The Witching Hour is at hand...
Justice League Dark (2018) is a 2018 ongoing series written by James Tynion IV. It was announced as part of the "New Justice" DCU imprint spinning out of Justice League: No Justice, with Wonder Woman heading a team including Zatanna, Swamp Thing, Detective Chimp, and Man-Bat, their first storyline involving the group dealing with the aftermath of the Dark Multiverse Invasion and them trying to stave off the Death of Magic.
The series consists of the following storylines:
- The Last Age of Magic: #1-3, 5-7
- Wonder Woman and Justice League Dark: The Witching Hour: A Bat Family Crossover between Wonder Woman (Rebirth) and this series.
- Lords of Order: #8-13, Annual 1
- The Witching War: #14-19
- A Costly Trick of Magic: #20-28
The series was cancelled in 2021 and turned into a back-up for Justice League (Infinite Frontier). For more on that, see Justice League Dark (2021).
Tropes
- Always Someone Better: Mordru reveals that his brothers and sisters, the Lords of Order have a glaring limitation. They're so besotted with Order that they limit what they can do with rituals and spells whereas the Lords of Chaos simply channel magic and will it to what they want. So when he turns the Justice League into Lords of Chaos, they easily wipe out the Lords of Order and imprison Nabu.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Hecate and the Otherkind do this to anyone who goes up against them. Dr Fate and the other Lords of Order continue this tradition of steamrolling everyone, before Justice League Dark are transformed into Lords of Chaos and kill almost every Lord of Order in a single hit.
- Enemy Mine: A Godzilla Threshold moment happens for Wonder Woman's team when they witness Dr. Fate and his fellow Lords of Order slaughtering entire dimensions. They know there's nobody on their side even close to being able to take on them. So they approach the evil Lord of Chaos, Mordru, for help.
- Face–Heel Turn: Dr. Fate turns on everyone and sides with his fellow Lords of Order, they end up dismantling entire magical dimensions while their inhabitants were still in them.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Subverted. Zatanna tries this on Diana who has been brainwashed by Hecate as a distraction so Constantine can exorcise Hecate's influence from Diana's body.Zatanna: Even a cheap stage magician knows that sleight of hand isn't about what you're looking at. It's about what you missed.
- Magic Is Feminine: Hecate is the goddess of magic. She is the first magical being in the universe and even predates other gods. She was the one who taught humanity how to use magic. When some humans tried to steal her power she split into five portions each hidden within a woman: Wonder Woman, Manitou Dawn, Witchfire, Black Orchid, and Circe.
- Magic Versus Science: Averted with Dr Kirk Langstrom. Despite being a man of science he accepts magic as real very quickly and is interested in studying it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Diana lets the Upside-Down Man into the human world so he can kill Hecate who is trying to bring about the end of the world. Unfortunately, this allows the Otherkind access into the human world and they begin killing people.
- Detective Chimp attempts to resurrect Nightmaster who perished in the events of Dark Nights: Metal. However, because Myrra operates on different set of rules for life and death for Earth, he instead raises an army of zombies that terrorizes the populace. Fortunately, he is able to undo his mistakes.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: On Wonder Woman's team, it's Man-Bat and Detective Chimp. Detective Chimp has become a self-pitying drunk after the death of his best pal, Night Master and shows little desire to get out of his current state. Man-Bat isn't trusted as he's shown to be dangerously unstable in the past with his Mad Science and outside of beating up mook-level threats, he's largely out of his depth as someone with no magical background.
