The Death of the Justice League

It’s been done before, better. Much better.

Twenty years ago, Joe Kelly’s “Obsidian Age” arc gave us the death of the Justice League. The six-issue story, building upon many issues that preceded it, showed the Justice League being defeated and killed by another league of super-beings. The story was structured around two intertwined narrative threads that initially alternated issue by issue, odd-even, between the past and the present, with prophecy and the interleaved narrative challenging the reader to guess where things are going, and even where they’ve been. I have written about that story before and won’t try to reproduce here a tally of its merits, or even its faults, which surely exist.

Then today, there was this story, 2022’s Justice League #75, with “Death of the Justice League” emblazoned on the cover. Guess what happens inside? Spoiler alert: It’s the death of the Justice League. The cover needn’t have tipped you off, though, because DC’s promotion of the event has already detailed this, down to the fact that Black Adam would be the one survivor. So as you read, page by page, you know what is coming, exactly. There is no drama on any single panel of the issue. It doesn’t matter if Batman can get to Pariah’s machine to stop it (whatever that machine does). It doesn’t matter if Jon Stewart can summon a ring-powered army. It doesn’t matter if Green Arrow’s arrow does something. He will not be cooking chili as a celebratory dinner. We already know this. There is no drama.

In fact, I was at all points during this issue more certain about how it would end, and what would happen on the next page, than I often was about what was happening on the page I was actually reading. What does Pariah’s machine do? If the Dark Army isn’t fighting as themselves, what does that mean? When someone’s utterance is cut off mid-sentence, what were they trying to say? How can Aquaman and Aquawoman fight Doomsday fist-to-fist? These are details that I wanted to have clarified, but that never were. And they never mattered. Ultimately, Pariah had wave-your-hands-and-it-kills-Superman power. Why? Did he always have that? Did it come from his machine? Did the machine give him that power because Green Arrow failed to stop it? Or did that just not matter? This is the correct answer: None of it mattered. The Dark Army didn’t even actually do anything except fight the heroes to a draw for way too many pages of unimportant busy-ness on the page before someone waving their hands around did the one and only important event in the whole issue, and that was an event that we already knew was going to happen.

It was flimsy story telling that seemed like an imitation of better storytelling with not enough effort to make a pretense of being good storytelling.

Not only is the issue predictable, but so is this: As April 26 goes on, fan and professional reviews will appear online calling this a great issue. It will get ratings of 10/10, 9/10, 8/10, and perhaps 11/10. There will be false claims that this issue had drama and emotion, when it had zero of those. Reviewers will be impressed by the last cast of characters, even though there isn’t a single page worth of those characters exhibiting any personality. This was a visual spectacle, and in that, I will acknowledge the one thing that impressed me as interesting: The deaths of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman visually echoed the death of Barry Allen in Crisis on Infinite Earths. their faces peeling away to bone, in a series of minipanels. The homage is not deep, but this act of borrowing, borrowing though it be, was imaginative.

 “Pop will eat itself.” Andy Warhol said. Food looks a lot better going into the digestive tract than coming out. Anyone looking to have an engaging experience reading about the death of the Justice League today should put down today’s “new” Justice League #75 and pick up 2001-2002’s Obsidian Age. 

I’m more interested in the source of the automatically-positive reviews than in anything Williamson put on the page. I suspect that it’s this: Positive reviews end up with higher click counts, and psychology’s study of classical conditioning tells us that a rewarded behavior will be repeated. Drama has been replaced by the presence of eyeballs on pages. It is mere gaze. Storytelling is dead. And that is the true death of the Justice League. 

Justice League (2017)

At least as far back as 1979, someone wondered what would happen if you put Christopher Reeve, Adam West, and Lynda Carter – give or take some substitutions in the lineup – together in one production. Somehow, thirty-eight years went by before we got this year's Justice League, which doesn't seem to have benefited nearly as much as it should have from all that time and all the intervening lessons as to what works and what doesn't.

One should note, without doubt, there is more than one way to approach the genre. Christian Bale's Dark Knight and Reeve's Superman, to note just two, took paths that both worked, in their way, but were completely, irreconcilably different. It is at the creator's peril that one would try to blend two different approaches in one work; as the saying goes, a camel is a racehorse designed by committee, offering so many improvements to the idea of a horse, you end up with something that can't race.

Justice League, with its six superheroes, is a six-humped camel – eight or nine if you count the Amazons, Mera, and the villain Steppenwolf. It's inherently a tough assignment, with the same number of superheroes that Marvel's Avengers tossed together in 2012, but without the advantage of so many solo movies to introduce the lineup.

Luckily, the three new additions benefit from wonderful performers. Ray Fisher is pitch perfect as Cyborg in a movie that shows only 5% of him and falls even shorter in giving him adequate lines to relate his existential crisis as a superhero who would really rather not be what he's become. Jason Momoa was essential casting to lend gravitas to the Aquaman character who, historically, battles unintended laughs as much as he does underwater villains: The genetic bulk and fury of Momoa immediately defuses the threat that Aquaman would come across as a lightweight. And Ezra Miller's Flash is so likeable, so fun, that nary a fan has complained that his Barry Allen is so different from the comics' version.

Justice League takes those strong performances, along with others by returners Cavill, Gadot, and even Affleck, and a dozen or more fan-pleasing moments and puts them together in almost the worst possible way. It looks as though four or so different good Justice League movies were made and then the pieces from them placed in a salad bowl and edited together without much concern. Indeed, and sadly, something like this did happen, as original director Zack Snyder was taken off the project due to a family tragedy with Joss Whedon picking up – and pasting together – the pieces. The result corrects, to its credit, the overly dark and destructive tone of the two previous Superman (and Batman) movies in the DC Extended Universe, which were seemingly hell-bent on showing collateral damage and a world that wasn't sure that having Superman was a good thing. Justice League fixes that, and undoubtedly has some fun. Most of that fun was, unfortunately, shown to us in the form of trailers over the last year, but buyer beware when it comes to watching trailers, I suppose.

In tallying Justice League's other successes, I must compliment it on melding the Amazon and Atlantean traditions, which is a bit of sense the comics rarely touched upon. And to skip ahead to the ending, it worked for me – and I think, the franchise – to have the superficial ending that the big, bad villain is beaten simply because Superman is stronger than him. People like Superman when he is strong, and here he is, and if that's too simple an ending then Superman is too simple for you.

And some subplots pull it off. When Batman tells an intimidated Flash to save just one hostage, it gives Miller's speedster the chance to gain confidence and show us the master manipulator Batman at work. When an enraged Superman manages to track an increasingly terrified Flash, we get a perfect moment where the characters and their powers interact to make a moment powerful.

And there are elements that seem like subtle nods to past comics. I would comment how like a Lazarus Pit is Superman's revival scene, and reminiscent of the Bad Batman Clone who rose from one in Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin. The need of the villain to bring together three artifacts hearkens back, whether knowingly or accidentally, to the demons Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast who are empowered by a bell, wheel, and jar, from a JLA story way back in 1962. And the opening scene with Batman taking down a Parademon is, certainly knowingly, right out of the DCnU's premier issue of Justice League in 2011.

But here's the basic failure of Justice League: Plots and subplots work when there is a complication, a climax, and a resolution. These things need some time and investment to work for the viewer. The complication has to mean something. The resolution has to make sense. Over and over, Justice League gives us a mini-plot complete with a complication, climax, and resolution in less time than we can care about – or even understand – the situation. How does someone spend years working in the film industry without a much better sense of what is required to make a subplot pay off? It's unclear where the blame lies: screenwriter Chris Terrio (who won an Oscar for Argo), Snyder, Whedon, higher-up consultants, or some medley of all of them. Maybe too many cooks ruined the soup even though we know from Avengers that six superheroes aren’t too many for a movie.

And so, we know that Amy Adams can act the hell out of a role, but when she's given just five scenes to show Lois Lane's dark night of the soul (one each for her personal complication, climax, and resolution), there's not enough in the script for her to shine. Amber Heard looks and sounds as good as you could hope, but the rapid-fire dialogue in she and Jason Momoa serve up exposition of their characters' history and mommy issues shortchanges the matter to the point that one must ask why bother? Inescapably, I have to conclude that Justice League began with the outline of a potentially great three (or four) hour movie and the creators collectively decided to streamline, ruinously, several of the subplots while eliminating not enough of them.

And so, we have civilians who need to be rescued right before Superman deals with Steppenwolf, including a Russian family who earn more screen time than Diane Lane's Martha Kent while adding nothing but a rationale for Superman and Flash to race. And so, we have Batman knowingly insult the memory of Steve Trevor in order to shock Wonder Woman into becoming a leader in battle. And so, we have Alfred mysteriously conclude from audio alone that Batman being upset by the lack of a plan that somehow the team dynamic is working effectively. (It's not. The subsequent arrival of Superman is the only thing that prevents Steppenwolf from winning.) And so, we have Batman determined that the risk of Superman being resurrected as a monster was worth it after an entire movie was based on the premise that Batman wasn't sure if normal Superman was something we could trust. And so, the drama in many viewers' minds whether a Green Lantern would show up was executed to no payoff by showing extraterrestrial Green Lanterns during a flashback. And so, we have a villain like Steppenwolf, who lacked the slightest bit of interest in his personality.

And we have plot holes galore. Seemingly every viewer realized that Steppenwolf should have stolen the Mother Boxes before Superman came to Earth instead of waiting for his arrival and death. And that the Justice League should have guarded the Mother Box after using it to revive Superman.

If the final result of waiting thirty-eight years for a Justice League movie could come off this flawed, there was no reason for DC to wait this long – they could have squeezed Adam West and Lynda Carter into Superman III and fared little worse. But what's truly frustrating is that they didn't take a little more caution – a thirty-ninth year if it would have helped – and put all of these strong performances together to make a movie that everyone involved could be proud of.

Retro Review: Identity Crisis

By a DC tradition going back to 1963, the word "Crisis" is used in the title of a story to indicate that the story is about interdimensional travel and a threat on a cosmic scale. It may seem, then, that the title of 2004's Identity Crisis, a seven-part miniseries that had no inter-dimensional dynamics, is a misnomer. Figuratively speaking, however, Identity Crisis did indeed rework the DC Universe, though it did so with physically and psychologically brutal events and unsettling, disturbing themes, rather than the science fiction notion of parallel worlds. The dark deeds around which Brad Meltzer centered this work set the tone for much of the next decade, and unquestionably had an impact that is still being felt today.

The plot of Identity Crisis – those events occurring in the present time – is a simple whodunit. Someone is murdered in the first issue, and the murderer's identity is revealed in the last issue. Along the way, there are red herrings that fool the heroes and attempt to fool the readers. There are, of course, suspects who turn out not to be guilty – at least, not guilty of the crime at the center of the whodunit – and there are false crimes, even extraneous subplots, along the way. It turns out that the false crimes were planned by the killer, but the murder itself was something of an accident, an assault leading to involuntary manslaughter. There are many twists and turns to complicate the mystery. Yet, the story is not remembered because of a death that takes place in issue #1, nor even the several deaths that take place thereafter, but because of the flashbacks that tell of events that took place several years before the time of Identity Crisis. Those events are still remembered as some of the most shocking in a mainstream comic book, and still help frame the code of morality for superheroes – and their creators.

From the beginning, there is a shroud of secrecy that hangs over the story. In the first scene, there is a box with something inside and we don't know what it is. Heroes and villains alike are trying to get information. The narration refers to events taking place before some mysterious "Now" and the reader doesn't know at first that the reference time is the death of Sue Dibny, the wife of the Elongated Man, Ralph Dibny. As the story goes on, the mystery format makes it natural that the reader doesn't know everything, but what is hidden is not so much the story of a murder as a story of disintegration as Meltzer breaks down the ethical binaries of the DC Universe. First, Meltzer makes the villains worse than they've ever been before. Then, he tears away at the moral unanimity of the heroes. He doesn't, to be sure, bring the heroes low as he does the villains, but he replaces the moral framework in which heroes are generally of one mind regarding acceptable conduct and creates one divide among them, then another divide, and finally a complex series of factions and facades, and thereby the DC Universe is irrevocably changed.

The first dark event to set the story in motion is the killing of Sue Dibny. Meltzer goes out of his way to make this hurt – we learn all about the love that Ralph and Sue shared and how special it was. We learn, also, that Sue was pregnant, which doesn't stop her killer from saying, with ambivalence, "Goodbye, Sue…" as a flamethrower is used to torch her body. At her funeral, Ralph is unable to speak, as his sorrow turns his face into a rubbery mess that makes a mockery of the tragedy and the solemnity.

Remarkably, the shocks have at that point just gotten started. Identity Crisis #2 presents the most shocking and controversial revelation, that the villain Doctor Light had years earlier raped Sue Dibny during a break-in of the Justice League Satellite; the rape is shown, partially concealed, on-panel. Arguably more unsettling is the way Doctor Light narrates the rape, mockingly, to the Justice League, making obscene taunts and threats after he is caught. The heroes are upset, and the readers were as well. Sue Dibny's rape was a bombshell, earning Identity Crisis attention in the mainstream media and infamy among some readers.

After the story had thoroughly darkened its villains, it was the turn of the heroes. Immediately after Sue's funeral, Wally West and Kyle Rayner learn that a group of older, Satellite Era, Leaguers have a dark secret. This leads to one reveal connected to the Doctor Light case, then another, and yet another. What is unveiled is that the JLA used Zatanna's magic to remove Doctor Light's memory of the rape. Then, to prevent him from repeating such a vile crime, they narrowly vote to alter his personality. This, they do, but with the alteration turning out somewhat more severe than they had intended. Finally, when Batman walked in on the process and flew into a rage, they froze Batman and removed his memory of the event.

Identity Crisis thereby introduced the term "mindwipe" into the vocabulary of early 2000's DC readers, and established it as a controversial weapon in their arsenal. The controversy is articulated by the characters within the story, with Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Green Lantern voting against altering Doctor Light's personality, and Batman, obviously, completely rejecting the idea. Both Wally West and Kyle Rayner also articulate shock regarding the practice, and the heroes who supported the idea nonetheless knew that it needed to be kept a secret, even from other heroes, seemingly from Superman, among others. However, it is the controversy that was new to Identity Crisis, not the mind wipe idea as such. The idea of memory wipes goes back to a Green Lantern story in All American #23 in February 1941. Later stories show heroes deliberately altering their enemy's minds, such as a 1948 story in which Batman uses an interrogation room to break a prisoner's will, and a 1952 farce in which Batman goes to great lengths to make the Joker doubt his own sanity. Even killing villains was not off-limits for Golden Age heroes, with Hawkman and the Spectre downright bloodthirsty while Batman, the Flash, and arguably Superman finished off some of their enemies deliberately.

However, in the older stories, there was no hint that the reader should doubt that the hero had acted appropriately and justly. What's new in Identity Crisis is the controversy. It's not the deed, but the reaction. Superhero comics operate under the universal truth that heroes try to act justly. When one faction of superheroes decides that another faction of superheroes has acted inappropriately, the worldview that superheroes are just is irreparably shattered, because at the very least, one of those factions is wrong. Mindwiping and even killing villains was not new. Superheroes judging other superheroes as immoral was.

What makes the knife twist deeper is that the mindwipes were not an event involving only some newer, morally suspect superheroes such as Guy Gardner or Booster Gold. The flashbacks in Identity Crisis involved Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, who were not even alive anymore when Identity Crisis hit store shelves. By placing them in the conspiracy, Meltzer made this story about the pre-Crisis Justice League, and tore down the black-and-white morality of DC's pre-Crisis superheroes.

In performing his rewrite of DC history, Meltzer included some thorough scholarship in the details. When, in pre-Crisis history, did the Doctor Light-Sue Dibny incident take place? A panel in IC refers to events from a 1979 story in JLA #166-168, and the deaths of Barry Allen's wife Iris Allen and Zatanna's mother, Sindella, also took place in 1979. According to Meltzer's revisionist timeline, these all took place before the mindwipe and the secret pact to cover it up. Meanwhile, a story in New Teen Titans #3-7 that shows a "dimwitted" Doctor Light is cover-dated January-May 1981. That story itself explains that Doctor Light had been psychically manipulated by Psimon, but IC attributes his state to manipulation by Zatanna. According to the cover dates of the original issues, the rape of Sue Dibny and its shocking aftermath must correspond to an unprinted story that would have taken place sometime between late 1979 and late 1980.

Meltzer’s handling of the DCU did more, though, than simply lower the bar of morality for its villians and heroes. A gritty, noir feel pervades his use of supervillains as criminals who just happen to have superpowers rather than as superbeings who just happen to be bad. Meltzer’s villains are involved in all sorts of criminal activity, and are first and foremost out to make a buck, often without the traditional flamboyance of standing up in costume to make a public show of some grand robbery. In contrast, Meltzer’s heroes are more of a family, if an often dysfunctional one, than the traditional DC lineup, with first names being used at almost every opportunity. These people, heroes and villains alike, feel more real than the characters of earlier years.

The destruction of traditionally "good" characters is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the handling of Jean Loring. This character had been through the ringer before: In pre-Crisis stories, she was driven insane, then cured of insanity, by the villains in two science fiction stories, and abducted by the villain in another. In Identity Crisis, she is conspicuously on-panel early and often, and was, before the conclusion, correctly identified by readers as the killer. Other possible culprits might have been motivated by a desire to strike heroes through their vulnerable loved ones (as Doctor Light articulates in the rape flashback); the story illustrates that this is not a sound motive for super criminals because it drives the heroes to harass all super criminals even harder than usual. Yet, Jean Loring's motive is less than rational: Seeking to win her ex-husband back, Jean plans to attack Sue Dibny with the use of the Atom's shrinking suit, give her a stroke "or something" and thereby draw Ray Palmer back to her side as her defender. Her microscopic invasion of Sue's brain accidentally killed her, but insofar as that goal is concerned, her plan works, until her culpability is discovered. She accidentally gives away her complicity to her ex-husband, Ray Palmer, at virtually the same time that Batman separately solves the case. Her efforts to conceal the crime include a staged attack on herself, a threat to Lois Lane, and a hit-for-hire that killed Jack Drake, the father of Robin, and his attacker, Captain Boomerang. In perhaps the story's weakest moment, she smilingly tries to get Ray to accept her despite the killing. Predictably, he doesn't go for it: The story ends with Jean in Arkham Asylum and Ray shrinking himself to go into some microscopic exile. Identity Crisis a fair mystery in the Agatha Christie sense, Jean Loring was already marked as a damaged individual all the way back in 1970, decades before Meltzer planned this story. Surely, earlier writers didn't foresee her future use as the villain at the center of a rape-and-murder story, but Meltzer didn't choose the story's killer arbitrarily.

JLA #81: Jean Loring's first bout of insanity

While many readers objected to the formulaic and seemingly unrealistic "good person goes insane" story arc, it is worth remembering the character's history of externally-triggered madness, and one might consider that, whether or not it made

Jean Loring's role in Identity Crisis may have had some slender precedent in the past, but superhero comics had never seen anything like the rape of Sue Dibny. The shocking reveals and realism (not the same thing) in Identity Crisis create an unmistakable air of revolution. The use of Silver Age characters, including a pointed statement that Hal Jordan might soon return from the dead, turned the Crisis on Infinite Earths revolution into a counter-revolution, and Identity Crisis became the first of several monumental works that rolled back the entire post-COIE continuity. Within four years, it would all be undone: Hal Jordan would return to life as soon as Identity Crisis ended, then Infinite Crisis would bring back the Multiverse, and Final Crisis would bring back Barry Allen. The entire era from Infinite Crisis to Flashpoint was presaged by Identity Crisis. The darkness implied by Identity Crisis joined the deaths of Superman and Jason Todd and Bane breaking Batman’s back to become a rationale for Infinite Crisis and seemed to justify a quest to repurify the DC Universe.

Retro Review: JLA Top 5 - Obsidian Age

As Joe Kelly's JLA ran began in 2002, the team ran into powerful magic users in separate, seemingly-unrelated incidents. Kyle Rayner started having nightmares and visions that showed the JLA dying in battle. With unprecedented planning and foresight, Kelly used his first eight issues to set up the central storyline of his run, a story called "Obsidian Age" that took the team through the lowest lows and highest highs they ever faced. At its darkest point, Superman's skeleton and a mocking note served notice that the team was dead. The population of Atlantis was enslaved. We see Wally West captive with his neck broken and legs amputated, and then the whole team dies in battle. After that happened in the past, a seemingly-undefeatable witch in the present is about to make the Earth fall into the Sun. It's bad. It's very bad.

This sets up a finale when a staggering number of heroes in a greatly-expanded roster go on precisely the winning streak that saving the day requires, everyone playing a key role in a victory that cheats death several times, gives half a dozen characters arguably their finest moments, and then finally moves the Earth. There's a pause before the finale where a ghostly, undead Kyle Rayner tells Nightwing, "You're doing a hell of a job, by the way." It's impossible to reach that moment unmoved by the sentiment behind it.

But it began with the preparation earlier in Kelly's run. After the JLA had tangled with a Central Asian ruler/magician named Rama Khan, the story begins in earnest when two powerful opponents representing ancient Mexico and an unspecified Native American culture materialize at Disneyland and use their combined magic in an attempt to kill the JLA. They nearly succeed when Batman awakens from a spell that is supposed to keep any human asleep, and Kyle Rayner arrives in time to blindside the attackers, who escape where Atlantis used to be. This begins a mystery in which the JLA begins to search for Aquaman on the spot where Atlantis has, apparently, disappeared into the past. With Batman and Kyle expressing strong misgivings, they go 3,000 years into the past, and then things turn sour.

Kelly divides the story into parallel narration of the past, in even-numbered issues, and present, in odd-numbered issues. While the Big Seven plus Plastic Man gradually realize they are in over their heads in 1000 BC, a new replacement team led by Nightwing faces existential threats in the present, eventually realizing that their problems and the disappearance of the main JLA are related.

The split narration makes it all a mystery for readers to unravel, too. We know the JLA is missing before we know they are dead, and we know they are dead before we know why. The invocation of time travel makes it a little hard to unravel even at the end, but the flow of events goes like this:

In 1000 BC, a malevolent Atlantean sorceress named Gamemnae unites forces with Rama Khan, the forerunner of the Central Asian mystic whom the JLA had encountered in the present. Rama Khan in 1000 BC has visions of a seven-headed destroyer from the future. This is interpreted as being the JLA, but will eventually prove to be Gamemnae herself. The two of them gather a team of rather formidable super-beings from around the world and prepare to lure the JLA into the past and ambush them. Rama Khan and other members of the team do so believing that the JLA really is evil. Gamemnae, however, does so to facilitate her conquest of the Earth and manipulates the rest of the "League of Ancients" into eliminating the JLA for her.

Aquaman and the citizens of modern day Atlantic travel into the past as a refuge from the "Our Worlds at War" crisis. Arthur the first to fall, trusting Gamemnae before he is turned into a disembodied water wraith trapped in a pool. Then she raises the underwater city back to the surface and leads the ancient Atlanteans in enslaving the modern-day Atlanteans. Two of the League of Ancients travel to the present to battle the JLA, which succeeds in luring them back to their time, and into a very well-prepared trap.

In the past, the JLA covertly investigate Atlantis, trying to avoid walking into a trap. However, when they think they understand the situation, they do not, and the League of Ancients has mutilated the Flash in a separate ambush before the other heroes make their appearance. Behind the scenes, however, the Native American magician Manitou found out that Batman was unharmed by a weapon that could not harm a just person, a discovery that begins to win Manitou over to the JLA side. This is too late, however, for the rest of the team, who go down hard in the face of Gamemnae's perfect battle plan. Martian Manhunter is lit afire, Plastic Man shredded, and Superman physically beaten to death. Kyle Rayner is the only one who wins his matchup, using his ring to save Atlanteans who seem to be his enemy; this is the act of mercy that definitively brings Manitou to the JLA side, and in a brilliantly ambiguous moment, Kyle allows Manitou to rip his heart from his chest as part of a magical spell that's necessary for the league's resurrection.

With the JLA dead, Gamemnae turns against her allies, absorbing them into her own body with magic, which gives her the sum of all of their powers, all but that of Manitou, who hides the spirits of the JLA in Kyle's heart for three thousand years.

In the present, Gamemnae, now hideously monstrous, absorbs Tempest and Zatanna before the new JLA shows up in force, and she begins to pick them off, too. President Lex Luthor nukes the battle site, appearing to kill the heroes even while Gamemnae is unaffected. And after that bleak point, everything turns around.

Kyle Rayner, who has survived as a combination ghost / power ring entity for three thousand years, uses his ring power to save the new JLA, who put Manitou's plan into action. Nightwing declares, "I don't know jack about magic, but I do know people. If Gamemnae does have a weakness, it's her strength. It makes her confident, and will blind her." That observation is the pivot in the confrontation. Nightwing's people skills, his ability to lead the replacement JLA, ultimately turns the tide against a villain so powerful that she is basically a god.

The six dead JLAers bond as ghosts on the spirit plane, with Batman playing the chess master, directing Manitou to animate them as skeletal forms that are immune to Gamemnae's magic, and as the undead JLA begin to fight the witch, Kelly unveils some of his best dialogue…

Gamemnae: What good are a handful of shades against the force of Earth's gods?!?

Batman: You're about to find out.

[...]

Firestorm (to Manitou): I didn't think it was possible… but you actually made Batman scarier.

Attacks by the undead Superman and Wonder Woman manipulate Gamemnae into using her magic to bring the Leaguers back to life, while Batman whispers, "The chess match has begun. Force the move."

Meanwhile, the replacement Justice League under Nightwing try to find a way to beat Gamemnae. Jason Blood sacrifices himself in order to liberate Zatanna from Gamemnae, the Atom makes himself too small for magic to affect him, and the demon Etrigan and a Kelly creation named Faith lead a delaying attack before Firestorm uses his matter-transmuting powers to connect the pool confining Aquaman with the sea, in effect giving him command over the entire ocean.

At this point, with the teams in the past and present both at impressive levels of power, they win a double battle against the sorceress, with Manitou's magic, Aquaman's power, and the resurrected JLA beating her into submission.

Kelly uses the extremely traumatic events in the story not as a gimmick to impress the reader but as a means of bringing out the personalities of the characters. And so, we're not asked to believe in Wally West's nobility because he is running fast, nor even because he is risking danger. We feel it when he's being held by his broken neck, legs amputated, at the mercy of a merciless enemy, and he tells his comrades, trying to save their lives at the cost of his, "Run. Please. Just run." J'onn's death transforms Plastic Man's zaniness into fury, driving him to suffocate Rama Khan and yell, "You like burning?!? How about the burning inside your lungs as they choke for air?!? LIKE THAT?!?!" Superman tries to reason with the League of Ancients even as they try to kill him. Firestorm and Zatanna are frustrated by not knowing how their powers can be used to beat Gamemnae, then figure it out at the last minute. We see Kyle Rayner grimly whisper, "Be alive, be alive" before falling silent when he sees that every one of his teammates is dead.

And it hurts. It hurts Kyle and it hurts us. Seeing the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash die is a shock, one that might be a cheap stunt if handled differently. Joe Kelly, yes, brings them back to life, cancelling out those deaths as he certainly had to do, but he uses the death-and-resurrection to achieve a grand narrative payoff in the rich characterization it allows.

Kelly gets it. Death in comics isn't a moment for the writer to step back, quit writing, and hope the penciller can imitate Michelangelo's Pietà. Death isn't a moment at all. It's a process, an event, a beginning rather than an ending. Kelly wrote a story around the JLA's death, but it's neither cheap nor lazy. It's a tangled story that started setting things up twelve issues before their deaths and kept unspooling the consequences for several issues longer. It's obvious that he worked not only smarter but also harder than writers usually do, and the result was what I consider probably the finest Justice League story ever written.

Rikdad's JLA Top 5 Stories (in chronological order)
Steve Englehart – No Man Escapes the Manhunters
Steve Englehart – The Origin of the Justice League Minus One
Grant Morrison – New World Order
Grant Morrison – Rock of Ages
Joe Kelly – Obsidian Age