Justice League International #2

Justice League International may not be the star-studded lineup that the Justice League of America is, but at the very least, it can take credit for putting out two issues since the Justice League #1 debuted over a month ago (Jim Lee fails). Furthermore, both issues of J.L.I., created by lessor known talents of Dan Jurgens and Aaron Lopresti, are better than the one issue of Justice League by superstar creators Geoff Johns and Jim Lee.

This issue does a lot of things well. The most difficult task is that this is a large collection of mostly unknown characters. This team is nine members large, and the only ones who the average reader has probably seen before are Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, and of course, Batman. And yet, the reader is given strong clues to the personalities of nearly all the characters. Rocket Red and August General-in-Iron give us a great former communist rivalry of national superiority, Booster is a wannabe-A-list superhero still waiting for his big chance to join the J.L.A., Guy Gardner is an egomaniac, Godiva is a huge flirt not super-concerned with world-saving, and Batman is well, Batman.

What's great about this cast of characters is that it really is an international collection of heroes from different nations, as well as having an even divide in numbers between both genders, consisting of 5 men and 4 women. This is by no means a boy's club, as so many superhero teams tend to be.

Justice League International #1

This comes second because, well, I just read this one and figured I'd do a fresh review.

This comic is......surprisingly good, and better than Justice League #1. It stars a wide range of heroes from different nations and ethnicities and it really has a great diversity. The head of the United Nations Intelligence division, Andre Briggs, has formed a team to work for the United Nations, instead of acting as an autonomous body, as the Justice League does.

And Dan Jurgens comes up with a solid way to introduce the team to the readers, in a way that doesn't seem super cheesy but still introduces us to all the characters and a little bit of their backgrounds. It also shows a number of heroes the U.N. rejects, which also makes me wonder whether they were randomly chosen for this issue, or if Dan Jurgens actually considered putting them on the team. Either way, it's good that Blue Beetle and Green Arrow have their own books so we won't miss them too much here, and Plastic Man I could care less about so no big loss there either.