There was a time once when government enforced-lockdowns, thousands falling ill, and scientists frantically searching for a cure was a product of pure fiction. When Geoff Johns wrote The Amazo Virus storyline for Justice League (vol 2), COVID-19 was five years down the track. Comic books have toyed around and explored the concept of pandemics and epidemics and the like for decades. One of the most famous must be Batman: Contagion, a tale from 1996, in which a genetically modified strain of Ebola (devised secretly by Ra’s Al Ghul, not revealed until Batman: Legacy later in the year) comes to Gotham and it’s up to the Dark Knight and his chums to rescue the city. It was morbid, grim, and all-in-all, depressing stuff, made brilliant by a wonderful cast. For the penultimate story of the New 52 Justice League run before The Darkseid War, The Amazo Virus explores an eye-opening concept – what if there was a virus that gave all the infected violent super-powers?
The Amazo Virus was a five-parter published in Justice League (vol 2) 35-39. Written by Geoff Johns, the prelude issue was drawn by Doug Mahnke, Ivan Reis, Keith Champagne, Mark Irwin, Christian Alamy, Ray McCarthy, and Joe Prado. Meanwhile, the main bulk of the story was pencilled and inked by the great Jason Fabok.
Like all pandemics and epidemics, it has to begin right at the busiest time of everyone’s life. For the Justice League, their woes begin as they strive to discover the real reason why Lex Luthor has now decided to become a goodie and work for the Justice League. Justice League (vol 2) 35 is a prologue that acts as a bridge between the complex plot threads of Forever Evil/The Injustice League, and The Amazo Virus, which sails in a completely different direction. Although declaring himself a hero, Lex Luthor clearly has his own plans. In order to get closer to LexCorp and its secret, the company enters a partnership with Wayne Enterprises. Luthor is all-too aware that the league doesn’t trust him, but he allows Bruce Wayne to enter his secret vault. As a prologue, this first issue has little link to The Amazo Virus. And that’s because the arrival of the virus is wholly unpredictable. Instead, this feels like the next natural step in the Justice League (vol 2) plotline. Geoff Johns writes with a sense of thrill – Batman is thrown into LexCorp’s base with Luthor as his unreliable guide, while the rest of the league go undercover to monitor the building and prepare to storm it when Luthor’s true plans are revealed. Johns does focus primarily on Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor here – the similarities of family tragedy are overshadowed by the battle between good and evil. It’s in this prologue also where Johns introduces us to Lena Luthor. She was mentioned quite a bit in Forever Evil. Luthor tried to save her from a terrible illness, but she ended up paralysed in a wheelchair. Her inclusion in the story – while providing Luthor with a more emotional link – is pretty pointless. Johns just doesn’t do much with her. Luthor’s plan is try and cure her for good, but suddenly the whole story is blown off course when a supervillain named Neutron breaks into LexCorp to try and assassinate Luthor. In all the shock, the story shoots off at a one-hundred miles per hour. Neutron’s destructive attacks on Luthor’s vault leads to a rupture of his most dangerous secret weapon – The Amazo Virus. With the cannister leaking its gas into the world, the prologue ends flawlessly with the mysterious pandemic launched immediately. Within 24 hours, the whole of the world is in lockdown…
Justice League (vol 2) 36 starts by going full Grant Morrison. America is in lockdown, nearly the whole Justice League is infected, and Superman and Batman are teaming together to search for Patient Zero. This is all 24 hours after the prologue ends. Throwing us straight into the action and the drama is exactly what you’d except during a pandemic like this. The stakes are high from the start, and it’s good that Johns doesn't bog the story down with pointless dialogue scenes full of exposition. That would forever kill the high levels of anxiety present in the story. Where does this anxiety spawn from? It’s not just that the fact that this virus can kill anyone it infects in a short period of time, but also because those infected will receive a random superpower. It was made by Luthor to – apparently – neutralise supervillains and take their powers away from them. The virus was made by DNA from Amazo, the Justice League villain who has the capacity to mimic the powers of any metahuman. Amazo has always been a good villain because he is a suitable challenge for Superman and Wonder Woman. When foes like him or Despero emerge to fight the league, you can guarantee the stakes will be high. Here, Amazo isn’t so much the villain, but his fantastic mimicking quality is present. While Superman and Wonder Woman are immune from the virus since they’re aliens, Batman is wearing a fancy protective suit that you just know will be torn open soon enough to let the virus in. Other than those three heroes – and Lex Luthor – every other character in the league is bed-ridden. Having this smaller cast of characters works well as it adds to the apocalyptic mood of events, but perhaps some of the other heroes would have been better choices. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are great, but I think it would have been more interesting and unique for characters like Power Ring or the Flash to star instead. Sometimes you need the less important heroes saving the day. We do have Captain Cold still working as Luthor’s bodyguard, but he doesn’t exactly add much substance to the tale. He’s just there and only having his shining moment at the very end.
When it comes to the pacing of The Amazo Virus, it’s up there with other fast-paced stories like Justice League: Origin. The league has to fight many threats, and Johns of course knows that exposition and reams of dialogue would be out of place here. Justice League (vol 2) 37 starts with Batman and Superman finding Patient Zero. Named Dr Armen Ikarus, this scientist worked at LexCorp and was the first to become exposed to the virus. He has mutated further and become as dangerous and powerful as the real Amazo. Ikarus’s blood is needed to create a vaccine to defeat the virus and save humanity. The famous heroic trio fight Ikarus, but in the duel, Batman’s protective suit is ruptured. With that, the Dark Knight is now another victim to Amazo’s virus…
Justice League (vol 2) 38 is where this story’s second plot emerges. Remember how Neutron appeared first of all to try and kill Lex Luthor? Well, it doesn’t stop there. Another assassin very wittily named Bullet comes to kill Luthor as well. Since the assassination attempts on Luthor started before the pandemic, it’s safe to assume that whoever wants him killed wants him for another reason. That storyline doesn’t take up much room or space at all within The Amazo Virus, but it continues entirely in Johns’s fashion as a writer. He’s obsessed with plot and keeping the story moving. All these stories going at once is never bad, but there does need be room for the plots to breathe, develop, and then finish satisfactorily. After The Amazo Virus, there is only about a dozen issues of the run left – is that enough time? We’ll see. Either way, Luthor is spared his fate for now. Meanwhile, Superman and Wonder Woman contain Ikarus only to find that Luthor cannot use him for the antidote. The reasoning is somewhat scientistic ally sketchy and underwhelming, but the main point is that the Man of Steel himself can be used instead. It’s because Lex Luthor exposed Superman to the virus four years prior. This is a good shock which can be added to the long list of Lex Luthor’s crimes. Throughout, Luthor has been lying about the true purpose of the virus – its original goal was to infect the Man of Steel to make him powerless. Once again, Johns makes Luthor both the cause and saviour of the story. Without him or his hatred of Superman, this virus would never have been created. But Luthor is also responsible – at the end – for creating a mass vaccine to save humanity. What a fascinating character Luthor has become.
For the final stage of the story in Justice League (vol 2) 39, the virus is kicked up a notch. Now acting as a sentient being that unites all the infected, the Amazo Virus goes for the non-infected heroes in full force. While I do like the zombie-like idea of the infected working together, but making the virus sentient and giving it a voice is a slightly daft move. It takes away any of the creepy and mysterious aspect of the virus which made it so dangerous. It’s later revealed that the voice does actually belong to Amazo, but that raises even more questions relating to boring inexplicable science. Regardless, the ending to such a world-changing event is somewhat expectedly a comedown. By using Captain Cold’s weapons and freezing Patient Zero, who the sentient voice of the Amazo Virus connects with, the zombie army is halted and Luthor is given time to synthesise a vaccine. It almost ends too quickly, but when it comes to quality, it's an ending which makes sense.
The last few pages of Justice League (vol 2) 39 act as an epilogue to clear the air. Some of the infected public – while now human and healthy once more – have kept their superpowers. Meanwhile, Ikarus is kept under Luthor’s close eye for further experiments. Additionally, the story concludes with Jessica Cruz meeting Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern for the first time as she wants to stay in control of her powers. It’s insulting that this scene full of potential lasts for a mere two panels. Nevertheless, it’s does provide some closure and I’m glad the story doesn’t dwell on the oncoming threat of Darkseid – we have about a dozen issues to do that!
One criticism you could easily make of The Amazo Virus is its clear lack of originality. While it may be exceptionally difficult – after eighty-five years’ worth of stories – to muster together a wholly original story, The Amazo Virus is shallower than most tales in this field. I mentioned earlier that Batman: Contagion was another example of a health crisis previously done by DC. Compared to this, I would argue that Contagion is perhaps better because of its length and depth. But other elements of The Amazo Virus feel a tad stale too. The infection of humanity with superpowers – while certainly interesting – was done before by Grant Morrison JLA: World War Three. And even with the glittering potential of this story’s ending, with a few members of the public still retaining their superpowers, DC have done this before with Millenium, a 1988 crossover tale in which the Gene Bome detonated and blessed (or cursed) a random selection of humanity. None of this is to argue or say that The Amazo War is terrible. It really isn’t. But it does lack the same kind of originality which Geoff Johns has been capable of previously.
So, what can be said about The Amazo Virus in the grand scheme of Geoff Johns’s New 52 Justice League run? It may be a five-parter, but it – along with The Secret of the Cheetah, The Throne of Atlantis, and a few others – is outside of the main storyline. Yes, it does sometimes stray into the main plotline with scenes featuring Luthor and the assassination attempts on him, but it works really well as a breather from the action surrounding the oncoming Darkseid. The sense of thrill and drama is noticeable, and the stakes are high, but the story works primarily because it isn’t bogged down by either exposition or any forced plot. Geoff Johns writes The Amazo Virus to be a solid one-off, and it can be read as such. One of the forgotten elements of Johns’s run is Lex Luthor and the complexities of his character. While it may be too early to analyse it fully since we’ve still got a few issues to go, Luthor has been used so well very Johns and in such an interesting way that the villain must easily stand as a highlight feature. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always unflinchingly selfish, Luthor’s role in The Amazo Virus as both instigator and saviour is only a role that he could fit.
If there is to be criticism made of not so much this story, but the Geoff Johns run as a whole, is the lack of one-off character studies. The reason I mention this here is because The Darkseid War is nearly upon is, and that is the final story of Johns’s run. It’s sad that see that there have barely been any character studies or one-off issues that focus on a single character. Previous Justice League runs have done that, and they add a lot to the personalities of the team. Throughout Johns’s run, there are many characters who could have benefited highly from such stories. Power Ring is one, Cyborg another. These criticisms are to be made of the Geoff Johns run as a whole, but it seems to me that the vast majority of modern comics focus far more on multi-part epics than on character and personality in a one-off.
Doug Mahnke and Ivan Reis are the pencillers for Justice League (vol 2) 35, the prologue to the main event. Despite a number of inkers present, the style isn’t too inconsistent. The finishes are nothing spectacular, but there are some shining moments of storytelling. As for the following four parts, it’s Jason Fabok all the way! Fabok both pencils and inks the main bulk of The Amazo Virus and it’s stunning. His sense of storytelling is very unique and dramatic, while the whole visual appearance of the story is suitably bleak and downcast. Unlike some artists who ink their own pencils, it doesn’t look over-the-top on detail. Overall, with its sense of dramatic storytelling and great-looking finishes, Jason Fabok’s art is the best the title has looked since Jim Lee and Scott Williams collaborated during the first year of the New 52.
VERDICT
Overall, Justice League: The Amazo Virus is a nice pause before The Darkseid War begins and floods us with more plot. This story can easily be read separately from the rest of the title, and while the plot may not be original by any stretch of the imagination, it’s just good fun. The pacing is wonderful and – with the help of Jason Fabok – the grim and depressing aura of the story is displayed flawlessly. Sadly, it’s not as likely to be as remembered as other stories in the run, but it’s easily up there.
Next Week: Green Arrow: A Slight Case of Vertigo (Green Arrow (vol 1) 1-4. Written by Mike W. Barr, with art by Trevor Von Eeden, and Dick Giordano.
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