Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1 review

It’s been a busy week, I’ve only just got to my second comic, Justice League: Dark Tomorrow Special #1, and this is how it begins.

How does ‘Now’ work in the context of a non-place in between time periods?

Happily, things quickly improve, with a cracking double-page spread of DC time cop Waverider being chased across Earth eras before being killed. Narrating proceedings is a masked time traveller.

Desperate for help, the mystery person manages to get to the Justice League Watchtower in 2025, causing probably the sixth hull breach of the month. Science heroes the Atom and Mr Terrific check out the visitor for damage.

The same day, another time tourist, Gold Beetle, drops in on the League, with her own problem.

Could the targeting of self-propelling time travellers and Gold Beetle’s condition be linked to the fact the League is having no luck in getting heroes displaced from their own periods in the ‘We are yesterday’ story back home?

Time for an exploratory mission, and who better to send with ‘Legend’ than some of those said time-lost types.

Gold Beetle arrives late, and Plastic Man pops up too. As for how they’re all going to traverse various times…

So we have Legend with a timeship called the Waverider, referring to a regular crew who join them for missions to various periods? It seems the Legends of Tomorrow TV series finally has a DC Comics equivalent. But who is Legend?

We know they have history with Jonah Hex. And despite appearances, they’re female (time to change pronouns) and like the ladies…can that mean anyone else but Jonah Hex’s descendant from Young Justice, Jinny Hex?

As for what the ‘ragtag‘ team get up to in this 30pp story, it’s rather like the early issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths, with a strange transmission tower protected by shadow demons. And we meet another member of Darkseid’s very shady Legion of Super-Heroes, Shadow Lass.

Well, allegedly. Why isn’t this eeeeevil Tasmia Mallor blue? I thought this was Darkseid’s daughter, Grail.

The special ends with…

Or, as we ancient LSH fans know it, the Iron Curtain of Time.

Given a version of the Time Trapper is involved in current Justice League Unlimited shenanigans, I wonder if this has been made by him for some reason?

Regular JLU writer Mark Waid co-writes with Marc Guggenheim, and events are clear and character interactions interesting. I enjoyed obscure time folk being referenced, and their deaths don’t worry me because time traveller deaths are even easier to reverse than regular comic book deaths.

The art by Cian Tormey, with colourist Romulo Fajardo Jr and letterer Dave Sharpe, is more than decent. The comic is enjoyable enough but it’s not really a side mission to the JLU arc, it’s integral; it should be split over a couple of issues of the regular series, with the ten pages that would be unfilled given over to the team’s big names – heck, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are prominent on the cover, but inside we see only Diana, and that’s for just two panels (one of them a silhouette).

I enjoyed the use of such minor characters as Air Wave, who Mark Waid has been steadily building up in JLU. I do enjoy Marilyn Moonlight from the Superman series, even though she’s not so much time displaced as back from the dead. Amazing Man is coloured accurately, unlike in his latest JLU appearance. And it’s great to see the likes of Plastic Man, Huntress and pals. But isn’t the JLU book meant to be the place where lesser lights are seen, with the presence of the more popular characters helping get more eyes on them?

And if we’re going to have something labeled a Special, but it’s linked to a bigger story, it should certainly have a discrete story with a beginning, middle and end.

What’s more, the issue’s title is a little confusing, I thought we were getting a Justice League Dark revival!

I’d love to hear your thoughts.