Justice League #33

Writer: Joshua Williamson

Artists: Tyler Kirkham and Mikel Janin

Colourists: Arif Prianto and Jeromy Cox

Letterers: Richard Starkings and Jimmy Betancourt

This is the finale to the BATS OUT OF HELL crossover, which is the event's final crossover tie-in story. The event will rely on two one-shots in the coming months, which are next month's HAWKMAN FOUND #1 and February's THE WILD HUNT #1, co-written by Grant Morrison! I bring Morrison up because I think his spirit or style can definitely be felt in this event, and this issue in particular.

Overall I would call this issue unexpectedly good. I wish Joshua Williamson could have written the entire crossover because it seems he has more of a grasp of this event than Robert Venditti did. It was nicely paced and there was some genuine hoorah moments I enjoyed. As you can tell by the cover, Cyborg is front and centre in this issue and, frankly, it's about damn time. Cyborg's membership in the Justice League has always come across as contrived to me, but that's because the writers never have him do anything in these comics. Here he gets perhaps the most important role he's gotten since appearing in Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's opening arc of the New 52 JUSTICE LEAGUE. Since these crossovers have had ripple effects in the main event, I'm so excited to see exactly how big Cyborg's role will be going forward, which I think will invigorate people's love for the character.

The art is on full blast here. Tyler Kirkham has provided art for the event before in the BATMAN: THE DROWNED one-shot, and I think his art fits the tone of the story very well in that it should be balls-to-the-wall crazy which Kirkham's art perfectly captures. It's wildly detailed and epic in scope. A surprising artist also makes an appearance here: Mikel Janin. Janin is known mostly for GRAYSON and a couple of arcs in Tom King's BATMAN, so to see his wild, cosmic art here was an extreme pleasure to behold. We get to see some very different art from Janin that we haven't see since his FINAL DAYS OF SUPERMAN days. Despite my appreciation for his art, his page count is very brief at only a couple pages or slightly more, but his contribution added to the story to me.

This crossover ends on a mostly high note, though I do think its sole purpose was to simply set up the next issue of the METAL event. It delivered some fairly satisfying character moments as well as extremely cool art by Kirkham and Janin.