Cleansing The Palate Of A Disappointing Climax: Forever Evil #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Today is the second anniversary of the launch of Crisis On Infinite Midlives, and as such, I am going to give myself the gift of one review where I don’t try to be clever and / or funny to warn you that spoilers will follow. Plus, cocks.

It is the roughly second anniversary of the launch of DC’s New 52, and DC is celebrating by releasing the first issue of their crossover Forever Evil, also known as the seventh issue of their crossover The Trinity War. And DC is celebrating the complete and utter dismissal of their entire 1986 through 2011 continuity and the subsequent triumphant relaunch of the Justice League by bringing back a part of that 1986 through 2011 continuity and implying that the triumphantly relaunched Justice League is dead.

Well, that’s one way of celebrating your anniversary, I guess. Some of us like champagne and… well, champagne. Other people like leather, rails of drugs and savage whippings. This story features the Crime Syndicate. So I’m gonna let you guess which column this one falls into.

Look, I’m not gonna lie to you: I wasn’t particularly psyched to see this issue when I walked into my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show the paying clientele “something else that’s Forever Evil, and also in 3D, and it’ll only cost you three bucks!” The whole way that The Trinity War ended by not ending, implying that the readers of that series would need to tune back in this week to see what seemed to be the inevitable Justice League / Crime Syndicate battle that should have concluded that miniseries, was really a bummer for me to read, and it shaded my anticipation of Forever Evil. It’s hard to get excited about an event when the last one really had no climax. An anniversary with no climax is nothing but a champagne drunk. And is usually followed by divorce proceedings. Or at least an angry, furtive yank in the morning.

Well, we don’t get that fight in Forever Evil #1. We don’t find out what really happened after the last panel of The Trinity War beyond the word of a pack of degenerate liars. But what we do get in its stead is a pretty decent little mystery of what exactly happened to the Justice League after the Crime Syndicate broke through Pandora’s Box, the implication that a couple of members of the Secret Society are gonna wind up being unpredictable flies in the ointment, the foreshadowing of involvement by the Teen Titans and Amanda Waller… and one fuck of a bad day for Nightwing.