Comic Vine Review
0 CommentsJustice League Dark #12 - War for the Books of Magic, Part 1 Review
5by Mat 'Inferiorego' Elfring on
Doctor Mist has betrayed JLD! Madame Xanadu searches for answers while meeting with Timothy Hunter. Faust searches for the Books of Magic.
The Good
I'm usually not a fan of more mystic based comic books, but JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK is not only a fantastic mystic-based team book, but it's a book that I find a lot more accessible to non-mystic comic readers. It contains a lot of elements from the DCU that you may or may not be familiar with but it's very new reader friendly.
One thing I love that Jeff Lemire is doing on this book, since he took over writing duties, is how he introduces all these great, unused elements into this book. Since the run began, we've already seen The Books of Magic, The House of Secrets, and the House of Mystery. This issue we get a couple more cool unused ideas from the DC Vault. This is adding a lot of depth to the mystical side of the new 52, and I'm extremely happy to see these ideas incorporated, especially with Jeff Lemire writing them.
Mikel Janin (pencils) and Ulises Arreola (colors) are one hell of an art team here. The pencils are solid, consistent, and dynamic within each panel, and the colors are top notch. The colors are really the driving point of this book, no offense to Janin who truly has some great work here. There's lots of different pages and panels I could talk about, but a stand out one, for me, involves the reintroduction to a mystic character that not only has beautiful colors, but also a brilliant amount of detail. From page one, if you don't mutter to yourself "so pretty," then you may be blind.
Great ending to this issue. It's a bit of a shocker. No spoilers for you though. You'll have to read it.
The Bad
Although it's a new story line, in a sense, it's not a jumping on point. You need to start at issue 9, when Lemire started writing, to get a better sense of what's going on now.
The Verdict - Pick of the Week
JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK 12 is my pick of the week! What a fantastic issue, and what a fantastic series since Lemire took over. I love everything he's putting into this book and how the line between DC and Vertigo elements is becoming so blurred. This book has wonderful writing on it as well as wonderful art. It's a match made in Limbo.
The only downside, at all, is that if you want to read this book, I highly recommend jumping on at issue 9.
Overall, I highly recommend this issue.
