4 out of 5

Grant Morrison has a few different writer modes, all circling around his big picture ethos.  His recent “Supergods” book confirmed these different spins, so I’m not crazy for finding his JLA run a little silly – it’s supposed to be.

My first runthrough of this series was when I was rediscovering comics, and it was a great suggestion – Grant’s run made me see how the genre had changed and how it could be pushed to exciting levels even when dealing with massive characters who have already solved every problem.  During the course of his run, Morrison “reinvents” the JLA as a true world-protecting force, expanding and expanding their group to contain heroes for a specific purpose and of his partial creation and characters for which successful roles were found beyond their seemingly one-dimensional parts in the DC universe.  It really is a party, and the typically grand scale of matters really helped to sell the “super” angle that had been lacking in these style books, combining the emerging widescreen style (big events, big panels) that was sort of a gross carryover from the Image heyday and melding it with a cosmic and social awareness from previous generations.  This modernized Golden / Silver age tribute, combined with Howard Porter’s crisp, over-stylized and thick pencils, just causes the book to splash off the page.  Upping the ante is Morrison’s ability to thread a tale out over chunks of issues, giving you that “ohmygod that happened back in issue 3” feeling that what you’re reading actually matters.

Now with a bit of time and more comic reading experience, it falls apart a little bit.  It’s all very self-contained, and due to this, that threaded tale is very self-contained as well, and read collected (e.g. not month-to-month), there’s a disproportionate amount of world-threatening events that keep happening.  Once you’re used to Morrison’s style of oddities, you can zoom past all the weirdness and partially sensible science and what you’re left with is some pretty campy superheroics.  BUT – the goal was to make a noticeable impression on readers that shit had done changed, and the story absolutely, absolutely accomplished that (I’m still reading comics because of books like this) and will continue to do so for people who need a reintroduction to heroes.