About Heroes

Writer: Brad Meltzer
Artists: Ed Benes, Eric Wight, & Sandra Hope

With this issue, Brad Meltzer leaves Justice League, and it seems all too soon, and almost wasted.  Trully, he only wrote one JLA arc, being the first one and then two one-shot stories.  I'm not counting the JLA/JSA crossover as a Meltzer Justice League story since Geoff Johns co-wrote it, and it didn't do much to develop this new team.  I wish Meltzer was not counting those 3 issues as part of his self-allotted 13 issue run (Don't forget about #0), because this team still feels like it is not a team yet.  Sure they have new headquarters, and all the members in place, but it feels to me, like this team is still 12 individuals.  Meltzer needs to write one more adventure for comics history to call this team his.  In reality, it might be called McDuffie's team since he is taking over the book.

This issue focuses on monitor duty and is a series of scenes about each character, except the trinity.  Red Tornado is getting less human, Hawkgirl and Red Arrow are flirting, and Vixen is trying to get her powers back.  As a character piece, it's a good issue, but as the last issue of a high-profile run, it falls flat. I was expecting Meltzer to go out on a bang, but it seems his bang was back in issue 10 with Wally West returning.  Can't Meltzer write a good, one-and-done JLA adventure?  Some would point to last issue, but technically, it only concerned two characters.  I really hope that Meltzer returns to this team in a year or two after he writes his next novel.  Meltzer's run here is like baking a cake, and then not decorating it with icing, he's leaving McDuffie to do that for him.  At that point, it's no longer Meltzer's cake.  Don't get me started on how they are going to collect this book, with only two issues after the crossover, and the zero issue which didn't make it into the first collection, where it fit nicely when you read the series 0-7.  Benes does the usual great job on art here, by now I'm used to his muscles and boobs approach.  It's a good thing these characters wear costumes, otherwise I wouldn't be able to tell Hawkgirl and Black Canaray apart other than their hair.  As an issue, I give it a B, but as a run a C.