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Of Embassies and Origins - Justice League International Part 2 (Eaglemoss Collection v77)

  Review: Since we are doing a series of reviews focusing on Booster Gold over his nearly 40-year history, we include this one as a collection of some of his earliest appearances, dating to late 1987. That places the original publish date of these tales while his original solo series was still going strong.  This book is a beautiful, glossy hard-cover with smooth and heavy-stock paper inside, although the sometimes-low print reproduction quality leads to blurred and hard to read word balloons on occasion. It is also a rare book here in North America, as Eaglemoss Collections targeted UK fans with this series. At this point in the history of the 1987-rebooted Justice League, they have gained official United Nations recognition and sanction. To ensure their reach truly is global, they rebrand as Justice League International (as does the title of the series!) and they open new headquarters buildings around the world: New York, Paris and Moscow are included here. As this is a product of 19
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Thick but Thin: Wonder Woman and Justice League America volume 1

Cover image of Wonder Woman and Justice League America volume 1 collection


Review:

With nearly 300 pages of early-90s Justice League action, this is an appreciably thick Trade Paperback collection. Unfortunately, in all those pages, author Dan Vado tells an overly busy series of tales that is very thin on characterizations.

Forget character development, these stories often leave the heroes one-dimensional, failing even to borrow from already-defined traits of these heroes. Booster Gold is almost exclusively brash and arrogant; Blue Beetle, despite a long-running sub-plot of self-doubt over his place in heroic circles, is buried in his lab and research, with only the barest wrestling with his demons; Ray is young and naive; Maxima rides a knife's-edge between team player and weapon of destruction. Even the cameos by Jay Garrett are exclusively smile-filled pep-talks.

The only two with any second dimension or hints of depth in their characterizations are Wonder Woman, who struggles with feelings of inadequacy in her role as team leader, and Guy Gardiner, who is as big a hot-headed jerk as ever, but with occasional nuances slipping in, especially in the included bonus Guy Gardiner #15 chapter.

The bulk of the collection is taken up by a tale of escaped political prisoners and extradition requests. Blake and Corbett are on the run from their Kerrilian captors. When they crash-land in Alaska, the Kerrilians contact the UN and the government of the USA. Captain Atom and a small squad of brave but less than disciplined heroes seek to honor the request, while Wonder Woman and the JLA take the side of offering protection to the escapees at least until they have a better grasp of the situation. It's a wild ride mixture of super-powered confrontations and inter-planetary intrigue, climaxing in Guy Gardiner killing Blake in cold blood. The shocking behavior leads to the discovery of a Guy imposter and the entertaining story of trying to tell which hot-headed jerk is the real one.

Kevin West and Rick Burchett do a decent job with the artistic duties of these stories. The layouts are fairly cookie-cutter, with an occasional breaking of the edges in a given panel but for the most part standard team fare. Booster Gold's new armor is somewhat laughable, and the characters often have really tiny feet - a detail that, once noticed, becomes distractingly hard to ignore.

The flat characterizations and fine but run-of-the-mill art, plus some quality issues with the order of pages in the binding, ultimately undermine this otherwise entertaining volume. We give it 2.5 capes out of 5.


Description:

Wonder Woman takes over as leader of the Justice League of America, whether other members like it or not! Acting at the behest of the United Nations, the team must respond to a human rights crisis in a remote African nation, only to find the populace under the thumbs of the super-powered Extremists. The team must then jet to Norway, where the young superhero called Ice struggles to keep the nation out of the hands of her older brother. All this plus the mystery of two Guy Gardners!
 
Comics writer Dan Vado is joined by a team of veteran artists that includes Kevin West and Rick Burchett, who introduce Wonder Woman as the new leader of a very different kind of Justice League!

Collects: Justice League America #78-85, Guy Gardiner #15 and Justice League America Annual #7

Authors: Dan Vado
Artists: Kevin West and Rick Burchett
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: April 4 2017
Parental Rating: PG
ISBN-10: 140126834X
ISBN-13: 978-1401268343
Language: English
Pages: 280 pages


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