DC’s New Justice League Lineup Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before

While the Justice League has gone through plenty of roster shakeups in the comics, DC’s latest evolution is definitely one of its wildest.

Rather than sticking to a more traditional lineup of iconic heroes or even a rotation like we’ve been seeing in Justice League Unlimited, DC’s now kicking off something far more unpredictable. Although the reasoning is sound, the fact that the Justice League will now have supervillains on the team going forward is all kinds of crazy.

Following DC’s King Omega Tournament, The Justice League Is Making Some BIG Changes

The Justice League’s major villain shakeup comes in the aftermath of DC’s King Omega tournament, a massive event that saw Superman rise to the top and claim the King Omega title, receiving massive levels of cosmic power and the power of creation itself.

While the Man of Steel did manage to push back Darkseid and the erasure of existence itself, he didn’t go all the way. Determining that no one person should wield so much power, Superman chose to share his “Omega energy” with all the other tournament combatants.

While that’s a perfectly understandable and expected decision from Superman, it does mean that an even bigger confrontation with Darkseid is now on the horizon with the teased Absolute Crisis.

Now, the Justice League is looking for every possible advantage to survive what’s coming next in the new Justice League Unlimited #17. Although there were villains who made it into the tournament, it wasn’t by design, as the Justice League attempted to lock away as many major supervillain threats as possible in the Phantom Zone ahead of the event.

What the League neglected to realize was that some of these villains would have been willing to help fight with the entirety of existence on the line. After all, villains have people they care about and lives they’d like to keep living too.

As such, the Justice League has now made a very bold call in this new issue: select DC villains will be made members of the ongoing Justice League roster and given amnesty, provided they aid in protecting the world and help in the major fight that’s inevitably coming.

As such, the new DC issue ends with membership cards initially being given to those who fought in the KO tournament and presumably received some Omega Energy: Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn, King Shark, Lobo, Starro, Cheetah, and Giganta. Clearly, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Villains On The Justice League? Here Goes Nothing…

While the full impact of this decision will be revealed in future issues beyond Justice League Unlimited #17, these new additions to the roster will no doubt result in some crazy stories going forward in the DC Universe.

Some, like Harley Quinn, have skirted the line between hero and foe, while Lex Luthor has even been a League member in the past. However, the potential for some major conflict in future issues is huge nonetheless. After all, do we really expect someone like Lobo to work well with a team?

That being said, it’s clear that the intention is to make sure the Earth has as much protection as possible for when Darkseid strikes again with the upcoming Absolute Crisis, a multiversal event that will see Darkseid return with an army centered around heroes from DC’s incredibly popular Absolute Universe.

Adding villains to the roster is definitely a major gamble, giving us a Justice League the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Here’s hoping the payoff is worth it in future DC issues.

Justice League #17 is available now from DC Comics.