A few thoughts on Batman and Owlman, in light of Batman Vol. 2: City of Owls and Forever Evil

In 1964, the Justice League of America creative team of writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky introduced The Crime Syndicate of America, villainous counterparts to the JLA from the parallel earth of Earth-3, where the events of history were reversed in more-or-less random ways (In Earth-3's version of the Revolutionary War, for example, British colonists declared their independence from America, and so on). Therefore rather than having a team of superheroes, like the League's Earth-1 had, Earth-3 had a supervillains, who were a lot like their Justice League counterparts, but not quite (Ultraman instead of Superman, Superwoman instead of Wonder Woman, and so on).

Batman's opposite number was Owlman, who wore a blue and gray costume somewhat similar to Batman's costume, but instead of a cowl he wore what looked like a toupee made out of an owl's head.

In 1999, writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely reintroduced a new version of the "Crime Syndicate of Amerika," this one hailing from a parallel earth within the Anti-Matter Universe in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. The team roster was the same, but the characters were a little more thoughtfully designed, tweaked to more closely parallel their JLA counterparts, and some of them were given fuller back stories.

One of these was, of course, Owlman, who was now revealed to be Thomas Wayne Jr., older brother to Bruce Wayne. On their world, Bruce and his mother Martha Wayne were killed in that alley, while Thomas and his father, Thomas Wayne Sr., the police commissioner, survived. Blaming his father for the death of his mother, Thomas grew up to become the criminal mastermind of Gotham City, Owlman, and went to war with his father.

Morrison, who always showed a zeal for in-story allusions and/or Easter eggs, was in fact referencing an old, Crisis On Infinite Earths-rendered apocryphal story from a 1974 issue of World's Finest by Bob Haney, Dick Dillin and Vince Colletta.

In "Wipe The Blood Off My Name!", Batman pursues "The Boomerang Killer," only to discover it is actually his older brother Thomas Wayne Jr, who was severely and permanently brain-damaged in a childhood car accident, and confined to an asylum (I guess it was a very specific type of brain damage, which causes those who suffer from it to eventually grow up to become killers?). Bruce's parents had every intention of telling him about his criminally insane older brother they put in an asylum when he was old enough to understand, of course, but then there was that whole murder in an alley thing.

Fast forward to 2011, when Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo take over the relaunched Batman. Their first year's worth of stories is dedicated to The Court of Owls, a sort of semi-legendary Illuminati pulling the strings behind everything going on in Gotham City, a secret organization so secret that even Batman didn't know they were real. In addition to naming themselves after owls, wearing ceremonial owl masks and using a lot of owl themes in their decor, they also command a small army of elite, undead assassins in owl costumes that they refer to as "Talons."

At the climax, it is revealed that among their more prominent members is mayoral candidate Lincoln March, who Capullo draws to look a lot like Bruce Wayne. And with good reason!

March claims to be Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne's younger brother, who was still in Martha Wayne's womb when she was in a terrible car accident. Born early and severely brain-damaged, he was put in the "Willowood Home For Children" (In Haney's story, Thomas Wayne Jr. was in the "Willowood Asylum;" like Morrison then, Snyder was heavily referencing the now non-canonical early '70s story). Feeling abandoned by his parents and older brother, Wayne/March was raised by the Court of Owls to inherit the Wayne empire. That didn't quite work out, nor did his run for mayor, so he ultimately makes a play to seize control of the Court of Owls, even going so far as to give himself the Court's undead-making super-secret super-serum, the one reserved for the virtually un-killable Talons. Then he puts on a fancy new Talon suit; "Something tough and modern," he says of it, " Something to rival the Batman."

While he never goes by that name, Snyder and Capullo's March/Wayne dons a fancy owl costume and essentially becomes an owl man. (As to whether or not he actually is Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth are certain that he is not, that Bruce's brother actually died from the wounds sustained in that crash, but Bruce says he can't know with 100% certitude until he gets a DNA sample, and March/Wayne disappears during their climactic battle, in the fashion of many supervillains—presumably killed, but with no body discovered).

Then, in 2013, writer Geoff Johns re-introduced the new, New 52 version of The Crime Syndicate, who are once again from Earth-3, a parallel world where many aspects of the DC Universe is "reversed," including the fact that the heroes are villains and the villains are heroes. This Syndicate also has an Owlman, and as Johns reveals in issues of his Justice League of America, the new Owlman of Earth-3 is still Thomas Wayne Jr., now once again Bruce Wayne's older brother.

In Johns' origin story, the two Wayne children—Thomas and Bruce—conspired to kill their own parents, and, on the night when they were shot to death in the alley, Bruce had last-minute, second thoughts, so Thomas Jr., conspiring with Alfred Pennyworth, kills his mother, father and little brother. He then grows up to be Owlman.

So this is strange.

On the "real" Earth of the DC Universe, which I'll call Earth-New 52, there is a heroic Bruce Wayne defending Gotham City as the superhero Batman, and a villainous "Owlman" who is—or at least claims to be and presents a pretty good case for being—Thomas Wayne Jr.

And on Earth-3, the reversed world where good is evil and evil is good, Bruce Wayne was good (well, he was a spoiled brat who considered killing his parents, but he wasn't as evil as his brother), and a villanous Owlman who is really Thomas Wayne Jr.

In that respect, at least, the worlds aren't opposite at all. Thomas Wayne Jr./Owlman is a bad guy on both worlds, just as Bruce Wayne/Batman is a good guy (or at least not a bad guy) on both worlds.

The Justice League of America, now with 88% more Green Arrow!

A couple of weeks ago Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 4 came out, and it's a rather significant one, as it includes the official beginning of the so-called Satellite Era of the Justice League (JLoA #78, the one where they get a satellite), and the first 130 pages or so of that era of the team's history.

If you care about this sort of thing (and I do!), it's pretty interesting reading, as, from our current viewpoint, you can see the book and the team changing right before your eyes. In this particular volume, we see Snapper Carr get phased out, we see Wonder Woman quitting the League to go through her short-lived, power-less, costume-less martial arts phase, we see Martian Manhunter head off to space to deal with Martian drama, we see Black Canary move to Earth-1, we see Green Arrow grow out his goatee and the formation of his current prickly and political personality (and the emergence of the special relationships he has with Black Canary and Hal Jordan) and we see Batman gradually getting grimmer and less jokey.

You can lay most of these changes at the feet of Denny O'Neil, who writes most of these stories, as well as the other books that JLoA wass reflecting the changes in (Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Batman).

By the time we reach the last issue collected in this volume, from 1970, Justice League of America seems pretty far removed from its Silver Age roots, and O'Neil is quite obviously grappling with questions like "How can I make these seven characters somehow different from one another beyond the fact that they have superpowers?" and "How can I make this comic book more realistic?"

It's all the more remarkable considering where the volume starts, with Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky and Sid Greene's JLoA #61, "Operation: Jail the Justice League!", a doozy of a story from 1968 which is fairly typical of the Justice League as originally conceived.

Here, enjoy this terrifying cover:

There's some body-swapping between the heroes and their villains in this issue, which is why the cover is full of these horrifying half-and-half heads. Please note Green Arrow in the upper right-hand corner. His villain is apparently...Ronald Reagan...?

After a title page showing the villains all behind bars protesting that they are, in actuality, the Justice League, the action gets started as it so often does in Justice League comics—with a thrill-packed meeting of the Justice League!

They're all sitting extremely close together around their extremely small meeting table, and Superman announces, "All present but Green Arrow--Who shall be assumed tied up on an urgent case of his own..."

And then in strolls Green Arrow to announce that he's quitting the Justice League. His fellow members are all stunned, and he spends a half-dozen panels that he is indeed quitting, and he has a very good reason for doing so, but he can't tell them what it is, and if they try to discover the reason, they will be met with disaster.



Batman and Martian Manhunter, the detectives of the group, seem skeptical, and merely arch their eyebrows at the announcement. Superman, The Flash and Wonder Woman can only stand there in slack-jawed surprise. And Hal Jordan's mind races with a single thought: "I can't think of anything to say."

The League devotes the rest of their hour-long meeting—thankfully conveyed in just three panels—discussing the Green Arrow situation agreeing to respect Green Arrow's wishes. Although, secretly, all nine of them have the exact same plan, which they all coincidentally act upon simultaneously:


Yes, they all decide the best course of action would be to disguise themselves as Green Arrow, that way whatever trouble Green Arrow quit over will befall them, and thus reveal itself. Good thing they all have Green Arrow costumes handy!

Aquaman doesn't seem to be going far enough with his Green Lantern impersonation though:

If someone is after Green Arrow, surely they're not going to start looking for him floating around the high seas on the back of a giant sea turtle, are they?

One Leaguer is even worse at pretending to be Green Arrow than Aquaman though, and that's Wonder Woman, whose breasts give her away, and makes them narrator uncomfortable:


That night, Batman pulls out of the Batcave in a Batmobile modified to resemble the Arrow Car, and immediately runs into the Penguin. He tries to stop the criminal with a gas arrow, but a propeller in the tip of the Penguin's umbrella merely blows "that noxious nuisance" away. So Batman, still dressed as Green Arrow, decides to try his fists instead. And gets his ass kicked.



To be fair to Batman, who could have expected that a boxing glove could have been concealed in the tiny tip of the Penguin's umbrella? But still, that bottom panel's gotta be pretty embarrassing for our hero, doesn't it? (Please note: I resisted the temptation to make a joke about the fact that The Penguin says he's "turned on" in the first panel. Aren't you proud of my maturity?)

When the bogus bowman retorts "Your caper's laying an egg, Penguin" and lands a few punches, the villain begins to think maybe this GA is really Batman, but he's got another trick to rely on.


And that's that—Batman is down for the count. Man, the last sound any crimefighter wants to hear before losing consciousness is "BOINNNG!" but there you have it—Batman was felled by The Penguins spring-loaded trick top hat (Fun fact: That's how Abraham Lincoln won his final debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858).

Then something weird happens. The defeated Batman-dressed-like-Green Arrow transforms into The Penguin, while the victorious Penguin transforms into Batman-dressed-like-Green Arrow! So when the Gotham police arrive, they pick up Batman (who now looks like The Penguin), while the Penguin (who now looks like Batman-disguised-as-Green Arrow) goes free. Got all that? I hope so. I had to read the sequence like three times to figure out what was going on exactly.

Meanwhile, "in a city somewhere on the Atlantic Coast," the narrator isn't sure where, The Martian Manhunter (also disguised as Green Arrow), sees Dr. Light using one of his light gimmicks to rape an armored car.

J'onn bungles the bow bit by shattering it with his incredible Martian strength, so decides to go hand-to-hand against the fiendish rapist. It doesn't go well for him though. First, Dr. Light rapes his eyes with a distortion beam, imprisons him in spiral-light bonds, and draws him near fire, which completely rapes J'onn of his powers. As before, when the battle ends, the disguised hero takes on the form of the villain, while the villain takes on the form of Green Arrow.

The other heroes all experience similar events:

("Cutlass Charlie"...?)

In Star City, Oliver "Green Arrow" Queen reads the newspaper to learn that seven of his fellow Leaguers have all been captured in the forms of their own foes. Since The Atom is the only one left un-shape-changed and un-captured, GA heads to Ivy Town.

There, Jason Woodrue, who hasn't yet become a tree man but is basically just a middle-aged dude who carries a bunch of potted plants around with him to commit crimes with, is in pitched battle with a six-inch tall Green Arrow, who is actually The Atom poorly disguised (The six-inch height is a dead giveaway that you're not really GA, Atom).

Woodrue wins the day with a variety of plants, ultimately capturing The Atom in the vines of a liana plant and then just punching the shit out of him. But! Oliver Queen, wearing a jacket and tie, lurks up behind him, and stuns Woodrue after the predictable transformation takes place. Queen flips a switch on a device Woodrue was carrying, and the various heroes all resume their normal shapes. Then he sets off his emergency signal, and everyone convenes at the Secret Sanctuary where Oliver Queen and unconscious Dr. Destiny are waiting for them, and we get to The Explanation.

This was a little hard to follow too. Apparently, Doctor Destiny had escaped from prison and used his Materioptikon, which can later matter, to give GA his likeness while he took on GA's. While GA-as-Destiny was in jail, the transformation wore off, and Green Arrow was released from prison. He went to the Justice League meeting expecting to see a second Green Arrow, which he knew would really be Dr. Destiny in disguise, but sine there wasn't another GA, that meant Destiny could have been disguised as one of the others.

Does that make sense?

Again, this took me a few readings to follow.

Anyway, Destiny wakes up, and reveals he has an ace up his sleeve! He had planned on his plan being foiled, and therefore put the real villains into a trance, so that, should he be captured, they would wake up and materialize at the Secret Sanctuary to kick the League's ass.

And here they come!


Man, just look at these guys! They are just cold prancing into battle, and they look pretty damn happy to be about to throw down with the Justice League, despite the fact that, you know, Superman, Martian Manhunter and The Flash could kill them all single-handedly in the space of a second or two if they wanted. When the four-foot tall guy in a tuxedo and monocle with the cigarette holder is the most bad-ass dude in your gang, you might not really be ready to fight the Justice League...

But you've really got to admire their positive attitudes. See Jason Woodrue there? Right behind Captain Boomerang? All he's got with him is a house plant, and he's holding it aloft like it's going to decide this fight.

That wonderful panel if followed what may just be the greatest page in JLA history. Check this out:


Each villain lines up in front of their enemy and attacks simultaneously, while explaining exactly what they're doing. Note Woodrue's flawless battle plan in the bottom of the panel: He's just going to go ahead and throw that potted plant across the room at The Atom. And Green Arrow, Wonder Woman and Snapper Carr? They're just kind of in an "other" category together, having to share Dr. Destiny as an opponent.

As beautiful as this page is, it's followed by an even better image, a big, huge, two-page spread in which the Leaguers totally scatter and change opponents, and just wreck the villains. Unfortunately, I couldn't scan it, due to the size of the book, but trust me, it rules. "And because actions speak louder than words, we're dispensing with dialogue!", says the narration, above the various Leaguers smiling like maniacs while that knock out villains.

There's a few more panels of the League mopping up, like this one where Superman punches poor way over-matched Captain Boomerang so damn hard he knocks the boomerang-pattern off his costume...
...and then they literally pile the villains in the corner to continue with The Explanation.

And that's how "Operation: Jail the Justice League!" went down.

Now hurry up with Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 5, DC...

The Justice League is shocked...

...at how badly they fucked up the cake they were baking.

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.

When Crises only took two issues...

Crisis on Infinite Earths was a 12-issue series. Zero Hour: Crisis in Time was five issues long. Infinite Crisis? Seven issues. Final Crisis? Also slated for seven issues. And, of course, each of those stories had/continue to have/will have several dozen to several 100 tie-in issues, crossovers, prologues, epilogues and so on.

But when Gardner Fox, Godfather of the Multiverse (thank/blame him) wrote a crisis, he did so amazingly efficiently. Why, he could imperil the existence of two universes and resolve the conflict within the space of a single issue of Justice League of America. Two if he was really cooking. Tonight let's take a look at one of those early crises, given the accurate but not terribly exciting sounding title of "Crisis Between Earth-One and Earth-Two!" which ran through 1966's JLoA #46 and #47. It's been reprinted at least two times that I know of, in full re-colored color in Crisis on Multiple Earths Vol. 1 and in black and white in the recent Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 3.

Here’s the cover of the first issue.


Now, this is a very dangerous cover to think about, at least any more deeply than “Wow, if you hit Batman hard enough, you can actually knock the dignity right out of him,” or “Wouldn’t it be nice if all DC comics continued to have that checker pattern across the top?”

If you think about the interaction of the sound effects and the characters too long, it will set you on the road to madness (I speak from experience). Because the way these characters are interacting with the sound effects challenges what I thought I knew about the way these things are supposed to relate to one another, and if that’s wrong, perhaps everything I think I know is wrong too.

For example, Wildcat is being punched through the O in the POW (Nice aim, by the way, Blockbuster). But what generated the sound POW, calling those big green letters into existence? The sound of Blockbuster’s fist hitting Wildcat’s face. So, if the punch sends Wildcat flying, shouldn’t it appear on the other side of the flying Wildcat? It would emanate from the point of the punch, not a few feet away, right?

The same hold true for the others. The SOK! of Solomon Grundy’s punch doesn’t appear quite as far away as the POW of Blockbuster’s, but his fist goes right through the O, meaning it was called into creation sometime after he punched Batman. Is this a physics thing, having to do with light traveling faster than sound, perhaps?

Finally, most frustratingly, Batman and Sandman fall to the ground, apparently crushing the sound effect THUD! under them. If the THUD! is the sound of them hitting the ground, then how did it get between them and the ground? And, if its merely the sound of Batman falling on top of Sandman, then why is it down there on the ground, beneath them?

See, best not to think about this stuff.

Do pay attention to the lower left hand corner though, wherein we’re told that Anti-Matter Man is “Too overwhelming to be shown on this cover!”

But apparently he’s wasn’t so overwhelming he couldn’t be shown on the very next issue’s cover:


Me, I found myself a little underwhelmed by A-M Man, particularly after that build-up.

Anyway, it’s summer time, and that means its time for a JLA/JSA team-up, probably involving at least two Earths.

Fox and artists Mike Sekowsky and Sid Greene present this nerve-shattering epic (According to the first page; my nerve’s are actually all right at the moment).

We open on the roads of Moro Mountain, and Hawkman (the space-man version with the awesome helmet, so Earth-One, I guess) chasing fur hijackers through the mist, intent on clobbering them with his mace.

The truck disappears, however, replaced by an armored car. So Hawkman clobbers those men with his mace instead. Hawkman’s not picky.

Meanwhile, on Earth-Two, Sandman Wesley Dodds is following a stolen armored car in his Sand-Car (Fox’s term, not mine), when it’s replaced with a hijacked fur truck.

Most of what I know of the original Sandman comes from Matt Wagner and company’s quite excellent Vertigo series Sandman Mystery Theater, so I guess I never realized how stupid the character was, but apparently he fights crime with sand-related gimmicks in the ‘60s?

For example, he throws a handful of sand up in the air, shoots it with “an oddly shaped energy-rod” and it turns into a cement wall.


(Wait, “The Grainy Gladiator…?”)

Then he turns that sand into glass handcuffs.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mid-Nite finds himself in Barry Allen’s grip, while Batman is transported from the middle of a fistfight with two crooks to the middle of a fistfight with Wildcat. Throughout the two worlds, people seem to be switching places, with hilarious—well, mildly amusing—results.

Something even bigger is going on out in outer space. The Spectre finds himself being drawn away by a mysterious force, while…

Hey, check it out. Fox calls swamp monster Grundy “The Macabre Man-Thing.” This is about five eyars before Marvel’s swamp monster Man-Thing would debut in Savage Tales. Just saying.

After landing on Earth-One, Grundy starts wrecking the joint, so Hawkman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Flash Barry Allen and Grundy’s fellow visitors from Earth-Two Dr. Mid-Nite and Black Canary show up for a fight scene.

It’s pretty epic. Grundy is apparently so strong that, when Doc Mid-Nite blasts him with a laser beam, Grundy picks up the laser blast with his bare hands and, like, throws it…?

Speaking of destructive man-monsters being transported to alternate earths and going on rampages, Earth-One’s Blockbuser (who looks like a Caucasian Hulk wearing strappy ladies’ shoes) is coincidentally sent to Earth-Two, where I have a feeling he might end up fighting some superheroes too.

Oh yeah, he beats the hell out of Wildcat, Dr. Fate, Sandman and Batman. Sandman tries another stupid sand trick, encasing Blockbuster in block of glass, but he just busts right out.

Those aren’t the only fights raging though! In the strange space between the Earths, The Spectre encounters the gigantic Anti-Matter Man, whose bizarre energy seems to weaken the Disembodied Detective (Hey, it’s better than the Grainy Gladiator).

Unfortunately for the embodiment of God’s vengeance, every time he comes into contact with the Anti-Matter Man, his physical body is warped, leading to his rather hilarious defeat:



What could be causing all these between-Earth swaps? Perhaps it has something to do with the new space-warping device Ray “The Atom” Palmer’s hot Italian exchange-scientist assistant Enrichetta Negrini is testing.

Perhaps we’ll find out next issue.

Okay, yes. Yes it has something to do with Negrini’s space-warper.

Just as Batman and friends have managed to calm down Blockbuster, the big galoot changes places with Grundy, and the fights on again.

Sandman throws some sand that he changes into cinderblocks (?), but Grundy bats them back at them, so Dr. Fate does the only sensible thing and magics the cinder blocks into custard cream pies (?!), leading to this scene:


I love Grundy’s smacking all three of them at once there.

While he’s making stooges out of this set of heroes, Blockbuster is beating the holy hell out of the other group, and then Dr. Fate and GL bring everyone out to outer space to fight the Anti-Matter Man.

The fight is so nonsensical that there’s really only one word to describe it—


Suffice it to say the good guys win, and the Anti-Matter Man is forced back into his own universe.

But what of Grundy and Blockbuster? Green Lantern had the foresight to bring them to the same place at the same time while the Justice teams were saving their worlds, so Grundy and Blockbuster have been beating on one another until…

Zokko Krow, a double knock-out!

And when they come to they…

…hug?

All of which has lead us to what may be my (new) favorite panel in all of Justice League history:

There’s just so much awesome stuff going on for a single panel.

You’ve got the obvious Justice League cuddle

but the dialogue is great too.

“They knocked the hate out of each other!”

“If only we could get people and nations to knock hate out of each other without going to war!”

Yes Dr. Mid-Nite, violence really is the answer! If only people and nations could hit each other instead of resorting to fighting each other, they could resolve all their problems through violent fighting, as opposed to…violent fighting? What are you talking about, Dr. Mid-Nite?!

And then you have square college professor of physics Ray Palmer saying, “Like peace, man! Real peace!”

This was apparently a very influential story on Justice League history, as it established the organizing principle of their next 42 years of adventures: Working for peace by punching people in the face.




RELATED:

You know, once you look for a picture of a Green Lantern’s butt to post, it’s kinda hard not to see Green Lanterns’ butts everywhere. For example, here’s an image from this story, cropped to make Hawkman look even gayer than usual:

I know Batman isn't gay, and...

I'm sure lugging him and Aquaman into battle can sometimes be a rather awkward task for their flying Justice League peers...


...but surely there's a less homoerotic—not to mention more dignified—way to transport the Caped Crusader, isn't there?

Or, at the very least, a way that affords him a better view?

Did you know that Hal Jordan...

...considers his penis a super-power?

Did you know that when Batman gets really sad...

...his bat-ears droop?