Star Trek Adventures: Battling Space Pirates after Christmas!

As I did last winter break, I decided to run a three-week Star Trek Adventures one-off. I wanted it to be a fun one-off (as opposed to the very grim war storyline we ran last winter!), and an idea bubbled up that I've long had for a story. Apparently (I'm sure I heard this on NPR over a decade ago), getting your cargo freighter hijacked by pirates isn't a big deal, in that cargo companies have insurance that cover their losses. So you don't battle the pirates these days, you just hand over the cargo so no one gets hurt. I've always thought there was the kernel of a good action-adventure story in here: what if some character was travelling via a cargo ship and thought they were helping when they put up resistance to the pirates when in fact the cargo ship's captain would have much rather they remained calm and cooperated!

So that was the basic idea. Where would the players be travelling, and why on a cargo ship? Well, my campaign has a recurring group of aliens, the Ithik, who are obsessed with games because they live forever and are bored; these alien appeared first in episode 2 (based on the published adventure "Abyss Station" by Jacob Ross) and then returned in episode 6 (based on the published adventure "Game Night" by Alison Cybe). At the end of episode 6, the players had helped the Ithik resettle on a new homeworld. When one of my players, Ryan, wrote his character's personal log about the events of episode 6, he'd suggested that the Ithik channel their enthusiasm for games into hosting a galaxy-wide competition, the Ithika. That seemed like a good hook: the players could be travelling to the new Ithik homeworld to play in and/or observe the Ithika, on a freighter carrying colony supplies.

The other upshot of that was that it would make it easy for players to play someone different if they wanted, apart from their regular characters; they would just need a reason to be participating in the Ithika as either player or observer.

“Acting Captain’s Log, Stardate 54463.6, Lieutenant Jor Lena reporting. The senior staff of the Diversitas has been invited to participate in a competition on the new Ithik homeworld, Psi Erandi X. The Ithika is a massive competition with participants from across the quadrant, attempting to leverage the Ithik obsession with games to good end. Unfortunately, I will not be able to participate as, with Captain Rucot visiting his parents on Cardassia Prime, I will be commanding the Diversitas on anti-piracy patrol. The Diversitas is scheduled to rendezvous with a freighter charted by the Ithik to bring the other senior staff members to the games.”

Planning the Mission 

Breen freighter Urney, Klingon surplus
(image generated by ChatGPT)

All seven members of my regular STA group took me up on my invitation to play. Five of them elected to play their regular characters. Cari, who normally plays security chief Jor Lena, suggested she might play a somewhat incompetent pickpocket from a Blue Orion pirate family, and this seemed to line up nicely with my plans, so I encouraged it. Austin, who plays Frector the Ferengi intelligence analyst, asked if I had any ideas, but I said I thought the episode I had in mind would be a good one for Frector, and so encouraged him to stick with her. I did, though, reach out to Ryan, who in our previous Christmas one-off had played the Diversitas's previous science officer, Phalnox Drin, a Benzite science officer obsessed with MMA. Thanks to some well-spent Momentum, Drin had actually succeeded in defeating a Jem'Hadar in single combat, and at the time, Ryan had joked Drin could quit Starfleet and pursue an MMA career. What if he had, and he encountered his old shipmates on while travelling to participate in the Ithika? Ryan was keen on the idea, and revised Drin's stats and Values to account for his postwar career. Thus I had a line-up of seven, all of whom made all three sessions except one:

• Debi as T'Cant, first officer/science officer
• Kenyon as Nevan Jones, engineer (1-2)
• Claire as Mooria Salmang, pilot
• Austin as Frector, Intelligence analyst
• Andy as Gurg bim Vurg, medical officer
• Ryan as Phalnox Drin, MMA coach
• Cari as Rina K'var, Orion pickpocket

Back when I started GMing STA (which was also my first time GMing anything at all), I would plan out episodes in exhaustive detail—which was easily done, since I was always working with published missions. I had fifteen pages of outline for our first episode, "Patagon in Parallax," for example, covering all three acts. But 1) having written my own episodes several times now, and 2) having a strong group of players who really grok the game, I find I no longer do this. I went into our first session with 3½ pages, just covering the first act.

I knew I wanted the pirates to be Haradin, our recurring alien species; following the events of episode 8, the pirates would be followers of General Zotabia, my players' recurring Haradin nemesis (see episodes 1, 3, 5, and 8). He had tried to go legit as a nationalist demagogue, but would now turn back to piracy following his defeat in episode 8's election. Zotabia himself wouldn't feature in this episode, but a couple other recurring Haradin characters were, especially Esha Vortan, an earnest true believer of Zotabia. For a moment I thought about making the freighter crew Haradin too, but decided this was probably too much Haradin lore! I used to use the Haradin as my generic filler species, but I've developed them so much I can't do that anymore. I made the actual freighter a surplus Klingon ship so I could use my Klingon ship tiles, but had it been purchased by the Breen, whose weird standoffishness seemed like it might add a nice complicating factor to the proceedings.

Thot Udd (screen capture from Deep Space Nine)

I found a YouTube video of Breen dialogue from Deep Space Nine and paired it with an image of a Breen that I put on my tablet, so whenever the  Breen thot talked, I could press the play button and generate some gibberish.  

Basically, all I planned out was the broad setting, a couple characters (the Ithik mayor, three pirates, the Breen thot, some other Ithika participants), and the beats of the first act:

• Teaser: Rendezvous with the freighter, meet the other participants, end with the freighter being attacked while the players sleep
• Scene 1: Haradin pirates enter the corridor the players are in and lock it down, taking two players as hostages to the bridge.
• Scene 2: The players on the bridge learn what the pirates are up to. (In order to keep costs down, the pirates wouldn't staff the freighter or hold its entire crew hostage or anything like that; instead, they'd physically link their ship to the freighter and establish control over its systems.) 
• Scene 3: The players in their quarters would do something—presumably attempt to escape.
• End of Act: Someone, probably the pirate captain, would recognize a member of the Diversitas crew and realize they had something even more valuable than colony supplies—the senior staff of the Diversitas, who had foiled their boss many times over.

Also, once the pirates turned up, I planned to give Austin a slip of paper indicating what Frector knew:

Thanks to your Intelligence briefings, you are aware that in the months following Zotabia’s defeat in the Ship-Clan Marvek referendum, there has been a resumption of Haradin pirate activity in the Ekumene sector. However, the Haradin pirates have thus far been careful to avoid preying on ships belonging to the Federations or its allies, and there is also no clear indication that these pirates are allied with Zotabia. 

Lieutenant Commander Mazio Sanna [Frector's superior] on Deep Space 10 would particularly like to find either 1) hard proof that these pirates are affiliated with Zotabia (which could help turn some of the undecided ship-clans against Zotabia), or 2) the location of the pirate base.

Playing the Mission 

Tazrevi Korash, first officer of the Haradin pirates
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Overall, it was a lot of fun and went very well, I think. In the teaser, the players built some Momentum and were (re)introduced to Phalnox Drin, the Ithik mayor, the Breen thot, and Rina. In Act I, scene 1, Ryan tried to have Phalnox Drin knock out a Haradin pirate and scoot past him to the turbolift; he succeeded, but I spent 2 Threat to have the turbolift doors refuse to open for him (having established that the freighter was in poor shape), letting the pirates stun him, making him one of the hostages. The pirates randomly picked T'Cant to be the other, but she slowed them down by pretending to take a while to get dressed; when Frector poked her head out, the pirates took her instead. The two of them left their comm badges on secretly, so that the other players could hear what was happening on the bridge.

Nevan tried to write up a booby trap using a console in his quarters, and succeeded in accessing it... but also rolled a Complication, so I had him shocked and knocked unconscious; Gurg succeeded at a Task to argue he should be able to help Nevan, so they ended up in the same room adjacent to Rina. But when Rina tried to talk to Gurg through the walls, he rebuffed her! She ended up using her Orion smarts to claim to the pirates that she wanted to join them, and they let her out. On the bridge, Phalnox and Frector were able to sneak a look at some consoles and realize that part of the pirate plan was to do two things:

• Align the pirate ship's subspace carrier to the freighter's internal clock cycle. If the two ships were out of sync by more than a microsecond, the freighter would reject remote inputs.
• Install a "deadman echo" in the freighter computer core; if the link between the two ships was severed, the freighter's power grid would automatically go into standby mode. 

The first act did indeed end with the pirate captain, Beshlor, coming onto the freighter bridge and recognizing Frector and thus putting out an order for the rest of the Diversitas crew to be brought in.

Between sessions, I wrote up about 1½ pages of ideas of what could happen in Act II. One idea I came up with was that, if we use quartz crystals for timekeeping in the real world, maybe in the Star Trek world, they use dilithium crystals; thus the players would need to make their way to the freighter's dilithium crystal chamber.

Haradin pirate ship (Orion surplus, I guess?)
(image generated by ChatGPT)

Act II thus opened with a Timed Challenge: the Diversitas crew would have 4 Intervals to get away, with actions taking 2 Intervals. Momentum could speed those up, Complications slow them down, and the players could also Create Advantages that would give them more time. Rina talked the Haradin into thinking the Diversitas crew was very dangerous and they should be cautious, so they ended up with 6; the players were able to sneak into Jefferies tubes and even set up some booby traps.

On the bridge, Frector and Phalnox came up with a plan for Phalnox to pretend there was something wrong with Frector's (made up) heart implant and thus utter some dialogue about adjusting the timing, so that the other players could hear this and know to sabotage the freighter's clock. I made it a D5 Task to send the message and D4 one to comprehend it. The players succeeded, but Frector rolled a Complication when assisting Drin; I made the Complication that the pirates bought it so much they had Frector taken to the sickbay on their ship! Meanwhile, Rina befriended Esha Vortan, who really does like the Diversitas crew, and thus persuaded him to let her send a message to her people so the Diversitas could come and help. I had thought he would interact directly with the Diversitas crew, but that never ended up happening.

Meanwhile meanwhile, the other characters did an Extended Task to sneak around the freighter. Frector stunned the pirate escorting her... but then asked Gurg to join her in sneaking on board the pirate ship after all! Frector likes to keep secrets, so they were kind of vague about why, but a grumbling Gurg came along. 

When the other players made it to the chamber, I gave them a Timed Extended Task to adjust the freighter's computer clock. I made it Initial Difficulty 5, Magnitude 4, Work 30, Resistance 1, Intervals 4. Difficult but doable... but the players didn't always roll great, and I used Threat to keep the Difficulty up and the Work low even as they got Breakthroughs. For the first time ever, my players failed at an Extended Task! It was a good bad ending to the session. I felt almost apologetic, telling them you need to have a failure in Act II to make the victory in Act III even sweeter.

(Them: "What if we fail in this episode?" Me: "Then I guess season three will be escaping from Haradin prison!")

Aunt Thevi
(image generated by ChatGPT)

I seized on that idea Cari had had, of Rina sending a message to her people, asking for them to 1) come help, and 2) call the Diversitas. So providing she succeeded, having her family—a whole second group of pirates!—seemed like a great Act III complication. So going into Act III, I worked up a character to be a Blue Orion pirate leader, Rina's Aunt Thevi.

The beginning of the act went a bit better for them: the players in the dilithium chamber were able to hide when the Haradin pirates came by, then knock out a guard and finish their sabotage; Drin used his MMA skills to fake falling onto a console and mess up the pirates' work; Frector and Gurg were able to download the pirates' comm data and send a distress signal to the Diversitas, though they ended up jumping into an escape pod to get away.

Then Aunt Thevi turned up. She had not passed on Rina's message to the Diveristas but wanted the freighter for herself. Things got a bit goofy as I played up the incompetence of the Blue Orions; she did beam Rina and Phalnox off the freighter. The players decided to let the pirates slug it out, but this seemed undramatic, so I spent 2 Threat to have the Haradin pirate captain offer Aunt Thevi the Ithik freighter if she would just give the Haradin the Diversitas crew. The players decided to convince Aunt Thevi they could help take both the Haradin pirate ship and the freighter; I made this take three D4 Tasks, and they did succeed... only Rina rolled a Complication. 

The Diversitas then turned up; Aunt Thevi decided to flee (technically she hadn't done anything wrong... yet), but when she beamed Drin to the Diversitas, she sent Rina too, the Complication being Rina was now in exile for causing her family to yet again fail at piracy. The Haradin tried to go despite their linkup not being totally in place, but the computer clock sabotage caused it to fail; at that point, the pirates disconnected and flew off... leaving some of their people behind on the freighter!

So overall, it was fun even if it got a bit goofy in the last act... but then goofy made a nice contrast to our previous winter adventure! And there are some good hooks for stuff to come. Poor Esha Vortan has been taking prisoner twice! Will Rina ever come back? And will Phalnox Drin ever stop talking about the one time he kayoed a Jem'Hadar?

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"
9. "Legend Grew about Their Daring" 

Specials:

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

P. G. Wodehouse, How Right You Are, Jeeves (a.k.a. Jeeves in the Offing, 1960)

It has been an ambition of mine to work through all of P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster books. As is so often true of these things with me, I haven't exactly made a lot of progress; I last read one thirteen years ago! This particular one I have had in my collection around seventeen years. I am such a speedy reader!

How Right You Are, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

Originally published: 1960
Acquired: August 2008
Read: October 2025

I haven't read all the Jeeves and Wooster books, but I have seen all the episodes of the Fry/Laurie tv adaptation, and I was thus a bit surprised to realize there were books that were never turned into episodes, and thus stories with which I was totally unfamiliar. 

Well, as unfamiliar as one can ever be with a Jeeves and Wooster story, I suppose, as there are a number of familiar beats in all of them, and Wodehouse definitely follows those here: Wooster is accidentally engaged, someone has to give a speech for which they are ill-prepared, people have to pretend to be insane, Wooster's aunt is giving him marching orders that are impossible to execute, someone may have stolen a cow creamer, Wooster has a terrific plan that backfires and Jeeves must extricate him from his own mess—which of course engenders further humiliation.

But you know, it's familiar because it works. I laughed when I was supposed to laugh; I particularly loved all the ins and outs of how Wooster keeps ending up engaged when he doesn't want to. There are numerous laugh-out-loud moments, and the prose itself is the same breezy pleasure that Wodehouse excelled at. I will try to be better about reading more of these; I don't want to defer the pleasure of reading Wodehouse any further!

Justice League International Year Seven, Part III: Bloodlines (JLA #84-85 / JLI #53-57 / JLTF #9)

We have just eight regular issues in this set, but that's counterbalanced by there being two annuals and a whopping four issues of Justice League Quarterly. Note that chronological order and publication order are very out of sync between JLA and JLE during this stretch, thanks to the Bloodlines event. In JLA, Bloodlines follows issue #85, cover dated Feb. 1994 (due to the status of Booster Gold and Ice), while for JLE, it must precede issue #53, cover dated Aug. 1993 (due to the status of Elongated Man). This puts the two titles a whole six months off of each other!

from Justice League America #85

"Absolute Power" / "They Might Be Giants", from Justice League America #84-85 (Jan.-Feb. 1994), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2017)
written by Dan Vado, pencilled by Kevin West, inked by Ken Branch, letters by Tim Harkins, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Ice was written out during Dan Jurgens's JLA run; following the death of Superman, she left the team. During Dan Vado's run, he began periodically checking in on her as she returned to her people... only to discover that her brother had gone mad with power and was deposing her father and imposing a dictatorship. She sent her mother for help, and her mother arrived during the "evil Guy" story arc, so following its conclusion, the JLA finally goes to help Ice in this two-part story.

Let's say you were a fan of Ice. Unfortunately, nothing that makes Ice a fun character can be found in this story that supposedly focuses on her, which is all ridiculous posturing and snarling and big fights. And while it's not the fault of Dan Vado and artists Kevin West and Ken Branch, the trade paperback reprints the pages of issue #85 almost entirely out of order. With a more interesting story, I'd be willing to put in the work to figure out how to read it... but this story just isn't worth it. (I can't find anyone else on the Internet complaining about this, so I don't know if my copy has a unique issue, or if no one else has ever bothered to read their copy of Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1!)

from Justice League Quarterly #12

"Negative Feedback" / "On the Road" / "A Man of Parts" / "Love Is War" / "Grandpas and Other Strangers" / "The Unkindest Cut" / "Havoc Unleashed!" / "Scent of Fear" / "Flight" / "Ascent into the Abyss" / "A Hole in the World!" / "Galway Girls" / "The Devil You Know!", from Justice League Quarterly #12-15 (Autumn 1993–Summer 1994)
written by Mark Waid, Kim Fryer, Michael Jan Friedman, Kevin Dooley, Paul Kupperberg, Pat McGreal, Steven T. Seagle, and David De Vries; pencilled by Dan Rodriguez & Antonio Daniel, Mike Wieringo, Mike Mayhew, Greg LaRocque, Michael Collins, Mike Vosburg, Frank Squillace, Mark Tenney, and Eddy Spurlock; inked by Ken Branch, Frank Percy, Mike Christian, Dan Davis, Aaron McClellan, Terry Beatty, Eduardo Barreto, Mike Vosburg, Bam, Bob Smith, Ray Kryssing, and Don Hillsman; colored by Buzz Setzer, Tom McCraw, Glenn Whitmore, Matt Webb, David Grape, Gene D'Angelo, Phil Allen, and Mia Wolf; lettered by Willie Schubert & John Workman, Albert De Guzman, Bob Pinaha, Clem Robins, Ken Bruzenak, and Agnes Pinaha

These four issues of Justice League Quarterly all seem to fit in this general time period: in JLA-centric stories, Captain Atom is back, for example, while in JLI-centric stories, Crimson Fox, Elongated Man, and Hal Jordan are all still around. They also feature parts two through five of the ongoing Praxis story, "The Damnation Agenda." I'll go issue by issue here, except I'll save my comments on the Praxis story for the end.

Issue #12 launches with a Conglomerate lead story. This is, if I'm counting correctly, the third Conglomerate story from JLQ, and the third version of the team. Like the first (see item #6 below), it's about the tension between corporate interests and altruism; like the first, the team is a mix of returning characters (I recognized the JSA's Jesse Quick and Infinity, Inc.'s Nuklon) and new ones (I think so, anyway; I didn't recognize them). The art is all 1990s in what I would say is the worst possible way (except I've read Marc Campos's JLA run, so I know even worse is possible) and the new characters are pretty ridiculous. Worst of all, though, is that even though this is by Mark Waid and thus has some nice moments... we've read it all before, because this is just the original Conglomerate story over again! I'm guessing this was an attempt to set the team up for future adventures, but I'm not aware of any. This issue's non-Praxis backup is a flashback story about Ice and Doctor Light going on a road trip together; you've read better but you've read worse. A couple cute moments, but it doesn't always ring true.

from Justice League Quarterly #13

Issue #13's lead story focuses on Maxima and Captain Atom. Maxima's old consort, Ultraa, comes to Earth to take on Superman and resume his relationship with Maxima; however, at the same time, Maxima has decided to pursue Captain Atom instead. Captain Atom is dealing with his own issues, though, and doesn't think he can love again. There's probably a good story to be told with these ingredients, and this isn't the worst, but it wasn't very great either. I don't think Greg LaRocque has the character chops to pull this off, but he does draw a pretty Maxima.

One of the recurring features of JLQ has been getting Paul Kupperberg, who wrote the 1980s miniseries that reestablished Power Girl as an Atlantean, to write stories focused on Kara, continuing threads begun in that mini. Issue #13 contains the last of those, but it also seems to be dealing with threads for Kupperberg's Arion ongoing. I've read neither of these series, and I very much struggled to care about all this. Kupperberg also performs cleanup duties on issue #14's lead story, which seems to be focused on loose threads from the cancelled Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt ongoing, as Thunderbolt, along with Captain Atom, Nightshade, and Blue Beetle work together to take down a Thunderbolt villain. Again, it gets too much into the weeds with concepts from a series I haven't actually read, so not even some solid Mike Collins art can save it. The last page made me realize why this seemingly random collection of characters: they were all originally published by Quality Comics. Cute gag, I guess, but why build a story around it? The JL connection here seems slight. (Of the four, only Beetle is currently a member.)

#14 has two backups, one about the Crimson Fox, one about a new new Jack O'Lantern. The Fox one is by the usually dependable Pat McGreal, but like too many Crimson Fox stories, focuses on a man manipulating her sexuality. The Jack O'Lantern one is, surprisingly, a pro-choice story where he has to defend a woman fleeing her Irish Catholic community for England so she can get an abortion; the anti-abortion activists go to ridiculous lengths to stop her. O'Lantern spends the whole story going on about how he doesn't think abortion is moral but the girl has a right to do it anyway, which feels like a very 1990s take on the debate. Super heavy handed, and I'm kind of surprised it was even published.

There's another Jack O'Lantern backup in #15, which was so boring I never figured out what was going on. The fun story here is the Tasmanian Devil one, who joined the JLI in issue #50, but never got a lot of focus. Despite some confusing art, I enjoyed this one. Similarly, there's a Ray backup with ugly art but some good jokes. (I did not know Ray was a Star Trek fan.)

from Justice League Quarterly #15

So parts two through four of the Praxis story, "The Damnation Agenda," are backups in issues #12-14; then the longer concluding installment is the lead story in issue #15. It's fine. I think there are occasional flashes of something interesting, pulled down by the need to conform to a lot of clichés of the genre, like the fact that Praxis's female partner has to fall in love with him but he has to angst about it. Also, Praxis's power is to manipulate electricity, but this gets broadened to manipulating anything with electrons in it. 1) This is not the same thing at all, and 2) leads to a lot of dumb moments where people say things like, "I forget air was matter too!" In the last installment, some random members of the JLI show up (I guess to justify why this whole story appeared in a JLI-focused ongoing) but the story needs to make sure they're not essential to the resolution. I honestly got pretty lost in the thaumababble of the climax. On the whole, I would say the whole Praxis story wasn't as bad as I feared but probably not worth devoting five issues of JLQ to either.

Back when I wrote up issues #8-10 of JLQ (see #10 below) I said this series was probably my favorite of the then-three Justice League ongoings. Unfortunately, it seems to have plummetted off a cliff fairly quickly; we've gone from cute fleshing out of the characters of the JLI to desperate chasing of the worst trends of 1990s comics.

from Justice League International Annual vol. 2 #4

"Bloody London", from Justice League International Annual vol. 2 #4 (1993)
written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by Mike Parobeck, inked by Luke McDonnell, lettered by Clem Robins, colored by Gene D'Angelo

Bloodlines was the big crossover through DC's 1993 annuals; alien parasites fell to Earth, taking over people and turning them into monsters, but also creating the "New Bloods," heroes with powers to counter the parasites. To be honest, I'm a bit murky on the details; while I've systematically collected some of the themed annuals of the 1980s and '90s, what I have read of Bloodlines has demonstrated it to be everything that made the early 1990s a bad time for comics.

This isn't the worst. Gerard Jones's story focuses on Elongated Man, Tasmanian Devil, and Metamorpho hunting a serial killer in London, which is a good concept; Jones always does great by Ralph, and the premise is well-suited to him. Unfortunately, we also get a lot about Lionheart, the kind of angsty 1990s superhero who's torn between a government master and doing the right thing, with a dollop of English working-class resentment thrown in. I do in general think that Mike Parobeck is a really good artist, but a story about disgusting alien superkillers is not really a match for his cartoony sensibilities (though I do always like seeing him draw Elongated Man).

"Only the Lucky Ones Die", from Justice League America Annual #7 (1993), reprinted in Wonder Woman and Justice League America, Volume 1 (2017)
written by Bill Loebs, pencilled by Greg LaRocque, inked by Robert Jones, Mark Stegbauer, & Bob Downs, letters by Ken Bruzenak, colors by Gene D'Angelo

Now this one is bad. It's written by William Messner-Loebs, not Dan Vado, but unfortunately Loebs does a good job of imitating the Vado style on JLA, where everyone snarls and argues all the time. Lots of gratuitous darkness and violence. Somehow this run on JLA keeps sinking to new lows.

from Justice League International vol. 2 #54

"Deadly Liasions" / "Impostors" / "Lest Darkness Fall" / "Ambush" / "Inferno!", from Justice League International vol. 2 #53-57 (Aug.-Late Oct. 1993)
written by Gerard Jones & Will Jacobs; pencilled by Ron Randall and Mike Collins; inked by Randy Elliott, Aaron McClellan, Roy Richardson, and Romeo Tanghal; letters by Willie Schubert and Clem Robins; colors by Gene D'Angelo

Gerard Jones's run from JLE #37 to JLI #52 or so wasn't Great Art, but it was very much Solid Superhero Team Comics. Interesting characters, fun interactions, interesting villains, clever resolutions. Suddenly that goes away here. The first issue here is okayish, about Metamorpho following Crimson Fox to Paris. Fox's old boyfriend who she thought was dead turns out to be alive; he convinces her to fake her death to be with him. And she does. But why? I thought this was going somewhere, but it never does, she's just gone. What a weird way to write her out. But it's fun seeing Metamorpho kick up a storm in Paris; I love it when Jones makes up doofy European superheroes.

After this, though, things get very bad very quick. Lots of ideas that feel underbaked or dropped. Like, issue #54 is about everyone acting weirdly: Doctor Light puts on sexy lingerie to seduce Taz, for example. It turns out everyone has been replaced by robots, and they guy who did this is messing with their programming, and then he takes them to the future to fight in a war for him? Why? There's some attempt to make the conflict in the future philosophically interesting but the JLI just picks a side and fights people and none of the philosophy matters to that. Then the characters are back in the present day punching cultists?? And then it's over??? Kind of, anyway, all of these concepts will come back in future issues even thought they weren't worth devoting much time to to begin with.

Ralph and Sue (and, randomly, the ghost of Duke Donald) are written out at the end of issue #57. On the one hand, I'm grumpy because Ralph is literally my favorite; on the other hand, I'm glad my favorite character isn't around for the even worse issues to come. 

What was the problem? Was Gerard Jones losing steam? Or was editorial jerking him around? Probably both.

from Justice League Task Force #9

"Saturday Night's All Right for Fightin'!", from Justice League Task Force #9 (Feb. 1994), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by Jeph Loeb, pencilled by Greg LaRocque, inked by Kevin Conrad, lettered by Bob Pinaha, colored by Glenn Whitmore

This one-off JLTF issue is a followup to Bloodlines; Martian Manhunter is trying to enjoy an evening alone in the League's New York embassy (I think this is the first indication we get that he still resides there now that he leads the JLTF, actually) when some "New Bloods" turning up wanting training. He ends up working with them to defeat some parasites, and shenanigans ensue. It's mildly funny, but writer Jeph Loeb dedicating the issue to Keith Giffen was probably just dooming himself to being an also-ran when it comes to funny League stories. You can never make me care about the New Bloods, sorry guys.

This is the thirteenth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #86-88 of JLA, #58-64 of JLI, and #10-12 of JLTF. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Justice League #1-6 / Justice League International #7-12 (May 1987–Apr. 1988)
2. Justice League International #13-21 (May 1988–Dec. 1988)
3. Justice League International #22-25 / Justice League America #26-30 / Justice League Europe #1-6 (Jan. 1989–Sept. 1989) 
4. Justice League America #31-36 / Justice League Europe #7-12 (Oct. 1989–Mar. 1990)
5. Justice League America #37 / Justice League Europe #13-21 (Apr. 1990–Dec. 1990)
6. Justice League America #38-50 / Justice League Europe #22 (May 1990–May 1991)
7. Justice League America #51-52 / Justice League Europe #23-28 (Feb. 1991–July 1991) 
8. Justice League America #53-60 / Justice League Europe #29-36 (Aug. 1991–Mar. 1992) 
9. Justice League America #61-65 / Justice League Europe #37-42 (Apr. 1992–Sept. 1992)
10. Justice League America #66-69 / Justice League Europe #43-50 (Sept. 1992–May 1993) 
11. Justice League America #70-77 / Justice League Task Force #1-3 (Jan. 1993–Aug. 1993) 
12. Justice League America #78-83 / Justice League International #51-52 / Justice League Task Force #4-8 (June 1993–Jan. 1994)

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman by Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo

When I left off my JSA's project's original run back in 2023, it seemed to me that the JSA as we had known it up to 2011 was dead: in the era of the New 52, Earth-Two was reinvented was an alternate Earth invaded by Apokolips, and the idea of the JSA as 1940s forerunners of the Justice League was gone. I don't really follow DC continuity the way that I used to; if I had, I might have known that the JSA was being (or already had been) reinstated into DC continuity. There was a new Justice Society of America ongoing, but this was (I think) by Geoff Johns and I have no interest in seeing him do his third run on the title; I don't know why DC always thinks the way to revive a property for the present day is to hand it over to someone who first wrote for it thirty years ago. What I eventually discovered, though, is that part of what DC called the "New Golden Age" were three miniseries featuring JSA characters: the Jay Garrick Flash, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, and, of course, the Wesley Dodds Sandman. These looked interesting enough that I decided to pick up the trades, extending my immeasurably long JSA reading project to a mere fifty-seven installments.

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2023-24
Acquired: November 2025
Read: December 2025

Writer: Robert Venditti

Artist: Riley Rossmo

Colorist: Ivan Plascencia

Letterer: Tom Napolitano 

Back in the day, I read most of Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle's Sandman Mystery Theatre, the Vertigo series that chronicles Wesley Dodds's adventures as the original Sandman in the late 1930s. I didn't finish it, because at the time DC didn't have any collected editions that spanned the whole series (I think this has been rectified now). This made a lot of adjustments to Wesley Dodds lore, in particular regarding his relationship to his girlfriend Dian, making her almost a co-partner with him as the Sandman. Robert Venditti and Riley Rossmo's interpretation of Wesley and Dian clearly owes a lot to Wagner and Seagle's—which I appreciate because of how good SMT was! Wesley and Dian are much as I remember in their relationship, while Wesley himself is that interesting combination of authoritative as the Sandman but nebbish as himself that worked so well in that series. According to my chronology notes, the last collected SMT story was set in 1939; this book takes place in 1940, so it seemingly even works as a long-delayed continuation of Sandman Mystery Theatre. Maybe someday I'll reread it in that context and see how it holds up. (The one thing I know it's missing, though, is an appearance by my favorite SMT character, Lieutenant Burke.)

The premise of this story is that Wesley has grown increasingly anxious about the war in Europe; he's haunted by how his own father was changed by the previous war, and wants to stop something like this from happening again. He develops the gases he uses as the Sandman for battlefield applications, trying to come up with a way that will help the Allies win the war with a minimum of enemy casualties... but along the way, he discovers some deadly gases too. The Army turns down his nonlethal gases, but it seems like someone might know the truth of who Wesley is and wants his lethal weaponry.

I've missed these two.
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #1

It's not quite the grounded tone of Sandman Mystery Theatre, but that's fine, this is its own thing, and Venditti and Rossmo do a great job with it. It's a bit more exaggerated, but in a way that really works; you get the horror of the premise without going full-on Vertigo. This is my first time encountering Rossmo's work, and I liked it a lot. Sort of darkly cartoony, enhanced by some great atmospheric coloring from Ivan Plascencia.

Possibly the only way to ever get me to think it's okay to use Sandy is to use him as a dark omen of a foreboding future... just never as an actual character.
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #4

The story is a bit noirish, a bit detetectiveish, though not terribly complicated or surprising; if you thing it through a bit, you won't be surprised by much that happens. I didn't mind, though, because it hit all the notes I wanted from a story like this. Some dark turns, some investigating, some nightmares, some good fights. It's very much character- and theme-driven, which feels like all too much a rarity in contemporary superhero comics. The glimpses of Wesley's future and past are both very well done.

C'mon, give me volume 2!
from Wesley Dodds: The Sandman #6

I think DC's "New Golden Age" initiative is already over, alas, because I would gladly read a second miniseries or even an ongoing from this team. I hope these takes get picked up somewhere!

This post is the fifty-fifth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Jay Garrick: The Flash. Previous installments are listed below:

Being Gaslit by Google Gemini

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

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

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

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

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

But then it went on to say:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It agreed that it had misread the post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith: Norstrilia

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

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from Justice League International vol. 2 #51

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

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

from Justice League Task Force #8

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

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

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

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

The bit about Paradise Island was funny, though.

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

from Justice League America #81

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the twelfth in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #84-85 of JLA, #53-57 of JLI, and #9 of JLTF. Previous installments are listed below:

1. Justice League #1-6 / Justice League International #7-12 (May 1987–Apr. 1988)
2. Justice League International #13-21 (May 1988–Dec. 1988)
3. Justice League International #22-25 / Justice League America #26-30 / Justice League Europe #1-6 (Jan. 1989–Sept. 1989) 
4. Justice League America #31-36 / Justice League Europe #7-12 (Oct. 1989–Mar. 1990)
5. Justice League America #37 / Justice League Europe #13-21 (Apr. 1990–Dec. 1990)
6. Justice League America #38-50 / Justice League Europe #22 (May 1990–May 1991)
7. Justice League America #51-52 / Justice League Europe #23-28 (Feb. 1991–July 1991) 
8. Justice League America #53-60 / Justice League Europe #29-36 (Aug. 1991–Mar. 1992) 
9. Justice League America #61-65 / Justice League Europe #37-42 (Apr. 1992–Sept. 1992)
10. Justice League America #66-69 / Justice League Europe #43-50 (Sept. 1992–May 1993) 
11. Justice League America #70-77 / Justice League Task Force #1-3 (Jan. 1993–Aug. 1993) 

Star Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss

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

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

Originally published: 2009
Acquired and read: November 2025

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

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

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

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

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