Our 50th Post: Beat On The Brad

Brad Meltzer seems like a pleasant enough fella in interviews. I enjoyed a lot of things he put into Identity Crisis. His Green Arrow arc was certainly decent. He is decidedly unabashed in his crush on 1970's DC and the Justice League in particular, so what's not to like?


Apparently his Justice League of America. That's what not to like.

I was in the minority who enjoyed the first six issues, despite a slow build to climax. I gritted my teeth a little more through the next four installments, intertwined with Geoff Johns' Justice Society as "The Lightning Saga". By the time I finished muddling through the standalone issue #11 and it's horribly confusing geography (did anyone else have a hard time picturing exactly where Vixen and Red Arrow were buried? More specifically, how exactly was the semi-submerged building situated in the water?), I wanted the next issue to come out the next day, the quicker to get it over with.

Brad Meltzer writes fiction for a living (albeit in a different form). Why does he seem to struggle with the comic format, when neophyte comic writers from other forms (e.g. television and movies) don't seem to have the same early rough patches?

Primarily, it doesn't look like Meltzer's ever going to get used to working with an artist or putting anything in his script to express his thoughts non-verbally. He gives Ed Benes precious little to draw. Even when he does go for a visual revelation, he can't resist adding at least one word (see the opening graphic for only the latest example).

Another flaw common in just about every issue of JLA and Identity Crisis: He tends to jam... random things into stories, disregarding the idea that his audience might not be 100% dialed into the DC lore burned into his own brain. We don't even know whether this trivia is actual DC history or not, like the revelation that 31st century Legionnaire Wildfire actually resides in 21st century hero Red Tornado's body, or this sequence from this week's JLA.
Is this a real story that we should all have remembered going into this page?

I certainly don't want to savage Brad Meltzer's run. Again, I enjoyed the Red Tornado story (gratuitous cannabalistic maiming aside), the JLA/JSA/LSH crossover had some nice cliffhangers and a minimum of Things Actually Happening, and I was surprised at how touching this small panel could be in his finale.

I just wish there wasn't so much yakkity-yak and dull statuary in between all of that.