On Justice League: Their Greatest Triumphs

This bargain-priced 170-page, $9.99 trade paperback seems to have been assembled specifically to give retailers something to point anyone interested in DC's premiere super-team because of next month's movie towards.

As a long-time fan of the Justice League, I was pretty curious about its contents, as "greatest hits" collections are almost never actually that. Given that their limited page-count, they are inevitably limited to single-issue stories, and the editors generally stick to in-continuity, relevant stories rather than looking to something from, say, a comic based on a cartoon or in an alternate universe (So I wouldn't expect anything from Justice League Adventures or Justice League Unlimited, or from Adventures in The DC Universe or the Paul Dini/Alex Ross one-shot JLA: Liberty & Justice).

Of course, the sub-title here doesn't necessarily promise the greatest or best stories, but the greatest "triumphs," whatever exactly that might mean (Given that they are limited to one-issue stories, though, it's not like they can actually include their greatest triumphs, as those generally come at the end of stories of some scope and size. I guess they could use the final issues of story arcs like "Rock of Ages"...?).

These sorts of books also generally reveal more about where the publisher's collective head is regarding a franchise: What they consider the best or most important stories, which iterations of the League are the most important or relevant ones, which characters and creators they find important or relevant to the line at the moment. I knew without even cracking it I was probably going to disagree with many of the inclusions.

Looking solely at the table of contents, there are only three distinct teams or "eras" represented: Grant Morrison's "Big Seven Plus" roster (although nothing actually written by Morrison is included), Brad Meltzer's short-lived, one-arc team and Geoff Johns' post-Flashpoint team. To the extent that any earlier iteration of the team exist, it is only in flashback form in the Meltzer-written issue.

The average age of the stories is nine-years-old, with a Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong story from 1999 being the oldest, and a Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques and Scott Hanna story from 2016 being the most recent. Geoff Johns scripted three of the seven issues, with the four other writers each getting an issue a piece of the remaining ones. Three of the stories are set before Flashpoint, the other four in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe.

What accounts for the selection? The heavy representation of Johns feels slightly icky given his current prominence in the publisher's leadership--President & Chief Creative Officer--so it feels a little like flattering the boss. On the other hand, from what we know of the upcoming movie, it seems to be somewhat inspired by Johns' first Justice League story (which was also the basis of the direct-to-DVD animated film, Justice League: War), and the film's line-up reflects the post-Flashpoint, Geoff Johns inclusion of Cyborg on the team (aside from a weird, seemingly aborted line-up initiated by James Robinson, Cyborg was never on the team until Johns' relaunch).

It's possible the specific stories are included to offer suggestions of villains in the movie, but that actually seems a little unlikely, as in addition to a Parademon or two, these include The White Martians, The Construct, Ocean Master, a couple of cameos by Crime Syndicate of America and whatever the hell was going on in Bryan Hitch's first "Rebirth" Justice League arc.

Here are the comics included within...

Justice League #1
By Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair

This is the 2011 first issue of the previous Justice League series, the official launch of The New 52. Despite having the New 52 version of a Big Seven on the cover--all of whom are appearing in the film, save Green Lantern Hal Jordan--the actual issue just features Batman, Jordan and, on the last page, Superman. A pre-Cyborg Victor Stone makes an appearance (in his origin for the League, Johns tied Cyborg's origin to the invasion of Apokolips and the formation of the team), as does a Parademon or two.

Given the collection's sub-title, it seems like a random choice, with the final issue of the arc seemingly a better one (That at least features the whole roster, as well as Darkseid). Johns and Lee, another DC Comics executive, only collaborated on two story arcs, neither of which is very good, and neither of which was broken into strong individual chapters in such a way that would make the inclusion of any single issue read smoothly all on its own.

So on the one hand, while I totally get why a chapter of this arc is in here--it's Johns and Lee, it's apparently a pretty strong inspiration for the film--it also doesn't make much sense at all to include it here.

If a reader wants to find out what happens next, this story is collected as Justice League Vol. 1: Origin.

JLA #33
By Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo, Walden Wong and John Kalisz

This one actually kind of baffles me. Waid did have a decently well-written run on JLA, picking up the baton from Grant Morrison at the conclusion of Morrison's World War III arc. Waid's run kicked off with a pretty great, over-sized original graphic novel with Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary (JLA: Heaven's Ladder), and  then ran through issues #43-60 of the ongoing monthly title. Unfortunately, the art was a mess, as he was officially teamed with Hitch, who was unable to ever complete an arc (In that sense, the Waid/Hitch run peaked before it even began, as Heaven's Ladder was the only complete story Hitch managed, start to finish).

Waid was writing JLA stories before his run began though. In addition to scripting the prequel miniseries A Midsummer's Nightmare and then JLA: Year One, he wrote two great, two-issue fill-in arcs during Morrison's run, and returned again for two-issue fill-in stint in 1999, featuring two done-in-one-ish stories that kinda sorta dealt with the "No Man's Land" mega-story in the Batman titles. This was the last Waid-scripted fill-in, and it was penciled by then frequent JLA fill-in artist, Mark Pajarillo.

A follow-up to Morrison's first arc, which had the League re-forming to stave off a White Martian invasion, this issue has Batman assigning then-Leaguers Orion, Big Barda, Steel, Plastic Man and Green Lantern Kyle Rayner to investigate Bruce Wayne (actually a White Martian assuming Wayne's identity), while Superman and Wonder Woman investigate The (or is it "a"...?) Flash, a new version with a new costume who was refusing to reveal his true identity to just about everyone.

This was a fun story in several ways, including Pajarillo's drawings of Orion fighting with the tuxedo he goes undercover in, and one of Plas' skeeviest disguises as an inanimate object, plus an overall weird grouping of heroes interacting in the ways that Morrison's ongoing narrative rarely allowed for. It's still a weird choice for the book, though. Not only do few of these heroes seem to appear in the film, but it ties in to a couple of pretty specific and temporary plot points from other comics.

If DC wanted to choose a Waid-written issue, JLA #50 might have been a good one, as it was a stock-taking issue that transitioned between the arc that had just ended and the one that was beginning (and featured bearded Aquaman; he is clean shaven and short-haired in all of these issues), and aside from a compelling cliffhanger, it had some pretty classic Justice League-ing.

The best done-in-one, fill-in from during Morrison's run, however, was probably JLA #27, by Mark Millar, Pajarillo and Wong.

Essentially an Atom story, it features classic Justice League villain Amazo and the entire Justice League reserves (i.e. everyone that was a Leaguer and was still alive at the time) showing up before it's all over. It's a very clever story, too, harkening back to classic, Silver Age League comics. It feels weird suggesting anyone read a Millar comic in 2017, but this was back in the days when Millar seemed to really want to be a comic book writer, before he realized he could used comics as a stepping stone to Hollywood films, and started turning his Elseworlds pitches into analogue comics to entice filmmakers into adapting them.

Morrison had a lot of great short stories, but these were generally two issues long, rather than a single issue long. The only done-in-one of his I can think of is JLA #5, which was full of guest-stars and had some good Martian Manhunter moments but, for the most part, was a Superman and Tomorrow Woman story. Unfortuantely, Superman was going through his electric phase at that point, so I wonder if it would just confuse and repel readers of this particular trade collection...?

At any rate, I'd recommend one read the entirety of the Morrison run and, once that's finished, check out the Waid run as well...or, at the very least, Heaven's Ladder.

Justice League of America #1 #0
By Brad Meltzer, Eric Wight, Ed Benes, Alex Sinclair, and a whole bunch of artists

Huh. That's weird. The table of contents refers to this as Justice League of America #1, the first chapter of Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes and company's "The Tornado's Path" story arc, but it's actually JLoA #0. This was the start of prose novelist-turned-terrible-comics writer Brad Meltzer's run on the newly relaunched JLoA in 2006. Following the events of Infinite Crisis, this over-sized issue was mainly a vehicle for an exploration of Justice League history, as revised on the fly by Meltzer, although because it was coming off of a cosmic, continuity rejiggering, this time there was at least an in-universe explanation for the changes (Those in his Identity Crisis, on the other hand, were just mistakes).

Among those changes was to reinstate Wonder Woman as an original member of the Justice League of America--following Crisis On Infinite Earths, Black Canary II was a founding member in Wondy's stead, as Wonder Woman was being introduced into the DCU for the first time in the then-new continuity--and this issue was basically Meltzer having the "Trinity" of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman getting together to discuss who should be on the new Justice League of America line-up, flashing back to various meetings between the three at various points in DC history as it existed at that point and, oddly, a few glimpses into future meetings of the three.

It is mainly noteworthy for all the great artists involved. Ed Benes, who would be Meltzer's main pencil artist for the remainder of the writer's short, 12-issue run, drew many of the modern day scenes, and Eric Wight drew many of the earliest past scenes, with an all-star roster drawing everything in between. Among the artists were those who had worked on previous runs of Justice League comics before, including Kevin Maguire, Dan Jurgens, Howard Porter and George Perez.

In that respect, it is probably a good issue to include in here. If you want to find out what happens following this story, and I wouldn't recommend it, you can check out Justice League of America Vol. 1: The Tornado's Path. In retrospect, the most interesting thing Meltzer brought to the franchise was including new blood in the form of Black Lightning, Hawkgirl and Arsenal-turned-Red Arrow Roy Harper, but the line-up Meltzer spent 12 issues gradually assembling would begin being dismantled almost immediately.

This volume of the League book ultimately lasted five years and 60-issues, and featured work from talented writers like the late, great Dwayne McDuffie and James Robinson, but it was a complete mess, and perhaps the nadir of League history. (Seriously; I'll reread the Detroit Era and Extreme Justice before looking at these comics again.)

Justice League #16
By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Rod Reis

This is a particularly perplexing inclusion, as it is the third chapter of the six-part Justice League/Aquaman crossover "Throne of Atlantis," and, as such, doesn't really stand on its own at all. The basic story is that Aquaman's evil brother Orm, AKA "Oceanmaster," is leading the armies of Atlantis against the United States and the Justice League, and Aquaman is caught in the middle. In this particular chapter, he fights Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, while Cyborg is trying to sort everything else out elsewhere.

"Throne" was a pretty decent story, maybe the best of Johns' run, and Reis' pencil art was pretty great, but as just a single chapter, this is kind of a pointless read as anything other than perhaps an enticement to buy the trade it is collected in (Actually, this story appears in two different trades, both of which reprint the entire thing, which I imagine must have been awfully fucking frustrating for anyone following both of the Johns-written series in trade; Justice League Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis and Aquaman Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis). It does feature characters that appear in the film, so I guess there is that.

Justice League #29
By Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy and Rod Reis

This is the final inclusion from Johns' Justice League, a 2015 issue tie-in to that year's Forever Evil event series, which was also written by Johns. It has a rather striking cover, featuring the Metal Men appearing in the shapes of the Justice Leaguers, but little else to recommend it. It is basically a Cyborg solo story, and sees Vic recruiting Doc Magnus and The Metal Men to help him take on The Grid, the evil version of Cyborg that was colluding with the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3.

If you read this and find yourself dying to know what happens next (and I can't imagine you will), then it is included in context in Justice League Vol. 5: Forever Heroes, and you'll probably also want to check out the poorly-drawn Forever Evil collection.

JLA #107
By Kurt Busiek, Ron Garney, Dan Green and David Baron

So, if you had asked me at the time who should follow Mark Waid on JLA, I would have told you that Kurt Busiek would have been the ideal choice. Instead, DC chose Joe Kelly, a writer who wouldn't have even been on my radar at the time, but who nevertheless turned out a remarkably strong 30-issue run on JLA, which then continued into his Justice League Elite book and then returned for a single issue of JLA before reaching its conclusion. That was probably the last high-quality run on a League book until...well, I don't think anyone's matched it since, actually.

For whatever reason, DC de-emphasized the importance of JLA around 2004, perhaps because they were focused on Identity Crisis and the ramp-up to Infinite Crisis. The result was about two years in which the book became an anthology series, with different arcs by different creators, few of which had anything to do with one another, let alone with the DC Universe at large: Denny O'Neil and Tan Eng Huat did a forgettable two-parter; John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Jerry Ordway did a barely readable seven-part storyline that included a soft reboot of the Doom Patrol; Chuck Austen and Ron Garney did a series of solo stories which kind of defeated the purpose of the book (all of these character already had at least one solo book at the time, after all, with the exception of Martian Manhunter) and then there was "Syndicate Rules," of which this is the first chapter.

If anyone was still paying attention to JLA, they would have been rewarded with this eight-part story written by Busiek (finally!) and penciled by Garney, featuring a rematch with the Crime Syndicate, the first since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely reintroduced them in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. Entitled "Maintenance Day," it featured what was left of the Big Seven version of the League, which now included Green Lantern Jon Stewart in for Kyle Rayner and The Atom apparently out of his self-enforced semi-retirement.

While the storyline would eventually grow pretty epic in scope, this first issue is kind of a low-key start, a day-in-the-life type of story in which the impatient Flash Wally West and Martian Manhunter perform a series of tasks needed to keep the Justice League's lunar Watchtower in working order. This includes a conflict with The Construct.

It was a strong enough story arc that it became all the more depressing that the JLA/Avengers writer never had a proper run on JLA, but he would kinda sorta get his chance a few years later with the weekly Trinity series. To read all of "Syndicate Rules," you can try to track down the out-of-print JLA: Syndicate Rules trade or JLA Vol. 9, which includes it along with Geoff Johns and Allen Heinberg's Identity Crisis tie-in, "Crisis of Conscience."

Justice League: Rebirth #1
By Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Scott Hanna and Alex Sinclair

No, I don't know why these books aren't presented in anything approaching chronological order, but instead keep jumping back and forth.

After his poor showing as the pencil artist during Mark Waid's run on JLA, and a rather poor showing as a writer/artist on his own book entitled Justice League of America (which he hadn't yet finished when this series launched), Bryan Hitch got another crack at the League with the relaunched, "Rebirth" version of the title. The line-up was essentially the same as it was when Johns and Lee relaunched the rebooted League in 2011, only instead of one Green Lantern in Hal Jordan, they now had two Green Lanterns in new, Johns-created characters Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz. Oh, and instead of New 52 Superman, they now had pre-Flashpoint, post-Convergence Superman. What his deal was would eventually all get ironed out in the Superman books, but, at this point, much of the character's interactions with his teammates were colored in distrust, as they didn't know who exactly he was or understand what the fuck was going on with Superman continuity (Join the club, Justice League!).

As with all of Hitch's League writing to date, I read this--three times now!--and couldn't really tell you what happened in it, or why. It's all apocalyptic, wide-screen, disaster picture stuff, but it is also strangely boring, lifeless and unsubstantial. If you read the chapter and find yourself intrigued, however, you can see how it all plays out in the pages of Justice League Vol. 1: The Extinction Machines.

Heroes for Brad Meltzer's kids

The only prose of Brad Meltzer's that I have personally read were his contributions to the 2004 Sean Howe-edited essay collection Give Our Regards to the Atomsmahers: Writers On Comics and the 2001 collection The Games We Played: A Celebration of Childhood and Imagination, so I'm not exactly expert in his non-comics writing. That's why I didn't know of the existence of his 2010 Heroes For My Son and 2012 Heroes For My Daughter until I happened to be in the same aisle of the library as them the other day.

The premise of the books is pretty much right there in their titles. Upon the birth of his son, Meltzer started thinking about the wisdom he would pass on to his first child, and he soon began thinking of remarkable individuals who possessed and expressed particular virtues he hoped his son would possess. He came up with 52. And then another whole book of examples.

The books are sweet, and of the graduation gift sort. After the introductions (the intro in Son has a pretty funny anecdote involving Meltzer's grandfather telling him the same four-sentence story about Batman and Robin over and over again), there is a photo of a hero with a two or three sentence biography of them, followed by a page telling a particular anecdote about that hero, and what exactly makes the heroic. As a sort of page punctuation, there's a quote from each.

The figures included are generally the sort that you might expect a grade-schooler to write a report on at some point, ranging from historical figures to pop artists to athletes to people who made the news for something extraordinary to members of Meltzer's own family.

Knowing that Meltzer has written for DC Comics in the past, and that he holds enormous affection for certain comic book superheroes (thanks to his essay in Atom-Smashers), I checked both books out to see if any of those heroes turned out to be superheroes, or the people who created those superheroes.

It turns out, I didn't have to skim long. The third entry was "Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Inventors of the first superhero" (See the image above).

Here's Meltzer's entry on the pair, in its entirety:

They weren't good-looking.

They weren't popular.

And they were so poor that they used to draw on the back of butcher's paper.

But they were two best friends.

With one dream.

At the brink of World War II, in the midst of the Great Depression, two kids from Cleveland didn't just give us the world's first superhero.

They gave us to something to believe in.

The quote at the end of their entry, by the way, isn't a quote from "one of the first rejection letters for Superman,": "The trouble with this, kid, is that it's too sensational. Nobody would believe it."

So that was pretty cool of Meltzer.

Siegiel and Shuster were the only comics creators in either book, which, I should note, includes women in Son and men in Daughter, although there are plenty of folks around the fringes of comics, mixed in with more obvious candidates like Martin Luther King, Thomas Jefferson, Helen Keller and Rosa Parks.

These include cartoonist-turned-author/artist Dr. Seuss (as with Superman's dads, Meltzer points out that success didn't come easy to Geisel, noting his first book was rejected by 27 publishers), Superman's one-time opponent Muhammad Ali, Superman actor Christopher Reeve, cartoon (and comics!) character Lisa Simpson (for her creation of a Lisa Lionheart doll to replace Malibu Stacy), Muppets creator Jim Henson, the Three Stooges and popular comics subjects Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt and Leonardo Da Vinci. Oh, and All-Star Squadron character Winston Churchill.

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 1: Justice League of America: Second Coming

Earlier this week, three collections I reserved at my local library became available on the same day. What all three had in common was that they were bad comics I had started reading in comic book format as they were being published, but I quickly abandoned due to their exceptionally poor quality and my desire not to reward the publisher for producing them with my money (even though I felt some need to read them to keep up with the goings-on in the fictional universe in which they’re set).

As I discovered, even getting the comics for free, and reading them in big chunks without a month between every 22 pages to consider their faults didn’t do much of anything to improve their quality.

I’m going to review one of them at probably too-great length each day this weekend.


********************

DC has been publishing Justice League comics for just under 50 years now, and those that they've been publishing since 2006 or so have been the absolute worst. I know that sounds pretty harsh, and some modern readers probably think it insane to say the current volume is worse than the original Silver Age comics with their rudimentary, written-for-kids plots and dialogue, and the stocky, blocky art, but even those comics had a certain degree of professionalism and competence about them, as did any of the previous eras of Justice League comics readers are likely to point to as the nadir of the franchise (the early Extreme Justice run, when DC was trying to turn the Giffen/DeMatteis team into something Rob Liefeld fans might enjoy, or the Detroit League, when stabs at a new generation of heroes replaced the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman).

The current volume was produced from the start by people who just honestly didn't give a shit about what they were doing. Original writer Brad Meltzer may have had some interesting ideas here and there among the professional fan fiction he wrote during his brief run, but there was a very basic, fundamental level of not-caring emanating from the scripts, to the point where the 1939's World's Fair occurred in Washington DC instead of New York City (a fact Meltzer or editors would have known if only from reading the other DC super-comics they were referencing in the story) and the dead character Aquaman was used as a living character, but drawn by the artist to resemble a completely different character (who was alive).

There was a certain level of contempt for the material and the audience expressed by Meltzer and/or his editors that made reading the comics actively unpleasant, a contempt never better evidenced than in the choice of artists on the book, the most regular of which was pencil artist Ed Benes.

I've complained at such great length and detail about how poor Benes' art is that even I'm tired of hearing me do so, but, to quickly recap, Benes is a fairy decent pin-up artist who can draw big, brawny bosomy super-babes in suggestive poses and ridiculously muscled men with painted on costumes, and absolutely nothing else. Those are the only two designs he's capable of, and he has no range at all with them—the women can look sexy, the men angry, and that's about as far as Benes' "acting" skills go. He has no command of mis en scene, page design, panel-to-panel continuity or background. He's pretty much the last artist you'd want on a comic book about a dozen or so superheroes, whether they're actually having big adventures, or just having action-packed conversations like characters in a Brian Michael Bendis comic book.

That only added up to Benes being a poor comic book artist, of course—what was worse was his focus on the sexiness of the handful of female super-characters at the expense of everything else. Often times, he was drawing an entirely different comic story than his writers were writing, and the meaning of scenes was completely changed by the way he staged and rendered them.

Anyway, the Meltzer/Benes Justice League of America comic book of 2006 was a terrible, terrible comic book, and my mind remains boggled that one of the biggest publishers of comic books proudly produced that during a time when comics as entertainment and art have never seemed stronger.

When Meltzer left as planned in the middle of his story, Dwayne McDuffie was brought in, and the quality of the book dipped even further, with even worse fill-in artists (Joe Benitez) and a change of focus away from telling Justice League stories to telling tie-ins to other comics—for a couple months, every issue of JLoA was like a red skies tie-in to something, only instead of acknowledging something important to the DC Universe like Crisis on Infinite Earths, they tied in to Tangent and Salvation Run (itself a tie-in...to Countdown, a prequel in name to Final Crisis).

The fifth collection of the current volume of Justice League of America is entitled The Second Coming. I'm not sure why, beyond the fact that McDuffie quotes lines from William Butler Yeats' poem of that name in the titles of the individual chapters (Oddly, DC is also currently publishing a Batman miniseries titled after a line from the poem—Batman: The Widening Gyre). It could refer to the return of Red Tornado to a body, but as the character himself notes this is like the eighth time he's been reborn in a new body (the second within the first two years of this very series!). It could refer to the return of Amazon, but this is more like his twenty-second coming than his second. Perhaps DC had a big retreat where they all talked about Yeats, and his poetry is just filtering into the comics...?

At any rate, this is also a terrible, terrible comic book.

This is due in large part to the continued presence of Benes, whose deficincies are made so clear in this issue that it's actually kind of hilarious. For example, Red Tornado's significant other Kathy, who is blond, is distinguishable from Black Canary only in that the latter wears fishnet stockings. That's the sort of poor work a reader might expect from Benes as his off-and-on tenure on the book reaches its second year. But the first issue collected here contains this image of Professor Niles Caulder, the elderly, wheelchair bound leader of The Doom Patrol. Benes draws him just like Superman, in a fake beard and wig:

(I know I made fun of that image before, but it still makes me laugh).

Benes hasn’t become any stronger of an artist in the issues collected in this volume than he was in the issues collected in previous volumes (although, according to the credits, he’s now inking his own work). The art is still confoundingly amateurish, with odd panel to panel slip-ups like, say, a mace appearing in and out of Hawkgirl’s hand from panel to panel, and still suffers from Benes’ insistence of reducing everything he an to a picture of a sexy lady. Perhaps the most egregious example in this volume is a two-page spread in #26, in which the entire Justice League squares off against an entire Justice League of alternate versions of themselves. There are over 20 superheroes in action on the page, but Benes draws a super huge close-up of Wonder Woman in the immediate foreground, blocking the bulk of the battle from view.


The art isn’t the only problem with the book, however. Because writer Dwayne McDuffie has been so vocal about his dissatisfaction with the way the book turned out and the constraints put on him during its writing (and by “so vocal” I mean that he talked to anyone about it at all, which is somewhat unusual among Big Two comics writers), I think there’s temptation to forgive him for the lack of quality in the work, to assume he was simply shafted by his editors and by not having a real artistic partner (In addition to doing poor work, Benes had some serious deadline issues for someone who rarely even draws backgrounds—six other pencillers and eight other inkers are needed during this five-issue run).

McDuffie has a few moments of life within these issues—notably the inclusion of The Brown Bomber, a character up for behind-the-scenes consideration for DC’s first black superhero that ultimately evolved into Black Lightning—but the quality of work is overall quite poor.

The story—if it is a story, rather than just five issues of the comic chopped into a unit for collection’s sake—isn’t about anything at all. There’s literally nothing to the book other than familiar characters going through familiar motions to no discernable effect or impact. In short, there aren’t any ideas in the comic; it reads like tiresome pay check-collection on McDuffie’s part.

It’s possible that may be due simply to McDuffie operating in clean-up mode, trying to honor Meltzer’s run by wrapping up all the storyline’s his predecessor left unresolved before doing what he wanted. The arc opens with Red Tornado about to put into another new body, and still struggling with his Am I robot or a man? issues that Meltzer had him dealing with in the first few issues of JLoA. It closes with Vixen getting to the bottom of why her powers aren’t working right anymore, another conflict Meltzer introduced and then abandoned. In between, there’s some talk about the Roy Harper/Hawkgirl relationship Meltzer initiated.

If that is the case, it’s unfortunate it took McDuffie over 100 pages to deal with it in this book.

As for the superheroic stuff, it feels incredibly small, claustrophobic and tired. See all those characters trying to hide their feet on the cover? They and John Henry Irons must pool all their powers and abilities to combat Amazo, an android enemy the League’s been fighting about twice a year since the early sixties. McDuffie doesn’t do anything new or interesting with the character the way, say, Tom Peyer did repeatedly throughout his Hourman, or even Mark Millar did in his one-issue fill-in during Grant Morrison’s run on JLA. It’s just one more the Justice League-battles-a-robot-with-all-their-powers fight, lasting far too many pages.

Once Amazo’s defeated, the League tries to solve Vixen’s power problems, which involve a trip within her magical Tantu totem, where they encounter Anansi the West African spider god who functions as a stand-in for the writer. If there is a hint of freshness to the idea, McDuffie spoils it himself by involving Animal Man, and reminding readers of Grant Morrison’s insertion of the comic book writer into the comic book superhero narrative back in…Jesus, the late eighties? Early ‘90s? (And then again more recently in 52).

McDuffie does do a fairly admirable job of giving each character a moment of some sort, but he’s dealing with so many characters that all they get is a moment—a few pages of narration, a few lines of dialogue, a single scene to shine in, and then they completely disappear.

McDuffie’s Justice League appears as alien and remote as Morrison’s did, but not because they’re written that way, simply because McDuffie can’t find room for them all in the storyline. That may be in part due to a lack of ambition—should it take 20 superheroes and three issues to fight Amazo?

The sad part is that this is apparently the best part of McDuffie’s run on the title. The previous issues were the ones in which a co-writer was called in to help him handle the tie-ins to Salvation Run and Tangent, and the ones that follow this will deal with the since aborted attempt to integrate the Milestone Universe into the DC Universe for some reason, to reconcile the title with the changes of Final Crisis (in which Hawkgirl died, but then editorial told McDuffie she was still alive after an issue in which her death is being mourned had already been written and drawn, and to deal with the fall-out of the Justice League: Cry for Justice miniseries, which was so late it had yet to begin while McDuffie was writing its aftermath.

This then represents McDuffie at his least interfered with, and—even if you ignore the inappropriate, amateurish art completely—the results were terrible.

It’s really a shame. McDuffie’s a pretty talented writer, and as his work just prior for Marvel Comics proved, he’s adept at marrying big, crazy cosmic superhero adventure with lighthearted humor and solid character work. He should have been perfect for JLoA, but…well, whatever went wrong, to whatever degree he or whoever else was responsible, the comic books that resulted were shockingly bad.

Because (one of) you demanded (well, asked for) it!: 1,500 words about how JLoA is no damn good and what I think of those black splotches

Robert, an EDILW reader, emailed me last weekend to ask if I’d be doing a post about the semi-announced line-up of James Robinson and Mark Bagley’s upcoming run on Justice League of America, as he was wondering what I thought about it.

Because I am a jerk, I haven’t yet emailed Robert back. But, because I am also an eager-to-please jerk, I figured I would do a post about it.

This is that post.

So, if you haven’t seen the image, here it is again:

DC is using the old blacked-out characters on the cover gag, which they’ve done repeatedly with JLA line-up changes over the years, most recently with the new team that would be starring in the newly re-launched, 2006 Justice League of America.

At last week’s San Diego Comic Con, writer James Robinson confirmed that the team would include Donna Troy, Mon-El in a new Superman-esque costume (and hopefully going by the new codename SuperMon) and Batman Dick Grayson (In one of his Comics Of The Weak features, Tucker Stone asked if Dickbat was this new Batman’s clever nickname; has the Internet decided yet? I kind of like DickBats, as it is parallel to the AzBats construction used to refer to the Jean-Paul Valley-as-Batman character, and also because it sounds like a terrible venereal disease), Hal Jordan and Congorilla, who is apparently the big gorilla-shaped silhouette in the upper right hand corner.

As far as what I think, I guess my main response is that I just don’t really care anymore.

Well, I care a little (enough to devote several hundred words to the subject, and how I don’t care all that much), but not like I did in 2006. This current volume of the Justice League comic has really dulled my enthusiasm is Justice League comics, to a point I didn’t even think was possible.

A big part of that problem is just how bad Justice League of America has been.

Yesterday the thirty-fifth issue of the series was released. It was written by Len Wein, the fourth writer to work on the title in just three years (following Brad Meltzer, Dwayne McDuffie and Alan Burnett). I can’t even guess how many pencillers and inkers were involved up until this point, but, off the top of my head, the pencil artists included Ed Benes, Eric Wight, Joe Benitez, Rags Morales, Carlos Pacheco, Allan Jefferson, Shane Davis, Gene Ha, Ethan Van Sciver, Allan Goldman, CrissCross, Eddy Barrows, Adrian Syaf, Tom Derenick and Pow Rodrix. Some of those guys are really great artists, some of those guys I’m honestly surprised DC would even hire, but that is a lot of pencillers on a single book, let alone in the first three years of a book.

The direction of the book has reflected the slipshod nature of the visuals. There was a three-part crossover with Justice Society of America, a half-issue story devoted to setting up a Tangent miniseries, three and a half issues tying into Salvation Run (itself a tie-in to Countdown…a tie-in/prelude to Final Crisis), one issue devoted to tying into Final Crisis, and an eight-issue arc bringing the Milestone Universe characters into the DCU, while reacting to events in Final Crisis, the Superman books, the Batman books, Wonder Woman and Justice League: Cry for Justice, which hadn’t even been released yet.

How can anyone read a book produced in this fashion, let alone like doing so?

The other problem is that the narrative choices made by the writers and editors—granted, some of them in reaction to what was going on in other books and thus events beyond their control—reinforced the perception that Justice League of America doesn’t matter at all.

Brad Meltzer spent the first twelve issues of the book—the entirety of his run on it, and a third of it’s overall issues up to this point—telling an origin story for his line-up. Among the characters joining the team was long-time sidekick and Teen Titan Roy Harper, adopting a new codename and costume specifically to mark his “graduating” to the Justice League, and Black Lightning, another B-lister who, after decades on lower tier super team, finally made it to the big leagues. Oh, and after about a year of appearing in the title but emphatically not being on the team, Geo-Force consents to joining the team.

Then Geo-Force immediately leaves the team (in the pages of Batman and the Outsiders, not in JLoA), presumably so he can be on the Outsiders again. Roy Harper leaves unceremoniously after the events of Final Crisis, to mourn his girlfriend who died during Final Crisis in one draft of McDuffie’s script for an issue, although he later changed it when he was informed Roy’s girlfriend didn’t die after all (it was retroactively decided that she survived her suicide mission in FC, so that she could be murdered in the pages of Blackest Night). Harper has been appearing in Titans. Likewise, Black Lightning disappeared from the title, and has been appearing in Outsiders.

In all three cases, that’s an awful lot of build-up to what was presented as major events in these fictional characters’ “lives,” which were quickly and unceremoniously reversed.

Given the state of the title then, it’s hard to give a shit that Dick Grayson might be re-joining the Justice League temporarily or whatever, as who knows how long that will last, or why it might matter at all.

Long story short, I don’t really care about the Justice League any more, since DC seems to not really care about the Justice League anymore, and have been actively encouraging readers to not care either.

As it currently stands, there are two Justice League-related teams. The team in JLoA (as far as I understand) consists of Firestorm II, Dr. Light II, Vixen, Green Lantern John Stewart and Zatanna, with several other characters on some form of leave absence or sabbatical or whatever.

The team in Cry For Justice, which is of course written by the incoming writer Robinson, will consist of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, The Atom Ray Palmer, Supergirl, Batwoman, Starman Mikaal, Congorilla and whatever they’re calling Captain Marvel Jr. these days.

It’s probably safe to assume the new team will entail some combination of the two, with Supergirl, Batwoman, Captain Marvel Jr. and Starman least likely to stick around for various reasons (If SuperMon and DickBats are in for Superman and Batman, the lady versions of the characters become rather redundant. The Marvel Family needs some time out of the spotlight to let the radioactivity of Judd Winick’s attempts to rework them wear off, and as for Mikaal, having a Starman on the JSA and the JLA seems a little excessive for a character who doesn’t belong to one of the bigger character dynasties).

John Stewart is almost definitely out, since it seems unlikely Robinson would want to write two Green Lanterns on the team. (I hope I’m wrong though; giving Hal both Green Lantern and JLoA seems pretty unfair, and would make John the only of the five Lanterns without a book to call his own).

Dr. Light is almost definitely in, as Robinson has been writing her in Superman, and recently advertised a sub-plot with her continuing in JLoA.

Beyond that, I couldn’t even offer guesses, although I guess I’ll try.

The silhouettes on the Bagley cover make it pretty difficult too, as the bright white light of the background overlaps the borders of the characters, making the blacked-out ones seem less distinct and hard to see clearly.

Let’s see, he character just below DickBats is pretty obviously Starfire, whom I wouldn’t really expect to ever join the Justice League. Given that there are already at least two former Titans—Donna and Dick—adding Starfire seems like Titans overkill. Additionally, there’s the matter of the Titans. What are all these characters doing in JLoA when they’ve got a perfectly good Titans book to star in (And that book, by the way, is dedicated to the grown-up, former Teen Titans like Starfire, Dick and Donna, so filling up the roster on that book is a lot harder than it would be on, say, Teen Titans, where there are dozens of super-teens to choose from at all times).

Looking at figure behind Mon-El’s left boot. That looks a bit like Raven of the Titans, but I’m going to guess that’s Dr. Light, who wears a cape, and that perhaps explains the bright, luminous background.

Just to the left of Donna’s hip is an archer character; you can see the bottom half of the bow, and a quiver full of arrows. Both Roy “Red Arrow” Harper and Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen make equal amounts of sense. Roy was just on the team, and had just taken some time off to mourn his not-dead girlfriend, so could easily return, and he would certainly fit in with Donna, Dick and Starfire. However, Ollie is co-starring with Hal in Robinson’s Cry For Justice, and would thus make sense if this team includes Hal on it. So I’m going to guess it’s Green Arrow Ollie Queen.

As for the remaining shapes, theyre too abstract for me even to guess where one figure begins and another ends, so I got nothing. I can’t figure out what could possibly be in the lower right hand corner to fill that space (looks like a second gorilla to me, but that would be pretty crazy), or what could account for the vaguely mushroom-like shape beneath the “Trinity” characters there.

I’ll be pretty surprised if Flash Barry Allen isn’t on the team (unless Geoff Johns is doing his own Justice League book…but then wouldn’t Johns want his boyfriend Hal on his team…?), and from the few issues of JLoA I’ve read lately, I don’t see any reason why Vixen or Firestorm II would quit the team, so maybe they’re part of those blobs somehow…?

Of course, DC could have just released a somewhat doctored image, to mess with fans, like they did last time.


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This concludes my ranting and raving about a single cover image. If any of you have a topic you would like to see me rant and rave about, please feel free to suggest it in the comments section (and/or just ask questions you’d like me to answer). I can’t promise I’ll get to them in anything approaching a timely fashion (or at all if they are super-dumb or along the lines of "Why do you suck so much, Caleb?"), but next time a post falls through because I can’t get to a scanner or I’m plumb out of ideas, I’ll try and take some of ‘em or all of ‘em up.

So request and/or ask away!


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RELATED: I have a post that also spun out of that JLoA cover image above over at Blog@Newsarama today that may be of interest. It's much shorter and has more pictures. You can check it out here.

Sometimes I really don't get DC Comics.

Today on the company's Source blog they announced a new Red Tornado miniseries, written by Kevin VanHook (most recently of Oracle: The Cure and Superman and Batman Vs. Vampires and Werewolves) and drawn by Jose Luis (whose work I'm unfamiliar with). Red Tornado is, of course, the android hero that nobody in the whole world really likes at all, a character who played a prominent role in Brad Meltzer's relaunched Justice League of America, which has shed a huge chunk of its readers since Meltzer left. The last member of that cast to get a solo miniseries years after the relaunch was Vixen, and that sold extremely poorly (Unlike Red Tornado, Vixen was still on the team at the time too; he's apparently back to being a former member). Black Lightning: Year One sold awful as well, although perhaps that's not apples-to-apples, as his story was set in the past. But using those as examples, DC can't reasonably expect this sell 35,000 copies per issue. They're probably looking at the 19,000-34,000 range. Is that enough to justify a miniseries?

I mean, I guess it must be, or they wouldn't be bothering, but this just seems like such a weird move give the fact that just this week they launched their new "co-feature" program of back-ups. Why not run this as a back-up in JLoA? Sure, it will drive some readers away from that title, but at this point, the only people still reading JLoA—which is about to enter a holding pattern, time-killing run by Len Wein until an inevitable post-Blackest Night reboot—are going to be hardcore, completeist fans anyway.

Anyway, what will the book be about? The Source blog says it "will shed new light on the true origins of the stalwart JLA member/android." Everything you know about the Red Tornado—which is either nothing, or so much confused gibberish it amounts to nothing—is wrong! Seriously, have you ever tried untangling this guy's origin(s) story? At this point, I think I've read them all, but he was one of the many who got screwed in the back-story department during the Crisis on Infinite Earths multiverse collapse, and thus its been revised and re-revised and re-re-revised an oh God, I'm having flashbacks—robot that wants to be human, Tornado Tyrant, Tornado Champion, air elemental, argh!

Anyway, there will be a Red Tornado miniseries for some reason. I hope there's much less crying and sophomoric metaphors than there was in Meltzer's JLoA. I haven't read any of VanHook's books yet—still waiting for the library to get that S&BvV&W's trade—but it can't be any worse than Meltzer's take on the character.

Way too many words about JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

I was originally planning on reviewing JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told and Shazam!: The Greatest Stories Ever Told together, perhaps in the “Delayed Reaction” format I often use when writing about books that have been out for a while that I’m getting around to a little late. But when I started writing about the JLA one, and considering why the stories that were chose were chosen, it became evident that almost all of them were there to represent particular eras of the team, and I soon found myself getting sidetracked, and, well, this grew in the writing.

So, if you’ve got the patience, this is going to be one hella long post, I’m afraid.

As with all of DC’s Greatest Stories Ever Told collections, this is really more of a Greatest Short Stories From a Variety of Different Times and Creators That Don’t Belong in Any Other Trades Really So We Put ‘Em In Here collection. None of these are among the greatest JLA stories ever told, but they are, for the most part, pretty decent, and are all good examples of the contributions of particular creators.

It’s really more of a sample platter of Justice League history. If you like the Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky story, you’ll want to read Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol 1. If you like the Giffen/DeMatteis story, they have a JLI trade (or two) out (or coming out). Like the JLA stories? Every issue of that run is in trade. Like the Satellite Era stories? Well, tough; none of ‘em are in trade yet.

The book begins with a two-page origin of the League by Gerry Conway, George Perez and Brett Breeding, a story which is kind of like a condensed version of the Mark Waid/Barry Kitson JLA: Year One story, only with Wonder Woman standing in for Black Canary, who was standing in for Wonder Woman. That’s followed by a pretty thorough four page overview of Justice League publishing history by Mike Tiefenbacher, and then it’s on to seven stories spanning 40 years of publishing history, and a nice set of contributors’ bios at the end, which should be helpful to any new readers wanting to see what else this Grant Morrison character has written, for example.

Here’s what DC decided to include, and way too many words about each story…



“The Super-Exiles of Earth” (Justice League of America #19)

This 1963 Gardner Fox/Mike Sekowsky story is typical of Fox’s run, in that it is simultaneously stupid and brilliant at the same time, depending on what angle you regard it from. Recurring villain Dr. Destiny, whose powers are ever-changing and vague—but always derived from dreams and reality shaping—has caused the Leaguers to dream of themselves, and then bring their dream versions of themselves to life.

This created a League of “super-super heroes” who are “naturally” wicked, since Destiny is himself wicked. The wicked Dream League defeat the true League, since they are those heroes but slightly better, and then go about robbing banks. The real Justice League members are brought before a judge for the crimes, but settle on exile, since no prison can hold them.

Presiding over the case is future Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:


Ultimately, the League decides to return to earth but, so as not to break their promise to Scalia, they do so in their secret identities. At this point, the Leaguers didn’t know one another’s secret IDs, so this is a pretty big moment. It’s revealed in a wonderful two-panel sequence:

Good thing their spaceship had a hallway with eight rooms in it!

The secret identities fight the dream League, but are again outmatched, ultimately only triumphing when The Atom shrinks to microscopic size in order “to enter our dream selves’ brains undetected and unfelt—and perform delicate ‘operations’!”

So, essentially he lobotomizes them all, to the point they can’t control their bodies, and Superman heroically suggests the rest of them then “finish off” the feeble-minded versions of themselves.

This issue is pretty representative of the breathless, dream-like storytelling Fox engaged in, and the casual savagery of superheroics. Even in this era where “crime” consisted solely of bank robberies, and rape and murder weren’t on anyone’s minds, you still have the heroes triumphing through stealth lobotomy.

Rereading the from today’s perspective, what stands out most to me is that Fox’s hyperbolic storytelling was more or less standard for the era, but in today’s super-comics scene, it seems extraordinarily weird. People always talk about how insane Grant Morrison’s stories are—not just his Justice League stories, but all his superhero stories—and yet Morrison’s really just writing like a Fox in a post-Dark Knight/Watchmen/Maus world. In tone, pace, scope and scale, this reads just like a Morrison story, albeit one with much more narration and explanatory dialogue.

The other striking thing about this story is the way in which Fox undoes whatever changed in his story. Story-to-story continuity existed at that point—Dr. Destiny is in jail, right where the League sent him in a previous adventure—but changes came pretty slow back then. Here, the League out themselves to each other, but the last two panels have Superman explaining his going to fetch some Amnesium from his fortress to erase that info from all of their minds.

I’m not positive why this particular story was chosen over all the other Fox/Sekowsky ones; if I had to guess, I would guess that this issue was chosen in large part because featured the whole League (the Big Seven, plus Green Arrow and the Atom).

It sure gives Sekowsky a lot to draw. In addition to the full line-up—two full line-ups actually—he gets to draw two sets of the heroes in their secret identities, including some great panels of the evil secret identities (I particularly like evil Bruce Wayne in his ascot), and some cool shit like a cutaway of the crust of the earth after the bad League imprisons the good League under it, and a small army of Aquaman’s octopus friends carrying “art treasures” over their heads.
(Can you spot the billionaire in the above panel?)

I can’t think of an instance of DC later re-doing this story, or following up on it, but the scenes of the Silver Age League looting and robbing reminded me of Ty Templeton’s cover for Silver Age: Justice League of America #1, and during Mark Waid’s too-brief run on JLA, he wrote a four-part story in which the Justice Leaguers’ secret identities had to defeat self-dreamed versions of themselves.




“Snapper Carr—Super Traitor!” (Justice League of America #77)

The next story in the collection is from a 1969 issue, scripted by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella.

Tonally, the book (like a lot of DC’s superhero comics) is now in that gawky, awkward phase, where they were becoming less full-on zany, and more imitative of Marvel’s superheroes-as-soap-operas-for-teenage-boys approach. The sensibilities were thus growing a lot more modern, but often these books seem more grating than Fox’s, if only because their more literary aspirations and their relative weaknesses give them an aura of pretentiousness (I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily; O’Neil’s pretentiousness at the time give his work here and elsewhere—particularly on the classic Green Lantern run—a particular, peculiar charm).

The story involves Snapper Carr, the only teenager who looks older and squarer than Jimmy Olsen, getting hassled for hanging out with those “freaks” like Superman and Wonder Woman. If it seems insane that the Justice League could be vilified as if they were the X-Men in the Marvel Universe, well, I thought so too—you can’t get any more establishment and mainstream than the JLA, even though they let Green Arrow stick around after he grew his goatee.

But hang on, O’Neil explains why they’re being vilified. These bullies are followers of John Dough, “otherwise known as ”Mr. Average”!-- The most normal man in America!” Dough is conducting a two-pronged PR campaign against the League; one-part propaganda, one-part mind-control technology. He got his hooks in the Justice League’s mascot Snapper Carr, turning him traitor.

It’s a pretty fleet story, and while it’s certainly not one of “the greatest,” it is something of a turning point in League history, ending with Green Arrow bemoaning the problems John Dough has caused them: “We’ve got to establish a new secret H.Q…our mascot is having the biggest trouble of his life…”

The League would shortly move to their space satellite headquarters, and things would be queered with Snapper from then on (this is his only appearances in this book, for example).

I don’t know how influential this particular issue was on the stories that followed; it came up in that stupid story involving the, um, Star Tsar, and was re-explored at length in an issue of Hourman, one of the best superhero comics DC ever cancelled.



“The Great Identity Crisis” (Justice League of America #122)

So, does that title sound familiar? And guess who the villain of the piece is? That’s right; Dr. Light. This story isn’t one that Brad Meltzer references in his Identity Crisis, but we’ll get to that one soon enough.

This is “an untold tale from the Justice League of America Casebook,” a short story by Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin pitting seven Leaguers against Dr. Light in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, where the villain has launched an incredibly stupid plan (particularly for 1975).

He uses a mind-light gun, the aforementioned chunk of Amnesium and a special prism to steal the secret identities of the Justice Leaguers and then—and this is an idea with great story potential—completely scrambles them. So Oliver Queen puts on a lab coat and shows up at Ray “The Atom” Palmer’s university lab, thinking he’s research scientist Ray Palmer; billionaire Bruce Wayne thinks he’s Queen, and shows up at the tenement Ollie lives in, getting friendly with his poor neighbor, and so on.

Now, there are probably all kinds of ways to turn a profit and/or make life miserable for the Leaguers once you know their secret identities, but Light opts to bump them all off with elaborately prepared light traps.

They, of course, survive, and use the Amnesium to wipe Dr. Light’s mind (Hey, that sounds familiar), before Superman KRUNNNCHs it so it “will never confuse anyone again!” and Green Arrow proposes the Leaguers all learn one another’s secret IDs to prevent troubles like this in the future.

Then they all hold hands and agree:

This one may have been included in part to get another Dillin-drawn story in the trade. With an influential 12-year run on JLoA, he’s probably still the definitive Justice League artist; given how rarely most DC artists can draw 12 consecutive issues of a particular title, chances are that’s not going to change any time soon. (The current volume of Justice League of America has only been around for 22 issues so far, but in that time has had eight different pencil artists working on it).

I imagine Meltzer’s Identity Crisis had a lot to do with it too, given the mind-wiping, Dr. Light and the title and, perhaps, the revelation that the Leaguers know one another’s secret identities after all (one of the bigger stumbling blocks in the mystery aspects of IC was that it assumed that the Leaguers’ IDs were widely known among the superhero community and their loved ones, which wasn’t actually the case since the early ‘80s).




“The League That Defeated Itself" (Justice League of America #166-#168)

Now this, this is the story that seemed to have influenced Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis. In this 1979 three-parter by longtime League scribe Gerry Conway and the art team of Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, The Secret Society of Super-Villains get their evil hands on a Bronze Age statue of a gryphon, and use its magical properties to switch their minds with those of some of the Justice Leaguers, Freaky Friday style.

So now The Wizard, Star Sapphire, The Reverse Flash, The Floronic Man and Blockbuster reside in the bodies of Superman, Zatanna, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman and Batman, and vice versa.

This is the story alluded to in flashback in the pages of Identity Crisis, in the discussion of how the Leaguers had to occasionally wipe minds to keep on Justice League-ing. There’s a scene where a character points out that of course the SSOSV peeked under the masks of Batman and Hal Jordan while they were in their bodies; it wouldn’t have made sense for them not to take advantage of the situation to do so.

I think this was one of the fundamental conceptual flaws of Identity Crisis, because the world of the Justice League need only work according to what’s logical there, not what’s logical in our world. It doesn’t make sense for the villains not to discover the heroes’ identities? Okay. It doesn’t make sense for the villains to imprison the heroes in a giant green diamond and throw it into the sun to kill them instead of just slitting their throats either. It doesn’t make sense for The Wizard-in-Superman’s-body to plan an elaborate museum heist when he could just fly around taking what he wanted in Superman’s body. It doesn’t make sense for him to try and trick and trap the other Justice Leaguers, when he could kill them all at super-speed in about ten seconds, tops.

You really have to be careful when you start pulling threads on these old stories, because it doesn’t take too long to unravel the whole thing.

At any rate, I’m sure the fondness Meltzer had for this story is the main reason its included here, as Conway and company had plenty of other stories to choose from if the idea was simply to showcase their run on the League, and show some of the Satellite Era members like Zatanna, Elongated Man and Red Tornado in a story (Poor Red Tornado gets defeated, like, three times in this story).

I don’t have it in front of me, so I’m not 100% positive, but I think this may also be the old Satellite Era adventure that was referenced in the Geoff Johns, Allan Heinberg, Chris Batista and Mark Farmer story arc “Crisis of Conscience,” which is an additional reason for inclusion.



“Born Again" (Justice League #1)

You’ll get no arguments from me that this is an issue that belongs in a trade called The Greatest Stories Ever Told. This is the first issue of the seminal Keith Giffen/J.M.DeMatteis run on Justice League, one of the creative highpoints of the franchise’s 40+ year history.

This first issue, drawn by Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin over Giffen’s breakdowns, is awfully early in the writers’ five-year run. Some of the team members introduced here won’t stick around on a full-time basis very long (Dr. Fate, Black Canary and Captain Marvel will be gone in a matter of issues), and some of the characters most associated with the JLI Era don’t appear here at all (Booster Gold, Fire, Ice).

But despite the somewhat opening ending—who is this mysterious Max Lord character who seems to be manipulating events and talking like he’s going to be taking over the Justice League?—this first issue is full of classic moments. There’s Green Lantern Guy Gardner rehearsing his nominating himself for leadership; there’s Guy picking a fight with the rest of the team; there’s Batman shutting him up with a dirty look and a few sharp words; there’s Blue Beetle casting about for a comedy partner to bounce his jokes off of; there’s the mix of character humor, superhero action and occasional melodrama that would make the next few years worth of Justice League stories among the best ever.

There were certainly one-issue stories during the Giffen/DeMatteis run that I would qualify as greater, but this is probably a pretty perfect introduction to that era, particularly since this is the only story a newcomer to the material could actually continue reading in trade format, since only the first handful of their run was ever collected in trade (Now, there are at least two handfuls of it in trade).

This issue features that classic cover of Maguire’s, which he himself would riff on over and over in the following years. In 1998’s JLA Secret Files & Origins Special #2, Christopher Priest would re-stage a few scenes from this issue beat for beat.



“Star-Seed” (Justice League Secret Files and Origins #1)

This is one of the three—count 'em—three origin stories for the Morrison/Porter League, counting miniseries Justice League: Midsummer's Nightmare and the first story arc of JLA, "New World Order." It originally appeard in the JLA: Sectret Files & Origins Special #1, the very first of DC's SF&O, and by far the most substantial. In additon to this story, there was another one by Mark Millar, an interview with Martian Manhunter by Millar, profile pages of each of the Leaguers featuring pin-ups drawn by the regular artists on their monthlies at the time, two pin-ups by Phil Jimenez featuring every Justice Leaguer ever and every Justice League villain ever, a year-by-fictional year JLA timeline/history and collecters cards.

This story features six of the Big Seven on the Justice League satellite—apparently before the Hyperclan knocked it down in "New World Order"—figuring out what to do about an alien invasion in Blue Valley. These particular aliens are these weird star-shaped, cycloptic face-hugger things, a scarier, slimier version of the old Starro face-huggers. They've taken over the city and The Flash, and is ranting about conquering the world. The U.S. government wants to nuke Blue Valley, and the League wants to save the day, but The Spectre arrives and forbids them. He gives them a vision of the future should they intervene, and they would inevitably be taken over by The Star Conquerer, who would then use them to conquer the universe.

They arrive at a compromise: The Spectre strips them of their superpowers, removing all risk of that future he showed them, and also getting around the Conquerer's defenses, since it was "primed" for super-humans.

As Morrison's League run goes, it's not among his better stories, but it is fairly representative. It demonstrates the Batman as the hero of the heroes, who often ends up saving the day (particularly in "New World Order"), the stakes are as high as they are in every work of his (global apocalyse, if not universal or all reality), and it features Morrison's subtle diddling with the "rules" of superhero conflict, wherein the day is saved by the characters altering some part of the near-mathematical equation that is superhero comics. It also features an ending in which he comes out and offers a sort of mission statement for the League. Story-wise, it also functions as a bit of a preview of a two-parter in which the actual Conquerer comes to earth, and invades and subjugates the human race through their dreams (The Dreaming from The Sandman, who also guest-stars, in one of the rare and now non-existent Vertigo/DCU intersections).



As to why it bore inclusion above all the other stories of the run, I imagine it was a simply matter of space. Morrison and company had quite a few quite excellent two-part arcs—The Zauriel/angel invasion story, The Green Arrow story (although Porter didn't draw it), the Prometheus HQ invasion, the aforementioned fight against the Star Conquerer—but only one single-issue story. That would be JLA #5, which encapsulated a lot of the greatest attributes of the run, but also prominently featured the temporarily blue electric Superman, something that the assemblers of this trade might understandably have wanted to avoid. The Secret Files story worked better in that it avoided Electro-Supes, even if it did feature long-haired mullet Superman, and '90s-style Aquaman (the latter of which I liked, but has ultimately proven short-lived).



“Two-Minute Warning” (JLA #61)

If the Giffen/DeMatteis and Morrison eras were the League’s creative high points, then the creative team of Joe Kelly, Dough Mahnke and Tom Nguyen presided over the end of the success of Morrison’s vision for the team. Neither Kelly nor writer Mark Waid’s runs were quite as good as Morrison’s, but they weren’t bad either, and they kept the basic formula in tact—the JLA was a book about the world’s greatest heroes banning together to stave off apocalypses they couldn’t take alone.

Kelly was the last regular writer to work on a Justice League book. He wrote 29 more or less consecutive issues (there was a single fill-in issue during that time), and then JLA became something of an anthology title: three issues by Denny O’Neil, six issues by John Byrne and Chris Claremont, six issues by Chuck Austen, eight issues by Kurt Busiek, five by Johns and Heinberg, six by Bob Harras. Even when it was relaunched as Justice League of America, Meltzer only stuck around for 13 issues (four stories) and Dwayne McDuffie’s only written five complete issues so far.

It was an incredibly solid run though. Though did exceptional character work, getting a strong handle on all of the characters, even Martian Manhunter and Plastic Man, two that seem to give a lot of writers trouble. He managed to come up with threats that seemed to be big enough to menace such a powerful team, but he often had a light touch, and wrote in bits of humor that weren’t too far away from what Giffen and DeMatteis might have managed. He seemed like a nice compromise between the two greatest runs on the title, even if his wasn’t as good as either of them.

I didn’t always agree with the decisions he made—particularly giving Plas a bastard son—and I’m sure some were controversial among some elements of fandom (like the Wonder Woman/ Batman almost-romance), but his stories were always big, fun and full of creativity, as JLA stories should be.

This was his first issue on the title, and it seems a good one to represent the post-Morrison era. The team is the exact same as it was during Mark Waid’s run—save that Aquaman was time-lost and presumed dead—but he goes ahead an introduces the characters anyway.

The story jumps back and forth between “two minutes ago” and “now.” He introduces each of the Leaguers in their day-to-day lives, showing what they were doing two minutes before their emergency signals go off (J’onn was meditating in the shape of a sphere, Superman was trying to spend some quality time with Lois, Kyle Rayner was discovering he didn’t have enough cash on him to pay for the expensive coffee and scone he had just ordered, etc) and then jumping ahead to the amazing feats they do when “on the job” (Kyle uses his ring to lift the entire island of Manhattan into the sky, saving it from a tidal wave, Superman lifts an aircraft carrier out of the water, etc), before they all come together to solve the problem…a problem that, naturally, takes all of them working together.
(Above: Two minutes in the life of Wally West)

Kelly presents the Justice League as something like a job (on the first page, J’onn even sighs, “Work,” as alarms start going off), albeit one they are extremely good at and seem to enjoy doing. They’re neither as business-like as they were during Morrison’s run, nor as riddled with internal strife as they were during Waid’s. They all seem to know each other well, and needle one another, giving it that comfortable, just hanging out kind of felling that permeated the JLI days.

(Note that Flash isn't the only character in the first panel who seems shocked that Batman is actually touching him)

It’s a tone that pencil artist Dough Mahnke was well-suited to, as he’d done equal amounts of work in comedy and superheroics. He’s a gifted actor with the pencil, wringing a variety of emotions out of the characters, and draws them with a great deal of variety. J’onn and Superman may be built like body builders, but Kyle and Batman are slimmer, and Flash slimmer still. Plastic Man is tall and skinny, and Wonder Woman imposingly athletic—neither over-muscled nor like a too-thin, big-breasted supermodel. She also has a vaguely ethnic-looking facial structure, which is appropriate, given that she belongs to the vague ethnic group that is the Amazons.

This creative team packs a lot of detail into panels, and these details describe the characters. Plas’ shape-changing and Kyle’s ring-structures are in almost constant flux, moving as quickly as they think (just as they would in real-life), and J’onn’s shape-changing is downright amoeboid, as he contorts to fit emergency situations.

Rereading this at the end of the collection, it seems like a much greater Justice League story than I remember it the first few times through. Divorced from continuity, it’s something else entirely than the then-new creative team’s first issue. It’s not really that great a comic, but it is a great character piece, introducing seven superheroes and, more importantly, their relationships to one another.

Brad Meltzer ruins everything, even retroactively

After reading Meltzer's Identity Crisis, what's a reader supposed to think when he sees this guy

shoot these guys

with a mind-altering beam that results in a panel like this?


Sigh...



(All panels from 1975 story "The Great Identity Crisis" in Justice League of America #122, by Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. Also available in trade paperback collection JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told)