Justice League Dark #24 by J. M. DeMatteis (Comics Review)

Justice League Dark is a title that I had no interest in until quite recently, when DC announced its Trinity War event. I was already reading the other two JL titles and since this was going to be a short event, I was really enthused about finally picking up the the third title as well, just so I was current on all the characters and what brought the JLD team together. It proved to be a somewhat mixed experience, given all the creative changes on the book, but Trinity War proved to be rather excellent.

With that event ended, we are now in the Forever Evil phase and we finally get an issue with the characters of the book in focus. Or rather one of them that is, John Constantine, confidence man and magician extraordinaire. And that’s not all of course, since with this issue the fourth Forever Evil tie-in begins, Blight, and this one doesn’t have its own mini-series, but is a large tale across four different titles. So this issue had a lot to live up to with new writer J. M. DeMatteis, and delivers aplenty.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Season 1 Ep 5 (TV Show Review)

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD returned this week with a brand new episode, where we get to meet a new threat to Coulson’s team, and also get to see some real tie-ins between the episodes as more of the world is revealed to viewers. Till now, the show has been heavily serialised, with the episodes having little to no tie-ins with each other and this created quite a bit of a disconnect with me since I wanted there to be a build-up early on, and the show wasn’t giving me what I wanted.

But, with this episode, things look to be changing in that regard, even as on other fronts the show continues to disappoint. Casting issues remain, the pacing is still a problem, and the acting is not quite there yet either. The show seems to be stuck in a honeymoon period where viewership is dependent on people wanting to tune in every week for a small handful of positives resulting out of the show’s spinoff nature from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Justice League #24 by Geoff Johns (Comics Review)

If there’s been one high-profile DC comic coming out this month other than Forever Evil #2, then that’s this one, Justice League #24. Geoff Johns has emerged as the premier storyteller of New 52, right alongside Gail Simone and Scott Snyder, and he’s been doing a fairly good job in the two years and one month of DC’s universe-wide relaunch. First Throne of Atlantis, then Trinity War, and now Forever Evil, he’s been writing some really good comics and this new issue marks the high point of the month for me.

I’ll be honest, I think Forever Evil has been a bit stumbling around with its first two issues thus far, but I have confidence in Geoff to pull things off because he really understands his characters and his vision for his story is always spectacular. After the end of Trinity War in August with Justice League #23, I was impatient to get to the next issue and while some of the related Villain’s Month issues gave me that fix, Justice League #24 is where all the pay-off is at.