This is another installment in the “Justice League of America” novelizations, this one by Roger Stern. Stern is a long-time DC writer who also did the novelization of the controversial death of Superman arc back in the early 90s, The Death and Life of Superman, a book I actually read on my own out of sheer curiosity.
(Superman’s death was a big deal back when I was in high school — you may remember that it was all over the news at the time and people were really upset about it. And when everyone realized that (surprise, surprise) Superman wasn’t actually dead, they were mad. I wasn’t a Superman fan at the time, more of an Iron Man/Flash-type, but recently I went through a quarterlife comic book phase and I decided to read Stern’s book to finally find out what brought the Man of Steel back. Wasn’t bad.)
Novelizing a comic book might be compared to doing an IMAX movie adaptation of a reality show, but Stern actually manages to wring a decent pulp novel out of his source material. Each of the books in this series focuses on a threat to the Justice League, with a particular emphasis on the challenges met by one of the members. In this one, Superman takes center stage, although there’s plenty of material devoted to the activities of everyone from Wonder Woman to the Flash to Green Lantern.
In case you didn’t watch Superfriends as a child, the JLA is sort of a planetary police force made up of the most popular DC superheroes. In The Never-Ending Battle, the League squares off against Kobra, a sinister cult leader who has combined the powers of the Weather Wizard, a pretty minor DC supervillain, with the weather-controlling technology of Stratos, another minor DC supervillain, to wreak enormous weather havoc.
It’s not quite made clear why Kobra wants to wreak weather havoc — though he’s obviously a comic book stand-in for Osama bin Laden — but it’s sort of a tacit rule in comic books that villains just enjoy being evil sometimes. In the course of the story, the members of the JLA have to match their powers against freak tornadoes, hurricanes, snowstorms, etc., while Batman — the detective of the group — does his best to figure out who’s behind all the inclement weather.
There are some nifty setpieces: the Flash running a tornado inside-out, Green Lantern blocking a tidal wave with a giant green barrier reef, Superman towing the QE2 out of an impenetrable fog. Not fine literature, but a very engaging comic-booky 350 pages.
If you’ve ever read a comic before, you should have a pretty good idea of whether Superman and the JLA end up triumphing over Kobra and his dastardly scheme. Non-comic book lovers will have no interest in The Never-Ending Battle, but anyone who enjoyed the occasional issue of Flash or Green Lantern back in their high school days will get a kick out of it.
Superman: The Never-Ending Battle (Justice League of America) by Roger Stern
Published by: Pocket Star; May 24, 2005
Mass Market Paperback : 384 pages
ISBN-10 : 0743417143
ISBN-13 : 978-0743417143
Genre: Comic book novelization
