Last issue was fantastic. We got plenty of Black Adam goodness. I feel confident that 52 #24 is going to keep this ball rolling and be another solid read. It looks like we are going to be dealing with a bunch of JLA wannabees in this issue. All right, let’s hit this review.
Creative Team
Writers: Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid
Penciler: Phil Jimenez
Inker: Andy Lanning
Art Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: Week 24, Day 1: We start in Star City where Oliver Queen is handling questions from reporters concerning his bid for the mayor’s office. Suddenly, Ollie’s JLA communicator starts beeping. Ollie takes the call and it is Firestorm on the line. Firestorm tells Ollie that he got a JLA communicator from the real Firestorm and is now calling Ollie to ask him to join the new JLA. We see Firestorm in a room along with the other members of this new JLA which includes Firehawk, Bulleteer, Super Chief and Ambush Bug. Ollie does the smart thing and tells Firestorm no way in hell he would join such a collection of losers.
Week 24, Day 2: We see Martian Manhunter at the original JLA’s headquarters. J’onn is thinking about how they all ignored Blue Beetle before Infinite Crisis. That J’onn vowed to see that Checkmate was totally eliminated. J’onn has been working through various disguises to infiltrate the U.S. government’s power structure. The President signed the Presidential orders this morning to eliminate Checkmate forever. J’onn finishes sculpting the new statue for Booster Gold that stands next to the rest of the statues of the dead JLA members.
Week 24, Day 3: We cut to the Black Marvel family meeting with the Greta Ten. Black Adam urges his old ally to keep the Freedom of Power Treaty in place that keeps foreign metahuman activities illegal within your borders. August General, from the Great Ten, makes a snide comment that a woman now runs Kahndaq. August General tells Black Adam that he is disappointing a great many powerful people with his decision to dissolve the New World Power coalition.
Week 24, Day 6: We see the new JLA in downtown Metropolis. Suddenly, an army of pirates and robots appear and start rampaging in downtown. The new JLA springs to action and we have a nice little donnybrook. Suddenly, a whole bunch of no-name wannabee heroes appear from the crowd. They are normal people who have received Lex Luthor’s metagene therapy and now thing they are super heroes.
Firestorm notices Skeets in the area. Firestorm approaches Skeets, but Skeets blasts him. Skeets says that he brought the robots and pirates here in order to draw out an enemy who thinks he can remain hidden from him. Suddenly, Skeets starts blasting and killing all of the no-name recipients of Lex Luthor’s metagene therapy. Skeets then blasts Super Chief who disappears. We cut to Super Chief appearing in the afterlife. An ancient Native American spirit takes Super Chief’s Manitou stone from him. The Native American spirit then turns and gives the Manitou stone to Ralph Dibny and warns Ralph that magic never comes without a price.
Week 24, Day 7: We shift to the Oval Office where a U.N. ambassador informs the President that Checkmate has been officially recertified as a U.N. agency and has been granted even greater authority that it had previously.
We cut to Belle Reye Federal Prison. Amanda Waller is meeting with Atom Smasher. Waller says that Black Adam must be up to something with his recent decision to walk away from his coalition of power that he was assembling. Waller says this is Atom Smasher’s change to atone for what he did when he helped Black Adam “liberate” Kahndaq. Waller tells Atom Smasher to pick out the various metahuman villains that he wants on his team. End of issue.
We then get a two page back-up story about Booster Gold. Huh, it really only needed to be one panel and one sentence. “He’s dead.” End of issue.
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Comments
The Good: 52 #24 was a solid read. The writers continue to weave an exciting tale that just gets more and more interesting with each issue. The dialogue was pretty good. I thought the dialogue between Firestorm and Ollie was the best. On a title as somber as 52, it is nice to see a little bit of humor every once in a while.
I liked the Black Marvel Family scene. I find Isis’ influence on Black Adam to be incredible. I liked how Isis reminds Black Adam that Billy Batson has said that Pride is the most evil of all the deadly sins. Black Adam’s character has experienced such massive development and growth during 52. I’m curious to see if this change is permanent or if Black Adam is going to snap and revert back to his old prideful and violent self. I did like how Osiris was written as a teenager who just wants to go out and use his powers to kick some butt and have some fun.
I enjoyed seeing the formation of the new Checkmate. And it got even more interesting with the scene between Waller and Atom Smasher. I dig Atom Smasher and I hope that he makes it out of 52 alive. The idea of Atom Smasher leading a team of metahuman villains in order to take down Black Adam should be very interesting. Atom Smasher has been through so much that I hope we see the rebirth of Al as a true hero in the pages of 52.
Quite possibly the best part of 52 #24 was the psychotic little tin can known as Skeets. Seriously, has this character totally gone off the deep end or what? Seeing Skeets just roasting people left and right was stunning. I’m amazed that the writers have been able to take a goofy character like Skeets and transform him into such a chilling villain. This Skeets really creeps me out.
As always, any scene with Ralph Dibny is going to get a thumbs up from me. We didn’t get much of old Ralphy, but what we did get was pretty interesting. It appears that Ralph is going to journey through the various realms of magic in order to collect a massive collection of powerful magical objects. It definitely seems like Sue Dibny is going to be raised from the dead.
I’m a big fan of Phil Jimenez’ pencils. He always delivers solid artwork. So why did this issue only get 6 Night Girls out of 10? Check out the Bad section for that.
The Bad: The pacing and structure of this issue was poor. This story cut back and forth between way too many plot lines and scenes. The transitions were clumsy and it made this issue a very choppy and disjointed read. One of the best features about 52 is that the writers have rotated plotlines in each issue so that a single issue isn’t overloaded and jammed full of the various different plotlines. I thought that the writers tried to squeeze a bit too many different scenes into this issue. 52 #24 lacked the nice flow that the previous issues have had.
I thought the “new” JLA was pretty lame. Other than Super Chief, I can’t say I liked any of the characters. The new Firestorm has never interested me. Bulleteer and Firehawk? *Yawn*. I have never really been a fan of Ambush Bug. He is a character along with Lobo that should really stay buried in the 1990’s and never seen again. Having said that, I know that there are tons of Ambush Bug fans out there who were thrilled to see their boy back in action.
This “new” JLA also seemed to lack any purpose for this story. They formed and disbanded all in one issue. It seems like they were just a throw away plotline. I wish the writers would have actually tried to do more with this plotline than what they did. This was rather poorly developed and executed.
And man, the only character I actually liked gets killed! What is up with that? Super Chief had a terrible name, but a pretty cool look. I can’t believe after spending so much panel time on this character in the last issue that he would get killed off so quickly.
While I enjoy Jimenez’s work, I have never been a fan of Lanning’s inks. Lanning’s inks really made Jimenez’s art look terribly average.
Overall: 52 #24 was another solid read. The writers are slowly starting to turn the heat up on several plotlines. We are almost at the half-way point and it is pretty obvious that 52 is going to end in a furious fashion. For those of you who never jumped on the 52 train, I definitely recommend that you pick this up when the trade paperback is released.