If you’ll recall, there was once a Mark Waid JLA story called “Tower of Babel,” wherein R’as Al Ghul infiltrates the Batcave and steals all of Batman’s contingency plans for taking down his friends in the Justice League should they ever be mind controlled or go rogue or some such. That created a rift of trust between the team and Batman, forcing the Dark Knight to leave. They even made a movie about it with Justice League: Doom. However, that’s all Old 52 continuity, cast aside to the Flashpoint winds. That said, it seems like Geoff Johns is about to retell that story, starting with Justice League #19.
We open with Jason Todd and Alfred grieving over the loss of Damian Wayne in the Batcave, when a man in black looking somewhat like a Talon from the Court of Owls (although he could also very well be from the League of Assassins, in keeping with the original story) knocks them both out and steals some kryptonite from a hidden box – and curiously enough, the Batcave seems to register his retinal scan as approved, so maybe he’s Hush or something, too. At this point, we don’t know if it’s more than kryptonite, but Batman seems to imply later that it’s just the rock and not all the other boxes helpfully labeled with the logos of the respective heroes.
Then, we see the new Atom playing video games, and apparently, for some reason, she can shrink small enough to become video game graphics? Because when she quits the game, she actually jumps out of the computer screen itself. That… makes no sense. But anyway, she’s off for her rookie run-through with the Justice League, alongside Firestorm, who hasn’t mastered the art of having a conversation with the second personality in his head without sounding like he’s talking out loud to nobody. Then, we see that Superman and Wonder Woman have dropped themselves into a tense political hostage situation in Kahndaq, rescuing people and causing an international incident at the same time, as apparently, they are both considered “Americans.” Batman has to drop some knowledge on the do-gooders about whether or not actions like this cause more problems than they solve – and tells them if the world finds out they’re an item, people will panic at the two most powerful beings on Earth becoming a threat. Then Despero shows up! Zoiks!
“Tower of Babel” was a pretty great story, so you can’t really fault Johns for wanting to drop it back into the New 52 continuity, and one supposes he has to do it differently so as not to be a direct rip of Waid’s work. I suppose it makes sense that Batman’s not yet hardened enough, even after losing his son, that he’s going to clamp down on his secret plans so hard that they have to drag it out of him later – thus, he comes right forth and tells Superman what’s up, which horks Wonder Woman off a bit and yet kinda undercuts the tension. We’ll have to see how it plays out, but right now, the big mystery is only ‘who took the rock?’ The Court of Owls wouldn’t seem to have much business with Superman, but maybe it’s a roundabout way to get at Batman by severing his ties to his allies. Or it’s a straight R’as thing. Or hell, maybe that was Owlman – either the antimatter universe one or Bruce Wayne’s long-lost secret brother, who was heading up his Court of Owls threat. Speculation ahoy!
We get some more revelations in the backup Shazam story as well, as Billy Batson is trying to give his powers back to the Wizard, feeling unworthy after Black Adam terrified him, but apparently he can’t get back to the Rock of Eternity without Shazamming back up again, which will lead Adam right to him and his foster siblings who are with him. He’s also having a magical conversation with an iPad that Mary can hear parts of – hinting that she’s secretly actually related to Billy by blood, and that she’ll Mary Marvel it up at some point. The bigger discovery is that Black Adam is ALSO a boy playing at being a man, which one supposes would explain his tempermental nature. It seems back in the ancient times, a barbarian named Ibac and his army (“the men who invented evil”) enslaved young Adam (not Teth-Adam, but Aman, apparently), killed his family and made to suffer intensely until he found his way to the Rock of Eternity.
This causes Billy to act foolishly, as the whole Billy Bathole schtick comes back to bite him in the butt. He thinks he can just run up and talk Black Adam down, because he recognizes that they’re both hurt by and suspicious of others, and they lash out to hurt them before they can be hurt. Of course, Adam’s having none of that, and looks to be about to smite Billy. Maybe this means Mary will be the new Captain Marvel, too. This Shazam business is so much better to read now that Billy’s veneer of Batholery is gone and he’s starting to act more like the actual Billy Batson.
Ivan Reis and Gary Frank are both top-notch artists, and Reis turns in great work on the A-story, and Frank’s right on par with the Shazam business. In fact, their styles are so similar that the flow is near perfect, and you almost don’t even detect the artist change between stories. While Johns’ tale doesn’t seem to have quite the oomph that Waid’s version did as yet, that does seem to be a pitfall with reinterpreting an old story in a new way, and there’s a chance it may play out in new and different ways down the line. Shazam is also now tolerable, too, although that might be because we haven’t seen Shazam acting like a dopey kid in a while. The whole ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ thing never seemed to kick in while he was running around being a dingus hero for cheap hire and a glutton with Freddy Freeman.
Overall, Justice League #19 isn’t particularly exciting, but it does set the stage for some potentially interesting developments. We’ll have to wait and see if they actually develop.
