Justice League #50: The Darkseid War Part 10 Review

By D. Goodman | May 27, 2016

The Darkseid War, and Geoff Johns time with the Justice League, has come to a satisfying and epic conclusion.

Justice League #50
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Jason Fabok
Colored by Brad Anderson
Published by DC Comics

The following review includes SPOILERS for Justice League #50 and DC Universe Rebirth. If you haven’t had a chance to read the issues yet, you have been warned.

Last time In Justice League: As Grail arrives with her new weapon in the form of Steve Trevor, Superwoman finally has her baby and the Justice League get ready to bring an end to the Darkseid War.

I knew Geoff Johns had it in him.

In my review of Justice League #49, I talked about how I was a bit worried if Johns would be able to bring together all the various plot threads of the “The Darkseid War” into one cohesive finale. And while I wouldn’t necessarily call Justice League #50 a “finale” as some ideas do carry over into DC Universe Rebirth #1, it brings the story he started in Justice League #1 to a dramatic and enjoyable end.

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Somehow, he not only manages to bring everything together into one, satisfying conclusion, but also creates some fairly mind-blowing story ideas that other writers are probably going to have a blast fleshing out.

I will readily admit that the one thing I did worry about going into the issue was Superwoman’s baby. If it turned out that it was the MacGuffin that somehow magically saved the day, I was going to be pretty pissed. And while I did think that Grail using the baby to absorb the powers of the Justice League members who had become gods was a bit of a cop out and an overly simple resolution, it worked in the larger context of the story.

But damn would I have liked to see a Shazam series with him still using those new powers.

Speaking of Grail, when I go back and reread “The Darkseid War” (and I will), it should be a very interesting experience. When the arc started, I naturally thought that Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor were going to be the principle bad guys for the story, but that turned out not to be the case.

In the end, the story was all about Grail, how she had been manipulated by her mother and her battle to control the evil inside of her, which she lost. The finale, along with the Darkseid War Special from last month, really shined a light on her and transformed her from a simple super-villain into a tragic multi-dimensional character that will always have strong ties to the history of Wonder Woman.

Artistically, Jason Fabok says goodbye to the Justice League in style. Considering the delays this arc suffered through, it would have made perfect sense to bring on a couple of other artists to help Fabok with the finale. It is to DC’s credit that they didn’t.

Justice League #50 has joined New Mutants Special Edition #1 by Arthur Adams as visually one of my favorite comics of all time. The way he brings everything to vibrant life and uses splash pages to accent the big moments of the story is incredible. As with the first few issues of “The Darkseid War”, there are so many pages in this book that need to be posters it’s kind of silly.

My only real gripe about the issue is that the ending felt just a bit rushed. The War ends, Grail leaves and Johns begins setting up Rebirth. I would have liked to see more fallout from the conflict played out in the title itself, particularly concerning Diana and Batman, who have the most to process thanks to what both have learned.

Sure, many of these plot points will be followed up on in DC Universe Rebirth, but it would have given the New 52 Justice League series a nice sense of closure.

More superheroes and comics: Super League Part 8: Superman #52 Review

The Bottom Line: Justice League #50 brings the “The Darkseid War” and the Geoff Johns/Jason Fabok version of Justice League to an amazing conclusion. Along with Flash, this is some of Johns best writing to date and is a fitting end cap to the this period in the League’s history. It’s just a shame it had to come to an end.

Honestly, if the rest of the books in the New 52 had been half as good as Justice League was issue after issue, DC wouldn’t have needed to do Rebirth in the first place.