Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Treachery, in the world of action comics or the graphic novel, not one plot device captures the imagination more and makes the reader feel aggrieved at the sense of injustice that has befallen the team or the solo hero. The disloyalty meted out is of such a despicable nature that it is akin to treason to the state. The betrayal of a handshake given in good faith is almost left hanging in the mind as you see in the other person’s eyes just exactly they are planning to do. When it is properly captured by the writer it is the most symbolic action to be placed down on paper and in the fourth volume of Justice League, under the banner of the New 52, The Grid, betrayal and treason come no higher that one of their own turns against them.
Geoff Johns, along with long-time collaborator Ivan Reis and Joe Prado bring the world of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and all the other Justice League members crashing down about them. However it’s not just the Justice League that is going to suffer as innocent by-standers start to get in the way and other members of the D.C. superhero world who are caught in the crossfire bought about by disloyalty.
What Geoff Johns manages to highlight is American foreign policy, albeit in a way that doesn’t make the reader immediately jump to the conclusion of a particular place in the Middle East, and how America is viewed as a transgressor in local politics. Even the use of Superman and Wonder Woman as the main two lawbreakers in the infringement is a novel approach as they are viewed as United States citizens rather than an alien who has made his home on Earth and a woman whose home is naturally that of legend and iconic fable.
By doing this Geoff Johns perhaps arguably shows that the world in our life-times will never be ready to accept a force of the well-meaning hero or soldier in to a country in which lays trouble that cannot be fixed by its own people. The result will always be a civil war and that’s what seems to have happened with the Justice League and the Justice League of America as they are played, rather superbly by the Atom, AKA Rhonda Pineda and the truth that lays just out of reach till the final few pages.
Justice League: The Grid is gripping; its novel approach is almost sacrosanct in its delivery and yet again shows Geoff Johns to be a master of the forward plan. Like Joe Hill, Geoff Johns is a class act when it comes to capturing a whole story in a single frame and artwork that just accentuates the appeal of Wonder Woman, The Flash and Aquaman to the same level that Bob Kane bought to the original Batman stories.
Treachery is always in season, no matter how small the rat who brings it down upon the hero.
Justice League: The Grid is available from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall