Comic Recap/Thoughts: Justice League Vol. 2: Outbreak, Part 2

Happy Friday! Today I am covering the rest of Justice League Vol. 2: Outbreak, more specifically issues #8-11! If you still need to read part one of this recap, you can find the link at the bottom of this post. I am just going to jump right in because I want to keep this post to a reasonable length.

Outbreak, Part One: In the Watchtower, Cyborg is reminding us that back in volume one, the JL was dealing with some giants called the Kindred and even though there was a lot of mayhem and destruction, only one life was lost. In the Batcave Bruce is also feeling the burden of that one death. Cyborg is watching news coverage of the funeral, but he can see some code that shouldn't be there. It jumps from the TV into Cyborg at the same time something is hacking the Bat-computer. All the vehicles in the Batcave start shooting, but Batman is quick enough to get Alfred out of the way. One of the Bat-planes activates surface to air missiles, but Batman is able to take it down. Same with the Bat-boat. In the Watchtower Cyborg is being controlled too and is forced out of an airlock. Once outside he regains control of himself, but can't contact anyone or use his boom tubes. The Watchtower itself is falling from space heading right for San Francisco. In the Batcave things are still going crazy, even the T-rex somehow comes to live. Lucky for Bruce, Alfred is a great shot with a grenade launcher (guessing that is what he was using).

In Denver (oh hey Denver!) at the home of Diane Palmer's family, the only casualty of the Kindred attack. Diane's children Bobby and Lily are both struggling and missing their mother and now their mia father. At the last minute Cyborg is able to regain control of his boom tubes and send the Watchtower back into space before it hits the Earth. He crashes into the road and the rest of the Justice League show up sans Batman. That is because Batman and Alfred are still dealing with a crazy Batcave. Alfred is able to upload some kind of algorithm while Batman detracts all his own weapons, but Alfred is a tiny bit slow and it looks like Batman has been blown up (I am guessing he hasn't, but it is very dramatic). Cyborg is again fighting his own body as he starts attacking the other members of the JL team. The infection jumps from him into Simon's Green Lantern ring and it is not looking good for the Justice League.

Outbreak, Part Two: In the Batcave Alfred is relieved to find Bruce is indeed still alive. The cave is in shambles, but they have the code that attacked them contained, so they just have to figure out who sent it. They go upstairs to start that process, but when Alfred turns on the TV they finally see all the craziness that is happening in San Francisco. Meanwhile, in San Fran, Simon's ring has created a ton of constructs that are fighting the other members of the JL. Cyborg is fighting with himself while Simon is fighting with his ring. It looks like maybe Simon is winning that fight as the constructs fade, but then the ring makes him punch himself in the face and the fighting starts up again. Flash and Aquaman both take off, leading the constructs away from the city. All the heroes are fighting light versions of monsters they might have dealt with in the past, while Cyborg is still just trying to get control of his body.

In Wayne manor Bruce has figured out who sent the code, it is James Palmer, aka a hacker named Jesse James. James Palmer the husband of Diane Palmer and he seems to blame the JL for her death. In Denver, Lily tries to chat with her dad but he is busy with "things," but Lily is not having it. She tells him off and asks that he come be a dad and he agrees, right after he finishes one thing. Cyborg is able to crawl to a transformer and electrocute himself. Diana makes a joke about having to kill Simon to stop the constructs and that gives Flash an idea. Cyborg wakes up and gets looped in on said idea. Simon also wakes up to find all of the JL coming at him hard. This activates his ring's emergency protocol, basically taking the ring back to factory settings (classic turn it off and on again). Simon is not happy about them all thinking about killing him, but Cyborg is chatting with Batman. On the last page all of the JL arrives at the Palmer house in Denver.

Outbreak, Part Three: The JL come face to face with James Palmer, who invites them into his house. James claims that it wasn't him and even his daughter is not convinced. They give James a chance to explain and he claims that he was just trying to sort out life stuff, since he lost his job. He was also trying to help his neighbors who have also been struggling lately. James wasn't going to attack anyone, his plan was to just steal money (Robin Hood style) from guys like Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne. Diana believes him but the others are still on the fence. James claims he kept his code safe and the truth finally comes out, it was Lily who took the code. She didn't want to attack anyone, she just wanted to create something like an AI friend who could anticipate your needs and learn, she called it Genie and thought it would help her family with their financial situation. Next we find out Bobby had been messing with the Genie app. He was telling the app all about the Justice League and about how he was sad his mom had died.

The app is still running and is making a new game for Bobby called "Villains." The premise of the game is that all the villains are offered a lot of money to kill the Justice League. They think they have time to shut the app down, but they do not and the villains are already there to kill them. We got Flash villain Double Down and Wonder Woman villain Giganta already knocking the house down. Batman has the smarts to realize they need to get the heck out of this neighborhood before it gets too crazy. Next to show up is Count Vertigo (I am not sure whose villain he is). There is literally no time to move as at least 10 more villains show up. Batman takes the family back inside to protect them, but inside Scarecrow is waiting to dose everyone with fear toxin. Outside things are going kind of okay, until Amazo shows up. (What is Amazo's deal you might ask? Well he can duplicate any meta-humans powers.) The JL might be in trouble.

Outbreak, Conclusion: In a Neighborhood in Denver, Colorado (I am going to pretend it is Cap Hill) the JL is fighting all the villains. Flash starts evacuating the neighborhood while the others keep fighting. Inside the house it is looking rough for Batman but then James steps up and knocks Scarecrow out with a baseball bat. The fight from outside comes inside. Cyborg does that thing where the hero says get them and that super dangerous AI app out of here. Then a bad guy overhears and takes the thing they definitely shouldn't have. Flash successfully evacuated everyone (except the poor Palmer family), then he rejoins the fight on the street. Batman is super smart so he uses the Scarecrow fear toxin on the villains in the house making them easy to take down. But three villains have taken off with Lily and the iPad (whoa, comic product placement), Cyborg is on it though. Wonder Woman and Green Lantern are having a tough time with Amazo. (I keep thinking where is Superman? But at this point in time he is dead and the new guy is not in the JL yet.)

In Seattle, Jess is dealing with some bad guys that don't know that she is taking a break from the Justice League. James is freaking out and Batman is not the best at being reassuring. Cyborg takes out the guy holding Lily, while the Flash gets the iPad, then takes Lily back to her dad. Psimon, a physic bad guy, gets a message to all the villains to forget about the JL, just get the girl and the iPad. It is looking bad since all the bad guys are now planning to work together instead of just chaos. Lily has an idea though, she uses Genie to hack Amazo and convince him that the villains are actually the JL. One of the bad guys with magma powers (honestly no idea who he is) tries to cause an eruption, but Jess arrives and contains it. We jump to the aftermath (because there is only one page left and we gotta wrap this up). Jess promises to still help when they really need her and Batman plans to help rebuild everything and make sure that Lily gets the best education he can offer.

Thoughts: I don't really have a ton of thoughts about this story. I guess my biggest issue is that while Superman is not part of this team, there is no way that the other Superman wouldn't have seen the news and come to help. Just saying this feels like a weird plot whole that they usually fill by saying something like, "Superman is off planet" or "Superman is not responding." Really that one line would have stopped me from being super annoyed. He was literally in the Fear story-line right before this one...Other than that I am totally fine with this story, who doesn't love a ton of villains and a kid accidentally almost killing all of the Justice League? The ending was a little abrupt, but Jess coming in and saving the day is also fine with me.

There was some great art in this story arc and some very impressive artists working on it. Neil Edwards was the main artist for this story working on all four issues. Daniel Henriques did all of the inking for all four issues as well. Honestly it was nice to have consistent art across the whole story. Feel free to click on their names to see more of what these two are working on.

It took a few look overs because there were many covers and variant covers for this volume but I finally decided on one done by Yanick Paquette.

I am not sure if this is a favorite line, but it was a funny conversation between Wonder Woman and Flash about killing Simon.

As always thanks so much for reading this! Next week you can look forward to something fun and new. Going to take a break, but I will try to post something for the holidays.


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