It's funny, for all that I respect Morrison for revitalizing the JLA and like quite a few of the aspects of what he did with the title, I'm honestly not that big of a fan of his run. Too many big ideas, too little structure, it was more of a factory for great sounding quotes about the lunacy of being big bad superheroes than a place to find well-structured superhero tales. JLA: Classified #1 reads pretty much like Morrison had never left JLA, even picking up with one of his creations from DC: One Million and starring Batman the unbeatable genius, as only Morrison can write him. Truthfully, I was hoping for a little more coherence, something more along the lines of what Morrison did with New X-Men, but despite the trouble my tiny brain had in keeping up with it, I did quite enjoy this issue, which gets across the pure pop fun and madness that superhero comics are capable of, without any of that pesky angst or heavy plotting to get in the way.
Morrison's JLA stories tended to read like a Bruckheimer movie as envisioned by Stephen Hawking and Jerry Garcia, and that's still the flavor he's got turned on in JLA: Classified. The plot, in short, involves the Ultramarines responding to a terrorist threat from Gorilla Grodd, and one of their number having to go to Batman for help when things go wrong. Over the course of this admittedly simple plot, there are several big fight scenes, a nifty little chase scene, some snarky by-play between Batman and his faithful butler and the revelation that Batman keeps a "sci-fi closet" for his JLA adventures. The ideas flow fast and furious, and Morrison's ability to tap into the goofy Silver Age charm of DC Comics without making the reader feel like a nerdy schmuck for enjoying them is probably the greatest weapon in his arsenal when it comes to this title.
This doesn't really start out as a JLA story, but instead as a focus on the Ultramarines, the Authority-esque group that Morrison set up in a floating city at the end of DC: One Million. Clearly, both he and Ed McGuinness had a great deal of fun coming up with the characters who make up this group. We've got an over-the-top Irishman named Jack O'Lantern, a Japanese man made up of fusion energy who speaks in haiku, an "English Batman" named Knight and a "quantum physics" take on The Writer, the character who personified Morrison in the pages of Suicide Squad. Their introduction is chaotic as hell, and potentially confusing, but the wild energy of McGuinness's artwork and the enthusiasm that Morrison clearly has for the superhero genre at its action-packed best carry it through. Certainly it's hard not to love Grodd screaming at the top of his lungs like a mad supervillain, and he's got more physical power and scare power here than he has since Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins gave him the spotlight during their Flash run.
Mind you, there is a goofy factor here that not everyone will like. Even I find Morrison's "uber" Batman a little too much at times, always prepared for everything to an almost comical extent and quite a change from the more serious, driven Batman we're used to seeing these days, but on the other hand, I kind of like that Batman is a little less brooding here too. The frenetic pace of the fight scene and the reversal of fortune, not to mention the rapid-fire introduction of new characters, is a little dizzying, and doesn't absorb easily the first time through. But on the other hand, it allows Morrison and McGuinness to keep things moving and pace this as a three-parter rather than the padded six-part stories that have become the industry norm.
In the end, JLA: Classified is no more or less than what I would expect of the collaboration between these two creators. All the madness and fun that Morrison brought to his JLA is here, and the chaotic larger-than-life style that McGuinness and Vines brought to Superman/Batman is here as well. The strange structure, which focuses on action and keeping things moving rather than delving into the characters beyond a very surface level or delivering a compelling plot, doesn't always work for me, but it's certainly a lot of fun. 9/10
