The Lords of Order have been defeated, but magic is broken and the Justice League Dark doesn’t know how to fix it.
Justice League Dark, since it began it’s run a little over a year ago, has consistently been one of the best books that DC has been releasing. It’s managed to combine horror, fantasy, and superheroics into one package, somehow, and each issue adds another wrinkle to the universe. Now, with the Lords of Order defeated, this issue lets readers take a breath and gives us the origins to Doctor Fate and John Constantine. Like everything else this series has done though, there are wrinkles to these stories and this issue is exceptional in what it does.
Starting off with Doctor Fate, this series has consistently changed the character from hero to villain, for Nabu that it is. Some diehard Doctor Fate fans may hate this change, regardless of story, but it’s made the character so much more interesting. Seeing Kent Nelson’s origin and transformation into Doctor Fate in this issue really just showcases how evil Nabu truly is. He says he’s a Lord of Order, but only when that gets him what he wants. Plus, this issue turns Kent Nelson into an even more tragic character than he already was. This issue does a great job with its reinvention of Doctor Fate’s origin as well as tying it into the present.
For Constantine’s origin though, not much differs in what has already been told, at least up until he accidentally damns a girl’s soul to hell. After that though, the new wrinkles to his origin add layers to decades-old comics, namely Alan Moore’s Saga of the Swamp Thing. Sometimes, stuff like this can completely backfire, but here, it fills out information in that story to help make it clearer. Many of Constantine’s early appearances, he felt way out of his depth and this issue explains why extremely well. Not only explaining it though, but Constantine’s section also carries a ton of emotional weight with Zatanna and it makes you feel sympathy for both of them. There’s really no reason that either of these sections should work, but both of them do what they’re aiming to do in a commendable fashion.
Because of the two stories in this issue, the art is also split between Mark Buckingham, Doctor Fate section, and Daniel Sampere, Constantine section. Buckingham does a solid job of recreating the Golden Age artistic style that Doctor Fate was created in for use of the flashback. It honestly felt very Jack Kirby-ish. It emulates that more innocent tone of the 40s and 50s very well, even though it’s a story about a child being to murder his father, losing his childhood, and being possessed by an ancient wizard. It’s when we get to the present that Buckingham masterfully switches tones and embraces the dark tone that was actually being told.
As for Sampere’s art, his was always going to be dark, no question about it, and he nails it. His figures have a solemn feel throughout his entire section and you can feel the emotion. When it turns to Constantine’s origin though, Sampere manages to recreate the 80s and 90s style that Constantine gained prominence with aplomb. It really felt that the art could’ve fit right into the first couple issues of Hellblazer.