Justice League of America #12

Writer: Steve Orlando

Artist: Ivan Reis

Colourist: Marcelo Maiolo

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

I've been anticipating this story ever since Ryan Choi was announced to be a member of the JLA. Surely he would continue his mission to find Ray Palmer as teased in DC Universe Rebirth #1. I understand that the creatives behind this story might have wanted Ivan Reis to draw the entire Microverse storyline, but it came at the cost of having a terribly paced book with absolutely no endgame and contrived plots.

However, just because we're finally getting to this anticipated storyline doesn't mean that it's flawless. Steve Orlando has a genuine storytelling problem, and the thank you to Geoff Johns in the credits might indicate some contribution from Johns to the plotting of the story. This is definitely the best issue of the series so far, but it only really began about ten pages or so into it.

The first few pages are a real slog to get through, introducing characters and scenarios that are completely unnecessary. Thankfully not all of the JLA enters the Microverse, but that only means that Orlando will probably shift focus to them at a terrible time.

As for the rest of the story, it suffers from a lack of engaging storytelling. Orlando drags out his dialogue to apparently cover as much ground as possible. We spend so much page space with Ryan worrying and talking about whether or not the whole thing is going to work. It's always good to see characters act human but here it's obvious it's just to fill up the page count.

It's good to have Ivan Reis back on art duties here. I love his take on Lobo and the visuals got very wacky and awesome when the team entered the Microverse. It's nice to know that he's going to draw the whole arc.

The long anticipated Microverse arc begins with half a whimper, even with the great Reis artwork. It'll take a lot for this storyline to win me over and so far it isn't impressing.