YMMV / Justice (DC Comics)

• Awesome Art: Kind of redundant for Alex Ross, but for the sake of completion... So much so that the trade paperback gives Ross' name top billing and all of the review quotes on the cover refer to his artwork.
• Complete Monster: Brainiac, the ultimate mastermind behind the Legion of Doom and the architect of most of the disasters in the story, is an advanced android created by the Computer Tyrants of Colu. When the Computer Tyrants were destroyed by the people they had oppressed, Brainiac decides to create his own version of Colu on Earth, by killing most of humanity and turning the rest into copies of himself. To do this, Brainiac meets with Captain Marvel villain Doctor Sivana, who has been developing tiny robot worms that control the minds of others. Brainiac takes his research and uses it to drive Doctor Sivana insane. Brainiac forms his own Legion of Doom, mind-controlling most of the members, except for Lex Luthor who has a force field that protects him from Brainiac's devices. Brainiac has Black Manta kidnap Aquaman, with Brainiac wanting to learn more about his telepathy by cutting open his brain. Brainiac has the various Legion of Doom members pretend to have turned good and wanting to help humanity, with several of them creating cities for the sick and needy, that will provided technology that will cure their illnesses and provided them with a good standard of life. Brainiac's micro worms have also let him take control of Earth's nuclear stockpile, with Brainiac planning to nuke most of the world to destroy humanity. When the Justice League reveal to Luthor that Brainiac has betrayed him, Luthor sabotages his plans and forces him to retreat to his ship. Brainiac, unhappy about losing, decides to set off the nukes anyway and destroy humanity.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Captain Cold is one of the least seen Legion of Doom members in the miniseries, but both the methods and attitude he sports while engaging in Cut Lex Luthor a Check Photo Op with the Dog heroics stand out.
  • Elasti-Girl, from the Doom Patrol, doesn’t appear until more than halfway through the story, but her The Big Guy moments in Alex Ross's art style make her decently remembered and very notable.
  • Scarecrow is one of the more generic villains in the story and only has a handful of action scenes, but his The Blank mask and the scope of his Mad Scientist efforts make him highly memorable.
  • Solomon Grundy The Brute has even less personality than usual, but his fearsome appearance and occasional Smarter Than They Look moment (such as being one of the only villains to escape at the end of the story) make him a highly notable villain.
  • The Metal Men are tertiary characters at best, but the way they use their liquid alloy powers to give the Justice League impressive battle suits makes them deeply appreciated parts of the miniseries.
• Harsher in Hindsight: From Batman's private files on the Flash, he said Barry is "the kind of man [he] would have hoped to become had [his] parents not been murdered before [his] eyes". Sadly it's now no longer the case after Reverse-Flash traveled back in time to kill Barry's mother and his father, framed for her murder, died in prison.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A talking psychic gorilla wearing a Green Lantern ring on his foot? YES!!
• Magnificent Bastard: Lex Luthor is the only supervillain who avoided Brainiac's mind control worms, by using a forcefield of his own creation. Deciding to work alongside Brainiac, Lex serves as the figurehead of their plan to have the villains perform humanitarian actions and use the popular goodwill to slander the Justice League and create utopian artificial cities to lure millions of humans. Managing to hack the Justice League's satellite, Lex uses the information to perform coordinated attacks that put many heroes out of commission, with some fatally injured. When the League discovers Brainiac's plan to destroy the Earth using the Worldwide Nuclear Stockpile and forcibly roboticize the people in the cities, Lex is seemingly defeated, but later reveals that he has created a AI copy that hacks Brainiac's systems to force Brainiac to escape, confessing that his goal was to become the hero that saved Earth.
• Narm: While Aquaman's turn to Papa Wolf can be classified as badass, one can't help but have flashbacks to Mel Gibson in Ransom when he's searching for Brainiac.
• Spiritual Successor: The series is jokingly described by Alex Ross as "All-Star Justice League" due to being similar to the All Star books in terms of discontinuity and Adaptation Distillation. Somewhat subverted in the "successor" department since Justice was being made around the same time period when the All-Star line was still alive.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The opening issues tease the interesting premise that the Legion of Doom are in full Well-Intentioned Extremist mode due to Dreaming of Things to Come and fearing the destruction of the world, but, reading the rest of the series, it can be hard to tell that most of them are supposed to be acting like anything other than their normal villainous selves as brainwashing and/or a desire to rule the remnants of humanity dictate many of their actions.

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