Wow it's been a while since I wrote a review for a single issue of a comic. Justice League Dark wasn't my favorite book to come out of the New 52 but out of the other Justice League books we got I think it was the most interesting. Although it was relatively popular, lasting at least 40 issues, I was surprised that they were bringing it back after the No Justice event. Even though I was less interested I decided to give the first issue a chance and it was okay, nothing spectacular. I wasn't even going to read this issue but after seeing my favorite Superhero Doctor Fate on the cover while at the comic store I decided to give it another chance. So did I make the right call? Let's find out.
---SPOILER WARNING---
Just to catch you up from the first issue there is something wrong with magic and it has something to do with creatures called The Otherkind. In order to figure out what's going on Wonder Woman enlists the help of Zatanna as well as Swamp Thing, Detective Chimp, and Kirk Langstrom aka Man-Bat who form the new Justice League Dark. In this issue after finding out that whatever is going on is also affecting the Red (The energy that connects all living animals on earth) they decide to request the help of Doctor Fate and they travel to the Tower of Fate in Salem. When they arrive however Doctor Fate is acting strange and will only talk to Wonder Woman and Zatanna. They go to a different part of the tower and Doctor Fate starts to tell them the origins of Magic as well as a retconned origin for Nabu and the Lord's of Order where instead of being cosmic beings they are the first humans who learned to use and manipulate magic.
Meanwhile Langstrom and Detective Chimp are looking around the tower while waiting for the others to return when they find Khalid, the DCYou Doctor Fate, imprisoned in a pot that Langstrom accidentally breaks. He tells them that Kent hasn't been in control and that Nabu imprisoned him in the pot right before he shatters like the pot he was imprisoned in. Hopefully they didn't just kill him off because while Paul Levitz's Doctor Fate isn't my favorite run I like Khalid. Anyway back with the others Fate reveals that he is Nabu and he is behind the Otherkind. His reasoning is that magic is naturally chaotic and only by destroying it can there be order. Wonder Woman and Zatanna attack him but he flees as the world goes dark and the comic ends with the Otherkind finally arriving on this world.
I really enjoyed this issue and I am glad I gave it another chance since this was way better then the last issue. Before I talk about my thoughts however I think I should address the elephant in the room in that this storyline bears some resemblance to a story that was in Doctor Strange a year or two ago called the Last Days of Magic in which extra dimensional beings called the Empirikal are trying to destroy magic on earth. I would say this might be a coincidence since beside the core concept of the story the details and execution are different but while looking up stuff on this book earlier today I discovered that the first trade for this series is also titled the Last Days of Magic. So i'll let you decided if this is a rip-off or not.
I'm kinda pissed they made Doctor Fate a d!ck again however I think the execution was handled well and made sense for Nabu's characters. At least it was way better then in Injustice 2 where he decides Brainiac is right to blow up the earth. I just hope he dosen't go full villian and I hope he didn't kill Kent or Khalid. There was also a really good scene, that I didn't mention in the plot synopsis, between John Constantine and Swamp Thing that made me nostalgic for Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing. I shouldn't forget to mention that the art was really good, Doctor Fate hasn't looked this cool in a while. Once again I should say that I really liked this issue, like alot of books since Rebirth it feels like the books I was reading when I started reading comics.
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