Justice League #41: BANG! POW! BLAM!

Venditti continues to bring the Justice League to their roots with a straight-forward tale of action and adventure. Thus far into the young run, the characters all sound and feel right. Venditti deploys a number of small touches to help keep his characters grounded in their personas, such as Clark apologizing for the mess or John serving as a tactician (once a Marine, always a Marine!). This issue is a no-holds-barred punch ’em up between the most powerful heroes on Earth and a foe none could defeat single-handedly. It simply doesn’t get much clearer than that.

Even with the help of Madame Xanadu’s arcane magic, the League falls to the Eradicator and his army in this issue. With such a short-staffed line-up right now, it would appear that Venditti may have some cards up his sleeve in terms of bringing in some cavalry. Venditti has shown in the past an excellent grasp on the history of various characters, particularly with his Hawkman work, so it will be exciting to see who shows up in these pages for future issues.

This issue was a testament to the wide-screen type of action popularized in the late 1990s and Aaron Lopresti handles that action with ease. His pencils are sharp as are the finishes by Ryan and the colors by Baron. There is nothing particularly remarkable in terms of emotive flourishes but the team is clearly extremely proficient.