It is possible that this was doomed to underwhelm. The expectations and the load Justice League #1 has to carry as the first of these new 52 books is so huge it was almost impossible for it to achieve everything it needed to. Still, even knowing it could never be everything that people wanted, I truly did expect it to be more than it is.

It is not a bad book, if this was just the first issue of a new Elseworlds series telling a new take on the origins of the DCU it would be a decent, but not a great, start. However it isn’t just another series. DC has set this up, very deliberately and with a lot of hype, as the introduction to a new DC and it just isn’t that.

There are no real defining or iconic moments here, no big shiny images that are any more memorable than your average splash page. This issue is going to be a first for a lot of readers. That might be the first comic ever, the first in a long time or the first DC or Justice League book, but the point is if this is going to be a first for so many, shouldn’t its job be to inspire as many as possible to come back for a second?

This was a very unique opportunity to usher in a new era at DC and to introduce people to that world, those characters, and this kind of story. You would hope that the book produced by some of the giants in the industry to take advantage of that opportunity would have something to say about said world, characters and stories. Unfortunately, in this issue the waters are pretty shallow.

For an issue that I hoped would be something special this is pretty run of the mill. Maybe by the end of the arc Johns and Lee will have achieved something more but how many of the new readers will be there to see it?