Where the New Gods go, the Eskaton will follow. Will the Justice League Odyssey gain a reluctant ally through that or a hesitant enemy? Spoilers for Justice League Odyssey #18 review.
As of late, Justice League Odyssey has begun to transform into an entirely new series from how it began. This current arc has done a great job of establishing the new team as well as the new stakes. Darkseid has won, so they need to find a way to fight back. Thankfully, instead of having another issue that doesn’t move forward much in plot, this issue establishes the way forward. If you thought that series was a bit out there before, then this issue basically tells you that the future will be crazy.
So, what will that future consist of? Time travel of course! Why wouldn’t it consist of that? It’s a logical step that a series like this would take and it’s exciting to see it happening sooner than later. Facilitated by Epoch, who was introduced in issue #17, there’s some serious potential moving forward with this story. Time travel is such a fun trope to use and leads to a lot of potential stories and character appearances.
Because of Epoch and the time travel set-up of this issue, there are also some Watchmen vibes in this issue. Obviously, the issue isn’t of Watchmen quality, but Epoch feels a lot like Dr. Manhattan at times. While it is slightly derivative, it makes sense within the story and is quite fun to read. We get more comedic moments through this than pretty much any other time in the series, which is great. Will this series become closer in tone to Legends of Tomorrow? No, it probably won’t, but the humor was much needed by this point of the series.
Cliff Richards handles art duties in this issue and does a pretty solid job throughout. His style is very similar to Mike Deodato Jr., which isn’t a bad thing, and it meshes well with Will Conrad’s art. The pacing throughout the issue is really solid with only a few moments where a beat ran a bit too quickly. There’s great action throughout as well thanks to his clean linework and great inks. However, the biggest problem with the art here lies with the coloring.
For the most part, Rain Beredo’s coloring is pretty good, but there are a few where the colors are flat out wrong. For instance, there’s one panel where Jessica’s eyes are blue. Like, what? The rest of the issue, they’re brown as they should be. But for this one panel, the panel where her eyes are the most prominent in the issue, they’re blue. As someone who has blue eyes, I truly don’t understand how you can mistake blue and brown eyes. The rest of the issue is generally good coloring, it’s just this moment is so noticeable that it’s distracting.
