Our Year of "Kelsey"

Way back in Spring 2018, my second semester as a professor, I had a student—we'll call her Kelsey—take AWR 101 with me. I liked Kelsey a lot, she was smart and did the reading and had interesting things to say about it. Unfortunately, Kelsey failed the class; I forget exactly why now, but I think it was because she just didn't turn in a final paper.

That must have not scared her off, because Kelsey took me again in Spring 2019, for AWR 201, after filling her 101 credit with a community college course. Unfortunately, she failed again, because once again she did not submit a final paper. I got to know Kelsey more this semester. She had a job at a local amusement park, and one time she told me a story about how she missed the last bus home and the battery on her electric scooter was low, and she ended up having to walk from there back to her dorm, which took four hours... she made it home at 6am! I told her if she ever needed anything, she should call me.

She took me for AWR 201 again in Spring 2020. Unfortunately, Spring 2020 was a bad time to take classes if you struggled with school to begin with. She scraped through with a D, though.

That summer, I got an e-mail from her. "Do you remember how you said I should get in touch if I ever needed help?" it said. I called her back.

Unfortunately, Kelsey had fallen victim to a rental scam. She'd moved back home with her family once the pandemic began, but her plan was to move into an apartment that summer and resume her job at the amusement park. When her mother dropped her off at the apartment, the doors were all locked; the landlord apologize for never having sent her the keys, and told her that if she hired a locksmith, he'd reimburse her. A locksmith came, replaced all the locks, and then Kelsey's mother drove back home.

The next morning, the apartment's maintenance guy was very surprised to find someone living in an unoccupied unit.

It turned out there's a scam, where people from foreign countries will take a real apartment listing and duplicate it, pricing it just a bit lower. Then they make off with your deposit money and whatever else they can get while they string you along. The maintenance guy called the police; by the time I got there, this was all sorted out... but Kelsey had to go. So I rented a U-Haul, and we put some of her stuff in a storage unit she owned, and the bigger stuff in our garage, and Kelsey crashed with us for a few weeks until she was able to sort out a new living situation with some people she knew from school.

I periodically heard from her after that. Her grades got bad enough she had to drop out of school for a while while she worked to make money.

In Spring 2024, I got a cryptic text from her: "It turns out living outside isn't as romantic as I'd imagined."

She'd ended up in a spiral where she fell behind on car payments and lost her car, this meant she had a hard time keeping up with one of her part-time jobs and she lost it, but that meant she couldn't make rent, so she was evicted, and then she lived in a hotel until her savings ran out, so she checked her dog into daycare and spent the night trying to sleep in a park! This was January. I mean, we do live in Tampa, but it can still get pretty cold.

So once again, Kelsey crashed with us for a few weeks, until she was able to sort things out with her boyfriend in Missouri, and she headed off to live with him.

Unfortunately, he dumped her on Christmas. She made her way back to Florida, and we told her she could once again crash with us until she got back on her feet. She has family here in Florida, but does not get along with them very well.

What we did not expect is that she would end up living with us for a year! Kelsey's goal was to get a government job so that she could get back on her feet financially, but also get the benefit of free community college, so she could also get back on her feet academically and finally finish her degree. This took a long time. She was constantly applying to jobs, getting interviews sometimes, getting strung along by jobs that promised her good things that never materialized. She helped out around the house some, watched the kids occasionally, but mostly tried to stay out of our way, I think always feeling like she was imposing. She did eventually restart her job at the theme park for a little bit of money.

Finally, in Fall 2025, she got an offer and a real job! It took a while, but she finally got enough money to get a car... and got into an accident like a week a later. But while we were gone for Christmas, she moved into her new apartment.

It's been an interesting thing—I don't know that we've kept it secret, but we haven't gone out of our way to talk about it either, so few people in our lives really know about it. I am happy to finally get my office back! But also I worry about Kelsey; it seems to me she is very much an example of what people call the "precariat," just one bad day away from the edge. I hope she can get back on her feet, and I hope we've done our part to make that happen.

S. E. Hinton, Rumble Fish (1975)

Since teaching The Outsiders a few years ago, 

Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton

Originally published: 1975
Read: October 2025

I've been working my way through the remainder of S. E. Hinton's works in her YA shared universe. Rumble Fish is the third of those, though in this case I'm not sure what its connections to the others actually are! I found this less effective than either Outsiders or That Was Then, This Is Now; it certainly has some strong scenes, particularly when Rusty-James and his friend go for a night on the town, and the imagery of the ending is captivating, but this one never quite clicked for me and I'm not sure I could tell you why exactly. Too repetitive? Just as TWTTIN did a similar thing to the previous book but sadder, so does Rumble Fish, going for an even more depressing ending. Yet, I don't know that that's explanation enough; plenty of authors circle around similar themes repeatedly and manage to make them compelling nonetheless. I think perhaps what hold the book back is Rusty-James's lack of self-knowledge; I don't think he ever really gets himself, which is different from Ponyboy or Byron. This certainly happens to real people (quite frequently!) but it does mean it's harder to immerse yourself in the narrative, I think.

Justice League International Year Eight, Part I: The Purification Plague (JLA #86-88 / JLI #58-64 / JLTF #10-12)

Here, the three Justice League ongoings get back into sync in order to lead into the Judgment Day crossover that spanned all three titles. (This is what my next post will cover.) JLTF #10-12, JLA #86-88, and JLI #63-64 all take place simultaneously as a series of natural disasters begins springing up around the world; I recommend reading them in that order, because a couple characters (T. O. Morrow and Desaad) cross between the titles, and that's the order the stories happen for them. All three of those story arcs end on a cliffhanger leading into JLA #89. Moreover, JLI #58-62 is a continuous story where its final issue also overlaps with JLA #86.

Because of this, even though they came out in 1994, I recommend reading the two Elseworlds annuals earlier, so as to not disrupt the continuous story that goes from JLI #58 up to Zero Hour.

from Justice League America Annual #8

"The Once and Future League" / "Attack of the 'O' Squad!!! or: What If They Staged an Invasion and Nobody Came?" / "No Rules to Follow", from Justice League America Annual #8 and Justice League International Annual vol. 2 #5 (1994)
written by Dan Vado and Gerard Jones; pencils by Norman Felchile, Evan Dorkin, and Kiki Chansamone; inks by John Stokes & Rich Rankin, Paul Guinan, and Rich Rankin, John Stokes, Frank Percy, & Don Hillsman; colors by Gene D'Angelo and Rick Taylor; letters by Kevin Cunningham, Gaspar Saladino, and Clem Robins

These two annuals present stories from alternate continuities: I think DC has done some great "Elseworlds" stories but my impression of the 1994 Elseworlds annuals I have read is that having every series do one all at once was probably stretching the concept too thin. These ones are... pretty okay. The JLA annual actually contains two; the first posits that during the early days of the Justice League, Felix Faust lured them into a trap and destroyed them all, allowing him to rule the world; the bulk of the story takes place a century later, where people finally begins rising up against Faust—including a new set of Justice Leaguers. I probably spent too much time thinking about the mechanics of this. At this point in DC continuity, Batman didn't work with the League in its early days, and Wonder Woman wasn't even around back then, so how could they have been killed by Faust? Similarly, why are a bunch of familiar characters (e.g., Jimmy Olsen, Ted Kord, Snapper Carr) around a whole century later? I mean, I know it's an alternate continuity, so these could all just be points of divergence, but the story goes to some pains to establish what its main point of divergence is, so it feels weird to add extra ones on top of that. Outside of that, it's an okay story; I feel like it's very similar to other Elseworlds or even "Legends of the Dead Earth" stories I've read. Who the new Leaguers are is barely explained, which definitely undermined it.

JLA Annual #8 also contains a humorous short where every supervillain with a name ending in "O" teams up: Amazo, Chemo, Sinestro, Starro, Kanjar Ro, Destro, and so on. They are not very good at cooperation. Meanwhile, the Justice League is trying to find something to watch on tv. It's not great stuff, but it is probably the single best Justice League story written by Dan Vado. I liked the last-page joke the best.

The JLI Annual is set in a world where superheroes didn't emerge until the 1990s, and people are reacting to them with fear and suspicion, especially Bruce Wayne, who has channeled his anguish over his parents' death into quashing crime via the Wayne Foundation. Wayne and the government attempt to crack down on these heroes, who fracture over what the best way to respond is. The lineup of the new heroes is mostly JLI characters (the Wally West Flash, Power Girl, Tasmanian Devil, Metamorpho, Fire) but with some random others ones thrown in (Beast Boy of the Titans, Poison Ivy), plus Booster and Blue Beetle appear as part of the group sent to stop the new heroes. (And also Ralph Dibny appears as a powerless writer who wonders if he might have been inspired to obtain powers if history had gone differently.) It's okay; there are too many characters, and the art is not great, but I did like the ending.

from Justice League International vol. 2 #61

"Nocturne" / "Ordinary People" / "Out of the Future" / "Born of Man and Woman" / "The Sacrifice", from Justice League International vol. 2 #58-62 (Nov. 1993–Mar. 1994)
written by Gerard Jones & Will Jacobs; pencilled by Ron Randall and Chuck Wojtiekiewicz; inked by Roy Richardson, Craig Gilmore, and Michael Oeming, Rich Rankin, & Don Hillsman; lettered by Clem Robins; colored by Gene D'Angelo

Here we have another set of totally mediocre JLI stories that jerk from concept to concept. I feel like Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs are struggling to both maintain threads they set up early on but also lean into the storytelling trends of the early 1990s, and pretty much failing at both as a result. Lots of time is given over to a really boring storyline about people from the future, but also there's this whole thing about the JLI waking up in a timeline where someone averted their heroic origins: Guy is Earth's only Green Lantern, Rex never got his powers, Kara was never woken up, and so on. I liked the bit about how Guy was a great guy in this timeline, but it's boring otherwise, and it feels like a diversion from the book's core premise. Rex gets a new "battle form"... like, why? So many dumb things in this run. 

You can also see them struggling to accommodate what's going on in other titles, specially Green Lantern, which previously the book was good at. For example, there's been no mention of the destruction of Coast City in JLI even though Hal is a lead here. In issue #61, Hal suddenly has his arm in a sling, which happened in the Coast City fight with Mongul, even though the opening scene of #61 directly continues from the closing scene of #60, where his arm is not in a sling. Certainly the destruction of Coast City didn't happen between those issues!

I found the notes from assistant editor Ruben Diaz in the letter column annoying. In issue #59, for example, he opines that other comics (I think he's dissing Marvel's X-Men line here) "have offered multiple crossovers, with big surprises, big changes, big star talent—big deal! Most of what they deliver is layers of convoluted storylines, inconsequential endings with little personal change in the characters, clichés, and less than 100% effort on the part of creators who step on each other's toes trying to outdo each other." But if that's so awful, then why do I feel like all the Justice League titles are just trying to imitate that storytelling style, instead of leaning into what they were actually good at? You can't diss the 1990s Marvel/Image style and copy it! There's another one (somewhere in the #53-57 range, I think) where Ruben apologizes for how bad the book has been since Breakdowns. Like, ouch! Why would I want to told as a reader that I've been getting substandard product? Why would you throw the writers and artists under bus like that?? And what if I liked some of that run???

from Justice League Task Force #11
(panels not contiguous in the original)

The Purification Plague, from Justice League Task Force #10-12 (Mar.-May 1994), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by Michael Jan Friedman, pencilled by Sal Velluto, inked by Jeff Albrecht (with Robert Jones), lettered by Bob Pinaha, colored by Glenn Whitmore

In this final story from the first (and, I guess, only, given it's been eight years) JLTF trade, J'onn and Gypsy assemble a team to go undercover among white supremacists in rural Nebraska: they are joined by Black Canary, Elongated Man, the original Hourman, and Thunderbolt. I had actually read this story in single issues before, when I read through a bunch of uncollected stories featuring the original Birds of Prey lineup.

It's about as okay as every JLTF storyline. Nothing will rock your world here; it's depressing to see the evil Aryans using what reads like MAGA rhetoric. The ending is a bit pat. I found it weird that Ralph somehow didn't know Gypsy's codename didn't reflect her heritage given they served in the League together during the Detroit era. Like, surely someone would ask at some point?

from Justice League America #88

Cult of the Machine / "Rage against the Machine", from Justice League America #86-88 (Mar.-May 1994), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 2 (2017)
written by Dan Vado, pencils by Mark Campos, inks by Ken Branch & Kevin Conrad, letters by Clem Robins, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Oh God make it stop.

I really struggled with this one. Ice is mopey and emotional; Marc Campos's art is incapable of nuance, so everyone is shouting at each other all the time. Captain Atom is a stupid jarhead who gets into argument with an ineffectual Wonder Woman; he's nothing like the guy who lead the JLE back in their Paris days. The story is about some cultists who build a transmitter tower or something that somehow brings back Dreamslayer of the Extremists; the resulting story is as unappealing as every Extremists story. Wait, no, moreso. How all this hangs together is left as an exercise for the reader, because neither art nor story are doing the work. At one point you have to turn the book sideways to read a page; this strikes me as the kind of power move that only works if your art is good enough to justify the effort. Campos's is not.

Bad bad bad. I hated every page of it, every panel.

from Justice League International vol. 2 #64

"Visions of Death" / "Immortal Truth", from Justice League International vol. 2 #63-64 (Apr.-May 1994)
written by Gerard Jones (with Will Jacobs), pencilled by Chuck Wojtiekiewicz, inked by Bob Dvorak & Rich Rankin and Craig Gilmore, letters by Clem Robins, colors by Gene D'Angelo

As I said at the top of this post, these issues take place in parallel with the contemporary issues of JLTF and JLA. While the growing natural disasters are a background element in the other two series, it's the main focus of these issues, which have the JLI on the ground in India trying to deal with them; meanwhile, Doctor Light is dealing with the disembodied consciousness Erewhon with which she's somehow fallen in love. This latter plotline could be interesting, I think, but at this point makes this overstuffed book feel even more unfocused. At the same time these issues are trying to lead into Judgment Day, they're also trying to pay off the ongoing JLI plot (since issue #51) about ancient cults rising up; it turns out (I think) that whatever's causing the disasters is also empowering the Cadre of the Immortal, with representatives from a bunch of different ancient civilizations. The JLI has to go to Africa and fight Prester John, and meanwhile Power Girl is pregnant and her baby can magically generate forcefields, and Chandi has temporarily been turned evil.

It's all another uninteresting action-focused story that's pulled in ten different directions. I feel like Gerard Jones has lost control of this book and, more significantly, completely lost what made it appeal so much to me just thirteen issues ago. 

This is the fourteenth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #89-92 of JLA, #65-68 of JLI, and #13-16 of JLTF. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Justice League #1-6 / Justice League International #7-12 (May 1987–Apr. 1988)
2. Justice League International #13-21 (May 1988–Dec. 1988)
3. Justice League International #22-25 / Justice League America #26-30 / Justice League Europe #1-6 (Jan. 1989–Sept. 1989) 
4. Justice League America #31-36 / Justice League Europe #7-12 (Oct. 1989–Mar. 1990)
5. Justice League America #37 / Justice League Europe #13-21 (Apr. 1990–Dec. 1990)
6. Justice League America #38-50 / Justice League Europe #22 (May 1990–May 1991)
7. Justice League America #51-52 / Justice League Europe #23-28 (Feb. 1991–July 1991) 
8. Justice League America #53-60 / Justice League Europe #29-36 (Aug. 1991–Mar. 1992) 
9. Justice League America #61-65 / Justice League Europe #37-42 (Apr. 1992–Sept. 1992)
10. Justice League America #66-69 / Justice League Europe #43-50 (Sept. 1992–May 1993) 
11. Justice League America #70-77 / Justice League Task Force #1-3 (Jan. 1993–Aug. 1993) 
12. Justice League America #78-83 / Justice League International #51-52 / Justice League Task Force #4-8 (June 1993–Jan. 1994)
13. Justice League America #84-85 / Justice League International #53-57 / Justice League Task Force #9 (Aug. 1993–Feb. 1994) 

The Story of the BBC Visual Effects Department by Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker

This is a large hardcover that chronicles the BBC's Visual Effects Department. It begins with an overview of the history of the department from its founding in the 1950s to its closure in 2003, chronicling various expansions and moves and reorganizations the department went through over the years. (It actually extends slightly beyond the 2003 end date of the title, because once the department was closed, one employee was kept on as part of a different department, doing model work, which lasted until 2006.) There's also an introductory chapter about the basic techniques that the department used over its lifespan. After these chapters, the bulk of the book goes through a bunch of a shows the department worked on in alphabetical order, from Alice in Wonderland (1986) to the Z-Cars episode "Contact" (1976). These have anecdotes from the VFX staff and are copiously illustrated with photos from the BBC archives showing both how the work was done and how the finished effects looked.

BBC VFX: The Story of the BBC Visual Effects Department, 1954–2003
by Mat Irvine and Mike Tucker

Published: 2010
Acquired: December 2012
Read: December 2025

This isn't the kind of book I would go around recommending to random people, but if you're me, you're squarely in the target audience of this book. I'm someone who enjoys reading about the practicalities of tv and film production, who likes getting nitty-gritty insights into how things are done. If you enjoyed, say, Preston Neal Jones's oral history of the making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, you're the kind of person who would also enjoy this book.

Most obviously, the book has a lot of sf and fantasy stuff in it. Of course the whole reason I was originally drawn to it were its chapters on Doctor Who; there are ten pages on the 1963-89 original run and eight pages on the 2005 revival. To be honest the chapter on the original run feels a bit cursory; ten pages means there's a lot to squeeze in here and not a lot of room for detail. (I wanted some nice photos of that space station from The Trial of a Time Lord, for example.) I am sure you could do a whole book on the department's contributions to Doctor Who! I was surprised by how many contributions the Model Unit made to the revived show; I'd known it was responsible for the spaceship crashing into Big Ben in "Aliens of London," for example, but hadn't realized the exploding Auton lair in "Rose" or the barrage balloons in "The Empty Child" or damaged tower blocks in "The Christmas Invasion" were also models. There's some beautiful photos in this part.

There was, of course, a lot of insight into other BBC telefantasy shows, both known and unknown to me: Blake's 7, Five Children and It, Moonbase 3, Quatermass, Red Dwarf, Space Vets, Star Cops, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Tripods, and so on. There's nice photos of model work in particular, and good details on other aspects of production as well; the creators of Red Dwarf loved working with the department, and tried to push what was possible further every series. Also, I learned that between seasons the model of the Dwarf rolled off a shelf and had to be totally rebuilt! The giant legs used to make the tripods in The Tripods were quite impressive. I was particularly wowed by the puppets used on Five Children and It; I guess I don't know how they looked in the finished production, but in the photos here they look amazing, particularly the beautiful phoenix used in the sequel series, The Phoenix and the Carpet. And how the puppets were operated is fascinating; they buried a box under the ground with all the support staff in it! There were fun stories from Space Vets, too; as it had a very low budget (it was a kids show), they just reused spaceship model from others shows!

But what was also quite fascinating were the details on the shows that are not telefantasy: costume dramas, news programs, documentaries, soaps, sketch comedies, and so on. If someone were to ask you if visual effects play a big role in these kind of shows, you would probably say no, but if they were to ask you how, you might think it through a bit more and realize they do. Lots of cool stuff in these parts, like how to simulate an ocean at night with no water, or how to flood a historical house, or how to film in an Egyptian tomb when the authorities won't get rid of the tourists. Miniatures are way more common than I would have guessed, but once you see it, it makes perfect sense. I have never seen and will never see, say, The Great Palace: The Story of Parliament, but I loved reading about how the buildings were recreated to tell this story. If you find reading about tv more interesting than actually watching tv (which is often how I feel), then this is the book for you. Lots of great anecdotes you can annoy your partner with!

Star Trek Adventures: Battling Space Pirates after Christmas!

As I did last winter break, I decided to run a three-week Star Trek Adventures one-off. I wanted it to be a fun one-off (as opposed to the very grim war storyline we ran last winter!), and an idea bubbled up that I've long had for a story. Apparently (I'm sure I heard this on NPR over a decade ago), getting your cargo freighter hijacked by pirates isn't a big deal, in that cargo companies have insurance that cover their losses. So you don't battle the pirates these days, you just hand over the cargo so no one gets hurt. I've always thought there was the kernel of a good action-adventure story in here: what if some character was travelling via a cargo ship and thought they were helping when they put up resistance to the pirates when in fact the cargo ship's captain would have much rather they remained calm and cooperated!

So that was the basic idea. Where would the players be travelling, and why on a cargo ship? Well, my campaign has a recurring group of aliens, the Ithik, who are obsessed with games because they live forever and are bored; these alien appeared first in episode 2 (based on the published adventure "Abyss Station" by Jacob Ross) and then returned in episode 6 (based on the published adventure "Game Night" by Alison Cybe). At the end of episode 6, the players had helped the Ithik resettle on a new homeworld. When one of my players, Ryan, wrote his character's personal log about the events of episode 6, he'd suggested that the Ithik channel their enthusiasm for games into hosting a galaxy-wide competition, the Ithika. That seemed like a good hook: the players could be travelling to the new Ithik homeworld to play in and/or observe the Ithika, on a freighter carrying colony supplies.

The other upshot of that was that it would make it easy for players to play someone different if they wanted, apart from their regular characters; they would just need a reason to be participating in the Ithika as either player or observer.

“Acting Captain’s Log, Stardate 54463.6, Lieutenant Jor Lena reporting. The senior staff of the Diversitas has been invited to participate in a competition on the new Ithik homeworld, Psi Erandi X. The Ithika is a massive competition with participants from across the quadrant, attempting to leverage the Ithik obsession with games to good end. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate as, with Captain Rucot visiting his parents on Cardassia Prime, I will be commanding the Diversitas on anti-piracy patrol. The Diversitas is scheduled to rendezvous with a freighter charted by the Ithik to bring the other senior staff members to the games.”

Planning the Mission 

Breen freighter Urney, Klingon surplus
(image generated by ChatGPT)

All seven members of my regular STA group took me up on my invitation to play. Five of them elected to play their regular characters. Cari, who normally plays security chief Jor Lena, suggested she might play a somewhat incompetent pickpocket from a Blue Orion pirate family, and this seemed to line up nicely with my plans, so I encouraged it. Austin, who plays Frector the Ferengi intelligence analyst, asked if I had any ideas, but I said I thought the episode I had in mind would be a good one for Frector, and so encouraged him to stick with her. I did, though, reach out to Ryan, who in our previous Christmas one-off had played the Diversitas's previous science officer, Phalnox Drin, a Benzite science officer obsessed with MMA. Thanks to some well-spent Momentum, Drin had actually succeeded in defeating a Jem'Hadar in single combat, and at the time, Ryan had joked Drin could quit Starfleet and pursue an MMA career. What if he had, and he encountered his old shipmates on while travelling to participate in the Ithika? Ryan was keen on the idea, and revised Drin's stats and Values to account for his postwar career. Thus I had a line-up of seven, all of whom made all three sessions except one:

• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-2)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer
• Ryan as Phalnox Drin, MMA coach
• Cari as Rina K'var, Orion pickpocket

Back when I started GMing STA (which was also my first time GMing anything at all), I would plan out episodes in exhaustive detail—which was easily done, since I was always working with published missions. I had fifteen pages of outline for our first episode, "Patagon in Parallax," for example, covering all three acts. But 1) having written my own episodes several times now, and 2) having a strong group of players who really grok the game, I find I no longer do this. I went into our first session with 3½ pages, just covering the first act.

I knew I wanted the pirates to be Haradin, our recurring alien species; following the events of episode 8, the pirates would be followers of General Zotabia, my players' recurring Haradin nemesis (see episodes 1, 3, 5, and 8). He had tried to go legit as a nationalist demagogue, but would now turn back to piracy following his defeat in episode 8's election. Zotabia himself wouldn't feature in this episode, but a couple other recurring Haradin characters were, especially Esha Vortan, an earnest true believer of Zotabia. For a moment I thought about making the freighter crew Haradin too, but decided this was probably too much Haradin lore! I used to use the Haradin as my generic filler species, but I've developed them so much I can't do that anymore. I made the actual freighter a surplus Klingon ship so I could use my Klingon ship tiles, but had it been purchased by the Breen, whose weird standoffishness seemed like it might add a nice complicating factor to the proceedings.

Thot Udd (screen capture from Deep Space Nine)

I found a YouTube video of Breen dialogue from Deep Space Nine and paired it with an image of a Breen that I put on my tablet, so whenever the  Breen thot talked, I could press the play button and generate some gibberish.  

Basically, all I planned out was the broad setting, a couple characters (the Ithik mayor, three pirates, the Breen thot, some other Ithika participants), and the beats of the first act:

• Teaser: Rendezvous with the freighter, meet the other participants, end with the freighter being attacked while the players sleep
• Scene 1: Haradin pirates enter the corridor the players are in and lock it down, taking two players as hostages to the bridge.
• Scene 2: The players on the bridge learn what the pirates are up to. (In order to keep costs down, the pirates wouldn't staff the freighter or hold its entire crew hostage or anything like that; instead, they'd physically link their ship to the freighter and establish control over its systems.) 
• Scene 3: The players in their quarters would do something—presumably attempt to escape.
• End of Act: Someone, probably the pirate captain, would recognize a member of the Diversitas crew and realize they had something even more valuable than colony supplies—the senior staff of the Diversitas, who had foiled their boss many times over.

Also, once the pirates turned up, I planned to give Austin a slip of paper indicating what Frector knew:

Thanks to your Intelligence briefings, you are aware that in the months following Zotabia’s defeat in the Ship-Clan Marvek referendum, there has been a resumption of Haradin pirate activity in the Ekumene sector. However, the Haradin pirates have thus far been careful to avoid preying on ships belonging to the Federations or its allies, and there is also no clear indication that these pirates are allied with Zotabia. 

Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna [Frector's superior] on Deep Space 10 would particularly like to find either 1) hard proof that these pirates are affiliated with Zotabia (which could help turn some of the undecided ship-clans against Zotabia), or 2) the location of the pirate base.

Playing the Mission 

Tazrevi Korash, first officer of the Haradin pirates
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Overall, it was a lot of fun and went very well, I think. In the teaser, the players built some Momentum and were (re)introduced to Phalnox Drin, the Ithik mayor, the Breen thot, and Rina. In Act I, scene 1, Ryan tried to have Phalnox Drin knock out a Haradin pirate and scoot past him to the turbolift; he succeeded, but I spent 2 Threat to have the turbolift doors refuse to open for him (having established that the freighter was in poor shape), letting the pirates stun him, making him one of the hostages. The pirates randomly picked T'Cant to be the other, but she slowed them down by pretending to take a while to get dressed; when Frector poked her head out, the pirates took her instead. The two of them left their comm badges on secretly, so that the other players could hear what was happening on the bridge.

Nevan tried to write up a booby trap using a console in his quarters, and succeeded in accessing it... but also rolled a Complication, so I had him shocked and knocked unconscious; Gurg succeeded at a Task to argue he should be able to help Nevan, so they ended up in the same room adjacent to Rina. But when Rina tried to talk to Gurg through the walls, he rebuffed her! She ended up using her Orion smarts to claim to the pirates that she wanted to join them, and they let her out. On the bridge, Phalnox and Frector were able to sneak a look at some consoles and realize that part of the pirate plan was to do two things:

• Align the pirate ship's subspace carrier to the freighter's internal clock cycle. If the two ships were out of sync by more than a microsecond, the freighter would reject remote inputs.
• Install a "deadman echo" in the freighter computer core; if the link between the two ships was severed, the freighter's power grid would automatically go into standby mode. 

The first act did indeed end with the pirate captain, Beshlor, coming onto the freighter bridge and recognizing Frector and thus putting out an order for the rest of the Diversitas crew to be brought in.

Between sessions, I wrote up about 1½ pages of ideas of what could happen in Act II. One idea I came up with was that, if we use quartz crystals for timekeeping in the real world, maybe in the Star Trek world, they use dilithium crystals; thus the players would need to make their way to the freighter's dilithium crystal chamber.

Haradin pirate ship (Orion surplus, I guess?)
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Act II thus opened with a Timed Challenge: the Diversitas crew would have 4 Intervals to get away, with actions taking 2 Intervals. Momentum could speed those up, Complications slow them down, and the players could also Create Advantages that would give them more time. Rina talked the Haradin into thinking the Diversitas crew was very dangerous and they should be cautious, so they ended up with 6; the players were able to sneak into Jefferies tubes and even set up some booby traps.

On the bridge, Frector and Phalnox came up with a plan for Phalnox to pretend there was something wrong with Frector's (made up) heart implant and thus utter some dialogue about adjusting the timing, so that the other players could hear this and know to sabotage the freighter's clock. I made it a D5 Task to send the message and D4 one to comprehend it. The players succeeded, but Frector rolled a Complication when assisting Drin; I made the Complication that the pirates bought it so much they had Frector taken to the sickbay on their ship! Meanwhile, Rina befriended Esha Vortan, who really does like the Diversitas crew, and thus persuaded him to let her send a message to her people so the Diversitas could come and help. I had thought he would interact directly with the Diversitas crew, but that never ended up happening.

Meanwhile meanwhile, the other characters did an Extended Task to sneak around the freighter. Frector stunned the pirate escorting her... but then asked Gurg to join her in sneaking on board the pirate ship after all! Frector likes to keep secrets, so they were kind of vague about why, but a grumbling Gurg came along. 

When the other players made it to the chamber, I gave them a Timed Extended Task to adjust the freighter's computer clock. I made it Initial Difficulty 5, Magnitude 4, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 4. Difficult but doable... but the players didn't always roll great, and I used Threat to keep the Difficulty up and the Work low even as they got Breakthroughs. For the first time ever, my players failed at an Extended Task! It was a good bad ending to the session. I felt almost apologetic, telling them you need to have a failure in Act II to make the victory in Act III even sweeter.

(Them: "What if we fail in this episode?" Me: "Then I guess season three will be escaping from Haradin prison!")

Aunt Thevi
(image generated by ChatGPT)

I seized on that idea Cari had had, of Rina sending a message to her people, asking for them to 1) come help, and 2) call the Diversitas. So providing she succeeded, having her family—a whole second group of pirates!—seemed like a great Act III complication. So going into Act III, I worked up a character to be a Blue Orion pirate leader, Rina's Aunt Thevi.

The beginning of the act went a bit better for them: the players in the dilithium chamber were able to hide when the Haradin pirates came by, then knock out a guard and finish their sabotage; Drin used his MMA skills to fake falling onto a console and mess up the pirates' work; Frector and Gurg were able to download the pirates' comm data and send a distress signal to the Diversitas, though they ended up jumping into an escape pod to get away.

Then Aunt Thevi turned up. She had not passed on Rina's message to the Diveristas but wanted the freighter for herself. Things got a bit goofy as I played up the incompetence of the Blue Orions; she did beam Rina and Phalnox off the freighter. The players decided to let the pirates slug it out, but this seemed undramatic, so I spent 2 Threat to have the Haradin pirate captain offer Aunt Thevi the Ithik freighter if she would just give the Haradin the Diversitas crew. The players decided to convince Aunt Thevi they could help take both the Haradin pirate ship and the freighter; I made this take three D4 Tasks, and they did succeed... only Rina rolled a Complication. 

The Diversitas then turned up; Aunt Thevi decided to flee (technically she hadn't done anything wrong... yet), but when she beamed Drin to the Diversitas, she sent Rina too, the Complication being Rina was now in exile for causing her family to yet again fail at piracy. The Haradin tried to go despite their linkup not being totally in place, but the computer clock sabotage caused it to fail; at that point, the pirates disconnected and flew off... leaving some of their people behind on the freighter!

So overall, it was fun even if it got a bit goofy in the last act... but then goofy made a nice contrast to our previous winter adventure! And there are some good hooks for stuff to come. Poor Esha Vortan has been taking prisoner twice! Will Rina ever come back? And will Phalnox Drin ever stop talking about the one time he kayoed a Jem'Hadar?

Star Trek: Ekumene:

1. "Patagon in Parallax"
2. "A Terrible Autonomy"
3. "Stinks of Slumber and Disaster"
4. "Angels in Your Angles"
5. "A Thousand Miles from Day or Night" 
6. "When I Get through This Part…"
7. "Only Trying to Do Right in This Wicked World" 
8. "No Place in the Processional"
9. "Legend Grew about Their Daring" 

Specials:

1. "Hear All the Bombs Fade Away"
2. "The Word for Word Is Word"

P. G. Wodehouse, How Right You Are, Jeeves (a.k.a. Jeeves in the Offing, 1960)

It has been an ambition of mine to work through all of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books. As is so often true of these things with me, I haven't exactly made a lot of progress; I last read one thirteen years ago! This particular one I have had in my collection around seventeen years. I am such a speedy reader!

How Right You Are, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

Originally published: 1960
Acquired: August 2008
Read: October 2025

I haven't read all the Jeeves and Wooster books, but I have seen all the episodes of the Fry/Laurie tv adaptation, and I was thus a bit surprised to realize there were books that were never turned into episodes, and thus stories with which I was totally unfamiliar. 

Well, as unfamiliar as one can ever be with a Jeeves and Wooster story, I suppose, as there are a number of familiar beats in all of them, and Wodehouse definitely follows those here: Wooster is accidentally engaged, someone has to give a speech for which they are ill-prepared, people have to pretend to be insane, Wooster's aunt is giving him marching orders that are impossible to execute, someone may have stolen a cow creamer, Wooster has a terrific plan that backfires and Jeeves must extricate him from his own mess—which of course engenders further humiliation.

But you know, it's familiar because it works. I laughed when I was supposed to laugh; I particularly loved all the ins and outs of how Wooster keeps ending up engaged when he doesn't want to. There are numerous laugh-out-loud moments, and the prose itself is the same breezy pleasure that Wodehouse excelled at. I will try to be better about reading more of these; I don't want to defer the pleasure of reading Wodehouse any further!

Justice League International Year Seven, Part III: Bloodlines (JLA #84-85 / JLI #53-57 / JLTF #9)

We have just eight regular issues in this set, but that's counterbalanced by there being two annuals and a whopping four issues of Justice League Quarterly. Note that chronological order and publication order are very out of sync between JLA and JLE during this stretch, thanks to the Bloodlines event. In JLA, Bloodlines follows issue #85, cover dated Feb. 1994 (due to the status of Booster Gold and Ice), while for JLE, it must precede issue #53, cover dated Aug. 1993 (due to the status of Elongated Man). This puts the two titles a whole six months off of each other!

from Justice League America #85

"Absolute Power" / "They Might Be Giants", from Justice League America #84-85 (Jan.-Feb. 1994), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2017)
written by Dan Vado, pencilled by Kevin West, inked by Ken Branch, letters by Tim Harkins, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Ice was written out during Dan Jurgens's JLA run; following the death of Superman, she left the team. During Dan Vado's run, he began periodically checking in on her as she returned to her people... only to discover that her brother had gone mad with power and was deposing her father and imposing a dictatorship. She sent her mother for help, and her mother arrived during the "evil Guy" story arc, so following its conclusion, the JLA finally goes to help Ice in this two-part story.

Let's say you were a fan of Ice. Unfortunately, nothing that makes Ice a fun character can be found in this story that supposedly focuses on her, which is all ridiculous posturing and snarling and big fights. And while it's not the fault of Dan Vado and artists Kevin West and Ken Branch, the trade paperback reprints the pages of issue #85 almost entirely out of order. With a more interesting story, I'd be willing to put in the work to figure out how to read it... but this story just isn't worth it. (I can't find anyone else on the Internet complaining about this, so I don't know if my copy has a unique issue, or if no one else has ever bothered to read their copy of Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1!)

from Justice League Quarterly #12

"Negative Feedback" / "On the Road" / "A Man of Parts" / "Love Is War" / "Grandpas and Other Strangers" / "The Unkindest Cut" / "Havoc Unleashed!" / "Scent of Fear" / "Flight" / "Ascent into the Abyss" / "A Hole in the World!" / "Galway Girls" / "The Devil You Know!", from Justice League Quarterly #12-15 (Autumn 1993–Summer 1994)
written by Mark Waid, Kim Fryer, Michael Jan Friedman, Kevin Dooley, Paul Kupperberg, Pat McGreal, Steven T. Seagle, and David De Vries; pencilled by Dan Rodriguez & Antonio Daniel, Mike Wieringo, Mike Mayhew, Greg LaRocque, Michael Collins, Mike Vosburg, Frank Squillace, Mark Tenney, and Eddy Spurlock; inked by Ken Branch, Frank Percy, Mike Christian, Dan Davis, Aaron McClellan, Terry Beatty, Eduardo Barreto, Mike Vosburg, Bam, Bob Smith, Ray Kryssing, and Don Hillsman; colored by Buzz Setzer, Tom McCraw, Glenn Whitmore, Matt Webb, David Grape, Gene D'Angelo, Phil Allen, and Mia Wolf; lettered by Willie Schubert & John Workman, Albert De Guzman, Bob Pinaha, Clem Robins, Ken Bruzenak, and Agnes Pinaha

These four issues of Justice League Quarterly all seem to fit in this general time period: in JLA-centric stories, Captain Atom is back, for example, while in JLI-centric stories, Crimson Fox, Elongated Man, and Hal Jordan are all still around. They also feature parts two through five of the ongoing Praxis story, "The Damnation Agenda." I'll go issue by issue here, except I'll save my comments on the Praxis story for the end.

Issue #12 launches with a Conglomerate lead story. This is, if I'm counting correctly, the third Conglomerate story from JLQ, and the third version of the team. Like the first (see item #6 below), it's about the tension between corporate interests and altruism; like the first, the team is a mix of returning characters (I recognized the JSA's Jesse Quick and Infinity, Inc.'s Nuklon) and new ones (I think so, anyway; I didn't recognize them). The art is all 1990s in what I would say is the worst possible way (except I've read Marc Campos's JLA run, so I know even worse is possible) and the new characters are pretty ridiculous. Worst of all, though, is that even though this is by Mark Waid and thus has some nice moments... we've read it all before, because this is just the original Conglomerate story over again! I'm guessing this was an attempt to set the team up for future adventures, but I'm not aware of any. This issue's non-Praxis backup is a flashback story about Ice and Doctor Light going on a road trip together; you've read better but you've read worse. A couple cute moments, but it doesn't always ring true.

from Justice League Quarterly #13

Issue #13's lead story focuses on Maxima and Captain Atom. Maxima's old consort, Ultraa, comes to Earth to take on Superman and resume his relationship with Maxima; however, at the same time, Maxima has decided to pursue Captain Atom instead. Captain Atom is dealing with his own issues, though, and doesn't think he can love again. There's probably a good story to be told with these ingredients, and this isn't the worst, but it wasn't very great either. I don't think Greg LaRocque has the character chops to pull this off, but he does draw a pretty Maxima.

One of the recurring features of JLQ has been getting Paul Kupperberg, who wrote the 1980s miniseries that reestablished Power Girl as an Atlantean, to write stories focused on Kara, continuing threads begun in that mini. Issue #13 contains the last of those, but it also seems to be dealing with threads for Kupperberg's Arion ongoing. I've read neither of these series, and I very much struggled to care about all this. Kupperberg also performs cleanup duties on issue #14's lead story, which seems to be focused on loose threads from the cancelled Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt ongoing, as Thunderbolt, along with Captain Atom, Nightshade, and Blue Beetle work together to take down a Thunderbolt villain. Again, it gets too much into the weeds with concepts from a series I haven't actually read, so not even some solid Mike Collins art can save it. The last page made me realize why this seemingly random collection of characters: they were all originally published by Quality Comics. Cute gag, I guess, but why build a story around it? The JL connection here seems slight. (Of the four, only Beetle is currently a member.)

#14 has two backups, one about the Crimson Fox, one about a new new Jack O'Lantern. The Fox one is by the usually dependable Pat McGreal, but like too many Crimson Fox stories, focuses on a man manipulating her sexuality. The Jack O'Lantern one is, surprisingly, a pro-choice story where he has to defend a woman fleeing her Irish Catholic community for England so she can get an abortion; the anti-abortion activists go to ridiculous lengths to stop her. O'Lantern spends the whole story going on about how he doesn't think abortion is moral but the girl has a right to do it anyway, which feels like a very 1990s take on the debate. Super heavy handed, and I'm kind of surprised it was even published.

There's another Jack O'Lantern backup in #15, which was so boring I never figured out what was going on. The fun story here is the Tasmanian Devil one, who joined the JLI in issue #50, but never got a lot of focus. Despite some confusing art, I enjoyed this one. Similarly, there's a Ray backup with ugly art but some good jokes. (I did not know Ray was a Star Trek fan.)

from Justice League Quarterly #15

So parts two through four of the Praxis story, "The Damnation Agenda," are backups in issues #12-14; then the longer concluding installment is the lead story in issue #15. It's fine. I think there are occasional flashes of something interesting, pulled down by the need to conform to a lot of clichés of the genre, like the fact that Praxis's female partner has to fall in love with him but he has to angst about it. Also, Praxis's power is to manipulate electricity, but this gets broadened to manipulating anything with electrons in it. 1) This is not the same thing at all, and 2) leads to a lot of dumb moments where people say things like, "I forget air was matter too!" In the last installment, some random members of the JLI show up (I guess to justify why this whole story appeared in a JLI-focused ongoing) but the story needs to make sure they're not essential to the resolution. I honestly got pretty lost in the thaumababble of the climax. On the whole, I would say the whole Praxis story wasn't as bad as I feared but probably not worth devoting five issues of JLQ to either.

Back when I wrote up issues #8-10 of JLQ (see #10 below) I said this series was probably my favorite of the then-three Justice League ongoings. Unfortunately, it seems to have plummetted off a cliff fairly quickly; we've gone from cute fleshing out of the characters of the JLI to desperate chasing of the worst trends of 1990s comics.

from Justice League International Annual vol. 2 #4

"Bloody London", from Justice League International Annual vol. 2 #4 (1993)
written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by Mike Parobeck, inked by Luke McDonnell, lettered by Clem Robins, colored by Gene D'Angelo

Bloodlines was the big crossover through DC's 1993 annuals; alien parasites fell to Earth, taking over people and turning them into monsters, but also creating the "New Bloods," heroes with powers to counter the parasites. To be honest, I'm a bit murky on the details; while I've systematically collected some of the themed annuals of the 1980s and '90s, what I have read of Bloodlines has demonstrated it to be everything that made the early 1990s a bad time for comics.

This isn't the worst. Gerard Jones's story focuses on Elongated Man, Tasmanian Devil, and Metamorpho hunting a serial killer in London, which is a good concept; Jones always does great by Ralph, and the premise is well-suited to him. Unfortunately, we also get a lot about Lionheart, the kind of angsty 1990s superhero who's torn between a government master and doing the right thing, with a dollop of English working-class resentment thrown in. I do in general think that Mike Parobeck is a really good artist, but a story about disgusting alien superkillers is not really a match for his cartoony sensibilities (though I do always like seeing him draw Elongated Man).

"Only the Lucky Ones Die", from Justice League America Annual #7 (1993), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2017)
written by Bill Loebs, pencilled by Greg LaRocque, inked by Robert Jones, Mark Stegbauer, & Bob Downs, letters by Ken Bruzenak, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Now this one is bad. It's written by William Messner-Loebs, not Dan Vado, but unfortunately Loebs does a good job of imitating the Vado style on JLA, where everyone snarls and argues all the time. Lots of gratuitous darkness and violence. Somehow this run on JLA keeps sinking to new lows.

from Justice League International vol. 2 #54

"Deadly Liasions" / "Impostors" / "Lest Darkness Fall" / "Ambush" / "Inferno!", from Justice League International vol. 2 #53-57 (Aug.-Late Oct. 1993)
written by Gerard Jones & Will Jacobs; pencilled by Ron Randall and Mike Collins; inked by Randy Elliott, Aaron McClellan, Roy Richardson, and Romeo Tanghal; letters by Willie Schubert and Clem Robins; colors by Gene D'Angelo

Gerard Jones's run from JLE #37 to JLI #52 or so wasn't Great Art, but it was very much Solid Superhero Team Comics. Interesting characters, fun interactions, interesting villains, clever resolutions. Suddenly that goes away here. The first issue here is okayish, about Metamorpho following Crimson Fox to Paris. Fox's old boyfriend who she thought was dead turns out to be alive; he convinces her to fake her death to be with him. And she does. But why? I thought this was going somewhere, but it never does, she's just gone. What a weird way to write her out. But it's fun seeing Metamorpho kick up a storm in Paris; I love it when Jones makes up doofy European superheroes.

After this, though, things get very bad very quick. Lots of ideas that feel underbaked or dropped. Like, issue #54 is about everyone acting weirdly: Doctor Light puts on sexy lingerie to seduce Taz, for example. It turns out everyone has been replaced by robots, and they guy who did this is messing with their programming, and then he takes them to the future to fight in a war for him? Why? There's some attempt to make the conflict in the future philosophically interesting but the JLI just picks a side and fights people and none of the philosophy matters to that. Then the characters are back in the present day punching cultists?? And then it's over??? Kind of, anyway, all of these concepts will come back in future issues even thought they weren't worth devoting much time to to begin with.

Ralph and Sue (and, randomly, the ghost of Duke Donald) are written out at the end of issue #57. On the one hand, I'm grumpy because Ralph is literally my favorite; on the other hand, I'm glad my favorite character isn't around for the even worse issues to come. 

What was the problem? Was Gerard Jones losing steam? Or was editorial jerking him around? Probably both.

from Justice League Task Force #9

"Saturday Night's All Right for Fightin'!", from Justice League Task Force #9 (Feb. 1994), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by Jeph Loeb, pencilled by Greg LaRocque, inked by Kevin Conrad, lettered by Bob Pinaha, colored by Glenn Whitmore

This one-off JLTF issue is a followup to Bloodlines; Martian Manhunter is trying to enjoy an evening alone in the League's New York embassy (I think this is the first indication we get that he still resides there now that he leads the JLTF, actually) when some "New Bloods" turning up wanting training. He ends up working with them to defeat some parasites, and shenanigans ensue. It's mildly funny, but writer Jeph Loeb dedicating the issue to Keith Giffen was probably just dooming himself to being an also-ran when it comes to funny League stories. You can never make me care about the New Bloods, sorry guys.

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #86-88 of JLA, #58-64 of JLI, and #10-12 of JLTF. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Justice League #1-6 / Justice League International #7-12 (May 1987–Apr. 1988)
2. Justice League International #13-21 (May 1988–Dec. 1988)
3. Justice League International #22-25 / Justice League America #26-30 / Justice League Europe #1-6 (Jan. 1989–Sept. 1989) 
4. Justice League America #31-36 / Justice League Europe #7-12 (Oct. 1989–Mar. 1990)
5. Justice League America #37 / Justice League Europe #13-21 (Apr. 1990–Dec. 1990)
6. Justice League America #38-50 / Justice League Europe #22 (May 1990–May 1991)
7. Justice League America #51-52 / Justice League Europe #23-28 (Feb. 1991–July 1991) 
8. Justice League America #53-60 / Justice League Europe #29-36 (Aug. 1991–Mar. 1992) 
9. Justice League America #61-65 / Justice League Europe #37-42 (Apr. 1992–Sept. 1992)
10. Justice League America #66-69 / Justice League Europe #43-50 (Sept. 1992–May 1993) 
11. Justice League America #70-77 / Justice League Task Force #1-3 (Jan. 1993–Aug. 1993) 
12. Justice League America #78-83 / Justice League International #51-52 / Justice League Task Force #4-8 (June 1993–Jan. 1994)

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman by Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo

When I left off my JSA's project's original run back in 2023, it seemed to me that the JSA as we had known it up to 2011 was dead: in the era of the New 52, Earth-Two was reinvented was an alternate Earth invaded by Apokolips, and the idea of the JSA as 1940s forerunners of the Justice League was gone. I don't really follow DC continuity the way that I used to; if I had, I might have known that the JSA was being (or already had been) reinstated into DC continuity. There was a new Justice Society of America ongoing, but this was (I think) by Geoff Johns and I have no interest in seeing him do his third run on the title; I don't know why DC always thinks the way to revive a property for the present day is to hand it over to someone who first wrote for it thirty years ago. What I eventually discovered, though, is that part of what DC called the "New Golden Age" were three miniseries featuring JSA characters: the Jay Garrick Flash, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, and, of course, the Wesley Dodds Sandman. These looked interesting enough that I decided to pick up the trades, extending my immeasurably long JSA reading project to a mere fifty-seven installments.

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2023-24
Acquired: November 2025
Read: December 2025

Writer: Robert Venditti

Artist: Riley Rossmo

Colorist: Ivan Plascencia

Letterer: Tom Napolitano 

Back in the day, I read most of Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle's Sandman Mystery Theatre, the Vertigo series that chronicles Wesley Dodds's adventures as the original Sandman in the late 1930s. I didn't finish it, because at the time DC didn't have any collected editions that spanned the whole series (I think this has been rectified now). This made a lot of adjustments to Wesley Dodds lore, in particular regarding his relationship to his girlfriend Dian, making her almost a co-partner with him as the Sandman. Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo's interpretation of Wesley and Dian clearly owes a lot to Wagner and Seagle's—which I appreciate because of how good SMT was! Wesley and Dian are much as I remember in their relationship, while Wesley himself is that interesting combination of authoritative as the Sandman but nebbish as himself that worked so well in that series. According to my chronology notes, the last collected SMT story was set in 1939; this book takes place in 1940, so it seemingly even works as a long-delayed continuation of Sandman Mystery Theatre. Maybe someday I'll reread it in that context and see how it holds up. (The one thing I know it's missing, though, is an appearance by my favorite SMT character, Lieutenant Burke.)

The premise of this story is that Wesley has grown increasingly anxious about the war in Europe; he's haunted by how his own father was changed by the previous war, and wants to stop something like this from happening again. He develops the gases he uses as the Sandman for battlefield applications, trying to come up with a way that will help the Allies win the war with a minimum of enemy casualties... but along the way, he discovers some deadly gases too. The Army turns down his nonlethal gases, but it seems like someone might know the truth of who Wesley is and wants his lethal weaponry.

I've missed these two.
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #1

It's not quite the grounded tone of Sandman Mystery Theatre, but that's fine, this is its own thing, and Venditti and Rossmo do a great job with it. It's a bit more exaggerated, but in a way that really works; you get the horror of the premise without going full-on Vertigo. This is my first time encountering Rossmo's work, and I liked it a lot. Sort of darkly cartoony, enhanced by some great atmospheric coloring from Ivan Plascencia.

Possibly the only way to ever get me to think it's okay to use Sandy is to use him as a dark omen of a foreboding future... just never as an actual character.
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #4

The story is a bit noirish, a bit detetectiveish, though not terribly complicated or surprising; if you thing it through a bit, you won't be surprised by much that happens. I didn't mind, though, because it hit all the notes I wanted from a story like this. Some dark turns, some investigating, some nightmares, some good fights. It's very much character- and theme-driven, which feels like all too much a rarity in contemporary superhero comics. The glimpses of Wesley's future and past are both very well done.

C'mon, give me volume 2!
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #6

I think DC's "New Golden Age" initiative is already over, alas, because I would gladly read a second miniseries or even an ongoing from this team. I hope these takes get picked up somewhere!

This post is the fifty-fifth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Jay Garrick: The Flash. Previous installments are listed below: