Marvel’s Civil War wasn’t the only high-profile comic book that didn’t show up at the shops Wednesday afternoon like it was supposed to; issue #1 of Brad Meltzer’s new Justice League of America got pushed back a week as well. But there’s no great crisis at hand—Meltzer quickly assured fans that it was “some printing issue that’s out of everyone’s hands…including DC’s.”
Well, sometimes I get stuff a week ahead of schedule, so I can assure fans of Meltzer’s work on Green Arrow and Identity Crisis that when JLA drops next Wednesday, they’ll be satisfied. Details have been kept pretty tightly under wraps—hell, I kept trying to drag info out of Meltzer every time I saw him for months—so I’m not going to be a spoilsport about it. (Those of you who aren’t comic book fans may want to skip the rest of this paragraph, because it’s pretty much all in geek.) It’s no secret that Meltzer’s building his first story arc around Red Tornado, but he’s found a new and yet quintessentially Meltzerian way to deal with Reddy. There’s guest stars aplenty, including one spooky character whose appearance is deceiving, and at least one of the team members… well, you know how the fan chatter has been “oh, they must be using Character A, there’s no way they’d pick Character B”? They picked Character B. Be forewarned: the cover art on DC’s website is significantly different than what’s in my hands, with five substitutions and one omission. And, as PW Daily reported earlier this week, the first chapter of Meltzer’s new novel is added bonus material. “If you read the first chapter of The Book of Fate, it reads like a 32-page comic book and if you read JLA, it’s like reading my novels,” Meltzer told PWD. “It’s about making readers care about the characters.” Too bad Fate doesn’t have a comics insert…but maybe they can put coupons for the first Justice League trade collection in next year’s paperback.