Peter Hayes, From Cooperation to Complicity (2004)

After I graduated from college in 2007, I ended up with a temp office job at a paint colorants factory in Lockland, Ohio, which was owned by the Degussa Corporation. It was an easy job if you knew how to use Microsoft Word, and I usually found myself with twenty hours worth of work to get done in my forty-hour work week. One day early on when I was bored, I googled the name of the company and ended up reading the Wikipedia article, where I found out that the company was German-owned... and that during World War II, they had manufactured Zyklon-B for the Nazis. You know, the stuff used to gas Jews in concentration camps!

From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich
by Peter Hayes

Published: 2004
Read: September 2025

Wikipedia told me this led to some controversy when Degussa had been hired to provide concrete sealant (something like that) for the Holocaust Memorial in Germany: this company had profited both from committing the Holocaust and from apologizing for it. A public outcry had sprung up, but ultimately Degussa completed its contract for the Holocaust Memorial because the project was so far along it would have cost too much money to undo its work and get someone else to do it.

In the short ten months I worked there, the company rebranded itself to "Evonik Industries." There were all sorts of official reasons, but it seemed to me that this was an attempt to divorce itself from its 1940s predecessor. 

I went straight from this job into grad school, so my time working for the "Nazi company" was a common grad school anecdote. Thus, when one of my officemates discovered this book, he told me about; I added it to my reading list, and some eleven years later, I've finally gotten around to reading it.

Peter Hayes is a Holocaust scholar; in the wake of the Holocaust Memorial scandal, he was given access to the Degussa archives to write and publish this book, which attempts to determine to what extent Degussa profited across the Holocaust.

I think probably Hayes is attempting to do something very worthy here, but I found that the book is an onslaught of detail with very little of an overarching narrative. Perhaps this was intentional: I think maybe Hayes wanted you to look at all the evidence he'd amassed and draw your own conclusions. But unfortunately, it makes it a very hard, very dull read. You are given so much information, but it seemed to me, very few answers. We see the results of decisions made, but not how the decisions actually got made, who made them, or why. I found it, ultimately, not a very interesting read, and in its detached, clinical tone, perhaps even a bit of a whitewash.

Justice League International Year Three, Part I: How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm after They've Seen Paree? (JLI #22-25 / JLA #26-30 / JLE #1-6)

from Justice League America #30

Here, we hit the era where Justice League International was doing so well that it was split into two titles. In JLI #24, Max and Oberon decide to add more members to the group, but also to move half of them to the JLI's Paris embassy. Existing JLI members Captain Atom and Rocket Red are put on the new Paris team, joined by new members such as Metamorpho the Element Man, the Elongated Man, Animal Man, Power Girl, and the Flash. Thus, with issue #26, Justice League International is retitled Justice League America, in time for the debut of Justice League Europe. Like JLA, JLE has plot and breakdown by Keith Giffen with scripts by J. M. DeMatteis; Bart Sears pencils with Pablo Marcos on inks.

As I said back in installment #1 (see list below), I read JLE back when I was in college, but at the time I had not read any other JLI titles. So I got a big glow of nostalgia returning to these characters after twenty years... but also now bits of it make a lot more sense to me, like who "Queen Bee" is and why Jack O'Lantern is so mad at the JLE! 

My reading of the last third of the stories collected in the Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 was a lot more straightforward than those in the first two thirds, because this time I had no stories outside of the omnibus to work in. I did still tweak the order, though; the omnibus places JLE #1-6 almost at the very end, after JLA #30, but I recommend reading JLE #1-3 after JLI #25, since JLE #1-3 and JLA #26-29 occur simultaneously.

from Justice League International vol. 1 #22

"Little Murders" / "Gross Injustice" / "The Road Less Travelled" / "Hostage!" / "Across a Crowded Room..." / "Repossessions" / "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm after They've Seen Paree?" / "Somebody Up There Hates Us!" / "Another Fine Mess!" / "Slice and Dice!, or There's Something Very Wrong with the Blue Beetle!" / "Mindswap" / "A Date with Density!" / "Nabu on in My Mind" / "Teenage Biker Mega-Death!" / "Bialya Burning!" / "Stagg Party!" / "No More Teachers' Dirty Looks...?!" / "Around the World with the Justice League" / "The Men I Never Was", from Justice League International vol. 1 #22-25 (Jan.-Apr. 1989), Justice League Europe #1-3 (Apr.-June 1989), Justice League America #26-30 (May-Sept. 1989), Justice League Europe #4-6 (July-Sept. 1989), and Justice League International Annual vol. 1 #3 (1989); reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)
plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen; scripts by J. M. DeMatteis and Dave Levin; pencils by Kevin Maguire, Ty Templeton, Dean Haspiel, Mike McKone, Bart Sears, Bill Willingham, and Tim Gula; inks by Joe Rubinstein, Dean Haspiel, Pablo Marcos, Dick Giordano, Bruce Patterson, and Tim Gula

The first two issues are are tie-ins to Invasion!, where an alliance of aliens invades the Earth. Most of the JLI is summoned to help Wonder Woman on an island in the South Pacific, while Booster Gold and Oberon mind the shop back at the New York embassy. The highlight of the first issue is definitely its opening pages, where the aliens send in an miniaturized strike force that immediately knocks out Booster, meaning Oberon must save the day. The second issue is set after the invasion, when the JLI comes up against the group of largely incompetent criminals who have branded themselves the Injustice League. My favorite is their leader, Major Disaster, who goes on about how failing political science caused him to miss his destiny... becoming a borough president in New York!

from Justice League International vol. 1 #24

After this, we get issue #24, which is an oversized issue that contains three stories, and the key one that splits the team into three groups. The first two stories are fun, particularly the second, a Maxwell Lord one where he gets taken hostage, but by the end, the hostage-takers are working for him, and they've paid Booster and Beetle enough to install a nice big tv in the JLI headquarters, but the third is a hoot. In this one, a bunch of prospective heroes are invited to a soiree at the JLI embassy... at the exact same time the miniaturized strike force Oberon imprisoned in some roach motels returns to normal size. Too many heroes all in a big group try to take them down, just getting in each others' ways.

Last in this sequence is a Beetle and Booster–focused issue, where they once again undertake their repossession business (see Justice League International Annual #2). It has lots of good jokes... and then gets surprisingly serious. Well done stuff.

from Justice League Europe #1

As alluded to above, I had a warm glow of nostalgia reading the JLE issues, especially #1, which mostly focuses on the character interactions on moving day. I love these characters, and I love the way they play off each other; obviously Kevin Maguire is a great artist, but Bart Sears and Pablo Marcos are also great in their own way, a bit cartoonier, but strongly expressive. The actual story here is fine, but what makes it all work are the character moments, particularly those revolving around Ralph and Sue Dibny. So many good jokes! You can feel the writers finding their way into what works for some of these characters (e.g., Metamorpho, Power Girl), but the Elongated Man and his wife click right from the off, and Rocket Red is starting to come into his own.

The work of genius here, though, is of course the issue where both the JLE and the Injustice League end up enrolled in the night school French class and cause a diplomatic incident. 

from Justice League International Annual vol. 1 #3

In the stretch of JLA issues collected here, the Blue-Beetle-attacks-Max-Lord subplot is surprisingly dark for this series often painted as a "sitcom," but I particularly enjoyed the story about a teenage street punk getting hold of Big Barda's mega rod... and being seduced by the call of Apokolips. Again, it's pretty dark, showing a side of Barda that's easy to miss—every time she goes into battle, she's resisting the power of this horrific weapon. Also we get a couple appearances of the Helen Bertinelli Huntress, before her retooling as a Gotham scion, when she battled gangsters on the streets of New York. I liked that series, and so was glad to see her here. We also get Ice's attempt to find the nice side of Guy by going on a date with him... which ends in dismal failure. (My favorite part of this was the crook who got out of the supervillain game, but then thinks Guy is after him when it's actually a total coincidence.)

Lastly, we get JLI Annual #3, which has two stories. One is focused on the Martian Manhunter and his trauma, but I felt like this didn't quite come off even if I liked the idea. The other is good fun, though; the JLI tours their embassies around the world, while Martian Manhunter tries to catch up to them with a delegation from a tropical island. Hilarity ensues, of course, but I particularly enjoyed the jokes about how all the tropical islanders had gone to the U.S. for college.

This is the third in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #31-36 of JLA and #7-12 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)

Guns of the Dragon by Timothy Truman

Guns of the Dragon is a four-issue DC miniseries from the late 1990s, entirely written and illustrated by Timothy Truman, as was Hawkworld. Its relevance to my Blackhawk project is perhaps slim, but it sounded fun enough to be worth reading.

I would posit that Guns of the Dragon is an undertaking that pretty much could have only happened in the DC Comics environment of 1985–2011, when DC's take was that basically everything they had ever published had somehow happened within a single timeline. It unites a bunch of different characters from different genres that take place in different eras, all converging in 1927 in the Pacific. Here we have:

• Enemy Ace, an honorable German fighter pilot who flew in World War I, originally published in war comics 1965-73.
• Bat Lash, a Western hero originally published 1968-81, now an older man tending a bar in Shanghai.
• Biff Bradley, a private eye: a new character for this story, but the brother of the preexisting Slam Bradley, originally published 1937-49 (I think Slam Bradley was in some other project at the time and thus unavailable to Truman).
• Miss Fear, a recurring nemesis of the Blackhawks originally published 1946-48, here made into a half-white Chinese communist spy. (Despite reading so many Blackhawk comics for this project, I actually had not encountered her before because I largely skipped the 1946-57 post-WWII Quality issues.)
• Major Kung, a Japanese warrior who could transform into animals, originally from Gerry Conway's 1977-78 Earth-Two WWII-set Wonder Woman stories, later a recurring villain in Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron (1981-87), also set during World War II.
• Chop-Chop, the Chinese member of the Blackhawk Squadron, and thus my reason for reading this series at all... though this can't be same Chop-Chop from the Blackhawk stories, since he was a young man in the 1940s, and this takes place over a decade earlier!

Plus one of the principal antagonists is recurring Justice Society villain Vandal Savage, and much of the story takes place on "Dinosaur Island," which is from a 1960-68 feature in Star-Spangled War Stories.

from Guns of the Dragon #1

I think the story thus revels in the joy of a franchise comics universe, where you can have characters from all these different genres overlapping: war stories, detective fiction, superhero comics, spy stories, and "lost world" adventures. You couldn't have made this comic before the Crisis collapsed all DC history into one things, and you couldn't have made it after Flashpoint ripped up DC's rich, interesting history in favor of... I dunno, because I largely gave up on DC then.

It's nothing deep, it's sheer pulp adventure, with lots of double-crossing and changing alliances, with WWI biplanes being used to fight pterodactyls, and tons of fights, and people punching out communists. Tim Truman is great at this kind of thing. To be honest, I don't have a lot to say about it, but I enjoyed it throughout. I don't think it really fits with the history of the Blackhawks at all (and Chop-Chop ultimately does very little), but I'm glad I read it.

Guns of the Dragon originally appeared in four issues (Oct. 1998–Jan. 1999). The story was written and illustrated by Timothy Truman, lettered by Ken Lopez, colored by John Kalisz, with separations by Jamison, and edited by Peter Tomasi.

This is the antepenultimate in a series of posts about the Blackhawks. The next installment covers Batman Confidential: Blackhawk Down. Previous installments are listed below:

1. The Blackhawk Archives, Volume 1 (1941-42)
2. Military Comics #18-43 / Modern Comics #44-46 / Blackhawk #9 & 50 (1943-52)
3. Showcase Presents Blackhawk, Volume One (1957-58) 
4. Blackhawk vol. 1 #151-95 (1960-64) 
5. Blackhawk vol. 1 #196-227 (1964-66)
6. Blackhawk vol. 1 #228-43 (1967-68)
7. Blackhawk vol. 1 #244-50 / The Brave and the Bold #167 (1976-80)
8. Blackhawk (1982) 
9. Blackhawk vol. 1 #251-73 / DC Comics Presents #69 (1982-84) 
• Pre-Crisis Continuity 
10. Blackhawk: Blood & Iron (1987-89)
11. Blackhawk vol. 3 (1989-92) 
12. Guy Gardner: Warrior #24, 29, 36, 38-43 / Annual #1 (1994-96)
13. JLA: Year One (1998-99) 

Reading The Living House of Oz Aloud to My Kids

Having enjoyed Paradox in Oz, my kids and I went straight on to Edward Einhorn's other Oz novel, The Living House of Oz. This is a sequel in that sense that it follows up some characters and situations from the earlier book: just like in Paradox, a bit of the action takes place in Tonsoria; Tempus the Parrot-Ox puts in a brief appearance; one of the characters comes from the same dark, alternate Oz that Ozma journeyed to in Paradox. But it's not a sequel in the sense that it's the same thing again. Einhorn isn't invested in solving Oz continuity discrepancies this time (not that he was particularly interested in doing so the first time around, to be honest... though he does explain one discrepancy he didn't squeeze into Paradox).

The Living House of Oz by Edward Einhorn
illustrated by Eric Shanower

Published: 2005
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: August–September 2025

Here, he's interested in doing two things, I would say. The first is providing a "traditional" Oz quest story in the mold of Patchwork Girl, Rinkitink, or, of course, Wonderful Wizard: in order to protect and/or return to their family, a child protagonist is forced to set out on a dangerous journey. The main character here is Buddy, who lives in the mysterious Living House, where every piece of furniture is alive... and so is the house itself! He lives with his mother, a sorceress, and like many young protagonists, yearns for adventure.

The second thing Einhorn is up to here is interrogating some aspects of Oz; specifically, Ozma's ban on magic practiced by anyone other than herself, the Wizard, and Glinda. Is this actually just? Is it right to ban people from doing the thing they're good at because it might hurt other people? Einhorn follows up various aspects of several of Baum's Oz books, most notably Emerald City (the Phanfasms reappear), Patchwork Girl (the little-used Emerald City jail and its mistress, Tollydiggle), and Glinda (the Flatheads and the Adepts at Magic). This kind of thing can feel gratuitous in the hands of later authors, but because it's all in service of one central idea, the return appearances by stuff from earlier books feel quite organic.

Like Paradox, the book has two sub-adventures, but I thought that structure worked a bit better here. In the first, the Living House comes to Tonsoria, in the Gillikin Country. Buddy goes out to explore, but ends up kidnapped when he's at the wrong place at the wrong time, along with Ayala, the princess of Tonsoria (who was a minor character in Paradox). He works to free himself while his mother, Mordra, also works to free him. It turns out that in Tonsoria, there's a guy who really like making wigs, but people in Tonsoria like doing their own hair, and so he thinks if he kidnaps the ruler, he can force everyone to wear his wigs. It's goofy but fun; Tonsoria, with its squabbling advisors and cute animal (the flutefly) has a touch of the Ruth Plumly Thompson about it (in a good way), but the whole adventure also reminded me of John R. Neill's Oz novels. Though they were never great, what I liked about Neill's Oz novels (particularly Wonder City and Scalawagons) is that I think they capture what living in Oz must be like. It's just nuts, weird things are happening all the time. Einhorn does the same thing here. Sure, the cranky old man who owns a wig factory is going around kidnapping people? Why not? It provides a bit of diversion. Will he be punished? Well, not much, and not if he says he's sorry, because people need to learn from their mistakes. And besides, life in Oz would be dull if things like this didn't happen.

This half is basically just an excuse for the second half, though. With Mordra drawn out of the Living House, she attracts the attention of Glinda, and is taken back to the Emerald City for trial. Buddy, though, thinks Ozma is likely to treat his mother unfairly, and so sets out on a quest to rescue her, with several misadventures on the way; this culminates in a reveal of Buddy's true parentage and a moment of supreme temptation for Buddy, who must learn to do the right thing. More than any Oz author other than Eloise McGraw, I would say, Einhorn is interested in the psychology of his child protagonist. The entire book hinges not just on an act of heroism by him, but him learning how the world works. It's a great moment, very well done.

Other than that, the second half of the book is just full of nice touches. More than most of Baum's imitators, Einhorn has a great sense of humor, with inspired jokes. I particularly liked the Flathead whose head is so full of information about carpentry, he doesn't know any words that begin with X, Y, or Z, so he has to contort his sentences around saying you and your. But he also can't say extra... because he's not a very good speller! The trial of Mordra is also hilarious; the Scarecrow is assigned as prosecution... but they decide it's unfair to Modra if her defense lawyer is less smart, so he also serves in that role, arguing against himself. They're the kind of jokes one could imagine Baum writing, but he never did.

My kids particularly loved the Earl of Haberdashery, the living hatstand in the Living House, who occasionally accompanies Buddy on his adventures, and is always telling lies about things he knows and places he's been and deed he's accomplished. He's the kind of delightful, kooky character who fits right alongside all the other weirdos of Oz without feeling derivative of them. And it all pays off with an amazing moment in the end where he comes through when it's clutch.

Plus, we have of course excellent illustrations from our man, Eric Shanower. Overall, this is an excellently done Oz book; had it been one of the "Famous Forty" it surely would have been in my top ten at least. I liked Paradox a lot, but this beats it for me. I'd happily read more Edward Einhorn (I gather he has a couple short stories, which hopefully we'll come to), but it's been twenty years since this book, so perhaps he's said all he has to say about the world of Oz.

Star Trek: Enemy Unseen by Keith R.A. DeCandido, Scott Ciencin, Andrew Currie, Peter Pachoumis, Lucian Rizzo, et al.

Star Trek Classics #2: Enemy Unseen

Collection published: 2012
Contents originally published: 2000-01
Read: September 2025

Written by Keith R.A. DeCandido, Christopher Golden & Tom Sniegoski, Scott Ciencin

Pencils by Peter Pachoumis & Scott Benefiel, Dave Hoover, Andrew Currie

Inks by Lucian Rizzo, Jason Martin, Troy Hubbs, Bryan Hitch & Chris Chuckry

Colors by Jeromy Cox, Chris Chuckry

Letters by Ryan Cline, Rob Robbins, & Nagmeh Zand

I got this "Star Trek Classics" collection from Hoopla; it contains three Star Trek: The Next Generation comic stories from the early 2000s, originally published by Wildstorm. The first is Perchance to Dream, a four-issue miniseries; this is set shortly before Star Trek Generations (it even features the film's mismatched uniforms), with the Enterprise-D coming to a Federation member planet where the aliens have three genders—but the new governor is being attacked by terrorists because she only has one partner, not the traditional two. It's a good premise for a TNG episode, but it's not a great comic: way too much dialogue and narration, plus art and coloring that makes the aliens largely indistinguishable from one another. Too many side characters on the Enterprise as well. There's a clever conceit here, in that Picard is sort of like a victim of multiple personality disorder (he also has the minds of Sarek, Locutus, and Kamin in his head), but this feels a bit tacked on as the resolution to the central maguffin, as opposed to being the central conception of the story.

The second story, "Embrace the Wolf," is set during season seven of TNG, and has the Enterprise encountering Redjac, the incorporeal alien from the original series's "Wolf in the Fold" which was supposedly Jack the Ripper. The story's best part is that it has Data battling Redjac in a holodeck simulation of Victorian London, with Data as Sherlock Holmes... but it just doesn't do very much with this idea, which really ought to have been the crux of the whole plot! The art is hit or miss; the artist seems to do particularly poorly with Troi and Crusher.

Also, Worf is randomly in this, but I kind of liked that—it was just how you told an Enterprise-E story in the late 1990s and early 2000s, you had to have Worf randomly pop up.
from Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Killing Shadows #3 (script by Scott Ciencin, art by Andrew Currie)

Lastly, there's The Killing Shadows, where the Enterprise-E (in the year before First Contact) battle evil alien ninjas. It's kind of incoherent and ridiculous, but I sort of admired that about it; it felt like a comic book in some ways, not just an attempt to render an episode on the page. But unfortunately it got dumber as it went on; I found it hard to believe that Riker could defeat a bunch of alien superninjas just because he stole their outfit. The inclusion of Sela is totally random. And I didn't really follow the climax at all.

So, yeah, "classics" may be a bit of an exaggeration, but as a Hoopla borrow this was fine. Glad I didn't pay for the print edition, though.

Justice League International Year Two: Suicide Squad vs. Justice League (JLI #13-21)

The second year of Justice League International brings the title into a crossover with Suicide Squad. This time-span also saw four issues of Secret Origins with Justice League collections published; three of these were reprinted in the third JLI omnibus, but I chose to read them by release date, in between issues of JLI. (Clearly they're more useful to me here than much later, but also experience has taught me I don't enjoy reading a bunch of origin stories in a row, so better to spread them out a little.) Plus, as with my "Year One" post, there is one story set during this period that was written later.

from Justice League International vol. 1 #14

Suicide Squad vs. Justice League / "Shop...or Die" / "Gnort and South!", from Justice League International vol. 1 #13 & Suicide Squad vol. 1 #13 (May 1988) and Justice League International vol. 1 #14-15 (June-July 1988), reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)

plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen; scripts by J. M. DeMatteis and John Ostrander; pencils by Kevin Maguire, Luke McDonnell, and Steve Leialoha; inks by Al Gordon and Bob Lewis

First we get a crossover with Suicide Squad: the Suicide Squad decides to free one of their members from a Russian prison; in order to prevent an international incident, the JLI is sent in to stop them. I enjoyed it even if I am very unfamiliar with Suicide Squad. Apparently Captain Atom is dating one of its members; the gag about how they pretended to fight but were actually tickling each other was a good one. The best part, though, was when J'onn J'onzz runs into one of his old Justice League Detroit teammates, Vixen, now a Suicide Squad member. Vixen says he must have seen her and her version of the league as a joke, but he confesses how important they were to him. It's a great moment.

Weirdly, the story ends with Batman declaring his frustrations with the JLI, calling everyone a moron, and quitting. It doesn't feel quite in character... but also in later stories, he's still a member!

After this, we have the first two parts of an eight-part story about the alien Cluster coming to Earth to trade... or compel it to trade by blowing it up. While there has been lots of character-interaction comedy so far, Lord Manga Khan and his sidekick robot, L-RON, are the first overtly comic villain characters we've seen, with lots of goofy back-and-forth and even some metatextual jokes. ("Please, L-RON--you sound like a contrived plot summary." "Sorry, m'lord.") I enjoy their interplay a lot.

In addition, Gnort returns (so far so good but I'm worried there will be a point I max out on Gnort comedy), and the Green Flame and Icemaiden, formerly of the Global Guardians (who appeared in some backups earlier in the series), finagle their way into joining the shorthanded JLI.

from JLA: Incarnations #6

"Buddies", from JLA: Incarnations #6 (Dec. 2001)

written by John Ostrander, pencilled by Val Semeiks, inked by Prentis Rollins, lettered by Ken Lopez, colored by John Kalisz

JLA: Incarnations was a seven-issue 2001-02 miniseries, where each issue contained stories from the history of the Justice League, beginning with its original incarnation and ended with the then-current "Watchtower" version. Issue #6 contains two stories, one from the JLI era, the other from the (as far as I can tell, extremely regrettable) "Extreme Justice" incarnation. Chronologically, there's no good place to fit this story in: the Green Flame and Icemaiden are League members, so it must take place after JLI #15, but Colonel Harjavti is still ruler of Bialya, so it must take place before issue #16. However, during that time, Mister Miracle was kidnapped by the Cluster, and Martian Manhunter was in space trying to rescue him, but they're both in this story. As we'll see, though, that was a problem the actual JLI series had too!

Anyway, this story is fun enough. Colonel Harjavti makes Bialya into a supervillain sanctuary so that supervillains will invest their money in his banks; Booster and Beetle decide to infiltrate the country (as some delightfully awful 1990s-style supervillains) to make the entire scheme collapse... only Colonel Harjavti expects their arrival, and they have to be rescued by the rest of the League. Writer John Ostrander decently captures the tone of this era, doing a good job with the Booster/Beetle interplay in particular. I really liked the art by Val Semeiks and Prentis Rollins which, like that of Kevin Maguire, goes for detailed and realistic, and lets the comedy emerge from that.

from Justice League International Annual vol. 1 #2

"Hit or Miss!" / "Bialya, My Bialya" / "Only the Dead Know Bialya!" / "Where No League Has Gone Before!" / "Raising the Roof!", from Justice League International Annual vol. 1 #2 (1988) and Justice League International vol. 1 #16-18 (Aug.-Oct. 1988), reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)

plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen; scripts by J. M. DeMatteis and Mark Askwith; pencils by Bill Willingham, Kevin Maguire, and James Webb; inks by Joe Rubinstein, Al Gordon, and Mark Pennington

Like "Buddies" from JLA: Incarnations #6, Justice League Annual #2 takes place in a nonexistent gap because Fire and Ice are on the team and Colonel Harjavti still rules Bialya, but Mister Miracle, Martian Manhunter, and Big Barda are not in space. The omnibus places it before issue #14, but I think it reads better after #15 since otherwise the presence of the Green Flame and Icemaiden is completely random even if there's not an actual gap for it to fit in. 

Anyway, this is a goofy story about the Joker teaming up with Colonel Harjavti while Booster and Beetle try to make extra money by doing repossessions, which leads to them running afoul of the criminal gang the Thousand; meanwhile, Big Barda and Mister Miracle are preparing to host a barbecue... and while Scott Free can rewire a mother box, a gas grill may prove beyond his ken. I enjoyed this a lot, particularly all the Booster/Beetle stuff and the Scott/Barda stuff. Mister Miracle has been part of JLI from the beginning, but I'm happy to see the increased inclusion of Big Barda, who is also a great character.

After this, we get the next three parts of the Cluster storyline, though it also incorporates a story about Colonel Harjavti and Bialya. It reads a little weirdly to have the JLI infiltrating Bialya again if you've read JLA: Incarnations, but there's nothing that says they haven't done this before. This one, again, has some fun stuff, with Batman pretending to be Bruce Wayne (!), Booster and Beetle being Wayne's hired help, and the Green Flame getting into a number of improbable escapades. It all ends, though, in the death of Colonel Harjavti, replaced by his consort "Queen Bee" as ruler of Bialya... as well as the reveal of Bialya's own super team, made up of the alien superheroes from JL #2-3 and rejects from the Global Guardians.

Meanwhile in space, Martian Manhunter and Big Barda do their best to liberate Scott; Lord Manga Khan hires Lobo to take them down. Lobo is a character who is often misused... but here he's in the hands of cocreator Keith Giffen and thus on great form, particularly in the sequence where he's accidentally sent to JLI embassy on Earth.

There's also a backup story here called "Raising the Roof"; Scott and Barda's home is accidentally blown up, so they move into the JLI embassy. Barda does housework to earn her keep but is terrible at it, so the other JLI members decide to rebuild their home to get her out... only they do a bad job of it. I have no idea where this story might fit chronologically, if at all, but I enjoyed it. Will Scott and Barda still live in the embassy in future stories? I guess I will see when we finally get there.

from Secret Origins vol. 2 #32

"All Together Now: The Secret Origin of the Justice League of America", from Secret Origins vol. 2  #32 (Nov. 1988)

story by Gardner Fox, plot by Keith Giffen, dialogue by Peter David, art by Eric Shanower, letters by Gaspar, colors by Gene D'Angelo

While issues #33-35 of Secret Origins were origins for various JLI members, #32 was an origin for the JLA overall, the first one told in the post-Crisis universe. It's not included in the JLI omnibus volumes, which makes sense, but I did want to read it. (The cover has some JLI members on it, but they're not in the actual story.) The story is fine, nothing too exciting to be honest; it does its job well, but that's about it. That said, I did really like the sequence where the various future JLA members figure out how to work together without actually talking about it. Peter David does the dialogue to a plot by Keith Giffen, but surprisingly, there's only one overtly comic bit in it. The art is by Eric Shanower, best known on this blog as the illustrator of numerous Oz books and author of quite a number of Oz comics. Shanower is an excellent storyteller, and overall he does a good job adopting a superheroic style... but I noticed he draws Black Canary's face the same way he does Princess Ozma's!

Coincidentally, I recently read JLA: Year One, and I note that that story basically picks up right from the end of this one. Maybe they should have collected Secret Origins #32 with it?

from Justice League International vol. 1 #19

"No More Mr. Nice-Guy!" / "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be-- Apokolips!" / "Apokolips... Wow!", Justice League International vol. 1 #19-21 (Nov.-Dec. 1988), reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)

plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen, scripts by J. M. DeMatteis, pencils by Kevin Maguire and Ty Templeton, inks by Joe Rubinstein

I alternated these issues with the three Secret Origins issues below, but reviewing them that way seems silly. These finally bring an end to the ongoing Cluster storyline, with Manga Khan trying to sell Scott Free to Darkseid on Apokolips, while Barda summons the whole JLI to help her battle. Lots of great stuff in this one... particularly Darkseid being above it all! Barda is awesome. Also, Guy Gardner turns into an asshole again and throws down with Lobo.

Also during this stretch of issues, the original Hawkman and Hawkgirl briefly (re)join the League. Hawkman is depicted as an obnoxious old fogey who doesn't like how thew League has become more irreverent. At one point, he complains about how their cursing shows a lack of decorum, which causes Beetle to tease him by calling him a Republican. Funny to think that thirty-five years ago it was the Republicans who were the party of public decorum! 

from Secret Origins vol. 2 #35

Secret Origins of Justice League International, from Secret Origins vol. 2  #33-35 (Dec. 1988), reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 (2024)

written by Mike Carlin, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, Gerard Jones, Cary Bates with Greg Weisman, William Messner-Loebs, J. M. DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, Mark Verheiden, and Robert Loren Fleming; pencilled by Don Heck, Chuck Austen, Valentino, Alan Weiss, Irv Novick, Stephen DeStefano, Dan Jurgens, Ken Steacy, and Eduardo Barreto; inked by Klaus Janson & Art Adams, Gary Martin, Eduardo Barreto, Joe Rubinstein, Stephen DeStefano, Tom Dzon, and Ken Steacy; lettered by Albert De Guzman, Todd Klein, Helen Vesik, Bob Lappan, and Agustin Mas; colored by Tom Ziuko, Greg Theakston, and Gene D'Angelo

These three issues of Secret Origins give us origins for Mister Miracle and Oberon, the Green Flame, Icemaiden, Captain Atom, Rocket Red, Gnort, Booster Gold, Martian Manhunter, and Maxwell Lord. 

Some are good. The Gnort one is fun (is his planet supposed to be a Dr. Seuss planet?). The Captain Atom one doesn't really give an origin for him, but ties into what I think was an idea in the character's then ongoing, that he had a superheroic career in the 1960s... that was all made up! (I think I detected a bit of a Miracleman influence here. I'll be curious to see what I think if I ever read his actual solo series.) The Rocket Red one also doesn't give much of an origin, but it does give us more of a sense of the main character that has been missing from his appearances in JLI so far. The Booster one is great—for a character so often played for comedy in JLI, he has quite a tragic life! The Martian Manhunter one is nicely atmospheric.

Some are just fine. It's good to get backstory for Green Flame and Icemaiden; my understanding is they had no origins at all until these stories. But the actual Icemaiden story is just okay, and I didn't care for the art in the Green Flame one, which I don't think quite matches what the Bierbaums were trying to do in their writing. The Maxwell Lord one is kind of pointless, because it retells something we just got a few issues ago in JLI #12... but I did find this telling more streamlined.

One is not good. I found the Mister Miracle and Oberon one a chore to read, and it felt to me like it didn't really capture key parts of the characters' origins, rushing over them, spending a lot of time on stuff that didn't matter much. The key to Mister Miracle is that need to escape, and this story doesn't really nail that at all.

This is the second in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #22-30 of JLI/JLA and #1-6 of JLE. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Justice League #1-6 / Justice League International #7-12 (May 1987–Apr. 1988)

Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda by Jim Zub, Lan Medina, Craig Yeung, et al.

This eight-issue miniseries came out in parallel to The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, Book 3, but if you've only been following T'Challa's adventures in his main title, it reads very oddly. Far from being lost in space, Black Panther is apparently the chairman of the Avengers!? According to this series, not only that, but he's assembled a special strike force to support the Avengers in times of particular crisis, called the "Agents of Wakanda" and led by the leader of the Dora Milaje, Okoye.

from Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda #1

I didn't really buy any of this. Why would T'Challa be the chair of the Avengers, particularly at this point in time? If he did think the Avengers needed extra back-up, why would he call the group "Agents of Wakanda"? Surely a group called that would be backing up Wakanda's interests, not the Avengers'? Based on the title, I expected something more like The Crew. How come Okoye is leading this group? Doesn't she have a whole other group of elite warriors to spend her time leading?

If you can get past all this, what's here is fine, sometimes even good. The eight issues are made up of four two-issue stories; each one puts a set of different Agents of Wakanda into the spotlight, which are a mix of prominent Marvel characters (e.g., Mockingbird, the Wasp) and ones I had never heard of (e.g., Fat Cobra). I do like goofy, obscure superhero characters, and writer Jim Zub really leans into that with the rotating line-up here. Of the four stories here, my favorites were the first, with its emphasis on Fat Cobra, a sumo wrestler who can eat his way out of trouble, and the last, which has a big focus on Fin Fang Foom. The goofy stuff on the moon in the second one was also good. 

from Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda #8

The only one I didn't really like was, predictably, the Deadpool one. Any amount of Deadpool is too much.

So I don't really get why this comic had to be made (its best moments have pretty much nothing to do with the Black Panther or his milieu), but if it did, it was decent enough. I enjoyed it enough that when I got to the end, I was interested to see its threads would be continued in a comic called Empyre: Invasion of Wakanda... but disappointed to discover the comic never actually came out! 

Black Panther and the Agents of Wakanda originally appeared in eight issues (Nov. 2019–Sept. 2020). The stories were written Jim Zub; penciled by Lan Medina (#1-4, 7-8) and Scot Eaton (#5-6); inked by Lan Medina (#1), Craig Yeung (#2-4, 7-8), and Sean Parsons (#5-6); colored by Marcio Menyz (#1-8) and Erik Arciniega (#4-5), with Federico Blee (#3); lettered by Joe Sabino; and edited by Wil Moss.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

New Publication: Review of Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll

This summer, it was my privilege to get to read Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by my former colleague Jordan S. Carroll. I reviewed the book for the academic journal that I am associate editor for, Studies in the Fantastic.

After I read and reviewed the book, the book won the Hugo Award for Best Related Work—which I think was well-deserved, and I think I would think that even if I didn't know Jordan! 

Jordan cites the idea of the "modal imagination" that he gets from Mark Jerng (who in turn got it from the philosopher Adrian M.S. Piper), which I have found really useful in articulating what makes science fiction what it is—I used it in my sf class this semester, and I suspect it might even find its way into a book project I've been contemplating.

The full review can be read here if you have access to Project MUSE, but here are the first couple paragraphs:

As Jordan Carroll discusses in the introduction to this slim volume from the University of Minnesota Press’s “Forerunners: Ideas First” series, “[s]cience fiction thinking turns out to be surprisingly prevalent in the alt-right and antecedent white nationalist movements” (5). Many like to think of science fiction as an inherently progressive genre: its urtext, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), is after all the work of the daughter of one of the founding thinkers of feminism, and early sf writers like H. G. Wells used the genre to criticize imperialism and nationalism. Science fiction allows us to imagine a better world.
     How, then, could the genre attract those who want to take society backward in some kind of way? This is a question often expressed by baffled fans and critics alike, but as Carroll demonstrates, there have long been racist undercurrents in sf and its fandom, as evidenced by controversies such as 2009’s “Racefail,” when authors of color critiqued the field (17), and the “Sad” and “Rabid Puppies” movements (2013–17), when right-wing fans attempted to pack the fan-voted Hugo Awards with their chosen finalists, many of them racist and homophobic (47–8). Prominent racist thinkers such as Richard Spencer and Nick Land are science fiction fans, and adherents of President Donald Trump sometimes refer to him as the “God Emperor,” drawing on a term from Frank Herbert’s Dune novels (1963–85) and the sf wargame Warhammer 40,000. How can all of this happen, given the genre’s supposed leanings and origins? As Pamela Bedore says (drawing on Carolyn Miller), we should “ask not what various genres or subgenres look like, but rather, what they accomplish rhetorically” (9). Is there something about the rhetoric of science fiction itself as a genre that allows it to be a breeding ground for racism?

The review works in a couple of my own obsessions: Pam Bedore's features/project distinction for articulating genre and Isaac Asimov's definition of sf.

But probably the thing I am most proud of is the title, which is a reference to a classic Internet meme, and somehow neither of the two editors I worked with on the review put the kibosh on that... which I totally expected them to do: "Racism? In My Science Fiction? It’s More Likely than You Think."

Reading Roundup Wrapup: September 2026

Pick of the month: Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold. Do I always pick a Bujold novel as my best book in the months where I read one? I bet I do. More on this sooner or later—but I think this might be my favorite Vorkosigan novel thus far.

All books read:

1. The Living House of Oz by Edward Einhorn, illustrated by Eric Shanower
2. The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume Four: Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
3. Star Trek Classics #2: Enemy Unseen by Keith R.A. DeCandido, Scott Ciencin, Andrew Currie, Peter Pachoumis, Lucian Rizzo, et al.
4. From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich by Peter Hayes
5. Tongues of Serpents: Book Six of Temeraire by Naomi Novik
6. The Monster Makers: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Magazine by Alan Barnes, Lee Sullivan, and Mike Collins
7. Mirror Dance: A Vorkosigan Adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold
8. Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (part 1) by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, et al.
9. Oz-story Magazine, Number One edited by David Maxine
10. Ms. Marvel Team-Up by Eve L. Ewing, Clint McElroy, Joey Vazquez, Ig Guara, et al.

All books acquired:

1. Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, et al.
2. Ms. Marvel Team-Up by Eve L. Ewing, Clint McElroy, Joey Vazquez, Ig Guara, et al.
3. Legion Lost, Volume 1: Run from Tomorrow by Fabian Nicieza, Pete Woods, Tom DeFalco, et al.
4. Legion Lost, Volume 2: The Culling by Tom DeFalco, Pete Woods, et al.
5. Black Canary: Best of the Best by Tom King and Ryan Sook
6. Oz-story Magazine, Number One edited by David Maxine
7. Tongues of Serpents: Book Six of Temeraire by Naomi Novik
8. The Monster Makers: Collected Comic Strips from the Pages of Doctor Who Magazine by Alan Barnes, Lee Sullivan, and Mike Collins
9. Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, et al.
10. Mirror Dance: A Vorkosigan Adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold

Currently reading:

• Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 by Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, et al.
• Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison
• Black Panther Adventures by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, et al.

 Up next in my rotations:

1. Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles; Or, Pirates of the Second Aether!! by Michael Moorcock
2. Formerly Known as the Justice League by Keith Giffen & J. M. DeMatteis, Kevin Maguire, and Joe Rubinstein
3. Rumble Fish by S. E. Hinton 
4. Wait, Wait…I’m Not Done Yet! by Carl Kasell 

 Books remaining on "To be read" list: 683 (up 1)

Hugos Side-Step: The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume Four

As part of my project to read old Hugo winners and related books, I've also been reading the complete Philip K. Dick short stories; this year that brings me to the fourth of its five volumes, which covers stories published from 1955 to 1964. (The stories are collected in order of composition, though, so it actually overlaps with volume three.) None of these stories were ever Hugo finalists, though notably, one of the stories collected here takes place at a Worldcon! This volume was originally published under the title of The Days of Perky Pat, but when the Steven Spielberg film adaptation came out, it was retitled Minority Report.

Previous volumes of this series covered just two to three years of publication time; this one covers a whole decade, indicating a drop-off in how many short stories Dick wrote due to, I believe, his novel-writing career taking off. Perhaps thanks to that, this volume has the highest hit rate of any of these I've read before. I'll just give an overview of some of my favorites and other thoughts here. 

The Collected Short Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume Four: Minority Report
by Philip K. Dick

Collection published: 2000
Contents originally published: 1955-64
Acquired: August 2025
Read: September 2025

You can see Dick's emerging interest in the figure of the media celebrity who controls the thoughts of the populace, a figure who would be a key character in some of his later novels, particularly Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974); here, they pop up in "The Mold of Yancy" (based on Eisenhower, according to Dick's note), "If There Were No Benny Cemoli," "Novelty Act" (where the First Lady controls America, and the President is selected on the basis of who she'd most like to be married to), and the linked pair of "Stand-By" and "What'll We Do with Ragland Park?", where a literal clown with a news broadcast runs for President and only loses thanks to dirty tricks by his opponents. Dick was not exactly right about which media figures would dominate in the future (I don't think newsreaders or variety show hosts carry the cachet now they did in the 1950s and '60s!), but right about our culture's increasing parasocial interest in hollow celebrities. Give me a Philip K. Dick story about TikTok, please.

To be honest, I didn't like the actual story of "Stand-By" very much, but I was tickled by its central conceit: in a future where a computer is the impartial President of the United States, as a concession to the unions over the fact that a human job had been taken by a machine, there'd be a stand-by president, a human being whose job is to sit around just in case the computer fails.

As the title of my edition indicates, the book contains "The Minority Report," a masterpiece of time travel fiction, and the only short story by Philip K. Dick I'd read before embarking on this project back in 2022. It's very cleverly plotted, and the mechanics of how precognition works and what the "minority report" actually is and what the main character chooses to do in the end are all much much more interesting and thought-provoking than in the mediocre Steven Spielberg film. It was interesting to learn that "The Minority Report" was just one of several stories about the mechanics of precognition; it's also the basis of "Recall Mechanism," where a psychiatrist who thinks he's uncovering a patient's suppressed past trauma ends up realizing it's their suppressed future trauma.

I wanted to like "What the Dead Men Say," whose opening premise is about a world where the dead can persist in a half-life; people can visit facilities to wake them and ask for their advice. This would make a great tie-in to my ongoing teaching about "technologies of immortality"... except that the story is barely about that idea! (Dick also used this idea in his 1969 novel Ubik, but again the story isn't really about it.) It's a decent story, but it has a rushed ending.

I didn't particularly get much out of "The Days of Perky Pat," but Dick's reflection on it in his notes was fascinating; the story comes out of his aversion to Barbies. Why are kids playing with adult dolls? Surely adults should be!

I really enjoyed "Oh, to Be a Blobel!", Dick's weird satire on how war changes people and societies—complete with an AI therapist. An Earth soldier infiltrated the enemy Blobels, and so had metamorphose into one, a blobby, protean life-form... and now that the war is over, he can't control and keeps doing it, as do many other vets, ruining his chance of reintegrating into society. The psychiatrist hooks him up with a Blobel who can't control her transformations into a human, and the story explores the ups and downs of their odd relationship, as well as his growing self-loathing over what he's become. Great sf take on the consequences of war.

My favorite story, though, was "Waterspider." In this story's future time, they believe that twentieth-century sf writers were precogs who could genuinely see the future; Dick himself is hailed for his prediction of World War III in "Second Variety." The future people need a precog, so on the basis of a story they read, they travel back in time to abduct Poul Anderson! I often hate "meta," self-indulgent stuff like this (David Gerrold wrote a very bad pastiche of Dick along these lines in "Jellyfish," which I will forever hold against him), but this story is genuinely hilarious and has a very clever time-travel twist; I loved it. Lots of good time travel stuff; I couldn't believe how brazen Dick was with Anderson as a character! "Orpheus with Clay Feet" is similar, if not quite as good, but still very fun—and gets quite weirdly meta by the end. These stories point toward Dick's increasing interest in the barrier between fiction and reality we see in novels like The Man in the High Castle (1962) and VALIS (1981).

I read an old winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel every year, plus other Hugo-related books that interest me. Next up in sequence: Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Justice League International Year One: Born Again (JL #1-6 / JLI #7-12)

I wouldn't have gotten into Justice League Europe if Bob Greenberger hadn't lost his job.

Back in the mid-2000s, I was in college and just getting into comic books; my main entry point was Star Trek and Star Wars, seeking stories I'd read about, but were not contained in the novels I'd been reading since childhood. At that time, Bob got fired from DC Comics and needed to raise money, fast, so he auctioned off his comics collection. I bid on a lot of stuff, mostly Star Trek (this is where my runs on Starfleet Academy and Early Voyages come from), but other stuff I'd heard of, too, like Green Lantern/Green Arrow (the 1980s prestige format reprints). In particular, there were two series I picked up just because the basic premises tickled my fancy: Alpha Flight and Justice League Europe. Canada's premiere superhero team! The Justice League... but in Europe! Something about the very American concept of superheroes being transposed into other countries very much amused and intrigued me.

I can't claim to be a big Alpha Flight fan (that will have to be another post someday), but I fell in love with Justice League Europe. Character-driven and funny, it's everything I want from an ongoing narrative, and it's thanks to JLE that Elongated Man is my favorite DC superhero. 

I hadn't known when buying it that JLE was a spin-off of Justice League International, or that it was intertwined with Justice League America, but I soon figured that out when I got to crossover events like The Teasdale Imperative and Breakdowns, which were largely incomprehensible because I was only getting half the story; even outside of that, this series clearly continued character threads begun in the earlier series. Additionally, JLE continued beyond what I had, just under another title: issues #51-68 were retitled Justice League International.

So I've long intended to read the whole of the JLI era, with both series intertwined and all the various side stories and spin-offs. To that end, about ten years ago I picked up Formerly Known as the Justice League, which collects the six-issue reunion miniseries of that name. 

The setup...
from Justice League vol. 1 #2

Well, it finally made it to the top of my reading list, so it's time to dive in. Since then, the core Giffen/DeMatteis run on the two titles has been collected in three hardcover omnibus volumes, and I'll definitely be reading those, but me being me, I'm making it even more complicated. 

I'll also be reading Justice League Task Force (which has been collected a little), Justice League Quarterly (early issues of which are in the JLI Omnibus volumes), and various other side stories and flashbacks set during this era. I won't end where the omnibuses end, but keep going, up until the point that JLI was cancelled, just before Zero Hour. (JLA kept going after that, but I won't.) Some of the post-Giffen/DeMatteis material has been collected, mostly issues of JLA in the Superman & Justice League America and Wonder Woman & Justice League America trades; I'll read single issues when I have no other option.

I'm mostly reading in the order things are collected in the JLI omnibus volumes, but I've made some adjustments based on the Cosmic Teams timeline. Here on this blog, I'll be writing them up in chunks of approximately twelve ongoing issues to a post. So, when it's just JLI, I'll cover a year's worth of stuff, but once JLE is added to the mix, I'll do two posts per year, and then once JLTF comes along, three.

So here's the first post. This covers issues #1-12 of the title originally known as Justice League, later Justice League International, plus the Justice League Annual, and two stories set during this era that were published later. 

...and the payoff.
from Justice League vol. 1 #2

"Born Again" / "Make War No More!" / "Meltdown" / "Winning Hand" / "Germ Warfare" / "Gray Life, Gray Dreams" / "Massacre in Gray" / "Justice League... International!", from Justice League vol. 1 #1-4 (May-Aug. 1987), Justice League Annual vol. 1 #1 (1987), Justice League vol. 1 #5-6 (Sept.-Oct. 1987), and Justice League International vol. 1 #7 (Nov. 1987); reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)

plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen; scripts by J. M. DeMatteis; pencils by Kevin Maguire and Bill Willingham; inks by Terry Austin, Al Gordon, and Dennis Janke, P. Craig Russell, Bill Wray, Robert Campanella, Bruce Patterson, & Dick Giordano

Like many ongoing titles, Justice League takes a bit to find its footing. I'm not saying it's bad—I'm just saying it's not what it would later become. The first four issues especially are pretty serious in terms of plot, with terrorists attacking the UN, looming nuclear meltdowns in Soviet Russia, people escaping dead worlds, and a fairly desperate fight between Booster Gold and the Royal Flush Gang. The comedy, such as it is, mostly comes from two things.

First, Keith Giffen's breakdowns, J. M. DeMatteis's scripts, and Kevin Maguire's pencils lean into the character interplay and highlight the differences between these various characters. To me, this is always the pleasure of a team book: the premises of, say, Batman and Booster Gold, make for fairly different approaches to superheroics, and it's just fun to have them butt up against each other here. In particular, Batman kind of becomes the cranky straight man to the other characters, as one of the only experienced JL members, and certainly the most serious... though not averse to cracking a joke on occasion. The other character who really stands out here is Guy Gardner, who's full-on in his boorish asshole characterization here. Captain Marvel is in his "holey moley" mode, which is fun too.

Second, as much as they put people in danger, there is a slight hint of comedy to the machinations of the League's mysterious benefactor, Maxwell Lord. Obviously being toyed with by forces beyond your comprehension can be frightening, but it can also be the set-up for some good jokes. So, the the first four issues are decent enough. The visual storytelling is top-notch, as it always is when Giffen is doing breakdowns or layouts. 

These are followed by Justice League Annual #1, which I thought was okay but a bit long-winded. Some of Ted "Blue Beetle" Kord's employees are infected by a mind-controlling virus, which spreads around the world; it's not really interesting enough to see a bunch of mind-controlled superheroes to justify the double-length story. And, unfortunately, the next story (the "Gray Man" one from JL #5-6) is also about mind-controlled superheroes. This is probably the weakest story in the whole book; I found the conflict about an ancient servant of the Lords of Order who rises up to bedevil Doctor Fate kind of long-winded and hard to care about. That said, JL #5 is the issue with the infamous "one punch" moment where Batman lays out Guy once and for all.

After this, the book was retitled from Justice League to Justice League International with issue #7; as you might imagine from the new title, this is also the story where the JL officially gets UN sanction. The Gray Man plot is wrapped up quickly, and the issue focuses on Lord manipulating the League and the press... but we also get some of the series's initial forays into more overt comedy, with Guy getting the bump on the head that turns him into an obnoxiously pleasant sap. On the other hand, there are nice moments of characterization, too, such as when J'onn "Martian Manhunter" J'onnz reflects on how the League itself is his home on Earth, the one place where he can be himself.

from JLA 80-Page Giant #1

"Mousebusters", from JLA 80-Page Giant #1 (July 1998); reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 3 (2024)

script by Keith Giffen, pencils by Kevin Maguire, inks by Karl Story, colors by Gene D'Angelo, letters by Bob Lappan

This story was written a decade later, but takes place during JLI #7. Its first page retells the first page of issue #7, with Guy crawling under a console in the JL headquarters looking for a mouse and hitting his head. The rest of the short story involves the rest of the League, particularly Beetle and Booster, working to try to catch the mouse. (The issue implies the rest of its events follow immediately after the first page, but this can't be the case; most of the story's events must occur simultaneous to the events of pages 14 through 17 of JLI #7 based on the presence of the Martian Manhunter. A couple days pass according to "Mousebusters," which isn't what JLI #7 implies, but is possible.)

Anyway, it's a very short but funny story about some Booster/Beetle hijinks. At the time I read it, I felt it was more overtly comedic than anything we'd seen in the actual JL comics so far, but it's actually pretty much on the level of "Moving Day," the very next issue.

from Justice League International vol. 1 #8

"Moving Day" / "Old News" / "Seeing Red" / "Brief Encounter" / "Soul of the Machine" / "...Back at the Ranch..." / "Constructions!" / "Who Is Maxwell Lord?", from Justice League International vol. 1 #8-12 (Dec. 1987–Apr. 1988); reprinted in Justice League International Omnibus, Volume 1 (2017)

plot & breakdowns by Keith Giffen, scripts by J. M. DeMatteis, pencils by Kevin Maguire, inks by Al Gordon

The rest of the first year of JLI sets up the series's new status quo, involves the characters in the Millennium crossover, and wraps up the subplot about Maxwell Lord manipulating the League while something else manipulates Maxwell Lord. Issue #8, "Moving Day," is comics perfection as far as I'm concerned. No superheroics, just character interplay as the JLI moves into their new UN-provided "embassies" around the world. Lots of great jokes, like Booster trying to hit on women and Mister Miracle not realizing that every superhero headquarters has a roof up to landing a shuttle on it.

"Seeing Red" and "Soul of the Machine" focus on battling the Manhunters; part of the premise of Millennium is that characters from every book would be revealed as evil alien Manhunters, but unfortunately the character picked here is Rocket Red, who literally joined the team one issue earlier, so it's not much of a shock reveal! In "Soul of the Machine," the League is suddenly in space (I did read Millennium, but over a decade ago, so my memory is foggy); I was surprised to actually enjoy the appearance of Gnort, the nepo baby Green Lantern. In the past, I have found the a little bit of the character to be far too much, but I guess it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire would handle him better than their many imitators.

To be honest, I found a lot of the reveals about Maxwell Lord pretty confusing, but I did kind of feel like the creative team was trying to wrap up this plot sooner rather than later so it wouldn't drag on too long.

There are also some backup stories here; in particular, we see the UN shutting down the Global Guardians, which had been their sanctioned superhero team before the JLI (as established in Infinity, Inc.)... but which never had America or Russia as participants. These stories are okay on their own but will end up having several different ramifications for the main series.

from Justice League America Annual #9

"In 30 Seconds", from Justice League America Annual #9 (1995)
written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by Jeff Parker, inked by John Nyberg, lettered by Clem Robins, colored by Gene D'Angelo

Lastly, I read this "Year One" annual from 1995. Unlike "Mousebusters," it's not collected in any of the JLI omnibuses (they seem to have only gone for retroactive-continuity JLI stories when they were created by members of the original creative team), so I had to hunt down the single issue. 1995's "Year One" annuals were all set (as you might imagine) during the first year of their characters' superheroic careers; this one actually takes place between pages of JLI #12. 

Basically, it further complicates the already complicated story about Maxwell Lord and Metron by having Metron accidentally boom tube the JLI to New Genesis, where they have to stop the machine intelligence that was controlling Max (here called "Kilg%re," though that hasn't been established in the actual JLI stories yet) from exerting its control over New Genesis and Apokolips. In Earth time, the whole trip takes just thirty seconds, between panels of JLI #12, hence the title... though much of the story retells the Max-focused scenes from JLI #12 over again, which must take more than thirty seconds. I found the retelling pretty unnecessary (though writer Gerard Jones adds some wrinkles which I think must be setting up some ongoing plot from 1995), and I honestly didn't really understand a lot of the turns in the New Genesis/Apokolips plot.

I usually enjoy Jeff Parker's writing, but I think this is my first time seeing his art, which I think is overall good, but what I am discovering about many of the people trying to imitate the JLI style is that they go for "comedic" in the art itself, which is something Kevin Maguire himself doesn't do. He just goes for character-focused and realistic, and lets the comedy emerge naturally from that.

This is the first in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #13-21 of JLI.