Star Trek Adventures: Wrapping Up Season Two of My Campaign with Another Original Episode!

So the ongoing thread of the second season of my Star Trek Adventures campaign has been the Haradin, an alien species my players bump into a lot. Across the course of the season, they've discovered that many Haradin have transmitter/receivers in their brain, that Haradin consider their homeworld space itself, that some Haradin thus perceive the Federation as an invading aggressor, and that General Zotabia—who the players have battled a couple times—is the face of a rising authoritarian/fascist movement among the Haradin.

Going into the campaign with all these ideas seeded, I knew I wanted to have a finale about this. Specifically, inspired by one of the published STA missions, "Ends and Means," I knew I wanted the season finale to be about about a vote. But instead of voting to join the Federation (as in that mission), there would be a vote on a Haradin clan-ship about whether or not to align itself with Zotabia's "Return to Harad" nativist movement.

What really unlocked the whole season for me was listening to an episode of WNYC's On the Media about shortwave radio, "The Divided Dial." What that episode discusses is how shortwave radio served as a medium largely invisible to both society at large and the government in particular, allowing for the proliferation of hard-right voices that no one knew about, leading to radicalization. I listened to this right at the beginning of the summer, and I came up with a science fiction take on it: the Haradin would have receiver/transmitters in their brains (as in M. T. Anderson's Feed), which would mean that authoritarian propaganda was being beamed right into their brains but no one would know about it.

(As it developed, the idea was that the Haradin maintained cultural unity despite being spread across a wide range of space through a transmitter network using subsubspace: a central transmitter connected to clan-ship transmitters, which then relayed to individual Haradin. The government ran this, a sort of NPR/BBC-like feed, but around six years before my current campaign, the government collapsed, and so the feed was shut down. Zotabia's group took possession of one of the clan-ship transmitter dishes and covertly reactivated it, changing it to only transmit to Haradin who adjusted their receivers with a certain code, meaning those with the potential for radicalization would spread it to each other, but to people on the other side, it would be pretty much invisible.)

I ran 13½ prewritten STA scenarios before I finally wrote my own for the first time this summer (see #5 in the list below), and I have been growing increasingly comfortable with both 1) coming up with my own ideas, and 2) not having the whole mission planned out ahead of time. Going into this mission, I knew I needed a number of things:

• To explore what a Haradin clan-ship was like: massive ships ten miles across and a hundred miles across, connected internally via a monorail system.
• Obviously to deal with the vote itself. Zotabia's people would be claiming that their opponents were rigging the election; but those opposed to Zotabia would be complaining of harassment at the polls. The players would be called in as a neutral party to help keep things aboveboard.
• The players had met a couple pirates in episode 1 of the season, including an earnest young one who (it would turn out) was being radicalized by Zotabia's feed; I wanted him to come back in some way. 
• In our first episode of the season, I had introduced a couple NPCs based on Deep Space 10, the Starfleet outpost in the Ekumene sector my players' ship is based out of; one of them was a female comms tech, Chief Susu Webb, and it seemed to me there was potential for a thing between her and Nevan, my engineer. In episode 2, I had her slip Nevan some special tea. How could I keep this going? I came up with the idea of Nevan and the ship's Intelligence analyst, Frector, being tasked by Starfleet Intelligence to figure out more about the Haradin transmitter, and Chief Webb being sent along to help. This would give Frector and Nevan a nice subplot, and also give lots of time for Nevan and Webb to be in close quarters.
• One of my characters, Mooria, has the value "Protect Critters," and in our session zero, her player had requested "critters"... something I hadn't been able to work into any previous missions! So I knew I needed to do it here. I came up with the idea there'd be a disease of some kind among the livestock on the Haradin clan-ship; this would give both Mooria and the doctor, Gurg, their own subplot to pursue. 
• Other things I had in mind, more vaguely: hacking the transmitter dish, the players having to drive a monorail themselves, the Klingon captain Akul (whom the players had promised to hunt Zotabia with) turning up, the clan-ship's ancient warp drive being reactivated, the Diversitas's resident alien AI (Mercury) playing some kind of role. As you'll see I didn't get to all of this!

The other thing I knew going in: I kind of wanted the nativists to win the election. Not because I am a mean old GM or anything, but because 1) it seemed to me that dealing with the fall-out of this would be potentially very interesting, and 2) as someone who currently lives in the United States, I just couldn't imagine how someone could stop a rising authoritarian movement! But more on that as I go.

"Captain’s Log, Stardate 54006.3. The Diversitas has once again been summoned to Deep Space 10 for a meeting with Consul Vrossaan. I can only assume this relates to the situation with the Haradin—as we made our way back to the station, we observed ever increasing numbers of Haradin ships streaming to an unknown destination somewhere within the depths of the Ekumene sector."

I had four weeks for the mission, so I planned it appropriately. Unfortunately, I had to cancel two sessions for various reasons, and so had to schedule two make-ups, but we did get there in the end! This is who I had per session:

• Ryan as Rucot, captain (sessions 1-4)
• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer (1-4)
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-2, 4)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot (1, 3-4)
• Cari as Jor Lena, security officer (1-4) 
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst (1-2, 4)
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer (1, 3)

I tried to make it work that all players would be present at the big finale, but unfortunately Andy got sick on the day! (His wife played for him, though; I thought it would unfairly handicap them to be down a player.)

Mission Directives:

1. As always, the Prime Directive is in effect.
2. Protect democracy.
3. Investigate the mysteries of the Haradin.

 I'll recap here on an act-by-act basis. 

Act I: True-Born in Vacuum

Haradin clan-ship Marvek

This act covered their briefing on Deep Space 10, and the first half of their first day on the clan-ship—they arrived two days before the election. A lot of the very first session was them getting the lay of the land: having to get through Customs, meeting the matriarch of the ship-clan, and so on. The players came up with the idea that in the chaos of Customs, the group assigned to investigate the transmitter (Nevan, Frector, Chief Webb) would actually sneak off on their own and play tourist so they could get a look at it themselves. After meeting with the matriarch, the remaining players split into two groups: Gurg, Mooria, and T'Cant would look into the plague among the plorthik ("puddle-pigs") while Jor and Rucot would investigate election security.

As always, the players surprised me. I made the NPC the players met on a puddle-pig farm someone who had been radicalized by the transmitter network, and thus she was reluctant to deal with Starfleet. I had thought the players would probably appeal to her desire to protect her animals, but instead they played up the fact they had actually worked alongside Zotabia a couple times, and convinced her they were sympathetic to finding out the "truth" that the mainstream media was refusing to tell people... and thus she gave them the access code for the Haradin transmitter network! (Earlier, Gurg had built his own receiver, so they had this to tune into it.) I had thought they might gain access in some way, but not this one. They figured out the puddle-pigs had the anatid space flu, but to know more, they needed to take a sick puddle-pig back to the Diversitas; Mooria had to drive a monorail very gently to stop from disturbing the poor plorthik.

interior city on the clan-ship Marvek

Meanwhile, Rucot and Jor learned how the election was going to be run; Ryan, who plays Rucot, is a sociologist, and so asked me a bunch of detailed questions I wasn't expecting about election mechanics that I had to think about between sessions! The idea ended up becoming that when the transmitter dish worked, clan-wide elections would be held via the Haradin feed, but since then, elections had to be held in person. Each district on the clan-ship had come up with its own system for electing representatives to the ship-clan legislative assembly, but this would be the first vote since then, so the first time all those 794 district systems had to be coordinated as one. 

The players also discovered there were Haradin who were not biologically Haradin, but culturally, living on the clan-ship: Orions, Yridians, and Lisspians. Zotabia's people were casting doubt that these were "real" Haradin and harassing them at the polls, particularly in the district nicknamed "Oriontown," the only one with a majority population of non-biological Haradin. Rucot and Jor worked with local officials to train election security.

clan-ship monorail system

Meanwhile meanwhile, Frector and her group approached the transmitter dish; they ended up playing enthusiastic tourists, and bribed a guard at a loading dock to let them look around, claiming they just loved transmitters so much. They had to sneak around until they found a maintenance computer, and they downloaded the schematics for the dish.

The first act culminated in two simultaneous Extended Tasks:

• When Jor was talking to Esha Vortan, the friendly ex-pirate (now part of Zotabia's paramilitary honor guard), at a polling place in Oriontown, other Haradin began harassing an Orion coming into register to vote. Jor had to defuse a potential riot. This one I made timed; if she failed to do it in four rounds, it would reach a tipping point where she'd be unable to stop it. (I had thought Rucot and/or T'Cant would be with her, but the way the players had split up, she was on her own... thankfully, she had a security squad with her!)
• Nevan and Chief Webb had to download the schematics; I did this one as the player's Extended Task track competing with an Extended Consequences track from me; if I got 5 Setbacks before they got their necessary 5 Breakthroughs, they would be discovered. But the players could do things to slow down the Extended Consequences Track.

I'm always experimenting with different ways to do Extended Tasks (to me, the best mechanic of STA and thus the reason I refuse to switch to the second edition); in this case, I gave each one a decent amount of Resistance (1 for the riot, 3 for the hacking) but tried to balance it out by making the starting difficulty less than the total number of Breakthroughs needed, so by the end of each Extended Task, it would be Difficulty 0. I think this ended up making them too easy but oh well! I do think Jor's player was pretty proud to defuse a riot single-handedly.

Act II: Their Gravity-Choked Values

This act was the remainder of the first day. At the beginning, the players reconvened on the Diversitas to consider their next move... but this was complicated by them receiving a distress transmission from Orvan Jadrel, the friendly Haradin professor they'd met in the previous episode. So they split up into three groups again: Gurg and Mooria would look into curing the puddle-pig, Nevan and T'Cant would deal with tuning into the transmitter network and validating the election algorithm, and Rucot and Jor would go to answer Professor Jadrel's distress signal. (Frector's player, Austin, was out that week.)

I ended up having a lot of fun with the transmitter network; when the players tuned into it, they picked up a broadcast, which I got my wife to prerecord with me (it was two hosts going back and forth), and played back for the players during the session. The players had the idea that they would reach out to the transmitter network and offer to validate the election security live on air; I was skeptical the people at the network would think this would make for riveting broadcasting, and so made it Difficulty 5... but they nailed it!

University of Marvek

Meanwhile, the group going to help Professor Jadrel discovered that, inspired by what the players had said to him in the previous episde, he'd taken to speaking out against Zotabia's movement... and his provost had suspended him, claiming he was making campus unsafe, as protestors were coming on campus to speak out against him in turn. Of my seven players, five are university professors (and the other two are married to professors)... and we live in Florida... so this hit pretty close to home! And of those five, one is a former University Senate president and the other the secretary of our AAUP chapter, so they were very concerned with whether appropriate protocols had been followed, and what kind of rules the Haradin university had covering extramural utterances.

(When Jadrel popped up in the previous episode, he had been so helpful the players had been suspicious; I toyed with having the cost of this being that he died, but decided that was probably too mean, and settled for him losing his job instead. One of my players: "This is hitting too close to home." Me: "Back in session zero, you told me one of the things you liked about Star Trek is the way it reflects current events." Her: [big sigh] "Yes, I know...")

They decided to take Jadrel back to the Diversitas, so he could broadcast from safety. But they were confronted by the Provost. Me: "Convincing the Provost will be a Difficulty 5 Task." Ryan: "What!" Me: "Ryan, I know you know that convincing a provost of something is much harder than Difficulty 5 most of the time." Anyway, they succeeded (and filed a complaint with the Haradin Association of University Professors)—it's nice if a game can provide a little wish-fulfillment!

Haradin puddle-pig on an interior farm

In the previous session, the players had expressed interesting finding the origins of the anatid space flu, so I set that up as an Extended Task. To make an effective antiviral, they would need to find out how the virus had mutated by tracing its origins back from the clan-ship farms to wherever it came from... but the plorthik in sickbay was dying, and would be dead if they didn't move quickly. (One of my players: "I think I wrote on my 'lines and veils' sheet no animal deaths." Me: "You'd better hope they succeed then!") Claire and Andy as Mooria and Gurg had fun with this, tracing the infection back to a ship recovered by a Haradin salvage crew, and posing as people interested in buying it. Andy in particular spouted bad fake Engineering jargon while secretly obtaining medical samples from the recovered derelict.

So all along, I'd been agonizing over my idea that no matter what, the players would "lose" the election. I kept talking to my wife about this—was I just being mean? railroading them? She told me I should just do it, but I called my friend Adam, a longtime GM in many different systems, and asked for his advice.

He said it was okay to have a downer ending, especially if it would set up more for the players to do in the long run, but suggested two things: 1) There needed to be a clear point where the players could do more but chose not to. Like, they could interfere in the election to make sure a certain side won... but perhaps they'd choose not to because of their Mission Directive of "Protect democracy." 2) The episode would need to end on some kind of victory, even if small. This was very helpful advice, so thanks Adam.

Thus, I had Act II end with the players getting a call from Consul Vrossaan on DS10, spelling out that Starfleet's opinion was that the election would almost certainly go bad: “Look, I’ve been trying to do what I can diplomatically for months now. But you guys are on the ground, no Federation team has spent more time with the Haradin—I saw you work miracles with the Ithik when no one else could. To quote the poets: 'only a fool waits for the thaw when the bridge must be cut.' The Federation needs a win here. The last thing we need is to be tangling with another authoritarian power on our borders, even a smaller one like the Haradin. A lot of people—both inside and outside the Federation—are going to suffer if Return to Harad wins this vote.” 

The players then had a great conversation: considering that Zotabia's movement was pretty undemocratic itself, could you do something undemocratic to stop it from winning? How did that accord with their Mission Directive? They bandied about some crazy plans (sabotage, hacking the network to make it seem like Zotabia was calling for violence), but they ended up noticing a thing I hadn't really thought about: I'd established that the defunct transmitter network was very important to the Haradin—it's one of the meanings of the word Harad—and it had been turned back on by Zotabia's people... which was being kept secret from most of them. The Haradin were being denied their own heritage! It was a great conversation, very Star Trek and very much what I love about STA... and for the first time, I believed there was a way for them to win to the election.

The second act (and third session) ended with Zotabia arriving on the clan-ship. I played a nativist speech from Zotabia (I got AI to read it, since I don't think my voice is very suited to being a fascist dictator), and the players decided if they could embarrass Zotabia by having Rucot hug him as an old friend. I thought this seemed unlikely and set up a bunch of Difficulty 4/5 Tasks... but they pulled it off!

Act III: We Will Purify Our Skies

Going into the last act and the last session, I was clear that things were going to be hard. (I established that due to how tense things were, all Tasks would generate Complications on 19 and 20; I needed to rebuild my Threat pool for the climax!) I said this wasn't because I was being mean, but because a victory is only exciting if it's difficult. I said it was like the climax of a D&D campaign, but instead of fighting a balrog, they were fighting fascism itself—I wanted them to win, but I was also going to make them work for it. 

The last act and last session covered the day before the election and the election itself. I began the session with another broadcast from the news network recorded by me and my wife: the hug had caused people to look into the past associations between the players and Zotabia, and notice that they had worked together sometimes, including Zotabia even speaking in Rucot's defense at his inquiry.  

(My seven-year-old kept asking if they could do a recording, too, so I did a "vox pop" piece on the election day: PARENT: “Zotabia speaks plain. He remembers what the old space-lanes were like—before the offworlders took them from us. I want my kid raised Haradin, not kowtowing to the Federation.” CHILD: “I wanna be a ship-guard like Zotabia. He doesn’t take orders from planet people.” Everyone loved this.)

The players first went to the ship-clan matriarch to ask what she thought they should do, but having her make up their minds seemed dramatically inert, so I had her be a fence-sitter: basically, she didn't want to lose her power by becoming beholden to Zotabia, but she also didn't want to make any overt anti-Zotabia moves in case she did become beholden to him. My players decided she sucked. (Not wrong.)

They chose to do the following:

• Disseminate via traditional Haradin media that the network was back.
• Help Jadrel broadcast from the Diversitas.
• Analyze the Haradin transmitter in case they wanted to hack it.
• Go on a goodwill tour of Haradin farms, emphasizing that it was thanks to the Federation the puddle-pig plague had been cured.

They succeeded at all this, but I told them it wasn't enough—news wasn't being spread fast enough, they needed to do something bigger to move the needle. Their news about the transmitter being restored just wasn't disseminating quickly. I had expected them to hack the transmitter and put Jadrel on it (this is an idea they had bandied about during the previous session), but they came up with a different plan: capitalizing on the questions being asked about Zotabia following him being hugged by Rucot, they'd offer the Haradin network an exclusive interview with Rucot, one where Rucot would be able to drop in that Zotabia worked alongside Starfleet a couple times, that some of the stuff Zotabia was claiming credit for had really been their doing, and that Starfleet had defeated Zotabia a couple times. Was this guy really going to stand up to outsiders as he was promising?

Of course, I made it into an Extended Task, Rucot rolling to be compelling and persuasive during the interview. The limiting factor here was that after each time Rucot rolled, one of the other players would have to attempt a Difficulty 3 Task representing some kind of prep they'd done to help Rucot before the interview. If any of them failed, Rucot would choke and the whole interview would be over. They did a good job coming up with various things each could do: Gurg used his Value of "Rigorous Debate" to spar with Rucot ahead of time to get him ready; T'Cant pulled footage of Zotabia (when he was a pirate captain) running away from the Diversitas; Nevan provided validation the footage was accurate; Mooria reached out to the governor of Ryuku (the planet where they first met Zotabia) and got her testimony; Jor led Rucot through some Bajoran yoga exercises to keep him centered; and so on. It was tense, but everyone succeeded on their Difficulty 3 Tasks, so Rucot was able to succeed even when in the last round he rolled two Complications, meaning I increased the Task's Resistance from 1 to 5!

Haradin lined up to vote

This took us into the climax of the episode. My idea was that we would alternate between me rolling Challenge Dice and the players attempting Difficulty 5 Tasks to allow them to roll Challenge Dice. The rolls on those Challenge Dice would represent votes: mine votes for the ship-clan joining Zotabia's movement, theirs votes against. Like in an Extended Task, they'd get to roll 2+Discipline. I'd get to roll 6... unless they'd succeeded at the previous scene's Extended Task, in which case it would be 5. (On the other hand, if they'd decided to do something foolish, like overtly messing with the election, it would have been 7.) Whichever side had more tallies at the end would win!

The five Tasks I gave them:

• Maintain order in polling places: Daring + Security
• Help Jadrel with his speeches: Presence + Command
• Monitor the transmitter network: Reason + Engineering 
• Go on plorthik goodwill tour: Control + Conn
• Monitor election computer systems: Reason + Science 

With seven players, plus Chief Webb, it would be up to them to decide who would do what and what would get an assist. Of course a lot of them spent their Determination here... but some had already used it on the Extended Task.

The players were very smart about how to do this, thinking about how to do ones where they had Advantages early to make them easier and generate Momentum. For example, if Nevan monitored the network from the ship, he could use the Engineering Department to help, do it in a lab they'd configured, and use the Sensors, each of which reduced the Difficulty by 1, so it was just 2!

I had 10 Threat going into this, so I aimed to spend 2 per round, either letting me reroll Challenge Dice if it seemed necessary, or just adding to my rolls. If the players rolled Complications, I let myself spend more. At first they had a commanding lead... 

Things got a bit tense, though, when on the second-last go, Frector only got 4 successes on her attempt to help Jadrel with his speeches. The players decided to reallocate Gurg from helping on the plorthik goodwill tour so he could roll an extra assist (I know this is technically not within the rules), which he did succeed at. Austin made Frector's Challenge Dice roll, and then I made my last roll... and I was up 3 over them.

There was just one roll left, Control + Conn for the goodwill tour... and only one player to do it! It was all down to a single roll by Claire as Mooria whether the Haradin would descend into fascism or not. Even thinking about it as I type this up, I get chills— I don't know that you can ask for anything better or more exciting as a GM.

She used her Value to spend Determination, spent all the Momentum remaining in the pool, added more dice with Threat... and she did it! She rolled nine on the Challenge Dice, meaning the players beat me by seven points!

I had prepared two speeches for Zotabia, a victory one, and one where he lost (but claims it was rigged) and then slinks away. I played the latter, and we just had a couple things to wrap up:

Consul Vrossaan called them to congratulate them: "Thank you for your hard work on this. To quote the poets: 'the glacier moves only a finger’s width, yet reshapes the world.' Hopefully this is the beginning of a more fruitful relationship with the Haradin."

Kenyon decided that Nevan would respond to Chief Webb's flirtations by inviting her to play a game with him, and then giving her a copy of it when they parted company.

Plato the Puddle-Pig

And lastly, the puddle-pig farmer the players befriended came aboard the Diversitas to tell Mooria she'd voted against Zotabia, and to gift her with a runt just born—too small for the farm, but suitable for a pet. Claire seemed quite delighted! The crew now has its own puddle-pig. (Ryan: "Rucot is not a pet person. This thing is all Mooria's responsibility.") Claire named it "Plato" as a symbol of democracy.

To me, it was one of the best episodes I've run. I did a post-campaign poll about which episodes the players liked, and one cited it as their favorite: "I like that we were talking to lots of different people who had diverse agendas and we had to cater to those agendas while also keeping our mission directives and principles in mind." 

If my campaign gets a third season, I definitely have lots of ideas of how to develop the storyline from here. But that will have to wait until next summer!

Star Trek: Ekumene:

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

Specials:

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

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)