Justice League Of America #7.1

The Team
Writer Matt Kindt Artist Sami Basri, Keith Champagne, Carmen Carnero, and Bit

Justice League Of America is in a really weird place right now, after a mere seven issues the entire team is completely disbanded. The stranger heroes never quite got the opportunity to really stand amongst some of the more popular ones in the DC Universe. This is unfortunate because the title retained a high level of quality since the very beginning. Practically the entire DC stable is in complete disarray after the events of Trinity War, now the heroes are missing from the face of the earth. To make matters worse several villains are running around causing chaos for the absent costumed crusaders. This title is set to be having an identity crisis as the series is going be renamed as Justice League Canada sometime in Spring 2014, while in the meantime the comic has been named Deadshot #1 for the current month only. There is also going to be a few spotlight issues on Martian Manhunter written by Matt Kindt before this series changes again. Good luck trying to wrap your head around all if this change. This comic is going to be in a weird state of flux for quite a while, the question is, will it be able to capture the attention of it’s readers through some of the changes?

Matt Kindt pens a well written character study here that observes a conflicted soul. This is the kind of writing that he excels at, as he dives in to see what would make a character like Deadshot tick in the real world. The results are anything but happy, as the calculated hitman does not seem to be driven by very much. While the writing is up to par with previous work by the writer, this man behind the mask is hard to make interesting in this context. It is also hard not to compare this version of the character to the current version, after the great character work achieved by Gail Simone in Secret Six. Motives given from Deadshot seem sort of paper thing in this story, as we are not really given a reason to care about him.  

Unfortunately the art does not live up to some of the standards set by previous artists of the series. The team is split up into two groups Sami Basri and Keith Champagne tackle the present day sequences, while Carmen Carnero and Bit handle the past events. The segments of the issues drawn by Basri and Champagne fall short of what the artist is definitely capable of. Basri’s artwork appears to be really rushed in some of these pages, backgrounds are also notably sparse from the artist. The two styles also do not look very good together, as the other one is going for a completely different tone. Colorist Matt Milla tries the best he can to unify the look of the disjointed issue but his attempts cannot magically pull this issue together art wise. Carmen Carnero and Bit’s pages are not very easy on the eye, the style is very amatuer and does not seem ready for the house style of DC.

This issue may serve as a slight back peddle to some of the great work laid down by Johns. Who did waves to make this comic book seem more interesting than most of the other books being published by the house of Batman. Hopefully in subsequent issues Kindt will utilize to the character of Martian Manhunter to flesh out his tenure on the title.