[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Writers: Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV
Artists: Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran
Colours: Adriano Lucas
Letters: Tom Napolitano
Reviewed By: Derek McNeil
Summary
The Source Wall has degraded too much, and the League must patch the hole right now or the whole Multiverse will collapse! Our heroes scramble for a solution and turn to the only thing that might work: the Omega Titans! The only problem? They killed the Entropy Titan back in JUSTICE LEAGUE: NO JUSTICE. Whoops…but never fear! Kyle Rayner, Miss Martian and Steel—from the non-planet-eating Titans team—guest-star with a plan to create a new Entropy Titan…one that’s so crazy it just might work.
Positives
In last week’s Justice League #16, things were finally starting to look up for the League. Starman was now conscious and in control of the power of the Totality. And he had a plan to fix the break in the Source Wall that threatens the entire Multiverse. As this Annual opens, the League sets about carrying out his plan.
The plan involves using the Omega Titans from Justice League: No Justice, and although one of them was destroyed, Starman informs them that Hawkgirl is able to take the place of the missing Titan.
There are a number of guest-stars helping with this enterprise: the Titans team, the Green Lantern Corps, the New Gods, and the Thanagarians all come to the Source Wall to help the League with their repairs. Unfortunately, Brainiac and Luthor pick that moment to strike, diverting Starman’s power towards the Totality so they can free Perpetua.
This causes the League’s Plan to disastrously fail, completely eradicating the Source Wall. This has sped up the demise of the Multiverse to a matter of months. The DCU now faces an extinction event on the par of the original Crisis On Infinite Earths.
Green Lantern Salakk suggest the League keep themselves contained to Earth, as “I fear Earth will have few allies in the days to come.” The League now have the impending end of the universe to deal with, and they have the Legion of Doom, Perpetua, and potentially a number of alien races arrayed against them. Plus the Justice League Incarnate has taken notice of the Source Wall’s destruction. But are they coming to help or stop the Justice League?
Negatives
I have found little to complain about this issue. Despite the many cosmic characters and concepts in the issue, the storyline wasn’t difficult to follow. Tynion once again has taken the scripting lead, and he seems better suited to keeping the story comprehensible than Snyder.
Snyder and Tynion have raised the stakes about as high as they have ever been. Things haven’t seemed this bleak for the entire Multiverse since the original Crisis. It leads me to wonder what future writers could conceivably come up with to top this. Perhaps this is the new high water mark that future events can only equal, but not surpass.
Verdict
With the entire Multiverse is facing imminent destruction, Justice League is hurtling along towards a the kind of event that usually involves some major continuity adjustments. If the DCU is facing a new Crisis that is just as dire as the one it faced in 1985, do you dare risk missing any part of that story?
