Justice League of America: the New 52 4: The Grid

Incomplete stories! Beware!

If you are a collector of the New 52 Hardcovers, this is worth getting just to complete your JL collection. But beware - the gripes posted about the content are accurate. Yes, it contains JL issues 18-20 (that's good), but not 21 (included in a separate Shazam title since the JL are not in that issue). Then is it contains 22 and 23, which sounds logical but those are parts #1 and parts #6 of the Trinity War saga. So you are missing the middle 4 chapters, plus issues of Pandora and Constantine that you really should read to follow the story. Basically, the last half of the book is wasted paper. you can't read those issues out of context. No idea why they published this volume is such a bizarre manner.

So this is really a 3-issue HC... look for it used for $10 and you get you money's worth. Go get the worth-it Trinity War HC from DC for the rest (JL 22-23 are included there with all the rest of the story line in the order they should be read).

In Justice League Vol. 4: The Grid, Geoff Johns has several storylines going on. The initial story concerns the expansion of the Justice League, as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the others recruit new members. This meets with mixed success, including someone who is not exactly what they seem.

The main storyline is part of the bigger Trinity War story that includes not only the Justice League, but the Justice League of America and Justice League Dark as well. Pandora's Box is the center of a mystery and opening it will unleash evil on the world.

I have mixed feelings about this collection. Geoff Johns is an excellent writer, but the initial story involving new Justice League members just didn't grab me. The characters just weren't that interesting to me. It may be my lack of familiarity with some of them, but this was just an average story for a writer who normally turns out spectacular work.

The crossover with the Trinity War is very cool, one of the bigger than life scenarios that the Justice League is made for. It was fun to see the characters from the different teams interact, with all of their baggage and previous history together. However, this book only has the Justice League part of the story. Readers looking for the entire story would do better to wait and pick it up as its own collection.

I like the Justice League, and would recommend this book to fans of Geoff Johns and the League. It's just not the best of the recent storylines.

I received a preview copy of this book from DC Comics in exchange for an honest review.

** Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book. This has in no way influenced my review. **
This trade collects Justice League (New 52) issues #18-20, 22-23.

I have mixed feelings about the New 52 reboot but I was looking forward to this review copy of The Grid to check out a bit more of this version of the Justice League. It seemed like a decent jumping on point and opens with some compelling hooks. Unfortunately the collection as a whole is a mess for several reasons.

Issue #18 sees a membership drive for the Justice League, establishing the core team and introducing potential members. It leads to a mysterious threat from within and is a solid start.

Issues #19 and 20 are decent enough and see the new members face an old foe while ideological conflicts arise among the core team and others scheme and manipulate in the background. I have minor quibbles here but as a whole things were interesting and coming together nicely on a few levels.

Then it starts to fall apart. Issue #21 is skipped, presumably because it is the finale of the Shazam backup stories that had been running in Justice League. Shazam is collected on its own, so this wouldn't be a big deal...

... except issues #22 and 23, which finish this trade, are the FIRST and LAST parts of the Trinity War crossover (which is also collected on its own). I can't grasp this at all. If they're trying to be complete for people wanting the full run of Justice League, they've failed because they skipped an issue. If they're trying to be more accessible, they've failed by including only the bookends of a long, complicated story. The way the trade is done really accomplishes nothing but adding confusion and/or having partial material repeated in numerous trades (essentially making people purchase certain issues multiple times if they want to read everything).

That aside, the Trinity War issues presented are disappointing in their own right. As usual with Johns there are a lot of interesting threads, but he reaches too far here and the story collapses under its own weight. We have a (forced) conflict between three teams with their own series and histories, secrets surrounding Pandora's Box, the Justice League traitor, and numerous other elements crammed together into something that's more overwhelming and contrived than epic and intriguing. And the "conclusion" is the final nail.

I enjoy stories with a grand sense of scope, but when it gets to the point of using giant crossovers just to INTRODUCE other giant crossovers, enough is enough. This grand battle between the marque teams of the New 52 literally becomes just a lead in to Forever Evil. You can talk about the journey being more important than the destination, but this journey wasn't good enough to convince me to ignore the lack of any resolution and jump right back into another long journey likely to lead to the same thing.

All and all this trade is impossible to recommend. It falls off after a promising start and won't do anything to keep new readers. If John's escalating crossovers are more your thing than mine, you're still likely better off getting the Trinity War trade instead. Even completists will find this wanting for the lack of issue #21. Truly a baffling collection.

I'll try and make this short.

I haven't read comics all my life until the last 6 months or so. Being a 30 some year old I much preferred the big budget movies and the smaller scale DCU animated movies. But I started reading comics because of those animated movies and know quite a bit of the DC universe now but hardly an expert.

I really enjoyed the first 3 volumes of "The New 52" Justice League. The first for the great Jim Lee art, the second for the evolving relationships between the charcters, and the third for making Aquaman less lame than usual...lol.

And this forth volume starts off good with the JL looking to bring in new members. Without giving away spoilers let's just say the "big surprise" or twist is super lame and rehashed. Not reading comics for long even *I* know this has been done before in different ways.

After investing some time with the new Justice League, I'm kind of disappointed with the way it all turns out. I'm still interested to read Forever Evil and the next JL volume 5 but I have a pretty good idea what to expect. Don't get me wrong, it was still a good and entertaining read but the conclusion was not.

So if you're a longtime comic reader you've probably seen this before. Either way if you've read Justice League up to this point you might as well check this out and decide for yourself

I've enjoyed the first three New 52 JL volumes -- the first one especially -- but this one left me a bit unsatisfied. There's lots of fighting and not a lot of story, and some JL members (The Flash and Green Lantern especially) have little or nothing to do or say. I felt as if Geoff Johns -- whose stories I frequently enjoy -- didn't know what to do with all the JL members in this story-arc. Furthermore, the book ends on a big cliffhanger, necessitating the purchase of volume 5 to finish the story. I wish I'd stopped with volume 3, "Throne of Atlantis".

I was very disappointed to see that about 75% of this edition was duplicated in the Trinity War hardcover that I also bought. The story was great, I just regret paying another $20 to hear it a second time.

This volume has an issue or two ahead of trinity war, but is largely duplicative of the trinity war volume.

Frankly, I don't understand why they simply couldnt provide this book and trinity war as one book. But overall, the story is great and I really love how there's an artist explanation on how he drew each page and the work he put into it. It's a great book but shame that it's so... "incomplete" without the JLA trinity war book.

Also, if you get it, avoid reading the last two chapters in the JL. Vol4 book. Trinity war covers them but also tells you what happens inbetween them.

Love him or hate him, Geoff Johns know how to write an epic comic. Indeed, long a fan of his work, I know that this very gift can often be his Achilles heel. His myth building run of Green Lantern is a case in point: how high can you raise the stakes, until you have to start lowering them again? Yet at least in GL, each story arc still possessed all the aspects of a good story. The same has been true of his run of Justice League, the Atlantis War being a particularly fine example. This leads me to my main gripe with JLA vol. 4: The Grid. To be blunt, not much happens. (SPOILER ALERT)

The Grid races from crisis to crisis, each quick resolved with not much impact. Even Despero’s appearance – apparent from the cover and beautifully drawn in this book by Ivan Reis – passes with a hiccup. We’ve been waiting for the JL/JLA conflict for a while, but when it comes it is little more than a head fake. Instead the whole book, all 170+ pages is a giant prologue to the launch of Forever Evil. What launches Forever Evil? It would be too much of a spoiler to mention who comes out of Pandora’s Box (which may in fact be western culture’s oldest McGuffin!). Yes, most readers probably know already, but I’m too sympathetic to those still in the dark to blow the surprise.

In the end, the value of this whole book depends on how you feel about Forever Evil. I’d say that this DC wide mega-event probably deserves a prologue, but I can’t in good conscience give much praise to a book that is just a giant set up. Yes, the reveals are fun, but like some Agatha Christie novel, they all come in the final pages.

Half of the story I did enjoy where the league are looking for recruits to join the team and where despero comes and attacks the new members....the other half of the story is focused on the trinity war story line which might confuse some readers who haven't read it so I advise people to pick trinity war first to get an understanding of what's going on