Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: The Furies by Mike Carey and John Bolton

11 July 2022

The Furies by Mike Carey and John Bolton

The Sandman Presents: The Furies

Originally published: 2002
Acquired: February 2022
Read: March 2022

Writer: Mike Carey

Artist: John Bolton
Letterer: Todd Klein

I read this over a decade ago in its context as a Sandman story. Now, I return to it with a new context: a JSA-adjacent story. Specifically, a story of Lyta Hall, who had been a main character in Roy Thomas's Earth-Two comic Infinity, Inc. before she got picked up by Neil Gaiman as a Sandman character. When we last saw Lyta in Infinc, she was married and pregnant, and then her husband Hector died, but it turned out he kind of lived anyway, as the new Sandman of the Dream Dimension. When Gaiman picked up with Hector and Lyta in The Sandman, he killed off Hector again and made Lyta the instrument of the death of The Sandman's Dream, and then made their son Daniel the new Dream. So when this comic starts, Lyta is trying to return to her life in Los Angeles, attempting to cope with the seeming death of her child. (From a chronology standpoint, it does read a little strangely. Lyta's apartment still has a baby room? This comic was published in 2002, and Lyta got pregnant way back in 1987 or so, but such is comic-book time.)

So how does it work as an Infinity, Inc. story? The answer is that it's okay, not as good as it does a Sandman story. There is an Infinity, Inc. group shot on one page, but overall this does the Sandman thing of being very oblique in its references to the superhero world it was all derived from. I did have to wonder at some of the continuity of it all. Lyta is of Greek descent, and knows the Greek language and Greek mythology... this would have made sense in her pre-Crisis backstory, when she was the daughter of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman, but post-Crisis, though her mother was Greek, she didn't know that until she was an adult; she was adopted and raised by Admiral Derek Trevor and the former superhero Miss America, Joan Dale-Trevor. But maybe I am overthinking all this!

Whose work has John Bolton pasted these real people heads over, anyway?

The Furies works as a story of a strong woman whose strength fails her. Lyta was an immensely powerful person, but she became a victim and a pawn—how can she get her agency back? I really like Lyta, and I remember liking the story, so I was looking forward to the reread... but I struggled with actually being emotionally connected to this story, since as I last read the relevant issues of The Sandman back in 2010, I was a bit fuzzy on what had actually happened to Lyta! So overall, fine but not great.

When I read panels like this, I kind of wonder what Roy Thomas thinks about Lyta's post-Infinc life. Did he ever imagine a comic where Lyta gets out her frustrations by having sex with and then beating up random men she meets in bars?

I am curious to see how it ends up playing into Geoff Johns's JSA run, if it does at all. As of this writing, I've read the first volume of that, where we're told Hector (resurrected again, of course) can't find Lyta. But according to this, she's living in their old apartment in LA, and the police have her on a register of ex-superheroes, so how is he so bad at looking!?

This post is twenty-eighth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers JSA by Geoff Johns, Book One. Previous installments are listed below:

All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)

The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)

All-Star Squadron (1981-87)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)

Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)

America vs. the Justice Society (1985)

Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)

Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]

Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)

All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)