Nope, that’s not Oliver Queen’s chili making your eyes water – there’s smoke in the air, and it’s up to the JLU to put out the fire! Stop, drop, and roll into this review of Justice League Unlimited #3…
JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED #3
Written by MARK WAID
Art and Main Cover by DAN MORA
Variant Covers: SIMONE DI MEO, NATHAN SZERDY, RICCARDO FEDERICI, TYLER KIRKHAM, DEREK KIRK KIM, GUILLEM MARCH
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: January 22, 2025
Justice League Unlimited #3 is off to a fiery start! Inferno, a mysterious cabal of powerful terrorists with unknown motives, has set fire to the Amazon rainforest, endangering over a third of the world’s plant and animal species and millions of human lives. Red Tornado calls for all hands on deck, sending a response team of heavy hitters like Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash.
But when the source of the fires is revealed to be magic in nature, Superman is tagged out for sorcerers Zatanna, Xanthe Zhou, and Dr. Occult. Herein lies the strength of versatility in Justice League Unlimited (both the titular team and the series itself) – a diverse roster capable of picking up any slack at any time. Even a few members of the Metal Men join in, at least, those whose melting points can tough out the blaze!
Continuing the ongoing B-story, Atoms Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi work to return balance to the metahuman power web. After the events of Absolute Power, teammates Plastic Man and Phantom Girl have inadvertently swapped abilities. Inexperienced in these powers, Plastic Man finds himself slipping through the floor and phasing through objects – and poor Phantom Girl has become a viscous puddle of flesh, unable to control her malleability the way Plas can. The Atoms have developed a device capable of transferring these errant powers, but have yet to develop the technology to work on a wide scale; the further adventures of these subatomic scientists-turned-superheroes can be found in the spin-off series Justice League: The Atom Project.
The tail end of ustice League Unlimited #3 finds Aquaman and Swamp Thing, two forces of nature (quite literally), pulled into the fray. Swamp Thing’s beloved Green, the life force connecting all plant life on Earth, is in mortal peril… and so is Swamp Thing! A cliffhanger ending closes the issue, and the stakes just got a whole lot bigger.
Artist Dan Mora’s remarkable dependability shouldn’t overshadow his creativity; his use of Ben-Day dots and foreground blurring are wise ways of focusing the reader’s eye on important information, without losing anyone in the chaos of a dozen characters on one page. Likewise, writer Mark Waid has the same challenge in juggling the nested stories of the ongoing series. Supporting so many spin-offs and tie-ins is a slippery slope to getting lost in expository asterisks, but the series has yet to lose its footing.
Reading Justice League Unlimited #3 evokes the nostalgia of emptying out your toy bin and smashing all your action figures together – a messy, imaginative collision of favorites, where any hero can and will make an appearance. It’s just good fun, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that!
