These Guys Should Have Been The Villains In The Justice League Movie!!

One of the big mistakes that super-hero movie franchises often make? They feel compelled to go for "the big bad" right away, trotting out the hero's biggest, baddest villain in the first flick.

It's almost as if they're afraid that they won't get to make any more movies, so they've got to use this villain right away, or never get the chance. But honestly, it often overstuffs a film, already crowded with an origin story. And it often makes little dramatic sense, as the rookie hero probably shouldn't be able to handle "the greatest threat ever" the first time the put on the costume. Plus, it leaves the "where do we go now?" problem for subsequent films.

Yes, I'm looking at you, Fox, having to bring in Doctor Doom in the first FF movies of each iteration. Yes, I'm looking at the Daredevil movie, which tried to give us DD's origin AND Kingpin AND Bullseye AND Elektra, squishing 30-odd issues into an hour and a half, because they wanted to do everything cool right away.

So, when the forthcoming Justice League movie runs straight for the massive alien invasion/Darkseid bit, well, you know I'm trepidatious. I mean, the actual Justice League started off fighting a giant starfish...so what's the rush for Apokolips?

Especially when we could start the JL out with training wheels, because they could barely take these guys:

Yes. the whitest gang in America, who would grow up to become:

Yeah, yeah, go ahead and mock. But these average Joes dressed for Halloween used playing cards soaked with "stellaration" to bring the entire to their knees--TWICE--in their first appearance.

Yes, Superman was brought down by a pudgy guy in a body stocking.

See, when you start out with the JL taking on Darkseid, who's going to believe that the Royal Flush Gang could give them a hard time? You ease into the big bads, guys. It leaves your team room to grow!

SPOILER ALERT: Snapper Carr saved them all. Because Silver Age. I guarantee you won't see that in the damn movie.

From Justice League Of America #43 (1966)

The Justice League Of What Now?

A pop culture magazine is interviewing the Martian Manhunter about the recently reformed Justice League of America:

It is interesting to see some qualms about the full name Justice League Of America even back in 1997. FWIW, this "interview" was written by Mark Millar.

And I'll allow you to discuss amongst yourselves whether the "interview" is deliberately highlighting J'onn's non-Earth-native naivete about the implications of the name, and his lack of understanding of the freight associated with the name. Why else would he lump in the democratic Baltic States with Libya, Iraq and China? Unless Lithuania is secretly oppressing its people and developing nuclear weapons...

Of course, there are real-world implications, too: Warner has movies to market, and toys to sell. As far as I can tell, the forthcoming JLA movie hasn't an official name, just a working title: The Justice League Part One. But you can wager dollars to doughnuts that, whatever the eventual actual title, it won't include Justice League Of America. They gotta make sure this movie gets on screens in China, after all, and the toys onto shelves in St. Petersburg.

Which may result in a bit of fun blustering. Remember the hissy fit Fox News and others had with Superman Returns, when Perry White dropped "the American way" from "Truth, Justice and..."? While the JLA'a name is not so culturally embedded as Superman's slogan, I'm eagerly anticipating Bill O'Reilly's shit-fit when he discovers that they've dropped the "America" from the Justice League Of America.

Of course, as J'onn points out in the interview, the "America" is more about tradition and history. Certainly, by the time they hit the Satellite Era (if not earlier), the JLA had a global reach. And post-Crisis, the decision to use/not use "America" was more a signal of a new direction/new creative team than anything else. Even today, the sole purpose seems to be to differentiate the Hitch book from the Johns book.

I've no real point to make here. I'm certainly not suggesting that DC permanently drop the "Of America" from "Justice League." I have no problem with that (although readers in foreign countries might have a different viewpoint...?). I just find it fascinating that a random and no doubt hastily thrown together name from a defunct 1940s super-hero team continues to hold such a strong sway 75 years later.

From JLA Secret Files #1 (1997)

Why Your Robot Can't Add, or Why I'm Not Allowed To Write Comics Chapter LXXVII

Hyper-Man, the super-hero of the world of Oceania, has invited Superman to his world. Objective: for Superman to help protect his secret identity!

Oh, Silver Age Superman--you always go straight for the robots.

Well, there's a very good reason why Hyper-man doesn't use robots:

OK...

Ah, DC Science...You know, a good programmer would never blame the zillium...

Anyway, Superman "helps" Hyper-Man by deliberately blowing his identity AND wiping out his super powers! Why? Because Kal has learned the HM is dying, and he wants Chester King to be able to spend the last year of his life in wedded bliss with his love Lydia Long. Hmmm...is that super-dickery, or super-sweetness--or both?!?!

Anyway, for reasons only the elves inside my head can explain, got me thinking about Superman's use of robots, and I've come up with the ultimate Silver Age story:

After getting some ribbing from Batman and Robin about always using robots to get out of jams while not sharing that tech with them, Superman decides to make robots for all his Justice League colleagues.

It all goes swimmingly, until a passing comet (or Superman tunneling through the earth opens a hidden pocket of zillium gas, or...) causes the robots to malfunction (and become invulnerable), and they take over the world as the Robot Justice League. Except one of them is not a robot, it's the real hero who destroyed their robot and is infiltrating the RJL to save the day from within...

And that is why I'm not allowed to write comic books.

[SPOILER ALERT: Eventually the robots are defeated, but "cured" of what caused them to malfunction. So rather than destroy them, Superman transports them to a machine world that has no heroes of its own. And thus begins the the long running Robot Justice League strip in the back of Strange Adventures...along with the annual JLA/Robot JL team-up...]

From Action Comics #265 (1960), as reprinted in Superman #207 (1968)

"Hey, Aquaman, Is Your Refrigerator Running?"

Did you ever wonder how Justice Leaguers contact each other?

A jetliner carrying 183 innocent souls and 1 wanted mafia fugitive disappears just before landing, radioing about a mysterious waterspout enveloping the plane.

Batman joins the rescue mission, and...

[editor's note: this is an obvious error in the story, as Batman NEVER has useless hunches.]

So who does he call?!?

Oh, boy.

Aquaman has an "unlisted special number," accessible only via "secret cable?"

Seriously, like Aquaman has so many people trying to call him that he needs an unlisted number?? "Aquaman, there's a villain run amok...oh, wait, you talk to fish. Never mind." Hell, given his reputation, I'd imagine he gets nothing but prank calls. "Hey, Aquaman, do you have Prince Orm in a can? Better let him out before he suffocates!"

More seriously, what if this had been an actual earth-threatening emergency? Despero, or Starro, or the Anti-Monitor? To get in touch with this founding menber of the JLA, a hero in need had to call the overseas operator to call a special unlisted number accessible only by special cable which is then forwarded by a flunky with a (very cool) dolphin phone? You don't have a more direct way of communicating?

That level of efficiency explains a lot about the Detroit League.

Oh, yeah, and while Aquaman is a dick, he didn't kill all the passengers on the plane--but he did sink it. Because Aquaman's "secret intelligence network" had discovered that the plane was carrying a hidden hydrogen bomb, planted by vengeful drug dealers from "Karatolia," set to go off when the jet landed in Gotham...that was revenge for the U.S. destruction of Karatolia's poppy crop, because...

OK, enough. Let's just say "Haney." That's all you need.

And if you're worried about NSA snooping, well, just try to sleep tonight while thinking about Aquaman's secret intelligence network. The Atlanteans are listening to you...

From The Brave And The Bold #114 (1974)

One Year later, Stuck On Earth-Q

It strikes me, as we approach the final two single issues of the first year of the nu52 (both written by Geoff Johns, both late...maybe we should stop blaming the artists?), one thought strikes me: Geoff Johns is the last person who should be in charge of universe-building.

That's not to say he's a bad writer. And that's not an attack on any of his predilections for ultra-violence, overuse of splash pages, and glacially-paced stories. That's more a matter of taste, and it sure doesn't seem to stop his books from selling.

No, the problem is, Johns is the wrong person for universe-building because he seems not to care one whit for what's actually going on in the shared fictional universe. He's just not interested in the project.

And now that a second Justice League title, Justice League Of America (ooh, how creative) has been announced, this first anniversary is an appropriate time to look at how JL fails at its stated task.

When DC announced JL as the lead-off title of the nu52, they said it was going to be the lynchpin of the new, rebooted universe. Written by DC's Chief Creative Officer, and drawn by DC's Co-Publisher, it was widely expected that this book was going to be integral to the new post-Flushpoint DC Universe.

Except, of course, the first 6 issues were going to be set five years in the past. Well, OK, fine. That seems a funny way to set up a new universe, but fine.

But as the title continued, the story and characters continued to be completely isolated from the rest of the nu52. I ask this only semi-rhetorically: has anything that has happened in the pages of Justice League been referred to in any of the solo titles of the teams' members? Or vice versa?

Don't get me wrong--I'm not talking about niggling miniscule continuity points like "how can Flash be in this story when in his own mag he's..." (Although, I must admit that I would really love to see Geoff Johns explain how Hal Jordan's current escapades in his own mag allow him time to participate in JL's adventures).

But somewhere, somehow, shouldn't there be some acknowledgement over how the heroes' experience with the JL impacts their lives, their own adventures? And, of course, vice versa? Some tiny sense that these are the same characters who are appearing in other DC titles? That this is a shared universe, and not loosely connected fan fictions?

Take, for example, Wonder Woman. In Justice League, Johns has given us a lot of hints and teases about how Steve Trevor met Diana, how they had a relationship but it failed, Etta Candy, etc. The only problem with that? Not one single syllable of that has appeared in Wonder Woman's own comic. Meanwhile, in her own comic, Diana has faced a year-long quest against (some of) the gods, discovered her origin was a lie, found out some unsavory truths about the Amazons, died, almost married Hades...and yet again, not one nano-particle of this was deemed worthy of mention in JL. It's as if they're supposed to be two different characters.

If it were just Wonder Woman, we could dismiss it as just another DC writer who didn't get Diana--hardly a unique problem. But it's all the other characters, too.

Superman and Batman surprise the rest of the JL by announcing that they've been working together on cases outside the League. Of course, not a scintilla of a hint of that in any of their books. In JL, Batman badmouths the JLI, and demands they be disbanded, while in JLI itself, Batman works with the team, praises them, encourages them, and even funds them! In his own mag, Flash has made discoveries about the nature of the Speed Force that might limit the use of his powers, and Barry Allen is believed dead; in JL, not a mention, as the character remains just a comic foil for Green Lantern. (And nothing the other way, either. As cops and the press in Central City rail against the Flash, not a line about his famous public allies also drawing ire...)

And speaking of Hal, JL has seen not a mention of Sinestro, or Hal's ring not being his own, or color wars, or...nope, Hal is just the team's mouthy clown boy, Hawkeye with a ring.

So when Johns says the new Kal-El/Wonder Woman hook-up will have "seismic" effects on rest of the DCU, based on what we've seen so far, it's 50/50 that the romance won't even be mentioned outside of Justice League, even in their own books.

In and of itself, none of this is wrong. If Johns and Jim Lee want to present the Justice League as some sort of ur-version of all of these heroes, not tied to anything else, that's fine. Grant Morrison did that, and yet, even though he's got a reputation of not playing well with others' continuities, he didn't ignore Electric Blue Superman, for example.

But the series was presented to the public as the focus of the all-new, all-different DCU, and even though two of the top dogs are in charge of the strip...so far, it bears so little resemblance to that universe it might as well be set on Earth-Q. There's zero evidence Johns & Lee have even read any of the other nu52 titles, or that they care about consistency in the universe.

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that--Justice League titles have often been not too tightly tied to the rest of the shared universe. It's just odd that DC's most popular writer, the one they promoted to push their universe, seems to be so little interested in that universe...

Now Johns is leaving Aquaman to write Justice League Of America. If things run to form, fans of Green Arrow, Katana, Martian Manhunter, the new Green Lantern, Stargirl, Vibe, Hawkman and Catwoman need not worry about missing anything that impacts their favorites characters--Johns will be writing different, Earth-Q versions of those characters.

Snapper Carr Is No Rick Jones

Snapper Carr--what a loser.

I say this not to be mean. But seriously, the guy sets the record for undeserved self-pity.

As a high school student, Snapper helped the Justice League Of America beat Starro. I mean, they make him an honorary member after that--a high school kid who gets to hang with the Justice League, for heaven's sake!! Dude ranked higher on the pecking order than most of the Teen Titans, is all I'm saying.

And yet he decides to throw it all away. Feeling unappreciated, Snapper allows the Joker (in disguise) to convince him that all super-heroes are dangerous, and gives Joker the JLA's secret HQ location.

Yes, that really happened. (And, if you were to ask me, I've decided that that event marks the end of the Silver Age...Not a hoax, not a dream, but the guy who has hung with the JLA since day one betrays them to DC's greatest villain because he buys into "heroes are bad for society". Definitely the beginning of the Bronze Age.)

After that? Well, let his sister Janet narrate for us:

I'll try not to get repetitive here, but after every one of these panels, do a mental comparison with Rick Jones, OK?

Fair enough. But those changes?

"Bull-ticky"?!?!?!

Wait.

Let's stop right here. Your fellow students ask you a few harmless and well-intentioned questions about the super-heroes you personally knew...and you "can't study" and "drop out"?!? I mean, sheesh, someone has the excuse machine cranked up to 11.

Back to the panel...
Really? You couldn't find any job? Not the Post Office? Not a dish washer? You couldn't, say, enlist in the military?? Mowing lawns? Anything?!?

Well, there's only one solution...

Seriously, Snapper Carr dropped out of school because someone asked him if Wonder Woman was hot, and then couldn't finds a job worthy of him...so he applies for welfare? But that wasn't quite down and out enough:

Maybe fame worked differently in the DC Universe.

Rick Jones, after all, wrote a bestselling book about being a sidekick, became a rock star, had his own TV talk show, became sponsor of a support group for former teenage super-heroes, etc, etc.

Snapper Carr, however, just became a loser...

Wait...his address was "disconnected"?!?

And then Carr went on to join The Key and became the super-villain Star-Tsar, which earns double demerits for the ridiculous stupidity of that name.

Over a decade later, they began to refurbish Snapper, giving him super-powers, having him mentor Hourman and Young Justice and join Checkmate and yada yada. And who knows when/if we get the nu52 Snapper Carr,

But man oh man, Snapper will always be that whiny betraying loser to me.

These panels were all from Justice League Of America #150 (1978)

All Of This Has Happened Before

You know, I was all ready to pick on Bendis for yet another one of those splash panels that consists of nothing but people standing and talking with dozens of word balloons.

Yup. I was all ready...until I came across Justice League Of America #150 (1978).

Mark Shaw, formerly a Manhunter, had adopted a new identity, as the hero Privateer. But it turns out that he was really evil, and had infiltrated the League just to enact some nefarious crimes. But he gets outed by Red Tornado, which is enough to drive a guy into mad monologuing:


Now, you'd think that might have been enough...but nope, the next panel we get is perhaps the worst use of a splash page in modern comic history:

Click to embiggen to full insane exposition-vision...

This was a 35-page "Giant" issue, so you'd have thought that Steve Englehart and Dick Dillin had plenty of room to lay out their surprise villain's motivations and scheme.

But for whatever reason, they decided to grind things to a total halt on page 34 with a static, long-winded and poorly typeset 500+ word info-dump. Maybe they ended up a page short and had to do an emergency page fill-in. Maybe editorial didn't care for what they originally had on that page, and demanded a last-minute replacement. Or maybe they actually thought this was good comics...

So, Bendis, you're off the hook...this week

Ask The Answer Manic Monday #6--Generational Heroes

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Green Lantern #105 (1978):

Oh, how quaint. Once again nobody sent poor Bob Rozakis the memo from the future. DC doesn't believe in generational heroes any more!!

There were no "super-heroes" before Superman now, the Justice League was the first team, and this group of heroes had no predecessors/mentors.

As to being replaced by their young proteges...hahahahahahahahah. The past several years have been dedicated to ensuring that the heroes of 1979 are exactly the same heroes in 2011, thank you very much. Just try to find Wally West and Donna Troy in the Flushpoint Universe. Roy Harper will be there, but it seems as if he's never been Ollie's protege there. Garth? Good luck finding him.
And Robin? Dick-as-Batman has been rejected by the powers that be, so it's all-Bruce, all the time. And Robin is just an intern program now...so obviously he was never meant to take the cowl!

On a related issue, from the Answer Man Column in Superboy & The Legion Of Super-Heroes #253 (1979):

Of course, the answer today would be "They're ALL young!! Younger than you think!! They're so young, newborns can relate to them!! As young as you think they are, THEY'RE YOUNGER!!"

Rosetta Stone!!

The day that the light of Krypton's explosion is due to reach Earth, Superman's been running around like a bat out of hell, taking on an inhuman amount of disasters and crimes. And his buddies at the JLA stage an intervention:

Superman's reply?

Wha??

Of course Batman speaks fluent Kryptonese...he's Batman.

Still, you'd think Hal's ring would have been able to translate that.

Anyway, that one Kryptonese word balloon contained a lot more information:

It turns out that Supes has been so driven because he's been scouring the skies for Brainiac, who has challenged him to a duel. He's also placed "cosmic bombs" all over Earth, which he'll detonate if the Justice League interferes.

That's an awful lot to pack into just 7 words! Krytponese must be a pretty dense language! (Maybe under a yellow sun, each word is more powerful...) No wonder Batman's the only one who knows it!!

Again With The Klingons?

So, I'm perusing DC's February solicitations, when I come across this:

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #54
Written by JAMES ROBINSON
Art by BRETT BOOTH & NORM RAPMUND
Cover by BRETT BOOTH
1:10 Variant cover by DAVID MACK
“The Rise of Eclipso” begins here as the dark energies that have surrounded Earth are harnessed once more to usher in the great Lord of Darkness! And it looks like the corruption of all mankind starts with the members of the Justice League! When things go dark, which teammate poses the greatest threat to mankind – Obsidian or Jade?

Sigh....

It immediately put me in mind of this:



I mean, hasn't Eclipso been played out yet?

The problem is, DC essentially destroyed him as an interesting villain by constantly upping his power levels, to the point there's nothing to be done with him. He started out as a silly Silver Age lark, a Jekyll & Hyde riff in standard super-villain drag.

Then he was the basis for a line-wide crossover event, which retconned him into an evil vengeance demon, rather than just Bruce Gordon's dark half--a demon who was able to tempt and possess every single DC hero. He had just been "posing" as a B-level villain all those years to keep of the big guns' radar, you see.

Enough? No? Well, then they retconned him further, so that he wasn't just any vengeance demon; no, now he was the first embodiment of God's wrath. Yes, he was the Spectre's predecessor, the force that caused Noah's flood, pretty much all-powerful evil embodied.

Oh, and then it turned out that Darkseid created him. Because that's apparently way scarier than God's exiled Wrath.

Anyway, I'm not sure where else there is to go with Eclipso. Just looking at the solicit, we've already seen Eclipso possess the DC heroes; we've already seen him fight the Spectre (and seduce the Spectre...ewwww). He's already done the corruption of all mankind shtick. So what else is there? Where else can you go with an all-powerful evil who exists by corrupting? It smells like a re-run...again with the Klingons!

Then again, I'm older than dirt, so I know all these stories, while there's an awful lot of comics readers who haven't experienced this before, so this may all be new to them.

And maybe every generation is entitled to its own Eclipso story.

If You Can't Be With The Avengers You Love, Love The Avengers You're With

The Hulk is on a rampage with potentially devastating consequences, so Thunderbolt Ross calls in the Avengers for help. However, he's not too happy about who shows up:


Vaguely?? Really? I mean, Quicksilver was front page headlines all over the world when he joined in the first Avengers roster turnover.

And when the Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, and Hawkeye-As-Goliath show up, well, he's still going to be making snarky comments:

What an ungrateful buffoon, eh? You'd think the fastest man alive (Marvel version), a hyper-powerful android, a mutant with power over probability, a super-strong giant, and a master strategist and fighter (and king!) would be enough to satisfy him. And indeed, these "yardbirds" do manage to turn back the Hulk (although they can't capture or defeat him), despite Ross' misgivings.

Roy Thomas was writing both Hulk and Avengers at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if he meant Ross' whining to be a veiled response to the many fans at the time who were bemoaning that the Avengers "didn't have enough power" and "weren't stars" and wanted the Big Three back on the team. You got that a lot in the Avengers letters column at the time, and Roy using this team to beat back the Hulk may have been his answer to that.

Or, just maybe, Roy somehow saw through the mists of time to the distant future, when a writer of Justice League would be complaining loudly about not being allowed to use DC's Big Three, and attempting to demean the remaining Leaguers as "Cap's Kooky Quartet."

So Thunderbolt Ross--jerk, allegory for certain fans, or prophet of the future? Maybe all three...

From Incredible Hulk #128 (1970)

Batman Explains Why The BP Spill Is A Good Thing--AGAIN!!

A couple of weeks back, I showed you how Batman was a supporter of BP on this oil spill nonsense. Heck, he even went so far as to say he was "grateful for pollution!" It's a great crime-fighting tool!

Well, apparently his successor, Dick Grayson, feels the same. An insane water elemental is messing around in Gotham Harbor...

And how does Batman deal with it?


Yes, Batman carries around a pollutants-firing gun, just in case he has to befoul the water to defeat a psychotic force of nature..

So, if you're in an area without a well-prepared Caped Crusader, well, your only defense against berserk manifestations of the Earth-force is pollution. So thank you, BP, for protecting the Gulf from possessed water elementals!!

Batman reminds us that, where crime is concerned, pollution=good in this week's JLA #46.