This book comes under the JLA banner, showcasing the superhero team in action with key characters acting as a novel’s lead figure. Justice League of America: Batman: The Stone King (I’ll just call it Stone King from here out) features, duh, Batman as the lead character to unlock the mystery of the pyramid and save the JLA as an ancient evil threatens to take over the world.

As comic books go, this novel’s plot is standard fare. An ancient evil comes back to the modern world, yada yada yada. There’s nothing really new are exiting that happens other than the whole team gets to beat up on Green Lantern as he’s under control of the ancient evil.

The whole story of the Stone King is that an ancient shaman built a place of power (along ley lines) and demanded to be worshipped as a god. The Stone King (the shaman’s title) killed and generally carried on, until his priests had a plan to kill him and finally be rid of the pompous ass. While the rid their world of the Stone King, they didn’t rid the world of his spirit. The Stone King’s spirit was hanging around waiting to possess a body and get back to killing and being a god. As it so happens, the Stone King’s pyramid is in present day Gotham county and is discovered after the dam breaks. A team of local archeologists enters and the Stone King possesses one of them. After the body of one of the team is discovered, weird events happen to the JLA team members (like an undead brawl for Wonder Woman). Batman figures that the source is the pyramid, so the JLA investigates, all (save Bats) getting nabbed in the process. Batman then goes on investigating and finds a way of freeing them (with the help of a psychic and one of the archeologists), sending the Stone King packing.

Overall, the Stone King is a decent comic novel that features the JLA in action. It doesn’t really add to the characters, and is a simple fun read to kill time with. Those wanting more detail to add to their comic enjoyment will find this novel lacking.