Review: Justice Society of America: Home Again! by Len Strazewski, Mike Parobeck, Mike Machlan, et al.

I guess The Demise of Justice (or Vengeance from the Stars!, as it was known back then) must have done well, because in short order, a few members of its creative team were reunited to put together the first-ever self-titled ongoing series for the JSA. Len Strazweski, writer, and Mike Parobeck, penciller on issues #3 and 5, were joined by Mike Machlan, who had JSA experience as an inker on All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. Alas, this "ongoing" lasted a mere two issues longer than the "mini" that birthed it!

It's not intuitive to me that because Len Strazewski had been a good writer of a retro-set JSA story that he would be the man to bring them back in the present day. It's a very different idea! But man, he sure was.

The series begins with a prologue set shortly after Armageddon: Inferno, with the JSA being heralded at a big event to welcome them home after their years fighting in the simulation of Ragnarok. (In a nice touch, Clark Kent is in the audience, and he is a total fanboy at getting to see the JSA again.) The series then jumps forward a couple months to let the JSA members settle into their lives again and pick up with what they're doing now. As the first present-day post-Crisis JSA ongoing, Justice Society vol. 2 can make use of a lot of the ideas Roy and Dann Thomas introduced in All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. for the first time. For example, A-SS's Johnny Quick reappears, and we learn that since we last saw him way back in 1942, he and Liberty Belle had a daughter and got divorced. This daughter, Jesse, is writing a dissertation on superheroes, and has inherited her father's super-speed (now revealed to be a consequence of Invasion!'s metagene); she quickly (ha!) becomes involved with the JSA as superheroine "Jesse Quick." (Plus Gernsback the robot is even installed in the JSA's new headquarters!) Infinc's Rick "Hourman II" Tyler reappears, now succumbing to Miraclo-induced cancer. The Hawks don't want to join a new JSA at first, being in mourning over the death of their son Hector in The Sandman. (On the other hand, it's a bit odd to read about this series's Wes "Sandman" Dodds, a rare appearance of his post-Crisis but pre-Sandman Mystery Theatre incarnation. This version of the character was being wiped out right as JSA vol. 2 drew to a close.)

from Justice Society of America vol. 2 #2
(art by Mike Parobeck & Mike Machlan)

The strengths of this series are many, but one of them is in carving out a place for the JSA in the present-day DC universe, the first time this had really been done post-Crisis. They fit into a heroic lineage now, in a way that Roy Thomas was beginning to exploit in Infinc but really comes into its own here. Bit by bit, we are seeing the way that the JSA was largely depicted in the 1990s and 2000s come into being. Wally West shows up for a bit, and is wowed by Jay Garrick; Guy Gardner has a showdown with Alan Scott while under the influence of an ancient Egyptian god's hate spell. But Strazewksi also has a light touch when it comes to continuity. Though some Infinc characters reappear, the series isn't bogged down in revisiting, say, Doctor Mid-Nite II, or in spending lots of time explaining what's up with Wildcat's legs.

Another of the series's strengths is its characterization. Strazewksi hits exactly the balance I like to see in a superhero comic. No issue ever lacks for a fight scene-- but each issue usually also finds time for an extended conversation. Strazewksi's writing is heart-warming without being saccharine, and he has a great handle on the present-day JSA members. My favorite touch is that of all the JSA, Al "the Atom" Pratt is the most like a grumpy old man. It's like, of course he is, because he had a chip on his shoulder since his college days... but he was also the youngest of the original JSA by far, so it's ironic, too! The interplay between him and Wildcat was especially great, but I loved seeing all of them in action: Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Charles McNider, Johnny Thunder, and so on.

In the lettercol to issue #10, Strazewski says he was inspired by seeing Buckminster Fuller and pre-WWII woman union members: "the senior heroes of my experience, folks [...] who had been making their statements and bucking conventional wisdom for decades[,] seemed to me, for want of a better word, secure." There's no angst here, just pleasure in a job they've always loved doing.

On top of that we have fun stories and good art. Mike Parobeck has a clean, heroic, retro style, perfectly suited to the world's first superhero team. You can tell all his characters apart even as civilians (not every superhero artist can do this); they have distinct builds and faces and hairstyles. The action is usually clear and clean. The plots are solid: the JSA battles evil experimenters (surprise, it's Ultra-Humanite), goes back to Badhnesia (where Johnny's powers come from) to find out what happened to its people, and stops a deadly hate plague spread by Spectre foe Kulak. I had a blast reading every single issue.

It's a shame, of course, that the series ended so soon; one senses that they were just getting started. Jesse Quick does a little, but not a lot; Kiku, the new ward for Johnny Thunder who gains some power over the Thunderbolt, hardly does anything. Future writers would pick up on Jesse, but I am pretty sure Kiku is forgotten. At the end of issue #10, Starman and the Sandman have only just got back into action. (Starman, by the way, clearly has one son, not two.) But even still, Strazewski, Parobeck, and Machlan carved out a way for the JSA to remain relevant in the 1990s and beyond; I think there's a direct line from what they did here to how David Goyer and James Robinson ultimately brought the JSA back in 1999. (But more on that later! Much later at the rate I am going.)

Justice Society of America vol. 2 was originally published in ten issues (Aug. 1992–May 1993). The series was written by Len Strazewski; pencilled by Mike Parobeck; inked by Mike Machlan (#1-10), Matt Banning (#5), Jeff Albrecht (#5), and Carlos Garzon (#6); lettered by Bob Pinaha; colored by Glenn Whitmore; and edited by Brian Augustyn.

 

This post is twenty-second in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers the Alan Scott stories in Green Lantern Corps Quarterly. 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)
    

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XL: The Death of the New Gods

Comic trade paperback, 246 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007-08) 
Borrowed from the library
Read May 2015

The Death of the New Gods

​
Writer and penciller: Jim Starlin 
Inkers: Matt Banning, Art Thibert, Mark McKenna
Colorist: Jeromy Cox
Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Travis Lanham, Randy Gentile, Steve Wands

Whether this book should even exist is pretty debatable: it's supposed to tie into Final Crisis, but like most Final Crisis tie-ins, it would ultimately do so in a way not very consistent with that book. To wit: all the New Gods die here, in front of Superman, but no one seems to know about this when Final Crisis rolls around.

The book has bigger crimes, though, and those are that it takes Jack Kirby's amazing cosmic epic and crams it into a procedural. The Death of the New Gods should be an operatic tragedy... instead it's a murder mystery? It's a weird misjudging of genre that transforms something mythic into something ordinary. These characters don't feel like gods, but squabbling aliens from any number of mid-range science fiction television shows. Plus, it's not even a good mystery; ten minutes after reading it, and I couldn't have explained to you what had happened exactly, and the revelation of the "villain" is beyond silly. Jack Kirby knew characters had to be reinvented to keep them vital, but this was not the way to reinvent the New Gods-- and I'm surprised that after his runs on cosmic titles for both Marvel and DC, Jim Starlin couldn't do better than this.

Next Week: We reach zero, both issue-wise and quality-wise, in the final volume of Countdown to Final Crisis!

Faster than a DC Bullet, Issue #15: Superman: For Tomorrow, Volume Two

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 2004-05)
Borrowed from a friend
Read December 2009

Superman: For Tomorrow, Volume Two

Writer: Brian Azzarello

Penciller: Jim Lee
Inker: Scott Williams
Additional Inkers: Richard Friend, Sandra Hope, Matt Banning, Eric Basaldua, Jim Lee, Danny Miki, Trevor Scott, Tim Townsend, Joe Weems
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Letterers: Rob Leigh, Nick J. Napolitano

DC Universe Timeline: Two Years Ago
Real World Timeline: 2006

What the heck happened here? Volume One of For Tomorrow was exceptional-- one of the best main series Superman stories I had ever read. But with this... Brian Azzarello goes completely off the rails.

Let's start with what I liked. Thankfully, Azzarello still gets Superman. I mean, gets him. In this volume, we get an explanation for the mysterious Vanishing and the orb that caused it: it turns out that Superman himself built the orb. Why? It turns out that his entire life, Superman has been haunted by his father's failure: his world about to be destroyed, and all Jor-El could manage to do was save one person, his own child. What kind of protector is that? Superman created the orb to shunt Earth's population into the Phantom Zone, the ultimate fail-safe. So far, so good. I really like this idea that Superman feels this need to outdo his father, to surpass his failures. It fits well. I can even kind of buy the notion that Superman has the technical know-how to design and build the orb to do it.

Where things get kooky, though, is that Superman staffs this world in the Phantom Zone with robot duplicates of Jor-El, his mother Lara, and Clark Kent. Creepy much? He sends the orb with them so that they can reactivate it if the need be. And apparently, having done all this, he wipes his own memory of it.

But the Phantom Zone was not empty, unknown to Superman. For within the Phantom Zone lurked Krypton's greatest threat... General Zod. And this is where things go from kooky to bad, because Azzarello's Zod is terrible. This is not the casually arrogant god played by Terence Stamp, this is a demonic brute, one of many in this comic. There's not really much to distinguish him from Equus, even though one supposedly is the master and the other the servant. The depiction of Zod does absolutely nothing more me; I can see why the fact that Superman had met Zod before was totally ignored for Last Son just a few years later, which was a much superior take on the character. Why bring back Zod if he could just be any old brute? (There is, however, one great bit where Zod asks Superman to save him... then lets go of Superman and falls into a vortex just to get on Superman's nerves.)

Anyway, Zod realized what the orb was and sent it back into our world to ensure that Superman would somehow be drawn back in the Phantom Zone: presumably, that's when it made its way into the hands of the Middle Eastern despot who used it cause the Vanishing. It's all a bit convoluted, but it can be puzzled through eventually. But it just doesn't work for me; it's too complicated to resonate effectively. This world Superman constructs-- Metropia-- represents his ability to atone for his father's "sins", so what does it mean that Zod, another of his father's "sins", populates it for him indirectly and smashes it up? Um...

The other problem with this book is Father Daniel Leone. The center of Volume One were the conversations between him and Superman, as both attempt to navigate their places in the world, as both are the people everyone looks to for help, leaving them with no one to look to. A beautiful relationship was being built there, with each of them as each other's confessor. Yet here, that is all cast aside. They barely talk, and Daniel falls into the hands of arch-mercenary Mr. Orr, who augments him into a replacement for the super-solider Equus, called "Pilate". Um, why? We're told that the fact that Daniel has cancer assists the mutation, but surely there are many more people with cancer, almost all of them more skilled at combat than a Catholic priest? The character is almost cruelly discarded by Azzarello here, becoming a pointless nobody in short order. I mean, there's a neat moment where Pilate saves Superman by figuring out how to send the orb back to him again, but this could have been so much better. What a waste. All that build-up in Volume One was for nothing.

Equus is still dumb, too. Other weird things include Mr. Orr's dealing with the mystic lady, who was never explained in any capacity, and his ability to manipulate Wonder Woman, who ought to know better. I did like that Wonder Woman came to stop Superman from reactivating the orb and sending himself into the Phantom Zone, though, and the Superman/Wonder Woman battle here worked pretty well, especially in its ending.

This does lead me to another point: Wonder Woman has nice legs. In fact, every woman drawn by Jim Lee has nice legs. And Lee wastes no opportunity to show them to you. Wonder Woman wears an improbably short skirt, and this skirt flies upwards at ever opportunity during combat. We even get the occasional glimpse of panties. Classy. Lois Lane is similarly sexualized. Apart from Clark in Metropia, where everyone else wears baggy clothes, she spends her time in a tiny shift that shows off both her legs and ample cleavage. While going tree-climbing. Why? Goodness knows. At least Superman gets his fair share of shirtless time in, too. Other than that complaint, though, Lee's art is typically gorgeous.

I wanted to like this story, I really did. And Volume One is still fantastic. But this volume neglects what made the first one work so well, and muddies the waters with the completely unneeded additions of General Zod and Pilate. A disappointing conclusion to what ought to have been a fantastic story, For Tomorrow does at least end with a great line from Superman: "I will always be there to save you. Because I am Superman. Believe that, until the end. The End. I wonder, when it comes... who will save me?" (Man, Azzarello's characters tend to talk in clipped, dramatic pronouncements. Oh well.)

Note that this originally appeared on my old LiveJournal and included pictures back then. Sadly, the pictures are lost in the mists of the Internet.

Archival Review: Mystery in Space with Captain Comet, Volume One by Jim Starlin

Mystery in Space with Captain Comet, Volume One

Writer: Jim Starlin
Pencillers: Shane Davis, Jim Starlin
Inkers: Matt "Batt" Banning, Al Milgrom
Colorists: Jeromy Cox, Jim Starlin
Additional Colors: Guy Major
Letterers: Phil Balsman, Rob Leigh, Jared K. Fletcher

Comic trade paperback, 204 pages. Published 2007 (content: 2006-07).  Acquired and read October 2007.

Once I was in the comic book store, and I saw this series called Mystery in Space.  No 2007 book can normally have such an awesome title, and it was all I could do to stop myself from buying the whole series on the spot.  I succeeded in self-control by going home and putting the trade paperback collection on preorder. 

Fortunately, the book did indeed turn out to be quite good-- it's exactly what it says on the tin, a mystery story set in space.  Captain Comet is an instantly likeable protagonist (now I am very tempted to seek out his previous adventures) and Hardcore Station is a good setting (good enough that I immediately tracked down the 1998 miniseries of that title and read it too).  The standout character is Tyrone, Comet's bulldog that has been genetically engineered to be sentient-- artist Shane Davis manages the extraordinary feat of giving him discernible facial expressions.  Looking forward to Volume Two.