Justice League Dark #7 Review

Writer: James Tynion IV / Artist: Alvaro Martínez Bueno/ DC Comics Who Dares Defy the Otherkind? The opening of Justice League Dark #7 feels very much like a callback to anthology TV series like Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction or Are You Afraid of the Dark?. As the camera pans to Man-Bat typing away in the catacombs of the Hall of Justice, he explains that he’s been documenting different interactions with the Otherkind, the sinister beings whose sole goal is to destroy and consume all of Earth’s magics. The Upside-Down Man was the first Otherkind introduced and throughout the issue, we get introduced to entities like The Soup, The Conjoined, and The Offspring whose playful names belie the monstrosities they are. Tynion IV’s narration is a little more prosaic, perhaps fitting the frame of Man-Bat recording each of the incidents that Justice League Dark division has had with the different Otherkind around the world. Given that there are multiple stories fitted into the single issue, there are large swathes of text that occupy panels, sometimes in dialog, sometimes in block narration. It definitely feels more verbose than your typical comic, but it doesn’t hurt the pacing too much. Man-Bat’s narration is definitely still enjoyable, evoking a semi-omniscient perspective that sheds light on how terrifying these monsters are. The transitions are a little rough between vignettes but getting to see different magical users of the DC universe in different environments is worth the cost …