Justice League of America #7.4: Black Adam

By Geoff Johns, Sterling Gates, & Edgar Salazar

Justice League of America #7.4 reintroduces Black Adam into the DC Universe (again). This issue serves as a continuation to Geoff Johns’ Justice League backup that ended in issue #21 as well as being another Villains Month tie-in to Forever Evil, this time leading into next months Justice League #24. While the book manages to handle being both an epilogue to a story as well as a prologue of sorts for another, the book ends up being just OK.

The book takes place through the eyes of revolutionaries in Kahndaq. This is really the strongest part of the book as Johns and script writer Sterling Gates show the struggles of the everyday citizen of Kahndaq due to its oppressive government that aren’t much different than issues happening currently in the real world. Both Amon and his sister Adrianna are revolutionaries with very different ideas of how to get things done and seeing them express these ideas is great.

When Black Adam enters the mix the book doesn’t fall apart but it does lose its footing for the remainder of the issue. Once the “god” is on the scene the revolutionaries take a back seat as Black Adam goes to town on their common enemy. Even though Black Adam tells the revolutionaries they will bow to no one it is a bit disheartening to think that these people stood no chance against the government without an all powerful being.

Edgar Salazar does a solid job on art duties. He brings the savagery of the first couple pages to vivid detail and the fight scenes with Black Adam look awesome. The scenes in the desert look great, especially when Black Adam reappears. There were some issues with Black Adam’s face however. At times he looked young, other times he looks middle aged and at the end he looks downright old.

With solid art and an interesting beginning and middle of the book its a good read until Black Adam appears. His presence seems like an easy way to get out of the scenario and the revolutionaries are left by the wayside not to be seen again. Hopefully they will be seen again but if they do appear in another book that doesn’t matter much to the people who only picked up this one.