“The Bad Seed, Part 1: Fresh Meat”
Writers: Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges
Art: Jesus Merino
Colors: Allen Passalaqua
Words cannot define how disappointed I am by this book as of late. Spoilers within!
This book was easily one of the strongest DC had at it’s reboot. The concept of the JSA reforming in order to train the upcoming generation of heroes was an exciting one, and the roster was full of exciting, established heroes paired with intriguing new ones.
But since then, it’s been one thing after another. The roster is now ridiculously large, the plots have been increasingly drawn out and bland, it’s been devolving into a ridiculous mess. And now, it’s just getting worse.
Willingham takes over as the new writer of the series, and the first thing he does is open up with a membership drive and Obsidian laying an egg. Or maybe becoming one, it’s not really made clear. It’s a bit of a letdown, the initial shot of the “egg” has been in the DC Nation back-up for a while, and it looked like they were trying to obscure something bigger…but, no, it’s just a big, black egg. And the new members, All-American Kid and King Chimera, are really annoying and unlikable.
The team finds themselves facing off against an army of supervillains who seem to have been pulled together by Tapeworm, a relatively unknown Robin villain. The team also gets their asses handed to them. And Mr. Terrific gets stabbed in the back by one of the new recruits because he was too busy looking at Obsidian’s egg to pay any attention to the relatively untested kid speaking in the big scary voice.
In short, the whole of this issue seems to be “Boy, The Justice Society of America isn’t great, are they?”, which I don’t think is fair. It’s a strong team, full of interesting character but there are just too many characters. Even with the announcement that they’ll be splitting this in to two separate books, the team is still unnecessarily large.  Everything about this right now is a wreck, which is heartbreaking, because DC has untapped potential with this book. Justice Society of America #29 gets a D.