Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks at the wrap-up of the first Justice League story arc.

Having just read Justice League #6, the final issue of the first arc of the New 52 version of the team, it's hard not to see it for exactly what it was: Justice League: The Movie.  And as cinematic source material goes it's pretty good.  As you might expect it's all broad strokes and bullet points: a terrorist attack on US soil from another world, a sufficiently bad big bad and a series of action set pieces connected by dramatic beats and gags.  It ends with a joke that seems calculated to get a belly laugh out of the audience right before the screen smash cuts to the title (it's a little sad knowing there's an entire generation of movie goers who believe the title of
a movie is supposed to come at the end).  There's even a nice little coda setting up the sequel they could slip in at the end to reward those in the know who stay until the end of the credits.

I liked it just fine and I'm looking forward to being able to compare it to the upcoming Avengers movie, but it's hard to miss the fact this comic has "End of an Era" written all over.  Because this certainly isn't my Justice League, which of course is exactly the point.  This is a comic that falls over itself trying to be modern and fulfill its mission to make these characters seem cool again, the pivot moment of this approach coming during the scene when Aquaman finishes blinding Darkseid by shoving his trident into his eye.  Under the circumstances (i.e. you're fighting a space god with destructive eye beams for the fate of the world and it's not going so well) it's entirely justified.  Plus it also completes the current rehabilitation of the character, bestowing upon him the all important (to the demographic DC is chasing) of total badass.  In the end the League defeats Darkseid through the power of the human spirit (though the blinding certainly didn't hurt), a far cry from the days when they would have done it with applied science and a carefully devised stratagem that allowed each hero to demonstrate his or her powers.

I'm not exactly complaining, you understand.  It's not even particularly shocking given its proper context, which is what's currently going on in other superhero comics, like Savage Dragon  #178.  I've previous written (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Don't Look Now") about how creator Erik Larsen often manages to marry standard Marvel/DC style superheroes with the old ultra violence without it ever seeming gratuitous.  In this issue minor supporting character Adrian gets torn in half for talking smack to a space monster, which I know might seem to be gratuitous, not to mention highly unlikely.  But his end was entirely deserved as well as completely in character because Larsen had established in previous issues that Adrian was, quite literally, too stupid to live.

And of course we have the Image comic The Strange Talent of Luther Strode written by Justin Jordan and drawn by Tradd Moore that not just deconstructs the idea of the superhero comic but a number of its characters as well.  It appears to be based on the not unreasonable notion that if someone "really" had super strength they would (whether they meant to or not) regularly reduce their opponents into great sopping chunks of red, pulpy meat, then runs with it.  Each issue has upped the ante on the concept until in the latest issue we reach the point where there are scenes where the walls are quite literally painted with blood and viscera.  Don't get me wrong, it's very well done, but content-wise it's more what I'd expect from a comic published by Avatar Press.

And, finally, Gary Frank's new design for Shazam-Not-Captain-Marvel made its debut in the New York Post which seems a kind of odd venue for it, given how USA Today is usually DC Comics' mainstream publication of choice when it comes to news about their New 52.  It will come to absolutely no surprise to anyone that, no sir, I don't like what I can see of it, but don't worry I have no plans to bitterly complain about this either.  Probably more interesting than the bruised feelings of a 50+ comic book fan is the fact the story hasn't gotten a lot of traction in the mainstream press.  Usually stories about long-lived popular culture characters undergoing some kind of major change provide publishers with some much needed free publicity but as far as but as far as I can tell no other newspaper has picked up on the story.  Which suggests, to me, anyway that DC might have its work cut out for it getting anyone to care.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.