Written by: Dan Jurgens
Art by: Tom Grummett
Publisher: DC Comics
After last week’s Justice League #51 with Dan Abnett telling a Titans prelude to his rebirth run, DC have let Dan Jurgens have #52 with a prelude to his Action Comics Rebirth run and it worked just as successfully as the former, if not more so.
So that you are up to speed, Superman of the New 52 is dead, and Lex Luthor received a suit of Apokoliptian armour during Darkseid War which he is going to be using to act as Metropolis’ new Superman, which pre-New 52 Superman is not so happy about especially because Lex is using New 52’s cape. It all sounds pretty exciting to me, and I can’t wait to see how it plays out over the next few months. But coming back to this issue of Justice League, Dan Jurgens uses it to bring the reader up to date with the events of what happens in between the end of Darkseid War and before his Action Comics run starts and it works really well.
Not only does Jurgens write Lex’s inner dialogue to perfection in this issue, he actually makes the reader completely understand where Lex is coming from in relation to why he is wearing the cape, and to why he needs to step up to be Superman, while at the same time still hating him. Jurgens really gets to the core of Lex’s motivation and gives us to the answers we have been looking for as to the real reason he becomes Superman, well at least the real reason at the moment, as I am sure there is more to this story.
As well as going through his motivation to perform this role, Jurgens delves into how Lex will perform this role, and though predictable it was still a great sequence watching Lex dealing with crooks in a vastly different way to the way Superman would deal with them.
On the art side, apart from the double page spread with the Justice League near the beginning of the issue, I thought it worked really well, looked fresh, and Lex & the suit looked superb. Yes, the art style itself is basically house style and much of what we have come to expect from what is essentially a fill-in issue, but it did the job to perfection and I actually prefer the design of Lex’s suit by this artist over that in this week’s Action Comics #958.
So, what can be taken from this issue? Well it definitely worked as a great prelude to Action Comics, and did fill the gap of what happened with Lex between Darkseid War and Action Comics, so it gets nothing but praise from me. Although not the swansong issue of Justice League that the New 52 deserved having been one of its best titles since the formation, it doesn’t disappoint in any way and you should definitely pick this up if you will be reading the continuation of Lex’s adventures in Action Comics.
