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Two astronauts on Mars open
a portal that has been locked for hundreds of years...releasing
something. Two years later on earth, Batman follows three suspicious
characters to a WayneTech radar substation. After they blow up the radar
dish, Batman realizes that the criminals were not human. Meanwhile,
Superman has been disarming the world of nuclear weapons when a large
pod-like meteor crashes into Metropolis. The pod cracks open and a
twenty-story tripod robotic creature emerges and starts blasting the
city apart. The pods are soon spotted landing all over the planet. For
the past few months, Superman has been receiving telepathic
communications that give him quick views of Mars, but he has been unable
to figure out what they mean. While fighting the tripod in Metropolis,
Superman receives another vision and finally figures out what it means.
He quickly flies out of Metropolis with Batman following in the Batwing.
They both end up rescuing J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, who was
being help prisoner in a military installation, but not by humans. J'onn
telepathically calls other super heroes (The Flash, Wonder Woman, Green
Lantern, and Hawkgirl) to help fight this alien invasion. Together they
hope that can defeat the race that once killed the planet Mars and wiped
out J'onn J'onzz's race.
Justice League: Secret
Origins by Michael Teitelbaum is a book based on the first episode
of the Warner Bros. cartoon Justice League, which is a spin off
of the shows Batman: The
Animated Series, The Adventures of Batman and Robin, Superman,
The New Batman Adventures, and The Batman/Superman Adventures. It is a Young Adult Super Hero story starring the
following DC Comics characters: Superman - the Last Son of Krypton,
Batman - the Dark Knight, Wonder Woman - the Amazon Princess, The Flash
- the World's Fastest Man, Green Lantern - an member of an intergalactic
peacekeeping force, Martian Manhunter - the Last Martian, and Hawkgirl -
a winged warrior from the planet Thanagar. They band together to form a
group of super friends called...The Justice League.
Michael Teitelbaum brings to
the printed page the first episode of the cartoon Justice League,
which plays on the Cartoon Network. He does a good job of portraying the
characters from the show, not the comic books. If you haven't seen the
show, which I have, you might be confused by some of the characters, as
they are not from the original Justice League comic book. They picked
John Stewart to be Green Lantern, not Hal or Kyle, because they needed
an African American on the team...John being the least popular of the
three Green Lanterns from Earth. They picked Hawkgirl, not Hawkman, because
they needed another woman, besides Wonder Woman, even though Hawkman is
a better known character. They went with the second Flash becasue they
needed someone younger, and probably because the original Flash, Barry
Allen, is dead. But in this story, Wonder Woman is new on the scene and
nobody knows her yet. So, the timeline is pretty messed up in the story,
but that is not Michael Teitelbaum's fault, is the producers of the
cartoon's fault. Either way, this book is a good representation of the
show and I quite enjoyed the reading...I must have since I finished it
in a day. If you like the show, or just the comic book, the book Justice
League: Secret Origins is worth picking up for some fun reading. I
only had one problem with the story: Superman never kills, but he seemed
to have no problem killing the invading aliens in this story. This is a
slight discrepancy in his character, but doesn't really distract from
the story.
I rated this book an 8 out of
10. |
