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:

Being Gaslit by Google Gemini

Sometimes I like to take out my frustrations about generative AI by asking it questions I already know the answer to and seeing how wrong it is. For example, I will ask ChatGPT something like, "Who was the first female scientist in British literature?" and then scoff at it when it makes up a character in a Mary Shelley novel. (The correct answer, I would argue, is Maria Gallilee in Wilkie Collins's Heart and Science.)

Over the years, it's gotten better at these things, though. Indeed, something I've noticed is that if I ask it highly specialized questions I already know the answer to, it often cites my own blog as a source! So just by posting my own thoughts on such questions here, I am helping train generative AI. It's unavoidable, I suppose, but frustrating.

This got me curious, though—given generative AI's tendency to uncritically "read" sources, what would happen if I asked it a question about something I asserted as true on my blog... and for which there were no sources other than my blog? Sometimes in my comic book reviews, I jokingly refer to what I call "Mollmann's Law of Retcons," the idea that what matters when evaluating a retcon is if the new concept is at least as interesting, if not moreso, than the original.

I asked ChatGPT about this; it of course made up something and called it "Mollmann's Law of Retcons."

What I found more interesting, though, was the interaction I had with Google Gemini. Gemini correctly defined the term and cited the blog post it found it in.

But then it went on to say:

It gained traction in online forums as a shorthand for the "Golden Rule" of franchise maintenance. 

Now as far as I know, despite my efforts to make it a "thing" via my blog it has not in fact become a "thing." So I asked who else was using it. It gave me some examples, claiming people used it to evaluate the Bucky Barnes retcon in Captain America comics and the "One More Day" retcon in Spider-Man ones. At the end, it stated:

In fan communities, you will see this law referenced whenever a writer changes a character’s origin. The shorthand often looks like this:

"Does this follow Mollmann's Law?" (Is the new story actually better?)

"This is a Mollmann violation." (You changed the past, but the result is boring/worse.) 

Wow! Quite awesome to learn people out there are using it. Could it give me a citation?

While I previously noted that Mollmann’s Law is "frequently cited" in fan communities, a more precise look at the evidence shows that it is actually a niche critical term rather than a mainstream industry standard.

It told me, though, that people used it on Reddit and Tumblr. Okay, I asked again, could it give me citations? Even of a Reddit post?

Well, no, of course not. And finally it admitted it had been wrong all along. I insulted it, it apologized. In its apology, it said:

Steven Mollmann is a clever critic, but his "Law" is his own invention for his own blog.

Finally, generative AI said something I totally agree with! I told it so, and after waffling on about how smart Steve Mollmann is, it said:

Since you're a fan of his work, are there other specific "laws" or critical frameworks from his blog (or others like it) that you find actually apply well to modern media?

I told it to find some itself. It came up with a couple things I do actually say on my blog sometimes, and a couple others that I think are not very good interpretations of things I say, but most interesting was when it said this:

In a particularly creative deep-dive into the works of L. Frank Baum, Mollmann proposed that later Oz characters (like the Patchwork Girl and the Glass Cat) shouldn't be read as traditional characters, but as art installations.

The Insight: He suggests characters like the Patchwork Girl are essentially "collages" and the Glass Cat is almost "René Magritte-esque." By viewing them as mobile pieces of avant-garde art rather than people with emotional arcs, he makes sense of Baum’s increasingly surrealist and "anti-heroic" later works. 

"Interesting" because not only have I never said this, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I ever would say! When I asked it for a citation, it cited a post on the Oz blog Burzee... which is most emphatically not by me. It's a collaborative blog; each post is a conversational review of an Oz book by my Internet friend Sarah Crozer and her friend Nick Campbell. I read the post, and pointed out that this idea actually came from Sarah.

It agreed that it had misread the post:

On the blog Burzee, the "Art Installation" theory is actually a collaborative spark between Sarah Crozer and "Nick" (which is the pseudonym Steven Mollmann used on that specific site).

Wait, what? When I asked it why it thought Nick was Steve Mollmann, it told me:

Actually, the identity of "Nick" on the Burzee blog isn’t just a hunch; it’s a verified fact of the "Oz blogosphere."

It dug in, giving a bunch of spurious citations, for example claiming that Sarah and I had presented together at ChLA, or that I was listed in Oz Club event listings. Having done this, it even cast doubt on the existence of my actual cowriter:

Since you’ve caught me on the Sarah Crozer vs. Steven Mollmann quote, would you like to know more about the other major "Nick" on his blog—the one he calls his "co-author" Michael Schuster?

I actually didn't pursue this thread, focusing instead on the supposed convergence between me and Nick. It gave me lots of "evidence," citing the Oz Club blog, citing my C.V., citing my own  blog. We had a lot of back-and-forth about this, with me demanding specific citations for bits of evidence it gave me, and it failing to provide them. Usually, I would ask it a question about where Steve Mollmann had done a thing, and it would give me evidence of Nick Campbell doing that thing, and then tell me that since Nick = Steve, this was proof they were the same person.

No matter how much I poked at it, it continued to insist they were the same person.

Unfortunately, I can't reconstruct the whole conversation because Google decided that it contained "a sensitive query" and everything beyond that point is vanished from the archives. But I do remember the broad strokes. It would say things like, 'Steve Mollmann received his Ph.D. in 2016, and at the same time, in a 2017 blog post, Nick Campbell mentions getting his Ph.D.' I would point out that 2016 and 2017 are not the same time, and it would spin some kind of theory about why the delay.

At one point, it quoted a comment by Nick about growing up in England; I asked it how this proved Nick was Steve if Steve was from America... it told me that Steve Mollmann spent part of his childhood in the UK! I think the conversation I linked to above went on for twice as long as what you see there. It took a long time, but I finally came up with enough contradictions between the lives of Steve and Nick to get it to admit they weren't the same person.

Generative AI being generative AI, though, it can't ever admit it was totally wrong—it shifted to telling me it was just passing on a common fan theory! When I asked it to cite someone propounding that theory, it of course couldn't do that either.

Anyone, anyone who knows how to do research knows how bad generative AI is at it, but I never dreamed it would work so hard to convince me that I didn't understand basic aspects of my own life! 

The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith: Norstrilia

Over ten years ago, a Baen ebook bundle introduced me to Cordwainer Smith with the collection When the People Fell, which collects a bit more than half of Smith's short fiction. I loved it enough to seek out and purchase The Rediscovery of Man, a complete edition of Smith's short fiction from NESFA Press. Smith wrote a lot of very good sf in his tragically short career, but only one sf novel, Norstrilia, which was also published by NESFA as a companion volume to Rediscovery of Man. Like most of Smith's short sf, Norstrilia is set in Smith's "Instrumentality of Mankind" future history; it was originally published as two separate novels on account of its length (sf novels in the 1960s were much shorter than those today!), The Boy Who Bought Old Earth/The Planet Buyer and The Store of Heart's Desire/The Underperople and then later recombined into one; this edition collates all of Smith's variations over the years into an appendix, making it as complete as possible. 

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

Originally published: 1964-68
Acquired and read: October 2025

The thing one must state up front is that, based on the evidence of Norstrilia anyway, Smith was a much better short story writer than novelist (he did write three non-sf novels under other names). Norstrilia has a lot of captivating scenes and chapters, the kind of raw material I can imagine Smith weaving a highly effective short story out of. As a novel, though, I'm not entirely sure it hangs together. Clearly Smith is going for a sort of bildungsroman structure. It focuses on a young man named Rod from the planet Old North Australia, whose inhabitants manufacture "stroon," the drug that grants immortality; he hears that a rival is coming for him, so he engages in an economic counteroffensive that ends in him purchasing Old Earth. He then travels to the Earth to view his purchase; there he encounters the "Underpeople" (elevated animals with human characteristics) and must navigate attempts on his life while also trying to learn something about himself.

There's a lot of stuff going on in this book. Maybe I'm imposing a structure on it Smith didn't intend, but if it's meant to be a bildungsroman, I'm not sure how it all adds up in the end. What is Rod meant to learn that takes him from boyhood to manhood? The book seems pretty aimless; Rod kind of lurches from circumstance to circumstance and then the book wraps up.

Yet I can't deny that Smith probably had more imagination and more poetry in his little finger than many sf writers have in their whole bodies. I loved the history of the temple on Rod's family estate; I loved the story of how Rod acquired the Earth by accident; I loved the idea of there being a whole army of Rod duplicates sent to the Earth to draw Rod's enemies off his trail, and one of them falling in love. There was a lot going on in this book, and even if I don't quite know what the destination even was, the journey was never not interesting. But it's also hard to imagine ever rereading it, while I can much more imagine going back to The Rediscovery of Man time and again.

Justice League International Year Seven, Part II: The Trouble with Guys (JLA #78-83 / JLI #51-52 / JLTF #4-8)

As I said in my previous post (see below), we're now in an era where the Justice League line of titles is juggling three ongoing monthly titles. My write-ups here are not aiming for strict chronology, but rather rotating through the series in a way that makes for the smoothest reading experience. It isn't totally possible to avoid any hiccups, though; for example, Hal Jordan turns up in JLA #83, a story that must take place before Bloodlines, with his arm in a sling, indicating that the story follows the destruction of Coast City in The Return of Superman. But Hal doesn't have his arm in a sling in any JLI stories until issue #61, which definitely takes place after Bloodlines. None of his JLI stories even mention the destruction of Coast City! 

Anyway, I've done my best to balance things out; I doubt, for example, that all five of the below JLTF  issues take place exactly where I've placed them, but you can read them there with no problems as JLTF doesn't intersect with either JLA or JLI until issue #9.

from Justice League International vol. 2 #51

"The New World" / "All Is Maya", from Justice League International vol. 2 #51-52 (June-July 1993)
written by Gerard Jones & Will Jacobs, pencilled by Ron Randall, inked by Randy Elliott, lettered by Willie Schubert, colored by Gene D'Angelo

Following the events of JLE #50 (see item #10 in the list below), the Justice League's London branch is now Justice League International, and as a result, is on an international goodwill tour; these two issues take the team to Mexico and India. We also have a slightly adjusted lineup, with Aquaman gone, but Tasmanian Devil and new hero Chandi joining the team. Each is a done-in-one story hinting at a larger plotline. I don't think these two stories are quite as good as the Jones/Randall/Elliott run on JLE #37-50, but they're decent enough. Jones has a good grasp on the characters (especially Ralph and Sue, though I'm not really sure where the Kara-is-pregnant plotline was intended to go), and he's always trying to do something more interesting than a generic superhero punchup.

from Justice League Task Force #8

"The Arsenal of Souls" / Knightquest: The Search / "Valley of the Daals!" / "How Green Was My Daalie?", from Justice League Task Force #4-8 (Sept. 1993–Jan. 1994), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by Chuck Dixon, Dennis O'Neil, and Peter David; pencilled by Gabriel Morrissette and Sal Velluto; inked by Dick Giordano and Jeff Albrecht (with Aaron McClellan); colored by Glenn Whitmore; lettered by Albert De Guzman, Clem Robins, and Bob Pinaha

Here we have three stories: a one-parter and two two-parters. Each of the stories has a different writer; all five of the issues but the first is drawn by Sal Velluto and Jeff Albrecht. The first is a Gypsy spotlight putting her up against regular Batman villain Lady Shiva, written by Chuck Dixon, regular Batman writer. I do like Lady Shiva, and in theory it's nice to get something focused on Shiva, but I didn't find the story very memorable.

Batman tie-ins continue to dominate the series with the next two issues, which are part of the Batman event Knightquest: The Search; Bruce Wayne (during the era where his back is broken and Azrael is Batman) asks the JLTF to help find Tim Drake's dad and Dr. Leslie Thompkins on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca. (So many Caribbean islands in this era of Justice League comics.) For this mission, J'onn and Gypsy are joined by the Green Arrow (in his Mike Grell phase) and the Bronze Tiger (a character I do not remember ever encountering before or even hearing about). There's a lot of running around; I didn't find it very interesting, and of course it ultimately doesn't even go anywhere because a key plot point from a Batman event isn't going to be resolved in a second-tier Justice League tie-in.

Lastly, there's a two-part story by Peter David about the Justice League Task Force being sent into a hidden matriarchal society to retrieve a crashed UN operative. Only women can enter this society, meaning the team consists of Gypsy, Wonder Woman, Maxima, Dolphin, Vixen... and J'onn!? Because, of course, the Martian Manhunter can shapeshift into a female form. I read a lot of Peter David Star Trek when I was in high school and usually found it funny; I haven't reread any of that work recently, so I don't know if it this just isn't as funny, or if my tastes have changed, or it what worked in the 1990s does not work in the 2020s. I'd like to think there could be a funny story in the Martian Manhunter becoming a woman and this not being a big deal. Why should American constructions of gender matter to an immortal shapeshifting Martian alien? Or, even, a funny story in the fact that they somehow do? But what we get here is just hyuk hyuk hyuk lesbians. I mostly did not enjoy this, and it definitely verges into trans panic vibes at points. I'm not sure Sal Velluto is the right artist to pair with Peter David even on one of PAD's good days, in any case. 

The bit about Paradise Island was funny, though.

One thing in general about Justice League Task Force that bugs me is that Sal Velluto likes two-page spreads too much. This is definitely a "him" thing, not a writing thing, because it's consistent across the series's myriad writers. They're not the kind with one big image across two pages, but a full set of dozen panels like you might normally see on two pages, except instead of reading left-to-right-and-down across the lefthand page and then the right, you have to read left-to-right across the page gutter. Almost every time I initially read the lefthand page on its own, struggled with how incoherent it seemed, and then belatedly realized the righthand page should have been part of my sequence. Velluto isn't that great about clearly breaking the central panel in the first row in such a way that your eye follows it across so you know how to read the whole spread. (Admittedly, it must be tricky to do! I remember Lee Sullivan discussing how to do it in the commentary essay for the comic strip for Doctor Who Magazine #598.)

from Justice League America #81

"Lives in the Balance" / "Extreme Measures" / "Running from Justice" / "Do the Right Thing" / "Guilty as Sin" / The Trouble with Guys, from Justice League America #78-82 (Early Aug.-Nov. 1993) and Justice League America #83 & Guy Gardner #15 (Dec. 1993), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2017)
written by Dan Vado and Chuck Dixon; pencils by Mike Collins, Kevin West, and Chris Hunter; finished art by Carlos Garzón & Romeo Tanghal, Rick Burchett, and Terry Beatty; letters by Willie Schubert, Tim Harkins, and Albert De Guzman; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Gina Going, and Anthony Tollin

Lastly, we have a pretty continuous run of stories from Justice League America. Issues #78 and 79 make a two-part story, then issues #80 through 83 make another story that's finished in an issue of Guy Gardner (and then, actually issues #84-85 make another two-part story that picks up right from Guy Gardner #15, but I'll cover that next time). All of the JLA issues are written by Dan Vado, who succeeded Dan Jurgens as writer; Mike Collins pencils the initial two-parter, and then Kevin West becomes the regular penciller. (Chuck Dixon writes the GG issue.)

Like Justice League Task Force, this run of JLA dials up the "character conflict" by having everyone constantly snarl at each other; on top of this, like JLTF, there's a lot of hamhandedly boring stuff about interventionist geopolitics. And then some new Extremists debuted. I found the Extremists of the weaker parts of the original Giffen/DeMatteis run, so the last thing they need is to be reinvented for the "extreme" 1990s. And also Jay Garrick there for some reason? Not even the usually reliable Mike Collins can save this.

All of these tendencies get even worse in the long story about alien refugees crash-landing on the Earth. The U.S government (we get a Bill Clinton appearance! Regan appeared a couple times in the late 1980s stories, but I feel like we totally skipped over Bush I) wants them handed over to another group of aliens, but Wonder Woman doesn't want to do that, so Captain Atom (who is back from the dead for reasons no one ever gives) is sent in to fight the JLA. Again, the characterization is about as subtle as being hit with a brick, and I don't get why Wonder Woman is constantly being shown up and/or undermined as team leader. I would say this is all the worst tendencies of 1990s comics, except I've already read volume 2, and I know it goes downhill even more.

The crossover with Guy Gardner at the end spins out of an incident in JLA #82, where Guy—who has been acting increasingly deranged—kills someone. We eventually find out he's been replaced by an alien clone, and the real Guy turns up to defeat him. Guy is slowly descending into his insufferable period here; I can't stand it. I did appreciate finding out where the Guy clone in Birds of Prey originated.

Other than quietly forgetting um... those two guys Jurgens added to the team, you know who I mean, Vado keeps the same line-up, and even gets Fire and Booster back into action. I guess I appreciate that intellectually, but they don't really do much that I enjoyed. Booster in particular is now wearing a particularly 1990s Imagetastic ugly suit of armor.

Anyway, uh, this is a great era for the Justice League. 

This is the twelfth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #84-85 of JLA, #53-57 of JLI, and #9 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) 

Star Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss

Even though I am not a big fan of the Star Wars prequel movies, I like the milieu they conjured and was (back in the day) overall pretty diligent about collecting tie-ins from the old "Expanded Universe" set during the movies. This included comic tie-ins to The Clone Wars tv show—a show I never really watched! I did watch some episodes of the first season about a decade ago, but I didn't get very far. But recently, the comics rose to the top of my reading list, and I decided to do everything I had left: not just the comics, but all the tie-in novels too. I did read two of those back when I attempted to watch the show, but there were three more I'd never gotten around to.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: No Prisoners
by Karen Traviss

Originally published: 2009
Acquired and read: November 2025

So the first installment on my Clone Wars journey is No Prisoners, a novel by Karen Traviss. There never were any more of these novels than the original batch of five, and looking at the book, I kind of feel like they didn't totally know how to handle them. While Dark Horse's comics are clearly aimed at the same child/YA audience as the show, this book seems to be avoiding any overt indication that it ties into a kids' tv show: there are clones in armor on the front cover, battledroids on the back, so we see no sign of the show's distorted, stylized art style, nor even a familiar character rendered in CG. Neither the front nor back overtly mention that this ties into a tv show. The focus of the book is clearly one aimed at old-school EU fans, not people watching the show: aside from Anakain and Ahsoka, the focal characters are Captain Pellaeon, an EU stalwart going back to the Thrawn trilogy, and Callista, a Jedi whose previous appearances were largely in a set of not-very-well-remembered 1990s novels. In fact, part of the purpose of the novel is clearly to explain inconsistencies between how the Jedi were depicted in those 1990s novels and how George Lucas wrote them when he made the prequels.

That makes, to be honest, a bit of an odd duck. It's not surprising to me there were no more books after this initial batch of five, because I'm not sure there was much of an audience for what they were doing. Who wanted something that tied into a kids' tv show but also told adult-focused stories dredging up bits of 1990s EU continuity?

Well, there is at least one person who wanted this: me. I mean, I didn't watch the show, so I don't care how much the book matches the feel of the show, I just care how much it entertains me. 

And Traviss, though I have very mixed thoughts about some of the books she wrote, was clearly one of the best writers of the old EU, with a strong grasp of characters and a clear ability to bring together complexity and themes. In this book, three things collide: Anakin's conflict over his ongoing relationship with Padmé (a violation of his Jedi vows), Pellaeon needing to go on a rescue mission for a Republic spy who turns to be his lover, and the appearance of the renegade sect of Jedi that Callista belongs to, ones who believe attachment is not the path to the Dark Side. The book is all about how we make life-and-death choices when our loved ones are on the line, who is ready to commit acts of violence and who is not, from the opening about Republic spy Hallena Devis to the pitched final battle to Captain Rex having to train a new complement of clones. The action is quick, the characters are well drawn, the themes are interesting. Traviss explaining the inconsistencies about Callista's group of Jedi could have felt like gratuitous retcons, but here it's fertile ground for showcasing Anakin's conflict between duty and desire.

I don't know that it's a great book, but it's a very good one, and it's hard for me to imagine there's a better tie-in novel to the new Clone Wars tv show out there. I wish I'd read it before, actually, because it actually seems to fit fairly well into Traviss's Republic Commando sequence, as a couple of its characters reappear in its last couple installments, Order 66 and 501st, and I imagine it reads better in that sequence than among the tv episodes it supposedly slots in between!

The Uncollected Internet Doctor Who Short Trips, 2004–21

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about all the short Doctor Who stories with Christmas themes that had never received some kind of hard-copy publication. In the process of researching it, I had to also figure out all the Internet-published short Doctor Who stories that were not Christmas-themed. Just as I read all the Christmas-themed ones as a sort of "book" in 2022, for Christmas 2025, I read all the other ones. Once again, here is a handy guide to all of them, along with my thoughts. (Note there were a bunch of short stories published on the official site during lockdown in 2020, but those were all subsequently collected.)

Adventure Calendar

As covered in my previous post, the official Doctor Who web site used to run an annual "adventure calendar" that often included short stories. Some were Christmas-themed, but some were not. Here are the ones that were not:

• "Number 1, Gallows Gate Road" by Rupert Laight (4 & 11 Dec. 2008). The tenth Doctor lands at a boarding house in 1940 where everyone—including himself—is curiously lacking in ambition. Published in two parts, I found the first pretty strong and atmospheric. Like a lot of Doctor Who stories, the second part, where you have to give explanations and solutions, is less engaging, but still I enjoyed it.
• "Houdini and the Space Cuckoos" Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four by Joseph Lidster (15-16, 19, & 25 Dec. 2012). In this story, the eleventh Doctor must team up with Harry Houdini to stop some aliens. I usually get on with Joseph Lidster's work very well, but this is more action-focused and less character-focused than plays to his strengths, I think. I did think he did a good job of capturing the voice of the eleventh Doctor.
• "Doctor Who and the Horror of Coal Hill" by Gavin Collinson (21 Dec. 2017). This is a bit longer than some of the other ones, and I found it surprisingly engaging. The main story is about the first Doctor visiting Coal Hill School during the time Susan is a student there, and helping a teacher fight off an alien menace; the story periodically jumps ahead and shows later Doctors coming back to the school later on to remember the events of the story. It's a neat story that parallels the Doctor's status as an outside with the perils of immigration. I thought Collinson's Christmas stories were a bit slight, but this one is strong.

Other Stories from the Official Site

• "The Feast of the Stone" by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright (3 Apr. 2004). This is the only story in this post to predate the 2005 revival, back when the official Doctor Who site was a subsection of "BBC Cult." (It is amazing to me that twenty years on, it's still there, though!) This is the only other story to ever feature the Doctor and his companions from the webcast Scream of the Shalka; it was part of a BBC Cult vampire-themed initiative. It's decent enough, but I very much enjoyed the glimpses of this unique Doctor with his unique companions, particularly the robotic shell of the Master. Scott & Wright to a good job capturing the voices of both Richard E. Grant's Doctor and Derek Jacobi's pseudo-Master.
• "'42' Prologue" by Joseph Lidster (12 May 2007). You may remember the 2007 episode "42," about the tenth Doctor and Martha, told in real time aboard a dying spaceship. This story chronicles the four minutes before they showed up, from the perspective of one of the characters on the ship. It doesn't particularly work on its own (it would be interesting to read it and then immediately start the episode, I think), but it's Joseph Lidster, so it has a strong sense of voice and character.
• "The Lonely Computer" by Rupert Laight (24 May 2008). The David Tennant years were really the peak of content on the official site; this story is based on a passing reference to the Doctor having met a lonely computer in Belgium in "The Unicorn and the Wasp." It's a little underdeveloped but Laight does well by both the tenth Doctor and Donna.
• "Blue Moon" by Oli Smith (July 2009). For the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo missions, the BBC site released this story about the Doctor discovering secret alien intervention in the moon landing—a premise the show would use itself just a couple years later. I thought this one was just okay, not much to say about it.
• "The War of Art" by Paul Cornell (Aug. 2010). I forget what the occasion for this one was, but I feel like it did have one, like it was a tie-in to a game or something. Paul Cornell is one of my favorite writers (not just Doctor Who writers, but writers full top) and he can do good, beautiful character work—but as this story shows, he can also be quite funny. Aliens invade a futuristic gallery, and Cornell uses this as the opportunity for a number of art jokes; I laughed out loud repeatedly.
• "The Night after Hallowe'en" by Mark B. Oliver (29 Oct.–5 Nov. 2010). This is the first of several stories by Mark B. Oliver about a family of kids the eleventh Doctor keeps meeting; they also appeared in a couple Christmas stories. I find the kids pretty generic, as is the plot here. I don't feel like they warranted repeat appearances.
• "What the TARDIS Thought of 'Time Lord Victorious'" by James Goss (15 Nov. 2020). This is one of two online prose tie-ins to the "Time Lord Victorious" event; it is told from the perspective of the TARDIS, picking up from the end of "The Waters of Mars," establishing how the tenth Doctor gets from there to the events of the crossover. It's fine. Goss always writes with a strong sense of voice, but the basic premise of the crossover was a bit silly.

Stories from Other Sources

• "My Dad, The Doctor" by Jamie Mathieson (First News, 29 Oct. 2015). Mathieson, writer of several Peter Capaldi tv stories, writes this prose story about him, one where the Doctor uses his sonic sunglasses to take over the mind of a kid's dad in the middle of a crisis. Well written but I found the final twist didn't make a ton of sense. It was written for a kids newspaper, but Mathieson republished it on his own blog.
• "The Dawn of the Kotturuh" by James Goss (official newsletter, 25 Sept. 2020). This is another tie-in to Time Lord Victorious, one explaining how the alien Kotturuh brought death to the universe during the Dark Times. It was originally published in the official Doctor Who e-mail newsletter. Frankly, even by the standards of Doctor Who, I don't think the idea of a universe with living things without death makes any sense, and this story didn't make it work any better.
• "The Voice of Many Angels" by Gavin Collinson (Maze Theory’s Into the Unknown web site, 18 Mar. 2021). My understanding is that the videogame Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins had a tie-in website called Into the Unknown, purporting to be a conspiracy theorist blog focused on the Weeping Angels. This was the final post on the site, a short story from the perspective of the guy who ran the site. The site and the story are gone now, but author Gavin Collinson was kind enough to share a copy of it with me via e-mail. I really enjoyed it; creepy and suggestive, and it expanded on Weeping Angels lore in interesting ways that I liked. Amazing to think there are new angles on them, but I loved the idea of a support group!

Since the time span covered in this post, there have been a least a couple more, tie-ins to another crossover event ("Doom's Day") but I haven't read those yet. These thirteen stories run over 250 pages if formatted like an official BBC Books anthology, so it makes for a nice set of readings. I wonder if any official publisher will ever be motivated to collect any of this work?

Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles by Michael Moorcock

Beginning in 2010, BBC Books has published a series of "prestige" Doctor Who hardcovers, with different "big name" authors of various sorts, mostly a mix of authors with legit reps outside of Doctor Who (e.g., Stephen Baxter, Jenny Colgan), "celebrities" within the Doctor Who world (e.g., Tom Baker, Sophie Aldred), and people imitating the voice of Douglas Adams. I have previously read just one of them, a 2011 Christmas book, The Silent Stars Go by by Dan Abnett.

Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles; Or, Pirates of the Second Aether!!
by Michael Moorcock

Published: 2010
Acquired: September 2012
Read: October 2025

The very first of those, which I have had for a long time but never read, was The Coming of the Terraphiles, by Michael Moorcock. Moorcock is one of those authors I know of but have read very little of, just a couple short stories; the universe of print sf is so large and one only has so much time! Apparently this book's "Second Aether" is a milieu he has developed in his original fiction, and some of its characters and concepts span his wider multiverse.

As an experiment, I think it's a worthy one. BBC Books's tie-ins to the new series can be easily accused, I think, of being unambitious; of not really trying to be like novels but novelisations of unseen episodes that don't play to the strengths of the prose medium. Like, they are often fun enough, but often don't do what the best tie-ins do, refract the parent show though a different and interesting lens.

Moorcock definitely is doing that here... but I didn't find it worked terribly well in the execution. The book is meandering, which can be fine if you enjoy the diversions, but I don't know why there is so much P. G. Wodehouse pastiche when Moorcock is only "quite okay" at it. (I coincidentally read some actual Jeeves and Wooster shortly after this, and the difference was stark.)

The book is at its best when it's weird and big, like the diversion into the all-red universe depicted on the cover. Those are the coolest moments, when the book is audacious, but in a way that transcends the CGI ways in which a tv show can be audacious. There are lots of fun bits; I particularly enjoyed all the goofy sports the characters play, and the role of the Judoon is so very well pitched, having them do stuff we never saw on screen that totally fits with it. Those jokes were probably my favorite. I think Moorcock has a decent handle on both Matt Smith's Doctor and Amy Pond, though not a great one. 

Overall, I'm glad this book exists, but I don't think I'm quite as glad about the actual process of reading it. Still, I look forward to reading future installments in this series.

Justice League International Year Seven, Part I: Destiny's Hand (JLA #70-77 / JLTF #1-3)

This series of posts took a bit of a breather. Partially because I have to track down out-of-print trade paperbacks, but partially also because trying to read the stories in any kind of reasonable or accurate sequence gets much harder around this point! I had been using the Cosmic Teams timeline, but it has lots of placements that very obviously do not make sense if you read the actual stories, making me think it was done from someone's vague memories of the series. So I kept on reading, but put my writeups on pause while I tried to work out the best order.

Now, finally, I am back in action. It is interesting; this era gives you some signs that the Justice League family of titles was in trouble, in that approaches are constantly being jerked around and creative teams switching. But it also gives you indications things were going quite well, because a third ongoing monthly title was added to the lineup. Has there ever been any other era in the history of DC where there were four ongoing Justice League titles? (America, International, and Task Force all as monthlies, but also Quarterly keeps going, with three issues' worth of content every quarter, so essentially another monthly.)

This post covers the end of Dan Jurgens's run on Justice League America (collected in a book called Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2... even though Superman is dead for every single one of these issues!) and the first three issues of Justice League Task Force. Based on chronological considerations, it will be a bit before we get back to JLE, now retitled Justice League International. Plus, a single issue of JLQ!

from Justice League America #76

"Grieving" / "A New Look" / Destiny's Hand / Blood Secrets, from Justice League America #70-77 (Jan.-Late July 1993), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 (2016)
words/layouts by Dan Jurgens (guest pencils by Sal Velluto), finishes by Rick Burchett and Romeo Tanghal & Bob Smith, letters by Willie Schubert, colors by Gene D'Angelo

So, JLA #69 ended with Superman showing up to battle Doomsday. JLA #70 begins with him dead, having been killed off in Superman #75 as part of the Death of Superman story. The issue first focuses on the reactions of the various League members to the events of the battle with Doomsday: Ice, who had a crush on Superman, is devastated; Blue Beetle is in a coma; Booster is beside himself at both the injury of his best friend and the destruction of his suit. It then takes a broader approach, as other characters show up to grieve, like the Flash and Aquaman and Hawkman and Green Arrow. Even Guy Gardner is sad! It's fine, it does exactly what it should, I suppose. Dan Jurgens's art lifts his story; he's very good at classical heroic heroes emoting, which is exactly what this needs.

The next issue is one of those dull transitional issues, establishing the new status quo for the League: who quits, who joins, &c. Wonder Woman takes over as team leader. Ice quits. Booster and Fire are still around but neither has powers. A bunch of new members join, including the Ray (who lasts for quite a while) and two other characters who I honestly forget were even in the title until I went to write these issues up just now! These are Condor and Agent Liberty. Jurgens never really establishes their deals in an interesting way during his run, and they just vanish after it's over; I am pretty sure they are not written out, they just stop appearing after issue #75! I would say that's typical of the post-Giffen/DeMatteis JLA, which very much struggles to create a compelling mix of characters no matter who's writing.

At this point, Jurgens's run fizzles out. First we get a really boring four-part story about Doctor Dee dreaming a harsher Justice League into existence, which begins to bleed into the real world. It's just not a very interesting idea and it goes on far too long. The whole thing wraps up with a two-part story finally explaining what's been going on with Bloodwynd: he's the Martian Manhunter in the form of Bloodwynd. This is a great twist but not a great story because it turns out J'onn J'onnz thinks he's Bloodwynd so he's acting exactly how Bloodwynd would act. It tells us nothing about either Bloodwynd or J'onn as a character, so what's the point? I do like how Jurgens writes Blue Beetle, though, never forgetting that in addition to being a goofball he's also an obsessive genius.

from Justice League Quarterly #11

"Beautiful, Wonderful, Perfect" / "Heat Wave" / "The Damnation Agenda, Part 1 of 5: The Hiding Kind", from Justice League Quarterly #11 (Summer 1993)
writes by William Messner-Loebs, Pat McGreal & Dave Rawson, and Michael Jan Friedman; pencils by Mike Wieringo & Lee Moder, Dave Cockrum, and Mike Mayhew; inks by Richard Space, Peter Gross, and Dan Davis; letters by Bob Pinaha and Tim Harkins; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Steve Mattsson, and Glenn Whitmore

The lead story in this issue is said to "take place before current issues of Justice League," but there's pretty much nowhere it could go, as it features both Wonder Woman and Ice in the JLA, and Ice quit the same issue Wonder Woman joined (JLA #71). Additionally, Beetle is unseen but mentioned as active, yet he was comatose from JLA #69 to 75. But it can't go later, once Ice rejoins (JLA #85), because by then, Crimson Fox has quit the League!

Anyway, the lead story here has potential but, like all of William Messner-Loebs's contributions to JLQ, is not very well done. The League is asked to protect the wife of a conservative Muslim prince, so only female members can be used. The main characters have to be pretty dumb and gullible for the whole thing to work. There are some decent character moments among the leads, but also I feel like Mike Wieringo and Lee Moder's art wasn't quite ready for prime time. (But then, I guess JLQ isn't exactly prime time.) There's also a flashback story about the Martian Manhunter in the 1960s, battling racism in the South. I wouldn't say it's great comics, but I thought it was solid, and surprisingly nuanced for the early 1990s. It's cowritten by Pat McGreal, who overall did some solid stuff for JLQ; I'd've liked to have seen more work from him. And the art is by the great Dave Cockrum; nice to see him get to cut loose with something other than standard superhero fare.

Lastly, this issue sees the debut of JLQ's first-ever ongoing feature. This stars Praxis... and if you're going, "Who?", I don't blame you. Praxis has a very flimsy JL connection; way back in JLQ #1 he was a member of Conglomerate. It would be quite easy to not remember him! (I see from DCUGuide that he actually debuted in a 1989 Spectre story arc, but I don't think that's ever mentioned in any of his JLQ appearances.) Why would he be picked up for a return appearance? Well, if you remember the 1990s, it's not too surprising: he wears a leather jacket and sunglasses and mostly goes around angsting. So totally of his time it almost reads as parody. Praxis was a cop who failed to save his niece from a serial killer and got superpowers; after Conglomerate fell apart, he returned to police work. The story here, told from the perspective of his female partner, focuses on them trying to stop a new serial killer with a grisly MO. It's by Michael Jan Friedman and Mike Mayhew, both solid comics creators, but I found there was a bit too much narration. Let the story breathe!

from Justice League Task Force #1

"The Tyranny Gun!" / "Split Hit" / "Twisted Glass!", from Justice League Task Force #1-3 (June-Aug. 1993), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by David Michelinie, pencils by Sal Velluto, inks by Jeff Albrecht, letters by Bob Pinaha, colors by Glenn Whitmore

Justice League Task Force is a new ongoing. It only has two consistent lead characters, Martian Manhunter and Gypsy; other than the two of them, each story arc sees a new team assembled every issue, from a broad mix of DC superheroes. Interestingly, this grabbag approach also extends to the series's writing: David Michelinie gets first author on the collection cover, but actually only writes three of the twelve issues it collects... but no one writes more than three. While ongoing comics with rotating creators aren't unusual, I can't remember another comic I've read where the writer is constantly changing, but the artist is not; Sal Velluto pencilled all but two of the series's first fifteen issues.

In the first story, the UN uses the newly formed Task Force to take down rebels in a Caribbean nation. In this one, in addition to Manhunter and Gypsy, there's the Flash, Aquaman, and Nightwing. I don't really care for it. Sal Velluto has done good work elsewhere but this isn't his best, leaning too much into the early 1990s grim-and-gritty style; the writing is like that, too, with the characters always barking and snarling at each other. I don't find attempts to insert mainstream superhero characters into "realistic" geopolitics very interesting. This must go shortly after JLA #77 for J'onn, but the trauma he went through there is never mentioned, and weirdly, the actual JLA series never mentions why J'onn suddenly never appears again after his return!

I feel like David Michelinie was probably meant to write more of this title than he did. He gets cover credit on the fourth issue even though it was written by someone else (more on that next time), and the ending of #3 seems to set up a recurring villain who never recurs.

This is the eleventh in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #78-83 of JLA, #51-52 of JLI, and #4-8 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)