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Geoff Johns, Rags Morales, Don Kramer, Michael Bair, Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-984-0
Super-heroes get all geo-political in this latest compilation of the Justice Society (JSA #56-58 and Hawkman #23-25) as a breakaway branch of members and ex-members invade a Middle-Eastern country to depose a monstrous and tyrannical dictator and liberate his oppressed subjects. This naturally leads to the right-thinking team-mates having to go in and stop them. It is a long cherished tenet of super-hero ideology that the good guys don’t mess with political injustice and make no lasting changes.
The result is the usual punch-up and soul-searching all around, culminating in a portentously inconclusive stalemate while every troubled, heroic stalwart reconsiders his/her/its position. In keeping with the new spirit of realism, there are even some casualties, but they’re only among the “misguided†heroes and probably only to facilitate the freeing up of the brand name for the next round of re-treads/relaunches.
It’s also impossible to escape the rather heavy-handed political allusions to America’s dubious foreign policy adventures, but by fictionalizing such commentary surely the risk exists that one also trivializes it? As ill-informed as many Americans seem, is a comic-book really the best place to air such views? Especially if you can’t even name the countries you’re ‘discussing’?
Glossy, pretty, fatuous and ultimately, rather vacuous.
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