{"id":590,"date":"2007-07-04T20:10:25","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T20:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=590"},"modified":"2007-07-04T20:11:05","modified_gmt":"2007-07-04T20:11:05","slug":"jla-pain-of-the-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/07\/04\/jla-pain-of-the-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"JLA: Pain of the Gods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/jlapain.jpg\" alt=\"JLA: Pain of the Gods\" \/>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>By <strong>Chuck Austen<\/strong> &amp; <strong>Ron Garney<\/strong> (DC Comics)<br \/>\nISBN 1-84576-033-6<\/p>\n<p>Getting over a post-celebration hump is always tricky for a long-running comic series. An anniversary or centenary is usually celebrated by some large-scale cosmos-shaking exploit which it&#8217;s impossible to top, leading to an anti-climactic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153day in the life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d venture. In the case of <strong>Pain of the Gods<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c reprinting <strong>JLA<\/strong> #101-106 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Chuck Austen and Ron Garney take that hoary tradition, and indeed the equally tired plot of heroes&#8217; soul-searching angst after a failure to succeed, and run with it to produce a stirring and powerful exploration of humanity too often lacking in modern adventure fiction.<\/p>\n<p>Each chapter deals with an emotional crisis affecting an individual Leaguer. Superman, Flash and Green Lantern all fail to save someone, Martian Manhunter is forced to confront the life-long emotional barriers left after the death of his entire species, Wonder Woman faces her own mortality and Batman has to acknowledge that he can&#8217;t know and do everything alone.<\/p>\n<p>The entire story can be seen as a post 9\/11 treatise on fallibility and post-traumatic distress with superheroes acting as metaphors for Police and Firemen and the sub-plot of a seemingly mundane family seeking redress plays well against the tragic grandeur of the stars. It&#8217;s good to see a super hero book that thinks with a heart rather than act with gaudily gloved fists for a change.<\/p>\n<p>\u00c2\u00a9 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00c2\u00a0 By Chuck Austen &amp; Ron Garney (DC Comics) ISBN 1-84576-033-6 Getting over a post-celebration hump is always tricky for a long-running comic series. An anniversary or centenary is usually celebrated by some large-scale cosmos-shaking exploit which it&#8217;s impossible to top, leading to an anti-climactic \u00e2\u20ac\u0153day in the life\u00e2\u20ac\u009d venture. In the case of Pain &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/07\/04\/jla-pain-of-the-gods\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;JLA: Pain of the Gods&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-novels","category-jla"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-9w","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}