Written by Scott Snyder, James T. Tynion IV
Illustrated by Jim Cheung,
Stephen Segovia, Mark Morales
Published by DC Comics
“The story of Perpetua was the most dangerous story in creation. And should it ever be allowed to come to light…
“Should the meaning behind her symbol ever be unlocked…
“She would rise again.”
Well folks, here we have it.
Issue #17 of Scott Snyder and James Tynion’s redefining run of the Justice League. And finally, we get the answers we’ve been waiting for.
I honestly wish it didn’t all feel a little anticlimactic.
Because it’s not a bad story. The secret of Perpetua, the secret history of the multiverse, the threat of a peril from beyond the dawn of time, one that the ancient races of the Universe locked away for eternity on Thanagar Prime. It is genuinely big, it is genuinely dangerous, and it is exactly the explanation we needed to put all of the dangling threads and all the confusions that have been building throughout this arc into a context that finally makes sense and fits.
It does.
But it turns out that has involved a lot of really questionable choices and decisions by key players, and more than a few narrative convolutions by our writers, to get us – all of us, and the League, and the Universe they inhabit – to this point.
It’s all more than I want to get into honestly. Better to let everyone make of it what they will, for themselves.
Honestly though, I just don’t come away understanding the need for all this secrecy, particularly towards all the heroes of Earth who are now barreling forward towards an inevitable conflict they are at the very center of, one that they could only benefit from knowing more about.
(I mean, yes, of course, other than the obvious reason.)
Well, now they do.
And so do we.
So, now it’s time to get down to business.
And by the end of this issue that is exactly what we do. Despite the gravity of the situation, and the many ping-ponging tensions that got us here, our cast of heroes all come through a roundhouse of hostilities for a great big Kumbaya, courtesy of a little godlike family counseling from Starman.
It’s a reset and a redefinition of the mission ahead that will kick everything into high gear, from a fateful meeting for J’onn (And is that another secret being pointed to, on this month’s front cover?), to a significantly more-informed war footing for the League, to a rather surprising announcement about plans for the Source Wall.
We still have some mysteries to work through, we still have questions to answer – like, where exactly is Scott Snyder at this penultimate point in our story? Lost him to his first love, Batman, over in the (rather excellent, I admit) Batman Who Laughs miniseries, have we?
Now at least, we know the danger we’re facing, and the stakes.
And simply put, the stakes are everything.
What that means for our heroes, we’ll be seeing in the months ahead. But for certain, it is a revelation and imminent confrontation with as much dire, reality-shaping consequences as those presented by Dr. Manhattan over in the other defining crisis currently underway in the DCU. Talk about a God complex.
Now we’ve got the other side of that equation.
Next Issue: Childhood’s end.
