, that panel where Superman coldcocks Shazam looks like Superman is trying to finish the fight before he shits his pants.

This review has gotten a little far afield from where I thought it was going when I started it. I thought I’d be spending a lot more time on how it looks like The Trinity War was shaping up to look like a Civil War knockoff, and make no mistake: a lot of the plot we’ve seen seemed like a way to get superheroes to punch on each other. And I also thought I’d be a little more enthusiastic about the main characters in the Justice League… but between Shazam and the dude what Superman seems to incinerate, the most sympathetic characters we’ve seen so far are, frankly, ill-treated by the heroes of the book. But one thing has stuck with me, not only through the review, but from the book, and that’s Billy Batson’s characterization. I just liked the kid; I liked how he tried to do right by his first, greatest enemy, I liked how he never threw the first punch (while never shrinking from a fight), and I like his sense of fairness. And I can’t wait to see him call Flash “Speedy McNarc,” and Aquaman, “Fishfucker.”

Yeah, there’s a lot of plot here, and not much to ease in people who haven’t been following the New 52… but if Johns can keep Shazam’s character this compelling, and keep the character front and center? This is gonna be worth reading.