Justice League of America 2: Curse of the Kingbutcher

This volume was probably a little better than the first, but I'm still running out of reasons to continue buying this title.Story: The first issue has Ryan and Frost checking out the DNA of an ancient, mummified, cryokinetic baby in a museum to see if they can learn how to cure Frost's sickness of having to steal heat from living things in order to live. Meanwhile, the security guards and eventually Ryan and Frost are attacked by the Terrorsmith, who can turn people into their worst nightmares. This first issue had some great character work, including hinting at the budding romance between Ryan and Frost. It's not entirely original to write Ryan as the stereotypical, shy, not so good with girls nerdy guy, but it's an easy characterization to figure out and get behind. The book rather abruptly moves onto the story, "The Man From Monster Valley", where the JLA encounters a man raised by monsters in a hidden valley 100 miles away from Tunguska, Russia. Turns out he's actually the heir to a LOT of money, and he agrees to come back to civilization and have his story told. I don't know if I've quite seen this particular story told before, but without spoiling too much, it's basically the story of Tarzan, but if he was misguided or went bad! This story does add the nice element of Monster Valley. As far as I know, it's a new concept. New to me for sure. I wouldn't mind seeing some future adventures set in this valley. It's very reminiscent of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Throw in some Silver Age wackiness, but with modern writing sensibilities and you have some great potential there. The final arc is the one for which the book is named. I didn't really care for it as a whole. I didn't find the Kingbutcher to have any sort of interesting look, though it was interesting to learn he's an agent of the Lords of Order and that he's trying to take people's granted wishes away so order can be restored. Apparently, the whole JLA title has actually been building up this "Might Behind the Mirror" thing. I'd forgotten about it from volume 1. Apparently, Lord Havok mentioned it. But, it seems like this title is setting up a huge invasion of Chaos Magic in the world. This last piece focuses heavily on The Ray, a character that I was interested in, but I'm losing interests in him pretty fast. He certainly proved to be quite helpful in battle, but he just hasn't struck the right chord with me yet. The book ends with Ryan's tracking algorithm picking up a signal to find Ray Palmer who had disappeared in DC Universe: Rebirth one shot. I'm looking forward to seeing Ray Palmer become a bigger player in the DC Universe. I wish DC would expand the power set of The Atom. There's so much potential there.Art: The only art that really stands out is Felipe Watanabe's and Neil Edwards' art. I first saw Watanabe on Cyborg's comic book during the second arc right before Rebirth launched. I really liked his art. He's sort of like a discount Ivan Reis, and I don't mean that as an insult. It's so hard to compare to an industry legend and a super talent like Reis, but if Watanabe's art reminds me of Reis, then that's not too shabby. Edwards has a style somewhat similar to Reis as well, but his lines look crisper than Felipe's. Both of these guys do fantastic jobs here. I'd like to say that Doug Mahnke's variants are a joke. I've seen that Mahnke is one of the best out there, but his variants for JLA don't show it!Overall: I didn't really like or dislike this any more than volume 1. There's so much potential here with a cool new location, decent character work for Choi, Frost, and Ray, but Orlando just isn't writing exciting enough comics to please me. This was okay, hence the 3 star rating. As I stated, I'm losing reasons to keep buying this. I'd only recommend for die hard fans or if you're a fan of at least 2 or 3 of the JLA members besides Batman.

Great story with interesting twists

I always appreciated a Justice League lineup that was diverse with a roster of heroes of variety. This title has it, but the stories are just ... eh. The art also suffers with multiple artists, none super dynamic befitting the epic scale expected. I enjoyed the first two earlier volumes, but it's obvious this title was loosing it's appeal in it's second year of publishing, as evidenced by this collected edition.

This volume collects issues #7-11 of the all-new all-so 1980s’ Justice League of America. This comprises a single-issue story and two-two-parters, though with character-development and sub-plots continuing through the volume.Basically, we have a group of costumed characters who don’t all get on with each other arguing a lot and fighting baddies.There are four pencillers and four inkers, with a different team on each issue, which usually means that the editors aren’t taking this book seriously, and either are doing it because a writer really wanted to do it, or a lot of fans wanted it and the editors hope they’ll shut up one sales fail and it is cancelled, or it is just an attempt to cash-in on the underwhelming (in terms of box-office) film.The costumed characters are all minor-league and have mostly failed to carry solo-titles for any length of time (even Batman, when he’s been over-extended into too many Bat-titles).The scripting is not very interesting, despite the writer having managed a superb Midnighter series recently. The artwork is actually “good”, in that the artists make everyone look like themselves, and are able to draw human anatomy ‘properly’ – i.e. people consistently look like people. Bad art is when people don’t look like themselves and anatomy is not ‘real’. The quotation marks are to emphasise that we are talking about superhero comics, so a little leeway is allowed. “Cartoony” art is when human anatomy is basically ignored for emphasis or because the artist was brought up on Japanese anime, and therefore doesn’t actually count as “bad” art.However, continuity in the artwork means that the reader feels familiar and comfortable with the characters and story, while rapid changes of artists lessens that connection. Couple this with unconvincing scripting and uninteresting characters, and, unless you are really committed to this title and team, this becomes an uninteresting book.

How is it possible to make a boring read with Lobo and Batman? I don't know but the writers managed to do it. It a bad book with direction and terribly written.