Welcome back, everybody, to my read through DC Comic’s next Justice League Event for 2020, Endless Winter. Today I’m taking a look at Justice League Dark #29, Part 7 of Endless Winter. I’m going to be taking a look at each issue of this event, including tie-ins, and assessing the extent of this Nordic nightmare! I’m adding each review to the master Endless Winter Reading Order and assessing which issues are essential and what tie-ins you can leave out if you like. You can also check out the primer we published a couple weeks back to get familiar with the landscape before diving in!
Releasing today, 12/23/2020, Justice League Dark #29 does everything the Justice League Dark team does best-magic, mysticism, mythology, all of that.
You can still grab a copy of Justice League Dark #29, over at TFAW as of the time of this writing. If you prefer, you can grab it digitally on Amazon Kindle or Comixology.
Check out the full solicit and then my review below. Beware, dear reader, spoilers abound ahead!
First and foremost, you may want to check into the earlier issues of this volume of Justice League Dark, in particular issues 24- 28. This will give you a better understanding of where Swamp Thing is when this issue starts.
We begin with Jon, Viking Prince’s heroic death and entry into Valhalla. He pulls the Frost King over the edge of a crevasse and the Frost King is presumably neutralized. Through his heroic death, Viking Prince gains entry to Valhalla, beating his curse of impenetrability. Black Adam’s hubris continues and he sees Jon’s sacrifice as a necessary part of the warrior’s life and still sees no other way they could have dealt with the Frost King. This will come up later in the Black Adam: Endless Winter Special #1.
Hippolyta and Donna are discussing the episode in the Oblivion Bar and devise a plan to bring nature (the Green) an avatar back from oblivion. Zatanna and Donna enter the other place to plead their case to Swamp Thing, but he cannot leave the Other Place without risking unleashing that dimension upon other realities. So, he sends a seedling, a tuber.
Meanwhile, Hippolyta summons the disembodied spirit of Viking Prince from Valhalla. Seemingly falling into the perfect union, Donna returns from the Other Place with a tuber, and Hippolyta provides the sentience to grow that tuber.
This issue requires a little bit of working knowledge of this “season’s” Justice League Dark mythos and is a little vexing otherwise. The arcane magic, dimension hopping, and all around bright, mystic beauty of the issue more than makes up for jumping into this team’s inner workings mid-stream, though. In the end, the pay off is amazing. Swamp Thing has always been one of my favorite DC characters and I love it when he is used to his maximum potential. His sacrifices in the Other Place and his addition to this plan to thwart the Frost King fit that bill, if you ask me. Mix that with some séance and mead magic on Hippolyta’s end and this is a satisfying, if not entirely action-packed issue.
The art bobs and weaves between verdant landscapes with bright butterflies aloft, to shining ephemeral specters, to ice-bound confrontations without much lost in transition. Details are plentiful and there’s a lot of great imagery to oogle at in this entry into Endless Winter.
As I said before, Justice League Dark #29 does what Justice League Dark does best. It marries an eclectic cast of various cultures of magic into a unified team that draws on the strongest of strengths from each. Here, a Norse spirit joins forces with an avatar of nature born in the bayou to defeat the Frost King. Perfect Justice League Dark synergy!
You can still grab a copy of Justice League Dark #29, over at TFAW as of the time of this writing. If you prefer, you can grab it digitally on Amazon Kindle or Comixology.
