What is the Consensus on Justice League Breakdowns?

[Timothy Hunter]

All I knew going into it was it would be noticeably darker than the previous issues of the Giffen/Dematteis Justice League run.

Now "dark" can have multiple connotations: I figured that Breakdowns would either be dark in the 80s sense, akin to DKR, Hawkworld, and the Longbow Hunters, or dark in the 90s sense, which basicially is the EXTREME!!! era of Image Comics.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the latter. I can enjoy a Jim Lee or a Jim Valentino as much as the next guy, but the Big Two bent over backwards to copy the "Image style", most of the time frankly, failing spectacularly.

The JLE tie in issues had some solid art by a young Derrick Robertson, but I couldn't stand Chris Wozinak on JLA.

As much as I dislike Breakdowns as a whole, there was a cool JLE issue in it where Wally, Ted, and Ralph explored the Morrison era Doom Patrol HQ, and the final chapter, Justice League Americs 60 being my favorite issue out of the whole Giffen/Dematteis run.

[caj]

I missed Adam Hughes' art in JLA for sure but I loved Breakdowns. I liked how they revisited so many storylines that had taken place over the previous issues and left it and sort of a nice conclusion.

I especially liked how Silver Sorceress defeated Dreamslayer.

While JLE had continued to be a great book, JLA lost a lot of steam after Booster left and after the Despero incredible storyline in issues 38-40. Issues 41-51 were pretty mediocre. But Breakdowns was great IMO.