Justice League by Bendis vol. 2: United Order

The Synmar Utopica is back!  And he’s got his eyes set on taking all of Earth for himself.  Before he can do that, though, he’ll have to take on the Justice League… and the United Order, the peacekeeping force of the United Planets.  While this is going on, Green Arrow and Black Canary find their alone time interrupted by one Leonardo Lane, a.k.a. Daemon Rose, former A.R.G.U.S. super-spy and half-brother of Lois Lane.  He’s come to Oliver seeking sanctuary with Checkmate because none other than Deathstroke is after him.  If that wasn’t enough, the Royal Flush Gang is back, and Superman isn’t going to be happy when he finds out what their biggest score ever is.

If all that sounds pretty entertaining, thanks.  Maybe I should hit up DC and see if they want me to start writing the copy text for the back covers of their collected editions, because the actual contents are mediocre at best.  With this volume it becomes clear that Bendis is taking all of his pet ideas and characters from his time at DC – the United Planets, the new Checkmate, Naomi, Daemon – and trying to make one last go of them here.  Unfortunately, “one last go” means having lots of superheroes fight each other for eight whole issues.  It doesn’t make up for the fact that most of these things weren’t that interesting when he introduced them elsewhere, and I’m expecting them to either be ignored, blown up, or killed in future stories rather than embraced by new writers.

Steve Pugh and Scott Godlewski contribute perfectly solid superhero art to this volume in their issues that come with enough detail to make the fighting interesting.  The majority of this volume is illustrated by Phil Hester, who’s an interesting choice for this material.  I wouldn’t say that he’s all that great with the scope and scale that some of these scenes call for, but he’s always been a good stylist, with his characters always possessing a wiry energy to them.  The latter bit works well with Bendis’ dialogue-heavy style and it all results in Hester turning in appreciatively different work for a superhero story.  Regrettably, it’s not enough to save this volume from being another one for completists of the writer’s work.