EVERYBODY IS EVIL
Despite Starfire looking frighteningly anorexic, this issue has a really nice cover. The soft color palate makes for a nice sort of dreamlike quality to the image, which is a very subtle yin-yang. And honestly I have to admire the way Starfire doesn't look like some kind of non-existant super skinny sexy, when she looks frighteningly thin, she looks literally malnourished. She DOESN'T look attractively skinny, she looks unnerving. I mean, there's no context to make that kind of statement, but I appreciate it in a weird way nonetheless.
I definitely don't like the way Julius Gopez draws Starfire. There's an odd kind of smoothness to her that makes her look super artificial compared to the rough linework in the rest of the issue. Facial expressions on everyone also tend to be off, except maybe Arsenal. His giddy glee building fantastical weapons is spot on.
One of the good parts of this issue is the fun little tour through the League of Assassin's world capital city. We get to see the daily lives of some of the recently reestablished assassins like Lady Shiva and Cheshire. Cheshire especially is extremely entertaining to watch with her affably psychotic dialogue and behavior. There's a nice variety of interesting personalities here in the League's upper ranks.
But overall the story is just far too convoluted for its own good. Everyone is trying to convince everyone else that everybody ELSE else isn't what they appear and has ulterior motives. And suddenly it seems the team is divided up to each being on one of the three cosmic sides in the conflict; The League of Assassins somehow having become a cosmic-eqsue force. I thought Starfire went along with Arsenal, but apparently not. I mean, ok, I get that probably none of them are to be trusted, but when things have gotten this complex, where does the story go when there's about to be a conflict between three different evil forces? Is there a lesser of three evils, because it honestly doesn't seem like it. And we had established last issue that all three sides were basically untrustworthy, so why did we need to reinforce it at every turn in this issue? The story's getting bogged down by excessive exposition.
But at least there's the promise of all this slow bulky buildup coming to payoff next issue as an Arsenal seriously earning his name appears on the scene. I mean, yeah, it looks like he walked right out of the 90's, but in this context it strangely works, especially for 'Arsenal.'
In Conclusion: 3/5
Things have been kind of dragging along at an awkward pace since Tynion took over, and I definitely think a good portion of that was his questionable decision to dive right back into the story Lobdell moved out of. I'm hoping the next issue will improve things once we get out of exposition swamp and into a big battle. And then once we get out of this story I'd like to see what Tynion has in store for the team for his own ideas. However, I do definitely admire that Tynion's been able to balance the importance of the team members arguably a bit better than Lobdell did.
