Justice League #2 Review

Writer: Scott Snyder / Artist: Jorge Jiminez / DC Comics After a first issue shrouded in mystery and suspense, this week Snyder lets us know that he ain’t playin’ around with these characters. He interweaves some deep cuts from DC’s history to inform certain characters’ motivations and doubts. Whether you’re familiar with those stories or not, it’s undeniable that including them adds some meat to the narrative. One of these instances is with John Stewart, who has a bigger role in this issue than he did in the first. His reservations to join the League lie in a bad decision he made on Xanshi, that resulted in the loss of millions of lives. This is in reference to Cosmic Odyssey, a 4-part miniseries from the late 80’s. If you do some comic book math and subtract the 10 years that Rebirth stole, then Cosmic Odyssey probably took place like 2 years ago in the DCU. Don’t quote me, though; I suck at math. What’s cool is that we don’t just know that John Stewart is reluctant because the story is telling us, there’s a whole comic we can go back to and see for ourselves why he’s feeling the way he does. Besides the agency applied to characters like GL, this was really an issue rooted in nuanced conflict. There’s a lot of revealed tension that makes you feel uneasy, but eager to keep going. It reminded me of Annihilation in a few ways. It seems like the Totality works a lot like The Shimmer: whatever goes inside comes out refracted or mutated, which means we might be getting some crazy…