Justice League of America: The Tornado’s Path TPB (DC)

As DC reboots the Justice League and Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman attempt to handpick the new roster. Throughout the book we’re constantly flashing back to the big three summing up each of DC’s big hitters, providing commentary of what they think of each character. Alongside this plot is a story that casts Red Tornado back into the spotlight as he is given a human body for the first time, but before he can come to terms with what that means, someone steals his old body and it takes DC best to track it down.

Despite the big moments and witty banter between Bats, Supes and Diana, the book is missing something that stops it from being truly great. Maybe it’s the random nature of the cast of characters that are thrown together in the story which is then reflected at the end of the story when the final choice for the team is decided by coincidence. That cop out ending just seems to be a lame excuse to throw Brad Meltzer’s favorite characters together. Now to be fair, that is at the heart of the team up, but at the same time you can’t help but shake the bitter taste of being led down a road where Meltzer takes away from your investment of choices for the team line up by metaphorically shrugging as saying, “whatever”. Other problems with the book could be argued that people who don’t know Red Tornado will find themselves asking why they should care. More attention to new readers and giving more history to Tornado and his origin probably would have helped to clear that up.

On the positive side, the book has a large scope outfitted with the proper talent to bring it to life. Ed Benes brings all of the power of a Jim Lee with none of the stiffness of the superstar artist. While there are many seemingly odd tangent stories running free at the beginning of the book, by the time they tie together, the team fight against one of their most feared villains of all time! These big moments work perfectly, if only there was more cohesion in the overall plot the book would really soar. Other moments that are especially sweet while reading, is the interaction between Hal Jordan the Green Lantern and Arsenal (Green Arrow’s sidekick) who, by the end of the book, dons his new Red Arrow costume for the first time. It’s probably the best moment in the book, bar none.

There are a lot of throwback moments for older fans of the Justice League that are lost on newer readers. This could ignite interest in readers to go find those older stories or read up on the characters they’re not familiar with, but I think that’s a little optimistic. Still fun, the Tornado’s Path is better to look at than to read, but is still good fun.