Unbeatable Comics: Justice League #10

writer: Geoff Johns
artist: Jim Lee

"The Villain's Journey" starts to heat up, with the League finally confronting Graves directly.  Graves was formerly the writer who literally wrote the book on the team, but whose faith fell apart when he lost his family and these apparent gods could do nothing about it.  It's a classic story of hero worship turned sour, but Geoff Johns is able to put more into than usual because it works so well with everything he's been doing on this book since the beginning, approaching the team much as Graves did, and thus allowing us to feel more of his disappointment than we otherwise would.

Much of what happens in this issue is much what happens whenever a new villain attacks a team, seemingly gaining the upper hand with what appears to be an easy victory, yet Graves is plagued throughout the episode with delusional flashbacks to those he lost and still grieves, and it's not so much to provide him with sympathy or to explain how the League will eventually rally and defeat him, but to continue the tapestry.

From the first issue, Johns has been careful to write this series straddling the line of iconic and grounded perceptions of the characters, and this has extended to the figures of Steve Trevor, the team liaison who has a troubled relationship with Wonder Woman, and now David Graves, whose transformation into a superpowered villain is depicted in the opening pages.  It has a mirror in the continuing Shazam backup feature, in which Billy Batson struggles to get past his resentment and become the hero he already is while Dr. Sivana releases Black Adam in an effort to claim power he's only read about.  Johns has an ability to understand the psychology of superheroes (and villains) and infuse his stories with it, and Justice League has managed to do that with multiple characters.