Review: Justice League Vol. 7- Justice Lost

Quick Summary

Pros: The book does a great job in exploring interesting social issues. The opening story has a solid moment of excitement.

Cons: The storyline is inconsistent and does not take enough time to generate excitement. The end of the book fails to provide a satisfactory conclusion to a number of plot points. The tone of the artwork clashes with the tone of the story.

Overall: This volume features one unique positive among a field of negatives. The positive comes from a thoughtful and interesting approach to complex issues in society. The negatives come from an uninteresting storyline, an inconsistent narrative, and a disappointing conclusion. This volume might prove worthwhile for those wanting to see the Justice League take on social issues rather than fighting monsters and villains, as long as they are unconcerned with excitement.

Story

Justice League Vol. 7: Justice Lost, by Christopher Priest, preforms well when exploring complex social issues but fails when it comes to storytelling. The League’s adventures here are inconsistent, uninteresting, and generally avoid any sort of meaningful consequence. This leaves the volume feeling hollow and unremarkable. The only saving grace here is the way in which the volume approaches societal issues, which is interesting throughout this read. However, this positive does not save the volume as a whole and leaves this as a distinctly lackluster book.

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The majority of the positives in Justice Lost come from the way in which it explores unique and interesting issues without directly lecturing the audience. Each section of the book explores a different theme, such as the disproportionate level of help rich communities receive or if one person’s life is worth more than another. There is also a great exploration into the responsibility placed on those with power, which calls into question the military actions of most first world countries and their relationships with third world countries. These ideas are all interesting and ends up being increasingly thought-provoking as the volume progresses.

Unfortunately, interesting conceptualizations do not equal an interesting story. The majority of this volume features adventures that never truly have enough time to develop suspense or excitement. Instead, the League ends up solving or leaving a problem shortly after it starts, which leaves little time for the reader to become engaged in what is happening. The one major exception occurs in the final moments aboard the Watchtower, which is the book’s most exciting juncture. Overall though, the level of engagement throughout this volume is lower than one would want it to be.

This problem is then exacerbated by the volume’s inconsistencies. The beginning of this volume sees the League dealing with Congressional hearings and the court of public opinion, while the end has all of these problems waved away with little to no fanfare. This happens with other problems as well and makes it seem as if there are no actual consequences to the problems presented within this story.

The end of Justice Lost is also a disappointment in how it fails to sufficiently wrap up a number of different plot points. The League’s distrust with Batman is barely brought up, Deathstroke is left to walk free despite the fact that he just killed someone, and the idea of a Justice Foundation is dropped before it is ever given a chance. Even smaller elements, like Jessica and Batman’s kiss, are so undervalued that they would have been better off if they weren’t included at all. This is a disappointing conclusion for this series and is unlikely to be one with which fans are satisfied.

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Art

The quality of the artwork in Justice Lost ends up being very similar to the quality of the artwork in The People vs. The Justice League (Review). Both volumes primarily feature work by Pete Woods, whose art looks good overall. However, both volumes also have a significant disconnect between the tone of the storytelling and the tone of the artwork. Justice Lost deals with sobering societal issues yet features artwork that is bright and cheerfully stylized. This clash does not prove well for the volume’s overall appeal and makes the reading experience slightly worse.

Continuity

Justice League Vol. 7: Justice Lost continues the story from Justice League Vol. 6: The People vs. The Justice League (Review).

This Justice League series ends here. However, the Justice League’s adventures continue in Dark Nights: Metal and Justice League: No Justice. These events set up a new Justice League series, which begins in Justice League Vol. 1: The Totality.

This volume also references stories from other comic books, detailed below.

• Aquaman mentions his recent struggles with ruling Atlantis. This is explained by the events of Aquaman Vol. 3: Crown of Atlantis. 
• Martian Manhunter’s role here provides a prelude to Dark Nights: Metal.
• The Red Lion’s role in Deathstroke Vol. 1: The Professional (Review) and Deathstroke Vol. 3: Twilight is brought up.
• Batman’s recent engagement is referenced. He proposed back in Batman Vol. 3: I am Bane (Review) and Catwoman accepted his proposal in Batman Vol. 4: The War of Jokes and Riddles (Review).
• The end of this collection mentions a “Foundation”. This is explained in the final chapter of Justice League of America Vol. 5: Deadly Fable.