Black Panther: The Long Shadow by John Ridley, Juann Cabal, et al.

Black Panther: The Long Shadow

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2022
Read: November 2025

Writers: John Ridley & Juni Ba

Artists: Juann Cabal with Ibrahim Moustafa & Stefano Landini, Juni Ba & Germán Peralta

Color Artists: Federico Blee, Matt Milla, Chris O'Halloran & Jesus Aburtov

Letterer: Joe Sabino

After the long, meandering, dull narratives of Ta-Nehisi Coates's run, this volume felt like a return to form for Black Panther. Coates never figured out how to integrate story, character, themes, and action; in his work, you had long boring scenes of dialogue alternating with long boring scenes of action. I don't think I've ever previously read a comic written by John Ridley, but he clearly knows how to write a comic book, and how to do so in a highly effective way, to boot.

The basic premise here is that T'Challa had sleeper agents in other countries, living seemingly normal lives, but ready to be activated if the need came up—known only to him. Except, all of a sudden, they are being killed off... so he must spring into action to defend them, while making sure no one knows of yet another long-laid plan founded on a lack of trust. Ridley's characterization of T'Challa definitely owes a lot to Christopher Priest's; this is the master plate spinner, except this time the plates are crashing down.

The story isn't quite complete here; League of Comic Geeks tells me The Long Shadow ran eight issues, and this volume weirdly collects just five. So one doesn't know how it will all play out. But I liked almost everything here: the sense that for once T'Challa is on the back foot is well done, the action is strong (Juann Cabal is probably the best regular Black Panther artist in a long while), and the character interactions are sharp and interesting. If Ridley's subsequent volumes maintain this level of quality, this will be an all-time great Black Panther run.

We get some fun Shuri stuff, too.
from Black Panther vol. 8 #2 (script by John Ridley, art by Juann Cabal)

Issue #3 was a special double-length issue, celebrating Black Panther's 200th issue; it came with two bonus stories. (Weirdly, the collection sticks them in the middle by publication order, interrupting the ongoing story; it would surely have made much more sense to put them at the end!) One, "The Wakandan" by John Ridley and Germán Peralta gives a backstory for a new character, Tosin, an angsty resident of Wakanda's "mute zones" with vibranium superpowers. Meh. The other is a tale of T'Challa being eaten by the panther god to go on a mystical quest; I really enjoyed the unique writing and art of Juni Ba.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

Justice League International Year Six, Part II: Red Winter (JLA #66-69 / JLE #43-50)

One of the defining comics events of the 1990s was of course The Death of Superman. Here we have the run of JLA and JLE stories that lead up to and overlapped with it. There are also a lot of Justice League Quarterly issues set during this span, presumably because they wanted to avoiding overlapping with the more complicated events of Death and its immediate aftermath.

from Justice League Europe #43

"'Round and 'Round and 'Round It Goes..." / "With a Little Bit of Luck", from Justice League Europe #43-44 (Oct.-Nov. 1992)
written by Gerard Jones, drawn by Ron Randall, inked by Randy Elliott, lettered by Willie Schubert, colored by Matt Hollingsworth and Gene D'Angelo

These two issues of JLE have the JLE checking into a hotel, as the events of the Deconstructo storyline saw them kicked out of their previous HQ; in this story, Sue finds them a castle to use as a headquarters. While the castle is made ready, though, they investigate a series of improbable disaster near gambling site. As in many stories in both JLI titles recently, the villain turns out to be an old League foe, though one unfamiliar to me other than this story: Amos Fortune, who can manipulate probabilities. When he makes good luck for himself, bad luck results for everyone else.

This isn't a great story, but it is another strong installment of a good run for JLE. Gerard Jones, Ron Randall, and Randy Elliott have really made the title work at this point. Fun, offbeat concepts and good character interactions elevate what could easily be an also-ran title into an enjoyable one. If you include the upcoming Red Winter storyline, this fourteen-issue run of JLE is the most consistent the title has been since its birth. I enjoyed a lot of the Giffen/DeMatteis/Sears run of course, but it's really clicked with this team.

from Justice League America Annual #6

"Maximum Eclipse", from Justice League America Annual #6 (1992), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 (2016)
plot by Dan Jurgens, written by Dan Mishkin, penciled by Dave Cockrum, inked by José Marzan, Jr., lettered by Clem Robins, colored by Gene D'Angelo

Eclipso: The Darkness Within was a big crossover where the villain Eclipso began taking over superheroes from a fortress on the Moon. I actually collected and read all of its installments many years ago, so this was a reread for me. The JLA installment is collected in volume 2 of Superman and Justice League America, but the status of Guy Gardner means its clearly belongs with the stories in volume 1.

What I learned from collecting all those Darkness Within installments is that I actually don't enjoy Eclipso stories very much. Oh no, a hero has turned evil! It doesn't really generate much of interest. To the extent that this one works, its the story's focus on Blue Beetle, who must outwit Eclipso with technical wizardry and sleight of hand; I have mixed thoughts on Dan Jurgens's JLA run, but he typically does well by Blue Beetle. 

"Eclipso over London" / "Brilliant Men", from Justice League Europe Annual #3 (1992) and Eclipso: The Darkness Within #2 (Oct. 1992)
plots by Gerard Jones and Keith Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming; breakdowns by Keith Giffen; dialogue by Will Jacobs and Robert Loren Fleming; pencils by Tim Hamilton and Bart Sears; inks by Romeo Tanghal and Mark Pennington, Randy Elliott & Raymond Kryssing; colors by Gene D'Angelo and Tom McCraw; letters by Ken Holewczynski and Gaspar

The Darkness Within continues with a JLE installment; it's fine but mostly forgettable. For completion's sake, I did actually reread the last part of the whole storyline, since it features a number of JLA and JLE characters, but I needn't have bothered, since they mostly just fill out crowd scenes. The whole thing is surprisingly jumpy at times considering Keith Giffen did breakdowns.

"Double Trouble!" / "It's...It's...a Ballroom Blitz! (or, The Rook's a Crook!)" / "Yesterday's News" / "The Real Return of... The Global Guardians!", from Justice League Quarterly #8 (Autumn 1992)
stories by Mark Waid, Mike Collins, Elliot S! Maggin, and Kevin Dooley; pencils by Rod Whigham, Mike Collins, Tim Hamilton, and Andy Smith; inks by Romeo Tanghal, Jose Marzan Jr., Trevor Scott, and Smitty; letters by Bob Pinaha, Albert DeGuzman, and Clem Robins; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Matt Hollingsworth, John Cebollero, and Tom McCraw

from Justice League Quarterly #8

This installment of JLQ's lead story is about Max and his ex-wife Claire setting up a rematch between the JLI and Conglomerate; Max uses his business connections to get all of Conglomerate's members to quit for better gigs, sabotaging her. In desperation, Claire ends up using heroes from another universe... not realizing they are members of the Crime Syndicate from the antimatter universe! The League must work together to overcome evil alternates of themselves. It's okay; the best part is probably all the lame heroes who audition for Conglomerate. There's also a story about Power Girl and Wally West stopping a robbery, which is obviously an excuse for them to meet Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, star of a then-forthcoming new series (Thunderbolt also cameoed in JLE #41, so DC was definitely trying to hype this guy)... but I do of course like getting to seem some Mike Collins artwork. Plus there's a good joke about what "Wally" means in the UK.

The best story in the issue surprised me by being the one by Elliot S. Maggin, who though I enjoy a lot, I feel is a bit of an old-fashioned writer. But his low-key story about the JLA discovering the identity of Max Lord's first ex-wife is surprisingly moving and charmingly contemplative and very character driven. The JLA (especially Fire) investigating in the present is paralleled against short scenes from Max and Sylvia's relationship. It's very well done, and one of my favorite stories about this incarnation of the League.

Once again, but thankfully for the last time, there's a Global Guardians story. 

from Justice League America #68

"Together Again" / "Transitions, Transmissions and Transactions" / "Actions, Admissions & Acquisitions", from Justice League America #66-68 (Sept.-Nov. 1992), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2016)
story and layouts by Dan Jurgens, finishes by Rick Burchett and Jose Marzan, Jr., letters by Willie Schubert, colors by Gene D'Angelo and John Cebollero

The last three pre-Death of Superman issues of JLA have a lot of Guy Gardner in them. In the first, Superman battles Guy—freshly tossed out of the Green Lantern Corps—for leadership, and wins through his refusal to fight; meanwhile, the Atom turns up just to shit on the new League. To be honest, I feel like Jurgens is always shitting on the League in this incarnation; the characters are constantly being show as inferior power-wise and bad at working together. If he's trying to hit some kind of "underdogs make good" vibe, it's not coming off; you more feel like the writer doesn't like the group of character's he's been stuck with... even when he is good at writing them!

The other two issues make a story about an alien coming to the Earth because he thinks he owns it; as normal for Jurgens, it's very action-heavy and thus not very interesting to me... except for the ending, which is a good trick and has a great joke. Fire getting a new new costume so quickly is surely an admission that Dan Jurgens screwed up.

from Justice League Quarterly #10

"Frenzy" / "Cherchez L'Homme" / "You Bet Your Life" / "Tomorrow Belongs to Geralyn" / "Time and Chance!" / "Half an Inch" / "Contested Friendship" / "When Titans Date", from Justice League Quarterly #9-10 (Winter 1992–Spring 1993)
stories by Mark Waid, Kevin Dooley, Paul Kupperberg, Elliot S! Maggin, and William Messner-Loebs; pencils by Rod Whigham, Andy Smith, Dusty Abel, Dave Cockrum, Patrick Zircher, Scott Benefiel, and Ty Templeton; inks by Mike DeCarlo, Bob Wiacek, Jose Marzan Jr., John Lowe, Mike Sellers, and Karl Kesel; letters by Bob Pinaha, Albert De Guzman, Todd Klein, Clem Robins, Tim Harkins, and Bob Lappan; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Dan Jerome, Tom McCraw, Matt Hollingsworth, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, and Steve Mattsson

I wouldn't have guessed it to be honest, but I actually think that of the three post-Breakdowns JLI ongoings... JLQ might be my favorite!? These are two really strong issues on the whole, with just one misstep, and lots of stories that focus on a group of characters I've come to be quite fond of.

Standouts include "Frenzy", where six member of the JLI are exposed to a virus with a one-sixth chance of turning you into a homicidal maniac. Tensions rise as they try to figure out who it will be and if they can protect themselves; again, Mark Waid does well by the personalities of this version of the League, and Blue Beetle gets to show off his skill. I also enjoyed "You Bet Your Life," where Wally bets Karen that she can't keep her calm for an entire day... the same day Battlecat--protector of the environment begins prowling the streets of London. Fun stuff.

Elliot Maggin pops up again with another really well done story, "Tomorrow Belongs to Geralyn," this one about Booster meeting a young girl he knows will go on to be famous and help make the world a better place... but who also has a tragedy in her life. I think it's easy to write Booster as a shallow gloryhound, so I like these stories that delve into his earnest side. Like I said, I wouldn't have guessed Maggin would be such a good fit for the JLI; I hope there's more from him in future JLQ issues.

We get more good Booster in "Time and Chance!", which delves into Booster's dark past with gambling when he gets a chance to take down the crime family that ruined his life centuries before it happened. There's a really great scene between Booster and Beetle about what a good hero Booster actually is.

My favorite in these two issues, though, is "When Titans Date," a slice-of-life story about Fire, Wally, and Booster spying on Ted while he goes on a really terrible blind date. It's fun, it's cozy, it's everything I love about this group of characters. It's such a shame most of these JLQ stories have never been reprinted, because they really maintain what worked about this team so well in the Giffen/DeMatteis run, but in a slightly different way.

The only real misfire in these two issues is the kind of stupid one about Fire and Ice. It has its moments, but you sort of have the feeling that William Messner-Loebs thought that because it was "funny" he could just do whatever, whether it made sense or not. I don't think Fire and Ice act very believably at key points. But the bit about world peace was great! 

from Justice League America #69

"Down for the Count", from Justice League America #69 (Dec. 1992), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 (2016)
story and art by Dan Jurgens, finished art by Rick Burchett, letters by Willie Schubert, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Oddly, Superman is only in one regular issue collected in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2. This issue is part of The Death of Superman; while Superman gives an interview in Metropolis, Doomsday (named by Booster Gold, fact fans!) beats up on the rest of the JLA. It's an all-action issue again, but I think it works better than most thanks to the level of desperation here. Still, I think it would have worked even more if so many of the preceding issues of the title weren't also action-heavy ones about the JLA being outclassed by superior opponents.

(I just reread my review of when I originally read this issue some eighteen years ago: "These aren't exactly heavy hitters. Guy, as much as I love him, is in one of the periods where he's been kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps, so he's dressed even worse than usual, and I'm pretty sure I could take out Blue Beetle. And I've never even heard of Bloodwynd or Maxima. This comic doesn't exactly inspire me to want to know more about them, either. I'm pretty sure Maxima's power is being stupid. And having an invincible midriff." God, I sucked.)

from Justice League Europe #50

Red Winter, from Justice League Europe #45-50 (Dec. 1992–May 1993)
written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by Ron Randall & Mike Parobeck, inked by Randy Elliott, lettered by Willie Schubert, colored by Gene D'Angelo

The last story of this very long chuck of comics (twelve regular issues, three double-sized issues, three quadruple-sized issues!) is the six-issue Red Winter, where the Rocket Red Brigade takes over post-Soviet Russia... and Elongated Man foe Sonar has taken over the Rocket Reds... and soon, all of Europe!

I remembered this as being epic, and I was, thankfully, right. Jones is just a master of this kind of thing at this point; these six issues cover a lot of ground, with characters splitting off into a bunch of different configurations throughout, and with everyone getting a good moment: everyone contributes to the resolution of the problem at some point. Once again, there's great moments between Ralph and Sue, and some good stuff with the Crimson Fox, and an excellent ending. Is it great art? I guess not, but it is exactly what I want out of a superhero team book.

The only thing to not like, in my opinion, is that the appearances of the JSA and the JLI reserves seems kind of random, as do the huge crowd of villains Sonar dredges up. (Why are the Global Guardians and Injustice League working for him?) But we get a new characters, Chandi incarnation of Shiva, and also the stuff with the ghost in the JLE's castle is amazing. As I said above, Jones and Randall's JLE run from post-Breakdowns to here is exactly what I want from superhero team comics.

(If you're trying to read precisely chronologically, that's not easy with Red Winter, as its events overlap those in The Death of Superman, and the stories aren't very clear on how that might work; no matter what you choose, there are going to be some inconsistencies. In these posts, I've rendered it how I actually did it as I read, but in retrospect, I would have chosen a different sequence I'll describe later.)

This is the tenth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #70-77 of JLA and #51-52 of JLI. 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)

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 9: Mirror Dance

My ninth Vorkosigan book is the second of a duology, the third time Bujold took a book she had written in the 1980s and came back to it to write a sequel in the 1990s, one that deepened the previous book's themes and character moments.

In this case, Mirror Dance is a direct sequel to Brothers in Arms. (It's also a follow-up to one of the stories in Borders of Infinity; I pity anyone who thought the novella collection was skippable!) Brothers in Arms introduced Miles's clone, Mark. I enjoyed that book a lot, but I think in that book Mark was primarily constructed as a foil to Miles: Miles is a person with so many obligations weighing him down, so what would it be like for there to be a version of Miles with seemingly no obligations at all? As I wrote in my review of that book, though, "it seems to me there's more thematic depth to be mined from the character of Mark than we actually get here, since Bujold's emphasis is largely on the action and intrigue plot."

Mirror Dance: A Vorkosigan Adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold

Published: 1994
Acquired and read: September 2025

Bujold returns to Mark in this book because she wants to take Mark seriously, not just as a foil to Miles. Who is Mark? These are the questions Mark himself is wrestling with, of course; the one obligation he does have is that he wants to save his clone-brethren, the other people raised just to substitute for someone else. But beyond this, who is he? He has no idea.

It's all quite good, and goes places I didn't expect. It's a bit difficult to explain exactly what makes Bujold so good, because a lot of times it's not so much about what happens as how it happens; with layers of compassion and reality that make the whole thing come to life and make any earnest moments feel totally earned. My favorite parts of the book were the ones where Mark goes to Barrayar and meets the mother and father he never knew he had—never even knew he could have. But he needs them. As Cordelia says, "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in." Mirror Dance chronicles the slow acceptance Mark makes of these other people into his own life, because if he doesn't do it, he will have no life. Mark is perennially frustrated to learn how many people Miles has made an impression on: "He's not a man, he's a mob," he thinks at one point. But those people made Miles who he is, too. We're all mobs. Mark is frustrated because he feels like, as a clone, he's a pale reflection of Miles. But if we don't reflect others, there's nothing to us. By the end of the book, Mark is a proud reflection of Miles.

There's lots of good action, too, of course, and jokes, and some moving bits; there was one part where I was genuinely worried for a main character and was misting up. There hasn't been a bad Vorkosigan book so far, and there's been several very good ones, but I think of the nine I've thus read, this one is probably the best.

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Dreamweaver's Dilemma

He Was a Citation Detective

I do some copy-editing for an academic journal, a pastime I have come to really enjoy. Unlike most things in the academic world, there is one right answer to how to cite something in MLA style! It's particularly enjoyable, I think, when the writer you're editing doesn't know what they're doing. I mean, I do get exasperated, but at the same time, the greater the challenge the greater the feeling of success. This most often happens when writers coming out of disciplines that don't typically use MLA style publish in our journal. I don't hold this against them; if I published in a journal that used Chicago, I think I'd be equally at sea! (I once published an article in a journal that used MHRA, which I'd never even heard of until I was forced to adopt it, so that was fun.)

One thing I have discovered is that a lot of the time you are better off doing something yourself than asking the author to fix it. Maybe this is encouraging bad behavior on the part of writers, but you might notice the author left out a piece of information and ask them to include it, but then when they add it and bounce it back to you for another look, you realize they did so incorrectly, so you have to fix what they fixed. In that case, why not fix it yourself to begin with, and save everyone the bother? This means I often find myself looking up page numbers when authors leave them out. If the source being quoted is in an academic journal, this usually isn't too tricky, but often I am scraping through Amazon's "Search Inside" feature, Google Books, and even the Internet Archive in my desperate attempt to figure out what page a quote might come from.

Google Gemini's take on "Generate an image of a citation detective."

This occasionally means you find out that the author has actually miscited the original source! Once you find an author has gotten one quotation wrong, then you approach others with increased scrutiny... but it does make you worry that there are misquotations getting by you that you did not notice, because who can check every quotation?

On other occasions, I find myself playing citation detective. For example, an author once added some in-text citations to a paper during revisions... only they forgot to add the sources to the Works Cited page. I could have bounced the paper back to them and asked them to do it, but I decided it would be easier to find and cite all the sources myself, and just ask them to verify that I had added the correct citations.

Recently, I had a particularly difficult-but-fun instance of playing citation detective. I always do the Works Cited first when copy-editing; on this occasion there was a citation that read, let's say:

Theorist X. "Chapter Title Y." Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. URL. 

What was clearly missing was the name of the book the chapter came from as well as the page range. So I clicked on the URL and was taken to the source, which was a PDF. But it was weird, because there was no clear indication of what book the chapter came from... and furthermore, the way the heading was formatted made me think this wasn't "Chapter Title Y" by Theorist X, but actually a piece called "Theorist X: Chapter Title Y." This was confirmed when I skimmed the piece and realized it consistently referred to Theorist X in the third person. If this was by Theorist X, then Theorist X was a very strange person indeed.

ChatGPT's take on the same prompt.

I did some googling and what I discovered very quickly was that lots of people cited the piece as being "Chapter Title Y" by Theorist X. But surely this was not the case! The PDF was on the web site of an academic publisher, but I could find no reference to it on the web site; clearly whatever page originally lead to the PDF had been taken down in some kind of reorganization (the date given was around twenty years ago), but the PDF itself had never been deleted.

I began googling what seemed to be key phrases from the piece. This lead me to a textbook by Author Z, which had a chapter about Theorist X. But this chapter came from the middle of Author Z's textbook, yet the PDF was numbered from page 1 up. Was this a preview of the textbook or something, with its own pagination? I couldn't get to the full text of the textbook anywhere, but I was able to look at its table of contents on the Internet Archive, and I could see that the section headings in the textbook chapter didn't exactly line up with the section headings in the PDF. So what was going on? Was it from a different edition of the textbook than the one I had found?

Eventually, I googled a different sentence from the PDF and found someone quoting that sentence on their blog—and thankfully that person gave a clear attribution. It was from something by Author Z, but a different textbook to the one I had found. This textbook had had some supplemental chapters that were only published online, on the publisher's web site. I was able to find that textbook on the Internet Archive, and the textbook's introduction explained all this, and gave the URL for where you could read the web-only chapters... a URL that was long defunct. But this was enough for me to feel confident I'd figured out what was actually being cited. So I constructed a new citation:

Author Z. "Theorist X: Chapter Title Y." Title of Textbook, Publisher, Year. Title of Publisher Site, URL.

I then had to go through all the in-text citations and edit them to make it clear the paper was not citing the work of Theorist X directly, but Author Z's summary of Theorist X.

I felt quite a sense of accomplishment when I was all done! In fact, I ran down to the office of the journal's editor and told her the whole thing because someone had to know. No one reading the essay will ever know, but academic work is founded on careful and accurate engagement with the words of others, and so it's quite important this stuff is right. And while everyone else citing "Chapter Title Y" has given credit to the wrong person, Author Z will get their due in our journal at least.

Long Gone, Come Home: A Novel of Cincinnati by Monica Chenault-Kilgore

Long Gone, Come Home by Monica Chenault-Kilgore

Published: 2023
Acquired: July 2025
Read: November 2025

I try to collect and read books set in my hometown of Cincinnati, a project my sister has embraced by tracking them down and buying them for me for birthdays and Christmas. Most recently, she got me this book, a piece of historical fiction set in the early twentieth century. Birdie is a young black woman working in a factory in Mt. Sterling (a Kentucky community east of Lexington) and living with her family; she has two sisters and an imposing mother but doesn't know who her father is. She falls in love with a man her mother disapproves of—and with good reason, when he proves himself to be an unreliable husband and father.

Birdie's travels take her initially to Chicago, and then to Cincinnati, where most of the second half of the novel takes place. It's a different time and a different angle on Cincinnati than a lot of the other books I've read, and I appreciated that a lot. Birdie works as a servant to the rich whites of Cincinnati; she spends her evening in the black nightclubs listening to cutting-edge music of the Jazz Age; she resides in a boarding house with strict rules about male visitors. It was all interesting to see.

The novel otherwise is basically okay, written well enough. I enjoyed reading about Birdie's attempts to find her own place in the world, and there were some great bits, and some other bits that felt hastily gone over. Unfortunately, the book kind of fizzles out; Birdie doesn't really make many interesting decisions in the last third, more just lives her life while events resolve themselves around her. I think a different ending could have sold me on it more.

Justice League International Year Six, Part I: Born Once Again (JLA #61-65 / JLE #37-42)

from Justice League Europe #38

So here I move beyond (mostly) the stories collected in the Justice League International Omnibus hardcovers. But when I was in college, my Justice League Europe collection ended with #50, and I remembered enjoying that material even though the creative team had changed a lot. So I decided to continue reading JLA and JLE (later renamed JLI) up to the point where the latter came to an end, just before Zero Hour. 

The JLA material from this era is mostly collected in a series of four trade paperbacks: two Superman and Justice League America collections, and two Wonder Woman and Justice League America ones. But no post-Giffen/DeMatteis issues of Justice League Quarterly have been collected, and Gerard Jones's run on JLE/I probably never will be, following his conviction for possession of child pornography. It seems as though DC will collect his work when its ancillary to a collection of someone else's (such as in volume 3 of the JLI Omnibus, or a couple issues contained in the Superman/Wonder Woman and JLA trades), but they will not make any collections where his work is featured. I understand the reasoning, but I really did want to read these stories, so I had to track down the single issues. It's a shame, because I think his work is underrated, and largely better than the parallel JLA issues that have been collected.

from Justice League Quarterly #6

"Take My Wife-- Please!" / "Fighting Trim" / "Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?" / "Never Less Alone...", from Justice League Quarterly #6 (Spring 1992)
written by Mark Waid, John Ostrander, Paul Kupperberg, and Kevin Dooley; pencilled by Eduardo Barreto, Barry Horne, John Calimee, and Andy Smith; inked by Eduardo Barreto, Scott Hanna, Pablo Marcos, and Andy Smith; lettered by Bob Pinaha, Willie Schubert, and John Costanza; colored by Gene D'Angelo, Matt Hollingsworth, Juliana Ferriter, and Tom McCraw

This contains four stories. The lead story, about Elongated Man, must take place shortly before Breakdowns, presumably in the gap between JLE #22 and 23 that I've placed so much other stuff in. Of the other three, the Blue Beetle and Global Guardians stories definitely follow Breakdowns; the Blue Beetle one presumably goes in the gap of months between when the team broke up in JLE #36 and came back together in JL Spectacular #1. The placement clues for the Power Girl one are a lot vaguer, but it could fit there as well.

The Elongated Man one is, of course, good fun. Ralph and Sue are on vacation when Sue is kidnapped, and Ralph must solve the mystery; he calls in some of his available buddies from the League to help. The mystery isn't a solvable one for the reader in any real sense, it's more of a series of weird encounters based on a Monopoly-like board game, and the foes seem a bit out of even this group of Leaguers' power levels. But there's a great double twist in the ending, and it shows off both Ralph and Sue to good effect. How could I not love it? Plus Eduardo Barreto debuts as the lead penciller on JLQ, and I really like his work.

Of the other ones, the Blue Beetle stories shows how he loses the weight gain that was pestering him during the previous year or so of JLA; I thought this one was funny, particularly 1) his conversation with Booster, 2) his interactions with General Glory, and 3) how he eventually loses the weight. The Power Girl one is fine, kind of a belabored joke; I feel like it was primarily written to explain how Karen could be living in Europe but also be a successful corporate exec in the states. I appreciated that she's shown as having a friendship with follow corporate exec the Crimson Fox. (Although this story, now that I think about, seems to contradict the claim in JLE: Red Winter that no one had ever seen Crimson Fox's face.)

Plus there's a Global Guardians story. I guess every issue has to have one. 

from Elongated Man #4

Europe '92, from Elongated Man #1-4 (Jan.-Apr. 1992)
written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by Mike Parobeck, inked by Ty Templeton, lettered by Bob Pinaha, colored by Rick Taylor

I mostly have not picked up solo stories featuring JLI members... but how could I skip over this? Like JLE itself, I picked this up when I was in college, and I have nostalgic memories of it. Plus, its events are decently well integrated into the main JLE series, as the following Red Winter is a direct sequel to it.

It's funny, Elongated Man is one of my favorite DC characters on the basis of JLE, but I was surprised to learn when rereading the series that he's not a big player during Keith Giffen's run. Oh, he's there a lot, but aside from the opening five-issue story arc (see item #3 in the list below), he rarely plays a big role in any stories. My memories of the character's greatness mostly come from Gerard Jones's solo work as writer, in JLE #37-50.

This isn't quite Ralph and Sue at their best, but it's very close. Sue's heard about a series of mysterious incidents at the European Unity conference, and so uses her father's connections to swing an invitation for her and Ralph so he can investigate... but soon Sue is being charmed much more by the mysterious Bito than her own husband. I think the temporary split of the two characters didn't quite work for me; I could buy some of the reasoning (Sue wonders if she married Ralph as a way to stick it to her family) but it seemed a bit ham-handed in execution. 

But other than that, this is great. Lots of good jokes, of course; I particularly liked Gerard Jones's endless parade of mediocre European-themed supervillains. Twenty years later, and I still get the giggles over the Wurstwaffe, a group of Germans who all dress up as sausages. Each has a personality following on from his name: Knockwurst likes to punch people, Bratwurst whines a lot, and so on. Comic genius! I can't believe these guys were never used in comics again. But in addition, Jones's story shows off how clever Ralph is, and how versatile his powers really is. The sequence where he flies in to save the day single-handedly is amazing. I also like Sonar as a villain for Ralph (though I could have done without the retcon that the down-on-his-luck Sonar from JLA's Guy Tortolini arc wasn't actually him). Mike Parobeck (of JSA fame) and Ty Templeton provide art, and their somewhat cartoony but still emotionally expressive work is perfectly suited to this story. It's a real shame this will never be reprinted... though to be honest, I bet that would be the case even if it wasn't for Gerard Jones!

from Justice League America #62

"Team Work" / "Born Once Again" / "Pawns", from Justice League Spectacular #1 (1992) and Justice League America #61-62 (Apr.-May 1992), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2016)
written by Dan Jurgens and Gerry Jones; art by Dan Jurgens and Ron Randall; finished/inked by Rick Burchett, Randy Elliot, and Jackson Guice; lettered by Bob Pinaha and Willie Schubert; colored by Gene D'Angelo

These issues finally bring the JLA and the JLE back into action. Maxwell Lord is pulling the strings, again sending a villain out to unite the League and public sentiment; I could have done without repeating that plot beat yet again. Hasn't Max learned yet? The Royal Flush gang attacks diplomats at Disney expy in Florida, which causes the former Leaguers to dive into action, along with Superman and Hal Jordan. It does what it needs to, I guess, which is by the end, the groups are reactivated with slightly adjusted lineups, but with Superman leading the JLA. In their first story arc, the JLA faces a villain called the Weapons Master, who is working for a Dominator; I thought this was fine, but what I liked a lot about it was that Blue Beetle saves the day through his cleverness. Maxima is a fun new member for the JLA as well. Dan Jurgens both writes and pencils, and though I don't love everything he does, he's one of comics' greats for a reason. Strong sense of composition and layout.

from Justice League Quarterly #7

"Klaarsh Reunion!" / "If This Be My Destiny...?" / "Homeward Bound" / "Time to Enjoy the Light", from Justice League Quarterly #7 (Summer 1992)
written by Michael Jan Friedman, Paul Kupperberg, Pat McGreal, and Kevin Dooley; pencilled by Eduardo Barreto, Don Heck, Mike Vosburg, and Andy Smith; inked by Carlos Garzon, Mike DeCarlo, Mike Vosburg, and Brad Vancata; lettered by Bob Pinaha, Tim Harkins, and Clem Robins; colored by Gene D'Angelo, Linda Kachelhofer, and Tom McCraw

As has become routine for JLQ, this issue features a lead story of over thirty pages and three shorter backups. The lead story can go at basically any time when Beetle, Booster, Fire, Ice, and Guy are all members of the League, and when the JLE is also active, so either sometime between JLA #30 and 37, or between #62 and 63. Of the backups, the Rocket Red one is set after Breakdowns, and the Doctor Light one is set after JL Spectacular, so on balance, the issue fits best here.

The lead is good fun; Booster, Fire, Ice, and Guy accompany Beetle to his high school reunion. (It was sobering to realize that I must be seven years older than Ted Kord.) Only it turns out that everyone in Ted's hometown except his family was an alien on the run from their home planet, and their former masters have come looking for them. Good jokes of course, particularly the one where none of Ted's former classmates have even heard of Blue Beetle, and also Ted gets to save the day with his cleverness. Once again, excellent art from Eduardo Barreto. It's not an A-plus story, but it is basically what I read JLI for.

Though I always find JLQ issues more enjoyable than not, this one might have one of the best hit rates, because all four backups are solid too. The General Glory one is a silly pastiche of Silver Age Captain America comics, complete with footnotes citing fake comic books; Don Heck is a great choice to illustrate it. The Rocket Red one was surprisingly great; I had never heard of writer Pat McGreal before, but he has an amazing command of the medium, with really interesting ways of layering in action and moving between panels. I see his mostly done Donald Duck comics, but he has at least one more JLQ story. The Doctor Light story was surprisingly good, too, giving her some needed depth.

from Justice League America #63

"Almerac or Bust!" / "The Revenge of Starbreaker" / "Of Ashes and Justice", from Justice League America #63-65 (June-Aug. 1992), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2016)
written by Dan Jurgens, art by Dan Jurgens, finished/inked by Rick Burchett, lettered by Willie Schubert, colored by Gene D'Angelo

In these JLA stories, Maxima returns to her home planet, only to find out she was deposed in her absence... by a Silver Age JLA villain. Good art from Dan Jurgens, of course, but very action-heavy, and not very much to my taste. I want more character stuff in my team comics, but mostly here that's Ice pining over Superman.

(Note to comics creators: if you are going to put a character into a new costume because the old one supposedly looked terrible... make sure the new one actually is better. Fire's new costume sucks.)

"Changing" / "Dissolving" / "Returning" / "The Coming of... Chthon!" / "Welcome to the Dark" / "Mother of Monsters", from Justice League Europe #37-42 (Apr.-Sept. 1992)
written by Gerard Jones; pencilled by Ron Randall; inked by Randy Elliott, Carlos Garzon, and Romeo Tanghal; lettered by Willie Schubert; colored by Gene D'Angelo

Lastly, we get a continuous eight-issue run of JLE stories (I'll cover the last two next time). The first three focus on the slightly rearranged League battling a villain named Deconstructo, who is a deconstructionist using an alien weapon to transform London as he "deconstructs" it to prove all meaning is constructed, while they also bicker over who their new leader will be. (Mostly they want it to be Batman, but he doesn't want the job.) I thought it was great fun, weird and unusual. Gerard Jones has a great command over this team of characters, and I really enjoy reading their interactions. The way they bicker but ultimately come together is perfect. The interplay between Batman and Elongated Man is well done, and there's some arresting imagery from Jones and penciller Ron Randall. (Plus, I think there's a Marvelman/Miracleman cameo in one issue.)

At the end of JLE #39, Hal Jordan turns up to take over the JLE, and the next three issues cover his first mission as leader, along with appearances by Wonder Woman and former member Metamorpho the Element Man. The team must battle the feminine energies of chaos sublimated by masculine order! Again, you can tell Jones is trying to do some heady, interesting stuff, different from your usual superhero punchup. I didn't like this as much as the previous story, but I appreciate it a lot, particularly the interesting way it all resolves.

This is the ninth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #66-69 of JLA and #43-50 of JLE. 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) 

Harlan Ellison, Dangerous Visions (anthology, 1967)

Like any fan of print sf, I am familiar with the long saga of the never-printed third Dangerous Visions anthology from Harlan Ellison. It was finally released last year, alongside new editions of the first two volumes. Though I've read some of the stories from Dangerous Visions in other collections (a couple were reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, for example), I'd never actually read them, so I asked for (and received) the whole set for my birthday this year.

Dangerous Visions
edited by Harlan Ellison

Originally published: 1967
Acquired: July 2025
Read: September 2025

I will say that the book gets off to a rough start, because it has four forewords and three introductions. A full seven things to read, totally forty pages, before you even get to a story! Well, no, because then each story has its own introduction from Ellison, so you have another four pages to go before you get to the first story. Geeze. I get that each new edition presumably needed new stuff to justify its existence, but it's just too much to slog through, and a bit too self-congratulatory on the whole. Seven introductions or forewords, really!?

Like any anthology, you are going to find good stories here and bad ones. Though there are some very good ones, I didn't find the hit rate here as high I would have liked—or would have expected, given the reputation of the book. Many are gratuitous in some way, pushing "boundaries" I suppose, but not saying anything interesting. I thought the duo about the Jack the Ripper, Robert Bloch's "A Toy for Juliette" and Ellison's own "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World," were particularly uninteresting for example. Perhaps the most disappointing was "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" by Theodore Sturgeon, which has a great title, and starts very strongly with some fun meta genre stuff, but fifty pages later is inexplicably still going on.

Still, there was some good stuff. Stories I particularly enjoyed included "The Day after the Day the Martians Came" by Frederick Pohl, a very well-written and grounded story about how the discovery of aliens might affect our society; "The Doll-House" by James Cross, a surprisingly successful cautionary tale about getting greedy with prophecy; and "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" by Carol Emshwiller, a very weird but captivating story. Also of note, though I didn't love the story itself, is Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man," a cautionary tale about how far people will go for immortality.

One of the very best was, not surprisingly, by Philip K. Dick; I've been reading my way through his collected short stories, but I haven't got to "Faith of Our Fathers" yet, and it's a particularly potent distillation of some of his most common themes: the need for conformity and the inescapable feeling that it's all bullshit underneath. My other favorite was one of the rereads, "Aye, and Gomorrah..." by Samuel R. Delany, which is sort of a queer rewrite of Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain." A great story about sexual desires and the self-loathing that can come with them.

Reading Roundup Wrapup: November 2025

Pick of the month: Jane Goodall by Dale Peterson. I very much enjoyed this biography of the late Jane Goodall, a figure I knew very little about. It's twenty years old, but other than that, I felt it gave a timely understanding of who she was and what she did.

All books read:

1. Black Panther: The Long Shadow by John Ridley, Juann Cabal, et al.
2. Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan
3. Star Trek, Volume 2 by Mike Johnson, Joe Corroney, and Joe Phillips
4. Long Gone, Come Home by Monica Chenault-Kilgore
5. Doctor Mid-Nite by Matt Wagner and John K. Snyder III
6. Star Wars: Scourge by Jeff Grubb
7. Star Trek: The Unsettling Stars by Alan Dean Foster
8. Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco and Agnes Garbowska
9. Superman and Justice League America, Volume 1 by Dan Jurgens, Rick Burchett, et al.
10. Star Trek, Volume 3 by Mike Johnson, Stephen Molnar, and Claudia Balboni
11. Into the Heartlands: A Black Panther Graphic Novel by Roseanne A. Brown, Dika Araújo, Natacha Bustos, Claudia Aguirre, et al.
12. Star Trek: That Which Divides by Dayton Ward
13. Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness by Roberto Orci, Mike Johnson, David Messina, et al.
14. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss
15. Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 by Dan Jurgens, Rick Burchett, Dave Cockrum, et al.
16. Black Panther: Range Wars by John Ridley, Stefano Landini, and Germán Peralta
17. Star Wars: Tales from the Clone Wars: Webcomic Collection, Season 1 by Pablo Hidalgo et al.
18. Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man by Dale Peterson
19. Wakanda by Evan Narcisse et al.
20. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Lots of comic books, tie-ins, and comic book tie-ins means I had my best month in terms of raw numbers since July 2021! But I got some legit stuff in there too.

All books acquired:

1. Doctor Mid-Nite by Matt Wagner and John K. Snyder III
2. Superman and Justice League America, Volume 1 by Dan Jurgens, Rick Burchett, et al.
3. Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space by Terrance Dicks 
4. Doctor Who Magazine Bookazine #38: Cybermen: The Ultimate Guide edited by Marcus Hearn
5. Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 by Dan Jurgens, Rick Burchett, Dave Cockrum, et al.
6. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss
7. Star Trek Into Darkness by Alan Dean Foster
8. Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague by David Michelinie, Sal Velluto, et al. 
9. Wesley Dodds: The Sandman by Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo 
10. Star Trek: Boldly Go, Volume 3 by Mike Johnson, Josh Hood, Megan Levens, Tana Ford, Marcus To, Angel Hernandez, et al. 
11. Superman by Grant Morrison Omnibus by Grant Morrison, Sholly Fisch, Rags Morales, Andy Kubert, Brad Walker, et al. 
12. Archie Varsity Edition, Vol. 2 by Mark Waid, Joe Eisma, Pete Woods, et al. 

Currently reading:

• The Worthing Chronicle by Orson Scott Card
• Star Trek Into Darkness by Alan Dean Foster
• Star Trek: The New Adventures, Volume 3 by Mike Johnson, Erfan Fajar, Yasmin Liang, Joe Corroney, et al.
• Star Trek: The New Adventures, Volume 2 by Mike Johnson, Ryan Parrott, Stephen Molnar, Erfan Fajar, Claudia Balboni, et al.
• Star Trek: The New Adventures, Volume 5 by Mike Johnson and Tony Shasteen
• Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague by David Michelinie, Sal Velluto, et al.
• Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, et al.
• Milk for Gall by Natalie Louise Tombasco
• Wesley Dodds: The Sandman by Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo

Thanks to the complicated pattern with which I am working my way through two different sets of comic books, I am in the middle of a lot of books all at once!

Up next in my rotations:

1. Baby Cat-Face by Barry Gifford 
2. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Starcrusher Trap by Mike W. Barr 
3. Formerly Known as the Justice League by Keith Giffen & J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, and Joe Rubinstein
4. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds by Mary Shelley, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 671 (no change)

Got a lot of books, but balanced that out, thankfully! 

Power Girl Uncovered

Over the last three years, DC Comics has released a number of "Uncovered" one-shots, where they collect a selection of covers featuring a certain character (or group of characters) along with some kind of frame story: Catwoman Uncovered, Birds of Prey Uncovered, Wonder Woman Uncovered, and so on. I was intrigued by these; though I'm not a big "collect covers" guy, I can occasionally be enticed by a really solid cover. Looking through the collected covers on League of Comic Geeks, however, turned me off some of them, because most of these collections primarily seem to consist of covers from the last five years or so, when these characters have massive histories. Like, there have been lots of great Birds of Prey covers, but most of the covers in their one-shot seemed to come from the most recent incarnation of the team.

But one of the exceptions to this was the Power Girl Uncovered, which, though definitely tilted toward the most recent incarnation of the character, contained covers going back to her original solo feature in Showcase (see item #6 in the list below), some covers from Amanda Conner's run (see #47 below), and even a cover from Justice League Europe. So I went ahead and picked it up.

The conceit here is that Power Girl has "recently become aware of a bunch of unauthorized 'photos' that have been released to the public." She suggests to the reader that we "check them out together to see if any of them are worth signing"; there are five pages of frame, mostly featuring Power Girl talking to the reader, but also her cat pops up for a few pages and her roommate Omen (see #50 below). I'm guessing this was a contractual necessity or something, but mostly it served to remind me of how lame her current set-up is ("Paige" sucks, and you know it will get undone someday), though I did like Meghan Hetrick's art.

As you might imagine, there are some great covers and some mediocre ones; I particularly liked Otto Schmidt's Power Girl vol. 3 #1 (which shows off many if not all of her costumes over the years), Jae Lee's Batman/Superman #8 (even if Power Girl isn't very central to the composition), David Nakayama's Power Girl Special #1 (featuring Fire and Ice! I don't know why but I won't complain), Alex Ross's Justice Society of America vol. 3 #9, Amanda Conner's Power Girl vol. 2 #1, Sami Basri's Power Girl vol. 2 #13, Warren Louw's Power Girl vol. 2 #27, Will Jack's Action Comics vol. 1 #1053, Guillem March's Power Girl vol. 3 #3, Babs Tarr's Power Girl vol. 3 #3, and Dani Bonvillain's Power Girl vol. 3 #5. For all that the collection has a bit of recency bias, a lot of the recent covers are very good! Power Girl is one of my favorite superheroes (going back to my early days as a comics fan reading JLE), and these covers capture what makes female superheroes work: beauty and strength in equal measure.

I could have done without the comment over the Justice League Europe #49 cover by Ron Randall and Rick Burchett, which I think is legitimately great; I do like Power Girl's early 1990s outfit even if it is very of its time. (Maybe I'm biased because, again, JLE was one of the first comics I ever read.) There are some covers I legit didn't like, but I accept this is a matter of taste, and some of them are fairly iconic and/or well-regarded despite my personal preferences: Jim Lee and Sandra Hope's Infinite Crisis #2, Adam Hughes's JSA Classified #1, and George Pérez's Worlds' Finest #1 (alas, not even Pérez can make Power Girl's terrible New 52 costume work... and I think he even designed it himself?). And in terms of exclusions, surely it's a crime that we only get two Amanda Conner covers! I'm guessing this was on purpose (I think she's the only artist to even have multiple covers), but Conner and Power Girl are inseparable.

As for the issue's own cover, it had six variants; I liked the Dan Mora one a lot but ended up going for the Pete Woods one, which you can see above. 

Power Girl Uncovered originally appeared in one issue (Mar. 2024). It had dialogue by Brittany Holzherr, editing by Jillian Grant, art by Meghan Hetrick, and lettering & design by Darran Robinson.

This post is the fifty-fourth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Wesley Dodds: The Sandman. Previous installments are listed below:

Justice League International Year Five, Part II: Breakdowns (JLA #53-60 / JLE #29-36)

Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis wrapped up their five-year run on Justice League International with a massive fifteen-part crossover called Breakdowns; JLE scripter Gerard Jones would continue on that title without Giffen, but JLA would receive a wholly new creative team.

As I've said before, I read JLE in college, but I did not read its sister title, and most of the time that was fine... but it did leave this storyline totally incoherent. So, twenty years later, I was quite looking forward to finally understanding what was going on here!

Overall, these issues are sequenced perfectly in the omnibus, except that JLA Annual #5 obviously goes before JLA #53, but is placed after it. I appreciate that the omnibus includes both Green Lantern #18, a Breakdowns tie-in, and JLE #36, which Giffen didn't work on, presumably because it's branded as "Part 16 of 15" of Breakdowns. Subsequent issues of JLE by Jones will presumably never be collected, but we'll get to that in my next post, I suspect.

from Justice League America #54

"Tomorrow's League Today!" / Breakdowns, Parts 1-5 / "An Old Beginning" / "Too Much Time" / Breakdowns, Parts 6-7 / "One Angry Guy" / Breakdowns, Parts 8-16, from Justice League America Annual #5 (1991), Justice League America #53-55 & Justice League Europe #29-30 (Aug.-Oct. 1991), Justice League Quarterly #5 (Winter 1991), Justice League Europe Annual #2 (1991), Justice League Europe #31 & Justice League America #56 (Oct.-Nov. 1991), Green Lantern vol. 3 #18 (Nov. 1991), and Justice League Europe #32-36 & Justice League America #57-60 (Nov. 1991–Mar. 1992); reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 (2024)
plots and breakdowns by Keith Giffen; scripts by J. M. DeMatteis, Gerard Jones, and Kevin Dooley; pencils by Steve Carr (with Chris Sprouse, Marshall Rogers, Dan Jurgens, Joe Phillips, Ty Templeton, Linda Medley, Russel Braun, Keith Giffen, John Beatty, Randy Elliott, and Curt Swan), Chris Wozniak, Darick Robertson, Andy Smith, Joe Staton, Bart Sears, and Kevin Maguire; inks by Jose Marzan Jr., Bruce Patterson, John Beatty, Bob Smith, Carlos Garzon, Randy Elliott (with Michael Golden), Art Nichols, Romeo Tanghal, Terry Austin, and Robert Campanella; letters by Bob Lappan, Willie Schubert, Tim Harkins, Michael Heisler, and Albert De Guzman; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Tom McCraw, and Matt Hollingsworth

Breakdowns is a complicated story, and this ultimately proves to be its downfall, I think. The inciting incident is that Maxwell Lord gets shot, and then the UN replaces him as the head of the JLI; this ultimately turns out to be a plot by the "Queen Bee" of Bialya. Max getting shot is great, in that the early issues here have a lot of good character focus as a result; the JLA argues about what to do for this man to whom they owe so much, and even the Injustice League gets involved, but in a good way. But I felt like this was wrapped up fairly abruptly; the whole conspiracy thing seemed over before it even began. (I do wonder if plans were derailed by the fact that Captain Atom dies between parts 5 and 6, thanks to the events of the Armageddon 2001 crossover; his beef with Bialya played a big role in some of the earlier installments.)

from Justice League America #56

At the same time all this is playing out, Despero escapes Lord Manga Khan's custody (see item #6 in the list below) and Dreamslayer of the Extremists (see #5) occupies Maxwell Lord's vacant mind and uses his mental powers to take over Kooeykooeykooey. I see what Giffen and DeMatteis were going for—you have two of the biggest threats to the JLI return at its lowest point—but in practice I felt like we ended up with a story that wasn't really a unified whole, but rather lurched from point to point. A lot of the individual parts are great—I particularly liked the battle with Despero and the way it was resolved—but it doesn't feel like a story so much as a bunch of things happening. This is probably at its worst where there's a whole issue that goes nowhere about the JLI finding weird stuff in the original JLA's cave headquarters, which has been borrowed by the Doom Patrol.

It also doesn't help that it feels like the JLI breaks up and reforms like three times in fifteen parts. How many times can these people realize that despite their bickering they do all belong together? (Or there's this weird bit where the UN assigns Doctor Light and the Tasmasian Devil to join the League... and they're out like two issues later, having never done anything.) However, some of those moments work well; I loved Guy Gardner and General Glory becoming roommates and Guy getting mad because General Glory runs a soup kitchen out of their apartment! It's good to see some focus on Guy as a serious human being in GL #18, too.

from Justice League America #60

Still, the story does have its high points. There's good character moments throughout, but particularly (as I said) in the battle with Despero and in part 15, where the League regroups after the intense events of the previous fourteen issues. The final scene between J'onn and Max was genuinely moving stuff; I've come to love these guys. I know they both persist as League members in future books, but I will miss these particular versions of them nonetheless.

Weirdly, part 15 ends with the League resolving to go on and then part 16 has them disbanding, with a lot of beats that directly contradict what just happened in part 15! It's very clearly just there so that the League can triumphantly come back together in the Justice League Spectacular (see my next post) but surely it could have been handled better given Gerard Jones scripted half the installments of Breakdowns, entirely wrote part 16, and cowrote JL Spectacular!

from Justice League America Annual #5

Of the other three stories here, two are Armageddon 2001 tie-ins. This was a 1991 crossover where a guy named Waverider came from the year 2001, seeking the hero who would become the tyrant "Monarch" in his era. He had the power to touch people and see ten years into their future, which let every story tell a story about what its characters would be up to in the future. The JLA and JLE ones are both cleverly put together, giving us a series of quick glimpses of each teammember, which the reader assembles to get a complete picture. In the JLE one, Waverider is confused because he keeps glimpsing each hero in the past, but in the end, you figure out how it all came to pass. This one is mostly goofy: Rocket Red becomes an Arthurian knight, Power Girl becomes General Glory's sidekick during World War II, Elongated Man eclipses Sherlock Holmes as the greatest sleuth of Victorian London, and so on. (There is a Mrs. Miniver reference in the Power Girl story, which was not something I expected!) 

The JLA one is proper great, though; the JLA isn't together anymore in the future, but across the course of the different glimpses, you see how much these people all meant to each other amidst all the jokes. I particularly like the moment where Ice gets Guy to admit his "nice" and "mean" selves are really just the same guy. But also some great jokes, like when Mr. Miracle decides to break Blue Beetle out of prison.

Lastly, there's a Global Guardians story here, about what they do after liberated from Bialya. Despite having to squeeze a dozen-member superhero team into a small number of pages, it has them teaming up with a second dozen-member superhero team. This is... not the way to get me to ever care about these guys. 

This is the eighth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #61-65 of JLA and #37-42 of JLE. 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)