For what it is, JUSTICE LEAGUE #2 is very nearly pitch-perfect. That’s something that should be taken as a highly relative statement. I understand that a lot of longtime readers are unimpressed with its relative simplicity. But if anything, JL is THE back-to-basics book of the New 52. Ground level. Start here.

Both as a beginner comic and as a fun action-adventure backbone of the universe, I really do think JL could work. I will always prefer more meaty comics, like BATMAN or BATWOMAN have been so far, but sometimes I just like to be able to pick up a comic that’s just fun and flash.

Oh, right, Flash. He makes his appearance in this issue, so with Cyborg-to-be we’ve got all but two of the League in play, mostly. The characters still but heads, and the dialogue works for this: these characters are, by and large, young, fairly inexperienced in this superhero thing, and are mostly used to everyone else in a costume trying to kill them. This is a new world where no one knows the rules yet.

JUSTICE LEAGUE is not a comic I’ve come to, or will ever come to, I imagine, expecting deep philosophizing or heavy drama. Indeed, major character things I’d rather have reserved for their own books. I get precisely what I expect: light, snappy entertainment that lives in the most basic elements of the superhero story. And that’s not nothing.