Review: Justice League Red #3
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Art: Clayton Henry
Colors: Arif Prianto
Letters: Lucas Gattoni
Reviewed by: Matthew B. Lloyd
Summary
Cyborg and Green Lantern, Simon Baz succeed in rescuing Red Canary, but it continues to raise more questions about what Red Tornado is doing as does his attempt to give Power Girl the chance to talk to her parents!
Positives
From a macro view, Justice League Red #3 succeeds beautifully at just trying to be what it is. It doesn’t try to do more than it needs to. It’s a good comic. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking or socially relevant to be a good comic. This is something that is often missing in comics today, they don’t know how to be good without trying too hard. And, when trying to hard it’s obvious and the creators lose sight of “the main thing”- a fun, entertaining experience in a unique storytelling medium.
I picked up this series for one reason, and one reason only- Power Girl. As one of my favorite characters, I will always seek her out. After the disastrous solo title that ended back in April, I was happy to see PG get another chance, even if it’s in a team book. So far, Saladin Ahmed is getting things right with Karen Starr. She may officially be “Paige Stetler,” but she’s not referenced with that name in this issue, and her personality is shedding the confounding elements of the aforementioned solo series that was incongruous with her entire history.
Positives Cont’d
Clayton Henry gets a lot of opportunities to show how well he can depict facial expressions in this issue. We get surprise, disgust, anger etcetera as Red Tornado is confounding Power Girl, Cyborg and Simon Baz with his “missions.” Even the rescued Red Canary doesn’t seem to know what’s going on or why she was abducted by an offshoot of the Church of the Blood. This is a nice aspect as Ahmed is able to connect this to Cyborg’s history with the Teen Titans.
We know Justice League Red is a lead in to the events of DC K.O. and despite that, Ahmed makes this series feel significant in its own right as he focuses on the characters as well as the plot. It could’ve been very easy for this series to be dismissed as just inconsequential shenanigans as a tie-in to the bigger event. Additionally, as someone completely unmoved by DC K.O., I’m here for for what happens to these characters, even if it does have the tie-in to the event. The character work is interesting enough, as it should be.
Positives Cont’d
That brings us back to Power Girl. As she grapples with the prospect of speaking to her long deceased parents, that means that Red Tornado (if it’s not a completely faked transmission) has managed to not only break through time, but also the multiverse and to a Universe that NO LONGER EXISTS! So, is that Universe out there somewhere? Is the original Earth-Two Helena Wayne out there? Is Karen’s BFF reachable? Exciting questions for Power Girl fans. However, it’s also reasonable to believe that Reddy is just creating this to manipulate her.
Ahmed also lets us in on Red Tornado’s mindset a bit. As he questions his seeming losing touch with humanity, it does beg the question if he’s already being manipulated by Darkseid. If that’s so, does that mean that what he suggests as their next mission would only server Darkseid instead of the heroes? Red Canary’s power explosion in this issue suggests that maybe she’s got some of that Omega energy, maybe she should be King Omega? She’s may already be partly there! These are all good plot elements which strengthen the issue and provide legitimately interesting reasons for coming back for the next issue.
Negatives
Nothing stands out as particularly bad in Justice League Red #3. There’s the chance that some of the questions will end up being answered poorly, but as of right now…yeah, nothing to cause this issue to fall into the “not recommended” category.
Verdict
Sometimes, simplicity and directness is more important than innovation or social relevance. Justice League Red #3 proves that as it takes a “back to basics” approach despite having the burden of being linked to DC K.O. It doesn’t try to be more than it should be and it succeeds. There’s nothing wrong with being a fun, entertaining comic. Some great comic book runs are made up of a lot of these issues that are strung together over substantial periods of time. 7.5/10 but the limits of the DC Comics News rating system force me to go with a…
…4/5!
