Justice League #18 Review

by Hussein Wasiti on February 20, 2019

Written by James Tynion IV
Art by Pasqual Ferry
Colouring by Hi-Fi
Lettering by Tom Napolitano
 
I've found James Tynion's work on this series to be very good. I think he and Scott Snyder work very well together, and having Tynion focus on these Legion of Doom issues lets these particular episodes have a different flavour to them, despite him working off of a Snyder plot.
 
Like the last issue, this was very focused on Lex Luthor. Lex and Brainiac are the focus of this issue, and Tynion does a great job at slowly building this trust between the two of them. If there were any two characters in the DCU that would be at each other's throats, it would be these two. They're very alike. They're overly analytical and seemingly don't hold any semblance of a connection to the people around them. They have different goals than their respective races and are thus isolated. While this may have been true of Lex in the past, his path with the Legion of Doom has opened his eyes to a larger truth that he's trying very hard to bring to life. For years he's been decrying Superman for being an unattainable goal for humanity to try and reach, so now he's finally putting his money where his mouth is. He's trying to find a different way to humanity to reach greatness, and he believes it's through discovering the mysteries of the Totality and Perpetua. With this in mind, Brainiac seems to represent more of what Lex was rather than what he is right now. This issue essentially turns the table on Brainiac in a way that I wouldn't have expected. I expected Brainiac to have more of a dominant role in the Legion since he's Brainiac, but this issue is really only concerned with bridging the gap between the two intellectual giants. It's slightly subversive it its own way, and I greatly appreciated it.
 
Pasqual Ferry is a name I haven't seen around much, if at all, in the past couple of years. His style is a little different than anything this series has had, and it had more of a cartoony look to it that I found refreshing. There's a lot of linework and a lot of detail, and I found Hi-Fi's colouring to be the perfect palette for Ferry's style.
 
I liked this issue a lot. It's slow and very conversation-heavy, so it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's the shifting of a relationship that I didn't expect to see. It subverted my expectations, and I'm pretty excited to read more.
 

Our Score:

8/10

A Look Inside