Impulse: Bart Saves the Universe by Christopher Priest, Jason Johnson, and Edwin Rosell

I don't have much experience with Impulse a.k.a. Bart Allen, who was essentially the Kid Flash to Wally West's Flash—that will have to wait until I finally read my Mark Waid Flash Omnibus volumes. But as I've been investigating what JSA-related stories I might somehow have missed in my fifty-installment journey through the history of that superhero team, I discovered there was an Impulse one-shot involving time travel and the JSA, so I added it to my list.

The book came out in 1999 and is set in the then-present of the DC universe, where Impulse is trying to be of use to somebody, anybody, but keeps getting rebuffed. No one wants his help, not Superman, not Wonder Woman, not Green Lantern, especially not Batman. When will he get a chance to save the world... or even the universe?

Well, he gets his chance when Extant (villain of the then-recent Zero Hour) travels back to 1941, battles the JSA, and tricks the Linear Men into changing history. Because he was born in the future, only Impulse remembers the original timeline, and thus only Impulse can do anything to restore it. But can the hyperfast hyperactive kid keep his mind on the job long enough to do it?

Poor Impulse.

The JSA are more of a plot point than actual characters here; they spend most of the story dead, except for one sequence where Impulse crashes one of their meetings. From that perspective, I probably needn't have bothered including it in my sequence of stories. But, you know, if the point of all of this is to be entertained, then this story does a good job of it. 

I don't blame Johnny.

I always like a bit of Christopher Priest, and Impulse is a character well-suited to Priest's techniques of rapid cuts and abrupt juxtapositions, as well as his tendency to mix darkness with comedy. Yes, there's a lot of Impulse goofiness here... but there's also some real tragedy as Impulse needs to reckon with the deaths of those important to him, and the fact that Barry Allen does exist in this alternate timeline, and will have to die to restore the proper the universe. (Ain't that always the case.) Artists Jason Johnson and Edwin Rosell are new to me, but they have that manga-influence, exaggerated design sense that I associate with 1990s comics in general and Impulse in particular, so that works well.

Aw, Max,

I particularly liked Impulse's relationship with the Golden Age speedster Max Mercury here, and I finished the one-shot looking forward to reading more about Impulse whenever I get around to reading all my Flash Omnibus volumes. (Impulse himself seems to have only received a single collected edition, alas. I do remember, a long time ago, reading a trade where Bart himself had become the Flash, but he was portrayed as very much a sad sack (I think this one?), nothing like the character here, and then he got murdered in Countdown. Bleh.) 

Impulse: Bart Saves the Universe originally appeared in one issue (1999). The story was written by Christopher Priest, pencilled by Jason Johnson, inked by Edwin Rosell, type designed by Willie Schubert, and edited by Paul Kupperberg & L. A. Williams.

 

This post is the fifty-second in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Doctor Mid-Nite. Previous installments are listed below:

The Crew: Big Trouble in Little Mogadishu by Christopher Priest, Joe Bennett, Danny Miki, et al.

After his run on Black Panther came to an end, Christopher Priest began a short-lived ongoing called The Crew, a team book that included one-time Black Panther Kasper Cole (now the White Tiger) among its members. I wasn't super into Kasper part of Priest's Black Panther run, but The Crew was included in the Christopher Priest Black Panther: The Complete Collection volumes, which you can read for free on Hoopla, so I figured why not read it?

from The Crew #2

It was kind of worth reading, kind of not. Certainly it wasn't worth it for Kasper, who continues to spin his wheels as a character, arguing with his girlfriend and expectant mother of his child, chasing promotion so he can afford to support his mother and girlfriend. The ongoing thing about his dad wasn't picked up at all, and by the end of these seven issues, Cole isn't really anywhere we haven't already seen him.

from The Crew #4

The other three members of the "Crew" (never called that in the story) are James "Rhodey" Rhodes, the one-time Iron Man and War Machine; Junta, a superpowered information broker whose mom is a robot who I think appeared in one issue of Black Panther vol. 3; and Josiah X, the son of a black man who was experimented on during World War II in an attempt to create super-soldier serum. The first few issues look at each man in turn; the "team" really only kind of comes together with issue #7, when of course the title was cancelled. Junta probably could have become fun with time, but the real standouts here are Rhodes and Josiah.

Rhodes I don't think I have ever actually read a comic about before, but I liked what Priest did with him here; a man who use to be on top but has found himself at the bottom trying to climb his way back up using his sense of justice as a guide. I don't know how the character is in actual Iron Man comics, but I would read more stories about him if they were like this.

from The Crew #6

Josiah X (called "Justice" in behind-the-scenes information but not in the actual book) is a really interesting character, a black Muslim community organizer who dons Captain America iconography. Can such a man reconcile the contradictions that led to his own existence? How can he wear the emblem of the country that treated him and his father so disposably? Priest and artist Joe Bennett do their best work with Josiah, and unfortunately only scratch the surface of the character. I gather he hasn't really appeared since, but I am curious to pick up the Captain America: The Truth miniseries where his father originally appeared.

As I've alluded to, it's a bit of a slow burn, which was probably a mistake for a book that bundled together a bunch of has-been and also-ran characters; I cannot imagine it sold well at all. I enjoyed it well enough, but by the end of seven issues, I wasn't convinced we needed seven issues to see the Crew take down some pretty ordinary gangsters. A decent read, but not really for Black Panther–related reasons. I gather the Crew returns during Ta-Nehisi Coates's run, but not with this line-up.

from Black Panther 2099 #1

I also read the 2004 Black Panther 2099 one-shot, set in (as always) a dystopian future. T'Challa is dead, his lineage has ended, and Wakanda is invaded by Latveria. A new Black Panther must step into the vacancy at long last. Not much of interest actually happens; the guy has basically no personality and no struggles. It ends with a twist, but it's a pointless twist if there's no more stories about this set-up, which of course there weren't.

Big Trouble in Little Mogadishu originally appeared in issues #1-7 of The Crew (July 2003–Jan. 2004). The story was written by Christopher Priest; penciled by Joe Bennett; inked by Danny Miki (#1-7) and Rich Perrotta (#7); lettered by Ken Lopez (#1-2), Rus Wooton (#3-5), and Dave Sharpe (#6-7); and edited by Tom Brevoort. It was reprinted in Black Panther: The Complete Collection, Volume 4 (2016), which was edited by Mark D. Beazley.

Black Panther 2099 was originally published in one issue (Nov. 2004). The story was written by Robert Kirkman, illustrated by Kyle Hotz, colored by Jose Villarubia, lettered by Dave Sharpe, and edited by Tom Brevoort.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

"With the sleekness of the jungle cat whose name he bears, T-Challa - King of Wakanda - stalks both the concrete city and the undergrowth of the Veldt. So it has been for countless generations of warrior kings, so it is today, and so it shall be for the law of the jungle dictates that only the swift, the smart, and the strong survive! Noble champion. Vigiliant protector. BLACK PANTHER"

In 1998, Christopher Priest began as the writer of a new volume on Black Panther for Marvel's "Marvel Knights" imprint; this was, I think, intended as a twelve-issue run and ended up lasting until issue #62 in 2003. Black Panther vol. 3 would introduce a lot of what will be familiar to contemporary viewers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the Dora Milaje, Everett K. Ross (played by Martin Freeman on screen), Wakanda vying for a place in contemporary geopolitics, and the Black Panther's more thoughtful, stoic demeanor.

from Black Panther vol. 3 #10
(script by Priest, art by Mike Manley)

Priest thinks through what it would mean for the Black Panther to be a king—he's not a superhero, though he is a fairly hands-on king. He's not going around recusing babies from trees or even punching supervillains, he's defending a nation from its threats, and he's doing so using political cunning even moreso than superpowers. In order to make this work, we mostly see T'Challa from the outside, usually from the perspective of Everett K. Ross, his liaison in the U.S. Department of State. Ross is meant to provide T'Challa with transportation and assistance during a quick trip to New York City, but ends up embroiled in T'Challa's machinations, which results in things like losing his pants to the demon Mephisto, becoming regent of Wakanda, accidentally offending Bill Clinton by roller-skating through the White House, and being exiled to a U.S. listening post in the Arctic.

from Black Panther vol. 3 #21
(script by Priest, art by Sal Velluto & Bob Almond)

The first twelve issues are almost certainly the highlight. The story is told out of order as Ross attempts to make some kind of sense of everything he's gone through, to little avail; with its out-of-order vignettes, all preceded by some kind of caption, it came across as an attempt to do Quentin Tarantino on the comics page. This is surely one of the most 1990s moves you could pull, and Priest and his ever-changing artistic collaborators pull it off perfectly. I was constantly laughing at the reversals facing Ross, as he confronts his own prejudices about Africa and the increasing series of absurdities he is faced with. Upon reading this series, it became very clear to me why Ross is played by Martin Freeman in the movies, because who does "put upon" better than Martin Freeman, but it also became clear to me that the movies had largely failed to take advantage of the character.

Priest's Panther instantly marked itself as the best run on the character I'd read thus far, taking the best aspects of Don McGregor's run in particular (though we don't spend much time in Wakanda here, Priest very much builds on McGregor's sense of it as a real, complicated place). You can very easily see why it kept getting extended, even though it was apparently always on the verge of cancellation. A revolving door of artists at the series's beginning soon gives way to Sal Velluto and Bob Almond, who illustrated thirty of the series's sixty-two issues, excellently capturing the humanity and the action alike. Priest is always coming up with new spins on old concepts, always keeping things fresh.

from Black Panther vol. 3 #25
(script by Priest, art by Sal Velluto & Bob Almond)

The Dora Milaje are not exactly what they became on screen, not an army of warrior women; here, they're wives of the king, one from each tribe in Wakanda as a way of maintaining political balance. They may only speak to the king (in Hausa) and must defend him with their lives. One of my favorite characters was Chanté Giovanni Brown, a teenager social justice crusader from inner-city Chicago who renamed herself "Queen Divine Justice"... and then learned that as the estranged descendant of a Wakandan tribal leader, she was a new Dora Milaje. I feel like we have really missed out by not getting her on screen.

That said, he perhaps sometimes keeps things too fresh. One gets the sense of a juggler continually adding balls to his act, forgetting to maintain balls he already launched into the air. (Okay, how's that for a metaphor?) Soon there's the Hulk (okay, the bit where Queen Divine Justice bonds with him is cute), and then Power Man and Iron Fist, and there's a crossover with Deadpool (ugh), and a flash-forward to a dystopian Black Panther, and all sorts of other stuff, and I found myself missing Ross and the supporting cast of the book's earlier days, whose stories had more faded away than actually come to an end. Though there's always a lot to like, from, say, issue #30 to 40 especially, I found myself a bit adrift in the book's overcomplications.

Also, suddenly a second T'Challa appears, one written and even drawn in the Jack Kirby adventurer fashion, complete with friend Abner Little. This is hilarious, especially given how much the two Black Panthers like each other, but the mystery of who he is and how he got there is drawn out too long and not really resolved satisfactorily. Like, we get all the answers we need, but the story just kind of fizzles out.

However, with the Enemy of the State II storyline, where Wakanda annexes part of Canada and T'Challa pits himself against Tony Stark, the book showed a marked improvement, again recapturing that energy and focus of the first twelve issues, and then there's a two-parter where the whole cast is inadvertently tossed through time into the Wild West, which is of course hilarious.

from Black Panther vol. 3 #51
(script by Priest, art by Jorge Lucas)

But, having got its mojo back, the book must have seemed in even more danger of cancellation than ever, for with issue #50, it's suddenly drastically retooled. T'Challa is missing, presumed dead,* and the main character is suddenly Kevin "Kasper" Cole, a New York cop who finds a discarded Black Panther suit and begins using it to take down corrupt cops, the whole series suddenly transforming into a seedy crime novel of sorts. Priest does an okay job with it, but it's just never as interesting as what he was doing. Unfortunately (aside from a terrible two-issue fill-in by the usually reliable J. Torres), Kasper is the main character for the rest of the run. He has its moments, but I found his character beats a bit repetitive, and, well, no one is reading Black Panther for a grounded crime thriller about corrupt cops. Kasper briefly counts as a new Black Panther, but by series's end, has become the White Tiger, endorsed by T'Challa and given the heart-shaped herb for his own superpowers.

I read the whole run on comiXology, having got it for free in a sale; it's also been collected as four trade paperbacks called Black Panther: The Complete Collection. The first three volumes collect all of stuff actually focused on T'Challa, and they are well worth your time to pick up. I have a lot of Black Panther comics to go, but it seems unlikely to me that any of them will top this.

ACCESS AN INDEX OF ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES HERE

* Well, kind of. In one issue we're told he's supposedly dead, in another, we learn he's still a member of the Avengers!

Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter: A Love Story by Christopher Priest, Karl Waller, Mark McKenna, et al.

I read this Wonder Woman story because it was the first appearance of the "original" "Golden Age" Fury, Helena Kosmatos, since The Young All-Stars, as well as her first-ever appearance in the present-day of the DC universe. It's a sort of complicated story: Wonder Woman is trying to put an end to a civil war in the Mediterranean(?) nation of New Vladonia, when she's attacked by Fury and given a proposal by Michael Lysander, leader of the East Vladonian Resistance.

Lysander turns out to be an ancient Greek demigod named Alcmaeon, who wants Wonder Woman to fall in love with him; if she'll sleep with him, he'll end the fighting. Much of the story alternates between Dinah going on dates with him, and Dinah wondering if this is the right way to bring peace to "man's world." For some reason, Superman turns up, as Clark is full of opinions on what Dinah can do with her body. It's like, dude, I think you are married to someone else! I found a lot of this hard to follow, actually, particularly bits that seemed to assume I knew more about Alcmaeon than I did. What actually was the 18th letter?

The Fury stuff isn't very well integrated into the rest. Partially this is because its stakes are kind of murky, as a lot of what is going on depends on backstory... backstory we have never actually seen, because since The Young All-Stars, the continuity terrain has shifted a lot. Roy Thomas created the original Fury to (partially) replace the Golden Age Wonder Woman's role in the post-Crisis DC universe. But later, John Byrne established that the Golden Age Wonder Woman's role in the Justice Society was actually taken by Diana's mother, Queen Hippolyta, travelling back in time and adopting the role of Wonder Woman. This comic establishes that while living in the 1940s, Hippolyta adopted a maternal role toward Helena, enough that Helena is jealous of Diana, Hippolyta's "real" daughter.

from Legends of the DC Universe #32
(art by Pablo Raimondi & Karl Waller and Mark McKenna)

Like, the emotional throughline of this story is all dependent on two retcons that I don't think were ever really intended to go together! We never saw the Helena/Hippolyta relationship, and I found it difficult to care about. Also, where has Helena been since World War II? Why did she give her daughter Lyta up for adoption? (For some reason, Helena says to Diana, "You've taken everything from me--my mother, my child..." Like, she's just living in LA, lady; go look her up in the phonebook.) Anyway, I think there's an attempt at some thematic overlap with the main story when it comes to love, violence, and redemption, but there's too much going on in this story's three issues, and so it's just not enough.

Both Helena and Lyta now exist in the present-day DC universe, but as far as I know, no writer ever connected the two Furies in any way; after this, Helena seems to have only appeared in some Themysciran crowd scenes in Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman: The 18th Letter: A Love Story originally appeared in issues #30-32 of Legends of the DC Universe (July-Sept. 2000). The story was written by Christopher Priest, pencilled by Karl Waller (#30-32) and Pablo Raimondi (#32), inked by Mark McKenna (#30-32) and Jason Baumgartner (#31), lettered by John Costanza, colored by Tom McCraw, and edited by Maureen McTigue.

 

This post is thirtieth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Two Thousand. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
9. Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
10. Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]
11. Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)
12. All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)
13. Steel, the Indestructible Man (1978)
14. Superman vs. Wonder Woman: An Untold Epic of World War Two (1977)
• Wonder Woman: Earth-Two (1977-78)
15. Secret Origins of the Golden Age (1986-89)
16. The Young All-Stars (1987-89)
17. Gladiator (1930) ["Man-God!" (1976)]
    
18. The Crimson Avenger: The Dark Cross Conspiracy (1981-88)
19. The Immortal Doctor Fate (1940-82)
20. Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice (1951-91)
21. Armageddon: Inferno (1992)
22. Justice Society of America vol. 2 (1992-93)
23. The Adventures of Alan Scott--Green Lantern (1992-93)
24. Damage (1994-96)
25. The Justice Society Returns! (1999-2001)
26. Chase (1998-2002)
27. Stargirl by Geoff Johns (1999-2003)
28. The Sandman Presents: The Furies (2002)
29. JSA by Geoff Johns, Book One (1999-2000)
    

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XI: JLA: Strength in Numbers

Since Neil Gaiman took over The Sandman, the character has been pretty well confined to the Vertigo portion of the DC universe. But from time to time, he manages to break out and interact with the rest of the DCU. The JLA and JSA stories here have aspects other than the Sandman ones, but I'm going to ignore all of them, since someday I'll reread these tales in their proper contexts:

Comic trade paperback, 223 pages
Published 1998 (contents: 1998)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2011

JLA: Strength in Numbers

Writers: Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Christopher Priest
Pencillers: Howard Porter, Arnie Jorgensen, Yanick Paquette
Inkers: John Dell, David Meikis, Mark Pennington, Walden Wong, Doug Hazlewood, Mark Lipka
Colorists: Pat Garrahy, James Sinclair
Letterers: Ken Lopez, Janice Chiang, Kurt Hathaway

Grant Morrison's "Return of the Conqueror" marks one of the first-- if not the first-- appearances of the new Dream, the former Daniel Hall, outside Gaiman's own Sandman series. Dream makes contact with the Justice League when the Star Conqueror hijacks the Dreaming, putting almost the Earth's entire population to sleep in preparation for an attack. Dream actually isn't very fussed by the whole thing; at the end of the story, we learn that he's primarily acting to return a favor, since early in The Sandman, the Justice League helped his predessor locate one of his artifacts of power.

Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Green Lantern travel into the Dreaming to stop the Star Conqueror, where only one dreamer remembers the superheroes that exist in the "real" world. The Dreaming lets Morrison explore themes he would later return to in All-Star Superman, volume 2: the notion that in a world where Superman didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. And just like in All-Star, the world without Superman is the false one, the world with him is real, but I think this notion worked better in All-Star. The Dreaming is a seemingly more appropriate venue for this premise than a simulation in Superman's Fortress of Solitude, for what are superheroes but dreams given human form? But the nature of "Return of the Conqueror" means that the superhero-less world is destroyed when Superman and company save the day (a little too easily given the scale of the threat), whereas our own world continues to persist. We can imagine that we reside in the Superman-less world of All-Star, that one level up in reality, Superman is real, whereas "Return of the Conqueror" precludes us from imagining that we could wake up some day and be in the world where Superman exists.

There are some nice moments, though: I loved the conversation between the Green Lantern and Dream, and the true nature of Michael Haney was good, too. On the other hand, Morrison's Dreaming is much more muted and prosaic than Gaiman's, but I suppose that's the nature of the corner of the Dreaming we're in. "Return of the Conqueror" feels conceptually flawed in the end: while superheroes seemed to fit into Gaiman's world just fine, Gaiman's character is too big to fit into the world of the superheroes without losing what makes it special.