By Waid, Augustyn, and Kitson

This is part of my comic book challenge 2009.

This is the retelling of how the Justice League of America came to band together and to stay together despite mutual distrust. The trade concentrates on things that happen in the background, so to speak. In other words, sometimes the characters speak about fights and villains which aren’t shown here.

Green Lantern, Flash, Black Canary, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter each battle a powerful alien on their own but then they track down the sixth invader and defeat it together. Afterwards, they get back together to give the aliens to the US military and naturally have to fight another group which is trying to steal the aliens. The other group succeeds in taking some of the aliens with them. Even so, the heroes decide to band together at least for a while.

All the time, there are mysterious group of people who watches the newly forming alliance and researches the heroes so that they can be defeated more easily. They are, of course, the main villains; a group called Locust which is determined on no less that the apocalypse which they themselves would survive.

The new JLA has to beat villains but also their distrust towards each other. A mysterious benefactor offers to fund them and offers them a new headquarters. A bit naively, the JLA accepts.

We also get glimpses of the heroes every day lives and how they are trying to cope with their dual identities and a doubled workload.

Overall: another pretty standard JLA romp