Review by Ian Keogh
When DC announced a team of mystical heroes under the Justice League banner the reception was lukewarm, and despite being written by creators with good track records, none of them made the concept sing.
Peter Milligan starts things off with what was originally published in paperback as In the Dark. He unites John Constantine, Deadman, the Enchantress, Madame Xanadu, Shade the Changing Man and Zatanna. Constantine, Deadman and Zatanna will remain series mainstays, later joined by Black Orchid, Frankenstein, Timothy Hunter, Nightmare Nurse, and Swamp Thing for longer sequences and others for shorter arcs. They’re characters with potential, but the only one who shines throughout is Constantine, manipulative, deceitful and devious under any writer. Milligan gets a job done without the imagination displayed on more personal projects.
Milligan’s initial ideas are good, but he never develops a cohesive story from them, while J.M. DeMatteis relies too greatly on vague omnipotent threats from beyond and there being few boundaries to the possibilities of magic. Over three volumes (The Rebirth of Evil, Paradise Lost and Lost in Forever) DeMatteis pontificates greatly and entertains little. His best moment is two concise chapters with Deadman central, although was there really any need to tamper with his origin? It leaves Jeff Lemire’s first story arc, in paperback The Books of Magic, as the standout sequence. Lemire has definite ideas about pulling in characters that work with his plots, and about grounding magic in reality, so he uses some superheroes. It’s also his idea to house the team within the House of Mystery as a headquarters, which provides plenty of story mileage. Sadly, even Lemire then runs out of ideas, and the content of The Death of Magic loses the sparkle.
The artists maintain a far higher standard than the writers, with Mikel Janín the longest serving of them and also the star turn. His pages are so well composed, never looking crowded no matter what’s going on, and always clearly drawn with attention to the fine details. Colour plays a part, but he ensures the cast are distinguishable beyond that. You could take one of Janín’s head illustrations from anywhere in the book and know who it is. Andrès Guinaldo is also impressive in bringing threats to life and in laying out the action, although his first few chapters look better than his later work.
Where this Omnibus scores over some of the individual paperback collections, especially Rebirth of Evil, is that it includes the chapters from other titles when there’s a crossover. It means there’s no need to pick up Justice League: Trinity War to make sense of the three chapters published as part of Justice League Dark, nor collections of Constantine and I, Vampire. The exception is Forever Evil: Blight, which is needed to make sense of the two individual chapters presented here. However, whatever malaise affects Justice League Dark is transferred to all crossovers.
Over three years of continuity is collected here, and no series runs that long without being commercially successful for a while, but the short review is Artists 5 Writers 1. In case you’re wondering years later, the ‘New 52’ aspect of the title refers to the name applied to DC’s 2011 reboot.
