Justice League United #10: The Infinitus Saga Conclusion

Justice League United #10

On Sale Wednesday March 11th, 2015

Written by Jeff Lemire

Pencils by Neil Edwards

Inks by Jay Leisten & Keith Champagne

Colors by Jeremy Cox

Standard Cover by Andrew Robinson

Mars Attacks Movie Poster Variant Cover by Dan Hipp

Synopsis:

This final chapter of the Infinitus Saga picks up where part 5 left off. The combined forces of the Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice League have successfully defeated Byth’s forces, but with no Infinitus to absorb the payload of Brainiac-5’s bomb, a black hole is ripped open in the fabric of space. The black hole threatens to absorb not only the Legion and Justice League United forces, but also the planet of Thanagar!

But Brainiac-5, with the help of Dream Girl’s precognition powers, quickly determines a course of action for fixing Brainy’s catastrophic mistake. He quickly has Sardath summon the warships of Rann, all equipped with Zeta Beam technology. With the combined might of 500 Rann Warships and White Witch’s magical powers, they are able to successfully transport Thanagar free from the gravity of the black hole and position it closely to Rann.

With Byth having fallen victim of the black hole’s gravitation pull and Thanagar now safely in Rann’s orbit, the team briefly celebrates their universe-saving victory before the members of the Legion return to the 31^st Century. As they leave, Brainy tells Dream Girl that her actions and leadership saved the day, and he’d like to discuss her taking over leadership of the Legion in the next round of elections.

And the story concludes on prehistoric Thanagar, as Byth plots his next attempt to reshape the universe in his own image, vowing that this time he will finally succeed. The end.

Thoughts:

The Infinitus Saga finally draws to an end, with a somewhat strong conclusion, but in my opinion, not quite strong enough to make up for the weak, uneventful meandering of chapters 3 and 4. The decompressed storytelling method really didn’t do this story any favors. All of chapters 1 & 6, along with most of chapter 2, and the last half of chapter 5 were all pretty strong from a writing and characterization standpoint. They had humor and great character interaction, which only makes it that much more tragic that the middle chapters were so weak. If you were like me and picking it up off the shelves, we had to wait 90 days to return to the same great storytelling that kicked this story arc off.

The art was always was top notch, the art team of Neil Edwards on pencils with Jay Leisten & Keith Champagne on inks delivered another winner. They really have a firm grasp on the huge cast of characters and making each one unique. I would really like to see them tackle a Legion of Super-Heroes book in the future.

Overall, it ended up being a pretty average story as far as current comics go. It promises an epic universe changing story that loses steam halfway through and thus loses the gravitas it potentially had. At the end of the story the status quo is essentially the same. The JLU is just down one member, Ultra the Multi-Alien, as he travels with the Legion to the future. Brainiac-5 leaves Adam Strange and Alanna with a parting gift, having readjusted their gamma frequencies in their own personal Zeta fields. This means they no longer switch places on Earth & Rann, and can once again be together. Everything else is as it was when this epic kicked off in the first JLU Annual, including Wildfire back in new containment suit. In chapter 5 we saw him ripped apart by Infinitus’ light construct army, here in the conclusion he is simply back in a new containment suit without any explanation. That was disappointing that his latest seeming death and resurrection weren’t explored further or even really given an acknowledgement in the dialog or exposition. I think DC really missed an opportunity with that one, and also blew a chance to give the story some gravitas here by not using this story as a springboard for (at least partially) causing the Convergence event.

Was this story worth the $20-some dollars? Absolutely not, if you haven’t picked this one up but are a Legion completist, wait for it in the cheap bins, trust me, it’ll make its way there.