3 out of 5

Waid started the JLA reboot.  He might not’ve put the panache and flashy stamp on things that Grant Morrison did, but his Midsummer’s Nightmare book plus JLA: Year One helped establish a viable and fun JLA in a post-zero hour world, where the over dramatics of the 90s threatened to keep comics in the dark forever.  Still, returning to the series after Morrison’s campy epic run is tough – do you go back to the light-hearted model you started, do you continue Morrison’s ethics…

Waid’s been in the game long enough that he knew how to keep the energy going without sacrificing his fun style.  Alas, he can’t quite muster up enough storylines to really drive us back month to month, but Tower of Babel is an excellent example of Waid firing on all gears, and keeps us in the game long enough to see us through the rest of his run.  Waid sort of hates Batman, it seems, and billions of years before OMACs caused mad Batman doubt in the JLA world, Mark tossed us an excellent “Bats paranoia screws us all over” scenario, and finds a way to keep the challenges fresh.  This is the biggest challenge for big-name team books, keeping things moving without having to destroy the world every few minutes and also without drawing back the curtain and making it seem like… well… they’re just playing heroics in tights…  To his credit, this is actually done better than in Grant Morrison’s run (which destroyed the world every MINUTE) but though Waid has tons of super successful big name runs to his name, his poppier writing style seems better suited to characters closer to the ground.  When it starts to get cosmic, it starts to get a little too noticeably silly, and being paired with Brian Hitch’s pencils for some books – though obviously an awesome artist – robs Waid of the ability to abuse Howard Porter’s more expressive style to match the comicy feel of this spin of the JLA.

An iffy review.  It’s still a fun read, and works great as a monthly, but – despite best efforts – loses some steam versus the previous run.