gc8's Justice League of America #199 - Grand Canyon Showdown review

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    Guess They Were Focused on Issue 200

    The Cover Tells the Whole Story
    The Cover Tells the Whole Story

    Issue 199 of Justice League of America, "Grand Canyon Showdown", concludes the tale begun last issue "Once Upon a Time in the Wild Wild West...".

    The art is good, though Cinnamon and Bat Lash meet for the first time, and they are dressed nearly identically, but no one seems to wonder about it.

    The story, on the other hand, really doesn't seem to make much sense. It seems as if it was perhaps condensed from a larger, longer story with chunks just left out for reasons of time and space. For example, the heroes ride out of Desecration, AZ shortly after arriving there, for no given reason. Later, the Western heroes exit stage left by riding off to pursue some bad guys, and we never see or hear from them again.

    The superheroes, for their part use their powers in ridiculous ways. The Elongated Man sticks his finger in the barrel of a gun - like that would stop a bullet. The Flash, of course over uses vibration powers (always a fix-all for lazy writers), and later swings The Elongated Man around in circles to create a "bump" in the Earth's atmosphere(!?!). Green Lantern's power ring goes beyond just making willpower derived constructs to being a magical screen that can show him any danger in the area - why they couldn't have had the actual magic person, Zatanna do this is crazy, she doesn't really have much else to do in the story, anyway.

    The Lord of Time's plan never really makes sense to begin with. If he wanted to harness the energy of an "anti-matter bubble", why would he send the only people in the world who could possible stop it to the exact place where he wouldn't want them to be. And the coup de grace? Supeman is the story's deus ex machina, who just stops the villain offscreen, having escaped the villain's deathtrap, also offscreen summarily explained in a one panel flashback.

    This kind of writing is an embarrassment. Justice League of America deserves a little justice itself.

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