• • Comic Book Reviews
• December 1, 2021

Justice League Incarnate #1 Review

Written by: Joshua Williamsom, Dennis Culver

Art by: Brandon Peterson, Andrei Bressan, Tom Derenick

Coloring by: Hi-fi

Lettering by: Tom Napolitano

This book is just fun. The cast is fun, the artwork is fun, the stakes are fun, the setting is fun, everything about Justice League Incarnate is fun. This book easily has the most interesting and diverse cast of characters across all the team books in DC comics, and more than most of the ones in Marvel. It’s filled with characters who never get real screen time. Characters like Aquawoman, the gender-bent version of Arthur Curry from Earth-11, President Superman, a black Kryptonian from Earth-23, and the original Mary Marvel from Fawcett Comics’ original Thunderworld, now called Earth-5.

This continues off the back of Infinite Frontier but doesn’t take itself too seriously in the best way. The characters are earnest, they pop off the page with personality in a way a Justice League roster hasn’t in a long time. It helps characterization when you fill a team with unknowns. This way you can do what you want without disappointing anyone. You can only go up.

And while the art in this book isn’t anything spectacular, it makes the inspired choice to use different artists for different universes. This helps Justice League Incarnate give off creativity on every page. The choice of artist was tactical though. They each are clearly different, but so different that it’s jarring when you turn the page.

The only real downside to Justice League Incarnate is its pacing. While the pacing lends itself to humor, especially when Darkseid fights an allegory for Thanos, you don’t get much time with the characters as individuals. The pacing is likely this way because this is a 5-issue mini-series rather than an ongoing one. These cool characters deserve more time to be fleshed out and have an adventure through the multiverse.

Maybe, if it sells well enough, we can see more of the best roster in comics right now.