Good news first: This is another accessible issue of the Busiek/Garney JLA, so if you missed the last issue, you can still jump on here. Bad news: That's because there's no obvious connection between the events of this issue and the last one, and two issues into the run, we're still just barely lurking at the edges of the plot. I'm interested to see how the Crime Syndicate lives, and Busiek is clearly having fun showing their depraved world and how it runs, but a full issue of this plus a full issue of "day in the life of the JLA" makes for an exceptionally slow-moving story in a book that is traditionally at its best when it's moving at more breakneck speeds. As with the previous issue, it's certainly not a bad issue, but neither does it grab the reader by the collar and have them demanding to know what happens next.
Right now, the biggest selling point for me where JLA is concerned is that it is a dramatic break with the tone of the rest of the DC Universe. Even in an issue wherein Busiek and company delve into a world of corruption and evil supervillains, it never becomes as dark as the Identity Crisis-tinged stories of the DCU at large. Busiek shows restraint in his depiction of the Crime Syndicate's Earth, getting across that these are casually corrupt and wicked beings without wallowing in their depravity along with them, and it's a refreshing change.
However, while I found the look at the Crime Syndicate's twisted, immoral version of a superteam to be fairly interesting, when the story departs for the world of Qward, it lost me to some extent. I have a certain fondness for these characters and their role as an evil force in the DC Universe, but that doesn't mean that the politics of their corrupt regime hold all that much interest, and certainly the story overplays its hand in terms of predictability. I'm usually not one of those to complain that the main characters are absent from their own book, but in this case, the whole issue feels like a story that doesn't belong, like we've accidentally picked up an issue of the JLA from Earth-2 and we should be really concerned about who will be First Weaponlord of Qward or that the Crime Syndicate has finally found an opponent to give them a challenge. The whole time I'm reading this issue, I'm wondering how any of this affects anything that I care about, and there's really no hint of an answer in this issue or in the previous one.
That said, there's definitely the sense that these creators are having fun, and that fun is in some regards infectious. Little details that Garney and Green throw into the art, like the skeletons at the teleporters or a bored Power Woman vaporizing miniaturized inhabitants of a sea city with her heat vision, show the casual disdain for life that these villains have. The obvious joy they take in invading a world full of armed and aggressive aliens, nicely highlighted by Fletcher's lettered laughter, also gives a pretty good indicator of the type of villains we're dealing with here. While I'm currently uncertain about where the creators are going to point these villains and whether the story will be worthwhile, certainly you can't accuse them of failing to make who they are and how they operate clear.
It seems odd for me to wish that Busiek would move the plot along more quickly, because I've generally found him to be one of the few guys in comics with old school pacing. However, the first two parts of "Syndicate Rules" seem to fit a lot of the complaints that fans commonly have about stories being "written for the trade," and it's too early to know whether all of this build-up is going to result in a satisfying story. 6/10
