Justice League, Volume 4: The Grid

 Geoff Johns has always excelled at fast-paced, widescreen summer-blockbuster-type stories, and can generally be relied upon to at least give the reader a bang for his or her buck. (One could also argue that Johns does NOTHING but fast-paced, widescreen summer-blockbuster-type stories, which makes reading his books like eating pizza every night. Yeah, you love pizza, but will you love it after eating it EVERY...NIGHT....?

 JUSTICE LEAGUE, VOLUME 4: THE GRID starts off with a Justice League recruitment drive, and ends with The Watchtower, the JL's orbiting headquarters, being attacked by longtime JL foe Despero, a naked, cape-wearing alien ass-whupper. (At least he WAS a longtime JL foe in the old continuity. They imply that he is in "The New 52", but that appears to be a still-untold story.) From the recruitment drive/Despero fight, we skip an issue (#21, collected in SHAZAM! VOLUME 1, reviewed HERE), and head into the first and last chapters of JUSTICE LEAGUE: TRINITY WAR (Reviewed HERE). Yes, I said first and last  chapters of the crossover...if you want to understand these chapters, buy the hardcover, because you ain't gonna understand shit reading these two chapters. I've complained about DC's collections before, and how the material is collated, but I do think that, overall, they're on the right track. A collection dedicated to one title should focus on THAT title, and not include crossovers unless it's small enough to be added to the collection in it's entirety. In a case like this, each Justice League book's collection should include all of the issues of THAT TITLE, and anyone wanting the whole thing should be referred out to the book that collects the whole crossover. However, DC should really be doing a text recap page, so people who are ONLY interested in, say, JUSTICE LEAGUE, can still follow the story and get a bit of closure for their buck. DC, a text recap page would smooth a LOT of the ruffled feathers that your collections have created. Just my two cents.

 Anyway, this is FAR from a complete book, and anyone who isn't reading the (Dreadful.) JUSTICE LEAGUE: TRINITY WAR crossover is going to be lost. On the other hand, this book does a better job of representing the gallery of triptych covers from TRINITY WAR than that book's own collected edition did.

SPOILERS!!!!

 I can't wait to see how Johns explains one issue showing The Atom as a sweet, conflicted girl forced to spy on The Justice League by Steve Trevor, and another showing her as a cold, calculated skank from Earth 3. That made no kind of sense. And as much as this book (And "The New 52" in general...) rushes from crossover to crossover, the end did make me want to jump right into FOREVER EVIL. I hope Johns can pull that one off....

 JUSTICE LEAGUE, VOLUME 4: THE GRID collects JUSTICE LEAGUE #'s18-20 and 22-23, complete with all covers and variants, and a few related TRINITY WAR covers. I've been dropping DC books left, right, and center lately, but I'll stick with this one, for now.