Following the New 52, it’s a new era for the DC roster of superheroes, and with the Dark Justice storyline behind them, it seems that times are just as dark for the Justice League… And they won’t be getting brighter any time soon if superstar comics writer Scott Snyder has anything to do with it.
This book collects the first seven issues of the newly relaunched Justice League as they face their biggest threat for a long time. Snyder delivers the goods and piles on the woes for the World’s Greatest Superheroes with no respite in sight.
The overall story is called The Totality. The Totality is, as DC tell us “the concentrated essence of the secret source of all things”. And it’s been headed toward Earth for a very long time – from both the future and the past – and it crash lands in the Nevada desert. The Justice League team investigate, and soon find themselves facing a bigger problem that they bargained for. The Totality changes everybody and everything that comes into contact with it, so it’s unsurprising that such potentially lethal and chaotic power attracts Lex Luthor and his Legion of Doom, comprising The Joker, Sinestro, Black Manta Cheetah and Gorilla Grodd.
Elsewhere, Sinestro starts his own Corps (again) based this time on the unseen power of ultraviolet light, making constructs of shame, negativity and hatred as his army grows, while the Flash faces a menace generated by the slowness of the first super-foe he ever faced, back in the Silver Age.
It’s a hectically busy seven issues for volume one with little space for our heroes to catch a breath. The story is not told in a linear fashion and there comes a point in the book where a flashback seems wholly unnecessary and obstructive as it throws the pace off for a few pages.
There are several threads left hanging – to be addressed no doubt in volume 2, due in May 2019 – along with a tantalising cliffhanger – so be warned, this book doesn’t tell the complete story.
JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE TOTALITY VOLUME 1 / AUTHOR: SCOTT SNYDER / PUBLISHER: DC COMICS / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 27TH
