darkly dreaming
I finally caught up on a few titles, and I have to say JLDark, while one of the more out there ones, bringing in a bunch of characters that have long stayed in limbo between DC and Vertigo, is also one of the slowest. The character work is great, and John Constantine is a damn likable son of a bitch, but each issue reads so slowly that the story suffers as it tries to push itself forward. That said it's still one of the stronger books in the DCU so far.
What I think is this issues strongest and weakest point is that this story focuses on developing the characters, giving them an idea about their history and nature of their powers. Shade's complicated past and motivations are given some more focus, recent events in other titles are given to Deadman, and Madam Xanadu finally exposes on what exactly is happening to them all. John Constantine and Zatanna receive little expose on their histories, being rather straight forward, but there place in the team is solidified: Constantines knows things and how to find them, and is skilled at how to read people and push their buttons, Zatanna isn't really given much, just some details about her powers, but hopefully she'll get more. The problem is that unlike something like the BRILLIANT Demon Knights, the plot isn't moved along with the characters, so we got a few confusing pages at the end to just shove them into next issue.
The art, however, is fantastic. Cool layouts, unique designs and visuals, not too shabby. What I could wish for, though, is instead of making everything dark, they focus a bit on contrasts in the coloring to set the tone, but that's just me.
Overall, It's a good book. Now that the team is together and the plot got kick started, hopefully it'll kick things into gear. If not, Jeff Lemire is taking over in a bit, so he'll instantly make things better, no doubt