One of the things that originally spurred my interest in reading the Earth-Two/Justice Society comics from DC was that idea of legacy that grew to dominate their depictions in the 1990s onward: series like
Starman leveraged the long histories of these heroes in powerful ways, and I liked that a lot, and wanted to experience more of it. But the other thing that made me want to read all this was that Lyta Hall is actually my third-favorite
Sandman character, and I wanted to see where she originated:
Infinity, Inc.It actually kind of amuses me that Neil Gaiman's Sandman, read by so many people who are otherwise unaware of DC continuity, has a major storyline rooted in an overcomplicated Roy Thomas retcon from the 1980s that is now in many ways forgotten and irrelevant. Yet while Infinity, Inc. has never really been collected, Lyta has recently been played by Laurel Lefkow in Audible's high-profile adaptation of The Sandman! The character lives on, even if detached from her past.
But let's go back to the beginning. I've previously discussed the first ten issues of Infinity, Inc., the "Generations Saga" (see below), but the series ran up to 53 issues in total, plus two annuals and a special. Infinity, Inc. was a super-team created by Sylvester Pemberton (the Star-Spangled Kid, later Skyman), mostly made up of heroes with relations to Golden Age characters, set on Earth-Two. So there was Skyman himself (a kid hero in the 1940s, propelled forward through time to the 1970s), Fury (the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor), the Silver Scarab (the son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl), Nuklon (son of the Atom's goddaughter), Northwind (a mentee of Hawkman), Obsidian and Jade (children of the Green Lantern), Brainwave (son of JSA foe the Brain Wave), Wildcat (mentee of Wildcat), Doctor Midnight (mentee of Doctor Mid-Nite), and Hourman (son of Hourman). Rejected from membership in the Justice Society, they struck out on their own.
I liked the Generations Saga, but after that, I found the book hard to get into. Todd McFarlane takes over as regular artist with issue #14. I know he would later become one of the superstar artists of the 1990s and creator of
Spawn, but I found his over-complicated layouts made for tough reading and distracted from the storytelling. Plus a lot of those early issues are that kind of team book I am not a huge fan of, where the fights just come on top of fights, and one feels that if people weren't always shooting off hot-headed and/or not having conversations, three-issue subplots could be over in one. The book suffered, too, during
Crisis on Infinite Earths (#18-24), as it had to connect into the big story, but not actually do anything important.
I know a lot of people (including, I think, co-creator Roy Thomas himself) think the Crisis ruined this book, but it was at that point where it really took off. McFarlane is penciller up until issue #37, but learns how to balance his layouts with clear storytelling, and Roy's wife Dann goes from co-plotter to full-fledged co-writer. The characters begin to pop more, the team has clearer interactions and connections, and the ongoing subplots start to get underway. I really do love ensemble books, and Infinity, Inc. has the interplay of personalities required to make a good one. I came to pretty fond of all the characters: overbearing but well-meaning Skyman, earnest Midwesterner would-be starlet Jade, angry Obsidian, doofy Nuklon, feisty Wildcat, and so on. I don't think the Thomases always used them all to their utmost-- there was a Jade/Fury resentment that never went anywhere, and Northwind was underused-- but all-in-all the effect was charming, and I was always happy to spend time with this bunch.
Highlights for me included the debut of Helix, a group of genetic experiments gone wrong. I had this vague notion that Director Bones,
who I know from Marc Andreyko's Manhunter, had been a supervillain at some point; I hadn't know he was an
Infinity, Inc. character who originally spoke in rhyme!
Mr. Bones, as he was then, is paroled under Skyman's care after Helix helps Infinity, Inc. He only behaves to protect his "siblings" in Helix... but by the end of the run, he's a well-meaning member of the team (and the final story arc actually has a very neat storyline where he is framed for murder and has to prove himself innocent). I liked the use of Solomon Grundy; after Jade (daughter of his old enemy) saves his life, he declares allegiance to her. This is one of those comics where even weaker storylines are elevated by the cast: I was always up for some Nuklon/Wildcat flirting, or a cameo from Stripesy, or what have you.
The Crisis, of course, complicated everything, as did the killing off of the Justice Society (more on that in a future post). But both of those things produced some of the series's strongest issues, "Memories" (#27), where we get a flashback to the JSA brats as kids, and "What Private Griefs..." (#30), where each Infinity, Inc. member must deal with the loss of the JSA in their own way. Suddenly Infinity, Inc. was folded into the same DC universe as the Justice League and everyone else-- but to be honest, I thought this almost always worked just fine. The only time it didn't work was "The Degaton Paradox" (Annual #2) which took itself to explain how the events of America vs. the Justice Society played out in this new timeline... a question I never had, given an overcomplicated answer.
And what of Fury? Lyta Trevor was the daughter of the Earth-Two Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, who were wiped from existence by the Crisis. Roy Thomas clearly originally thought he could make this work by just never mentioning it, so Brainwave wipes Lyta's memories of her parents. This was kind of a dark move the series never really reckoned with, and later moved away from because it doesn't actually make any sense: Lyta would have to
have parents in this new timeline, after all. So we slowly learn that she's the adopted daughter of one Admiral Trevor (no relation to Steve, I guess) and the Golden Age heroine Miss America (who in the new history took Wonder Woman's place in the JSA), but also the biological daughter of the (retroactive) Golden Age heroine Fury. I thought the new backstory was interesting, and worked in terms of making her a legacy-- which seems to me was really the point of all the Infinity, Inc. characters. You can work around the specifics of
whose legacies they are. The original Fury is given an origin in
Secret Origins #12, and I am given to understand that she plays a key role in
The Young All-Stars, which I will read in the course of time.
In a very complicated plotline, her fiancé the Silver Scarab (Hector) deserts her after she becomes pregnant, but that's because he's under the mental influence of an ancient Hawkman villain. He ends up dying-- but then it turns out he's not dead, as he has become the replacement for the short-lived 1970s Jack Kirby version of the Sandman. Why Roy Thomas decided to pick up this character concept, I have no idea, except that he is always compelled to chase down loose continuity ends. Lyta goes off to the Dream Dimension to live with Hector-- and the series is promptly cancelled, leaving the two of them free to be used by Neil Gaiman when he starts publishing The Sandman just five months later. (I have a theory that Gaiman really wanted to use the actual Kirby Sandman, but had to deal with revelations and changes Thomas made to him in Wonder Woman #300 and Infinity, Inc. If so, I think it worked out for Gaiman in the long run given how important Lyta became to the climax of The Sandman.)
Outside of the continuity issues, I still did like Fury a lot. She's a daughter of money and privilege, and good looking (one imagines that these days, she'd be showing off on Instagram), but she's strong, physically and mentally, and heroic. There's a harder edge to her in her post-
Infinc appearances, for obvious reasons, but you can see how that's nascent here. I don't think she's a great character
yet, but you can see the potential for greatness-- and that's what I love about shared universe superhero comics anyway.
Vince Argondezzi later takes over for McFarlane on pencils, and he's pretty good-- both are aided well by Tony DeZuniga, an old favorite of mine, on inks. Near the end of the run, Michael Bair becomes the regular penciller, and though I like his work on some of the Roy Thomas-penned Secret Origins I've read, his slightly macabre style doesn't really fit Infinity, Inc., and he is way too obsessed with working in panty shots and sideboob for the female characters. (Comics, everybody!) But despite this, I enjoyed the series up to its end, and wish it had run longer and done more, because I think it had a lot of potential. As I keep bouncing around DC's Earth-Two-adjacent material, I look forward to seeing what other writers do with these characters.
One last continuity note: I had previously read it, but I reread
Convergence: Infinity, Inc. at the point I think it takes place, between issues #24 and 25. Published in 2015,
Convergence was about characters being plucked out of old continuities to live on an alien planet for a year and then fight; Infinity, Inc. and the Justice Society were taken from during the Crisis itself. So we get appearances from the whole original gang. (I think? Now that I think about it, is Northwind in it?) The issues were written by Jerry Ordway, who co-created the series with Roy Thomas and Mike Machlan, and who pencilled issues #1-10 and part of Annual #2. Ordway emphasizes some aspects of the characters that had been forgotten at that point (Jade's desire to be an actress, for example), but he also incorporates post-
Infinc revelations about the Infinitors. Most notably, I had completely forgotten that Todd "Obsidian" Rice was revealed to be gay in Andreyko's
Manhunter! Ordway plays that up here. Reading subsequent issues of
Infinity, Inc. through that lens actually really works: there are some comments, when Todd dates Marcie and when Todd meets Raven of the New Teen Titans, that I actually found hard to interpret any
other way than hinting at him being gay! He has a dark secret, and I feel like he doesn't perform well sexually-- but his girlfriend Marcie is actually a Manhunter using him for evil purposes, so she has incentive to play along. Fortuitous, and I'm glad Ordway was willing to take on retcons to his co-creation.
This post is the tenth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment will be a supplement covering a reading order for Infinity, Inc. Previous installments are listed below:
- All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
- The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
- All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
- Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
- Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
- Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
- America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
- Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
- Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)
