JLA #55
Story:
Art:

Written by Mark Waid
Pencils by Brian Hitch
Inks by Paul Neary
Colors by Laura Depuy
Letters by Ken Lopez

Published by DC.
Price: $2.25

My Verdict: Make it stop.

As J'onn J'onzz gets his ass handed to him, the other members of the League find themselves facing a powerful unknown enemy that can control the minds of those around them.

I'll give this to Mark Waid. The Mark Waid that's been writing this title recently is a different Mark Waid than the one who did the fill-ins during Morrison's run. I have a big problem with people who try to out-Morrison Morrison or try to force themselves into that weird realm that the likes of he, Millar and Ellis can go into effortlessly. All the Waid fill-ins felt like that. They all made my eyelashes itch.

But with the Tower of Babel arc, that changed. The simple fact that Ra's Al Ghul stole Batman's parents to distract the Detective--that made my day. What's the ONE way to distract the Batman? He found it. And hot damn, it was brilliant.

Now I'm bored. As nice as the artwork is by Hitch and Neary, I, personally am bored to tears. Here are the reasons, and you should run away if you haven't started this latest story arc yet because we're talking spoiler territory here.

1. White Martians again? Again?! It makes no sense that in less than five years of the title, this is the third time we're dealing with these jokers. Out of the entire long, rich history of the League and all the villains and threats to choose from--this makes no sense. And okay sure, it was cool the second time around with the JLA vs. Bruce Wayne thing, but surely the League would have come up with a better prison for them than just letting them run around lose as amnesiacs after a near-disaster like that.

2. Telepathic attacks again? Again?! This was amusing when Arthur somewhere around the third story arc of the title said something to the effect of "These mind control attacks are getting old." So they're attacking the people around the League and using them as their pawns to mess with them. Blah.

3. J'onn being tormented by illusions of his family again? Again?! How many times have we seen this scene? J'onn with his wife and kids, J'onn weeping cause he misses them? Again, this has been done to death. Enough already. And speaking of which, since J'onn seems to be target number one on anybody's hit parade, you'd think the League would make him check in every six hours or something. "We under attack? No? Good, go about your business." Give him a dead man's switch. Something.

4. A city gets blown up again? Again?! Anytime DC wants to make some kind of impact (no pun intended), they just do a lot of property damage. You have Kansas twice, you have Coast City, you have the South American city I can't remember from DC One Million...it's just gotten boring. It's old hat. And what's worse, two seconds after it happens, Flash is being flippant about the fact that a city just got nuked around them. Sure "nice save" for the people Kyle saves with his ring, but thousands upon thousands are dead everywhere else.

About the only thing that did work in the book was the Flash's trick with giant metal statues. Nice. And like I said, the art's great. Otherwise, this better be leading to something impressive, 'cause right now I'm just too damn bored.

Quote: "BLOCK FOR KYLE!"