Daniel Dearlove reviews Justice League Dark #23.2

Daniel Dearlove reviews Justice League Dark #23.2

Any comic with Dan Didio in a creative capacity is going to attract a certain degree of cynicism if not outright derision, with the suspicion that he could give himself any assignment he wanted. His writing during the New 52 era has been as sparse as it is spotty. OMAC was generally well received despite low sales, but seemed widely assumed to be more the work of co-writer Keith Giffen. His Challengers of the Unknown serial in DC Universe Presents was a strange thing, showing every sign of being truncated with no room for the plot to breathe. And the debut issue of Phantom Stranger was possibly one of the worst comics I've ever read.

So it feels a bit unnatural to report that Dan Didio's Eclipso story is... Not bad. Just not bad. It's a fairly low-key tale setting up Eclipso's bonding with his apparent new host. In keeping with the theme of the month, no heroes show up to do battle. Eclipso gets his hooks in the disgraced entrepreneur Gordon Jacobs, and one unfortunate victim falls along the way. (A magazine glimpsed on page one identifies Jacobs as "Architect of the Great Solar Disaster", easily misread as "Great Disaster". Could it be...? Didio does seem to love his Kirby motifs.) The script isn't hugely ambitious but works on the level of an old-fashioned DC horror story. 

However, what makes this issue worthwhile is seeing an artist realise his potential. Philip Tan's prior work has been mostly undistinguished. His art on Final Crisis: Revelations didn't progress much beyond standard house style, even when given some potentially spectacular Spectre sequences. But here, the nature of Eclipso gives itself to some striking, ethereal imagery and inventive page layouts. Standard square panels dominate on the early pages, but by the climax their rare reappearance signals the intrusion of normalcy into Jacobs' warped existence. It doesn't hurt when the jagged, dreamlike art calls to mind the Bill Sienkiewicz of the mid-eighties, a likeness that never fails to make me say "This looks like Sienkiewicz, here is my money".

Mikel Janin's cover is one of the more effective of Villains Month, with Eclipso's gem acting as an appropriately shiny focal point (as much as it calls to mind one of DC's more ill-considered enhanced covers of years gone by). It's not immediately clear where Eclipso is supposed to go from here; the pages of Justice League Dark perhaps, but it's apparent that the title on the cover isn't to be trusted where these stories are concerned. The character has had a strange journey through the New 52, the Black Diamond making appearances in titles as diverse as Demon Knights and Catwoman, with Eclipso's most recent role as the big bad in Sword of Sorcery's Amethyst, all of which is touched on here. My interest is piqued enough to wait and see what's next.