Justice League International Year Seven, Part I: Destiny's Hand (JLA #70-77 / JLTF #1-3)

This series of posts took a bit of a breather. Partially because I have to track down out-of-print trade paperbacks, but partially also because trying to read the stories in any kind of reasonable or accurate sequence gets much harder around this point! I had been using the Cosmic Teams timeline, but it has lots of placements that very obviously do not make sense if you read the actual stories, making me think it was done from someone's vague memories of the series. So I kept on reading, but put my writeups on pause while I tried to work out the best order.

Now, finally, I am back in action. It is interesting; this era gives you some signs that the Justice League family of titles was in trouble, in that approaches are constantly being jerked around and creative teams switching. But it also gives you indications things were going quite well, because a third ongoing monthly title was added to the lineup. Has there ever been any other era in the history of DC where there were four ongoing Justice League titles? (America, International, and Task Force all as monthlies, but also Quarterly keeps going, with three issues' worth of content every quarter, so essentially another monthly.)

This post covers the end of Dan Jurgens's run on Justice League America (collected in a book called Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2... even though Superman is dead for every single one of these issues!) and the first three issues of Justice League Task Force. Based on chronological considerations, it will be a bit before we get back to JLE, now retitled Justice League International. Plus, a single issue of JLQ!

from Justice League America #76

"Grieving" / "A New Look" / Destiny's Hand / Blood Secrets, from Justice League America #70-77 (Jan.-Late July 1993), reprinted in Superman and Justice League America, Volume 2 (2016)
words/layouts by Dan Jurgens (guest pencils by Sal Velluto), finishes by Rick Burchett and Romeo Tanghal & Bob Smith, letters by Willie Schubert, colors by Gene D'Angelo

So, JLA #69 ended with Superman showing up to battle Doomsday. JLA #70 begins with him dead, having been killed off in Superman #75 as part of the Death of Superman story. The issue first focuses on the reactions of the various League members to the events of the battle with Doomsday: Ice, who had a crush on Superman, is devastated; Blue Beetle is in a coma; Booster is beside himself at both the injury of his best friend and the destruction of his suit. It then takes a broader approach, as other characters show up to grieve, like the Flash and Aquaman and Hawkman and Green Arrow. Even Guy Gardner is sad! It's fine, it does exactly what it should, I suppose. Dan Jurgens's art lifts his story; he's very good at classical heroic heroes emoting, which is exactly what this needs.

The next issue is one of those dull transitional issues, establishing the new status quo for the League: who quits, who joins, &c. Wonder Woman takes over as team leader. Ice quits. Booster and Fire are still around but neither has powers. A bunch of new members join, including the Ray (who lasts for quite a while) and two other characters who I honestly forget were even in the title until I went to write these issues up just now! These are Condor and Agent Liberty. Jurgens never really establishes their deals in an interesting way during his run, and they just vanish after it's over; I am pretty sure they are not written out, they just stop appearing after issue #75! I would say that's typical of the post-Giffen/DeMatteis JLA, which very much struggles to create a compelling mix of characters no matter who's writing.

At this point, Jurgens's run fizzles out. First we get a really boring four-part story about Doctor Dee dreaming a harsher Justice League into existence, which begins to bleed into the real world. It's just not a very interesting idea and it goes on far too long. The whole thing wraps up with a two-part story finally explaining what's been going on with Bloodwynd: he's the Martian Manhunter in the form of Bloodwynd. This is a great twist but not a great story because it turns out J'onn J'onnz thinks he's Bloodwynd so he's acting exactly how Bloodwynd would act. It tells us nothing about either Bloodwynd or J'onn as a character, so what's the point? I do like how Jurgens writes Blue Beetle, though, never forgetting that in addition to being a goofball he's also an obsessive genius.

from Justice League Quarterly #11

"Beautiful, Wonderful, Perfect" / "Heat Wave" / "The Damnation Agenda, Part 1 of 5: The Hiding Kind", from Justice League Quarterly #11 (Summer 1993)
writes by William Messner-Loebs, Pat McGreal & Dave Rawson, and Michael Jan Friedman; pencils by Mike Wieringo & Lee Moder, Dave Cockrum, and Mike Mayhew; inks by Richard Space, Peter Gross, and Dan Davis; letters by Bob Pinaha and Tim Harkins; colors by Gene D'Angelo, Steve Mattsson, and Glenn Whitmore

The lead story in this issue is said to "take place before current issues of Justice League," but there's pretty much nowhere it could go, as it features both Wonder Woman and Ice in the JLA, and Ice quit the same issue Wonder Woman joined (JLA #71). Additionally, Beetle is unseen but mentioned as active, yet he was comatose from JLA #69 to 75. But it can't go later, once Ice rejoins (JLA #85), because by then, Crimson Fox has quit the League!

Anyway, the lead story here has potential but, like all of William Messner-Loebs's contributions to JLQ, is not very well done. The League is asked to protect the wife of a conservative Muslim prince, so only female members can be used. The main characters have to be pretty dumb and gullible for the whole thing to work. There are some decent character moments among the leads, but also I feel like Mike Wieringo and Lee Moder's art wasn't quite ready for prime time. (But then, I guess JLQ isn't exactly prime time.) There's also a flashback story about the Martian Manhunter in the 1960s, battling racism in the South. I wouldn't say it's great comics, but I thought it was solid, and surprisingly nuanced for the early 1990s. It's cowritten by Pat McGreal, who overall did some solid stuff for JLQ; I'd've liked to have seen more work from him. And the art is by the great Dave Cockrum; nice to see him get to cut loose with something other than standard superhero fare.

Lastly, this issue sees the debut of JLQ's first-ever ongoing feature. This stars Praxis... and if you're going, "Who?", I don't blame you. Praxis has a very flimsy JL connection; way back in JLQ #1 he was a member of Conglomerate. It would be quite easy to not remember him! (I see from DCUGuide that he actually debuted in a 1989 Spectre story arc, but I don't think that's ever mentioned in any of his JLQ appearances.) Why would he be picked up for a return appearance? Well, if you remember the 1990s, it's not too surprising: he wears a leather jacket and sunglasses and mostly goes around angsting. So totally of his time it almost reads as parody. Praxis was a cop who failed to save his niece from a serial killer and got superpowers; after Conglomerate fell apart, he returned to police work. The story here, told from the perspective of his female partner, focuses on them trying to stop a new serial killer with a grisly MO. It's by Michael Jan Friedman and Mike Mayhew, both solid comics creators, but I found there was a bit too much narration. Let the story breathe!

from Justice League Task Force #1

"The Tyranny Gun!" / "Split Hit" / "Twisted Glass!", from Justice League Task Force #1-3 (June-Aug. 1993), reprinted in Justice League Task Force, Volume 1: The Purification Plague (2018)
written by David Michelinie, pencils by Sal Velluto, inks by Jeff Albrecht, letters by Bob Pinaha, colors by Glenn Whitmore

Justice League Task Force is a new ongoing. It only has two consistent lead characters, Martian Manhunter and Gypsy; other than the two of them, each story arc sees a new team assembled every issue, from a broad mix of DC superheroes. Interestingly, this grabbag approach also extends to the series's writing: David Michelinie gets first author on the collection cover, but actually only writes three of the twelve issues it collects... but no one writes more than three. While ongoing comics with rotating creators aren't unusual, I can't remember another comic I've read where the writer is constantly changing, but the artist is not; Sal Velluto pencilled all but two of the series's first fifteen issues.

In the first story, the UN uses the newly formed Task Force to take down rebels in a Caribbean nation. In this one, in addition to Manhunter and Gypsy, there's the Flash, Aquaman, and Nightwing. I don't really care for it. Sal Velluto has done good work elsewhere but this isn't his best, leaning too much into the early 1990s grim-and-gritty style; the writing is like that, too, with the characters always barking and snarling at each other. I don't find attempts to insert mainstream superhero characters into "realistic" geopolitics very interesting. This must go shortly after JLA #77 for J'onn, but the trauma he went through there is never mentioned, and weirdly, the actual JLA series never mentions why J'onn suddenly never appears again after his return!

I feel like David Michelinie was probably meant to write more of this title than he did. He gets cover credit on the fourth issue even though it was written by someone else (more on that next time), and the ending of #3 seems to set up a recurring villain who never recurs.

This is the eleventh in a series of posts about Justice League International. The next covers issues #78-83 of JLA, #51-52 of JLI, and #4-8 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) 

Review: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 by Roy Thomas et al.

DC's JLA/JSA / Earth-One/Earth-Two crossovers were an annual tradition from 1963 to 1985; several years ago, I read the Crisis on Multiple Earths trade paperbacks which collect them in their entirety... except that in classic DC fashion, they stopped publishing them when just one volume more would have collected them all! As I neared the 1985 crossover in my reading of Infinity, Inc., I realized that I ought to bung in the two before it and thus get the experience of what that nonexistent volume 7 would have been like...

Unfortunately, they're not the series's best work, even allowing for the fact that I was never particularly wowed by most JLA/JSA crossovers to begin with. Each one has the germ of a good idea, but it isn't really realized. I really enjoyed reading part one of Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension!, where Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt goes berserk and begins attacking the heroes of Earth-One in the midst of the annual JLA/JSA team-up. The writers do a pretty fun pastiche of how these things usually go; as it often is, the best part is when the members of the two super-teams are just chilling on the JLA satellite before things begin to go south, as we get to see (for example) Firestorm moon over Power Girl. Part one is credited to both Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, but I would guess that they plotted it together and Conway wrote the actual script; Conway was responsible for what were in my opinion the best of these crossovers (see volumes 5 and 6).

You wouldn't need the credits, however, to know that part two is entirely the work of Roy Thomas, because everyone immediately begins speaking in continuity and exact dates, telling each other things they already know and/or don't need to know.

• "It's Sargon the Sorcerer-- another who was born on our Earth and later migrated to this one."
• "I left the world of my birth for this one, in 1950."
• "Before you wandered onto the scene in 1947, Black Canary."
• "And who took his place in spring of '48? A certain wig-wearing wonder we all know-- called the Black Canary!"
• "The Wizard's idea, I'd guess. He's the one who dreamed up that 'patriotic crimes' caper in the late 40's, remember." "I don't-- because I was retired back then."

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #219
(script by Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway, art by Chuck Patton & Romeo Tanghal)

It's not just the dialogue, though; the entire story is constructed around explaining how Black Canary could have debuted in the 1940s but still be young enough in the 1980s to date Green Arrow (and was still drawn the same) while most of the other JSA members had aged. This is an okay thing to explain, but the actual explanation is so convoluted it beggars belief. Apparently, Dinah (Black Canary) and her husband Larry had a daughter also named Dinah, but she was cursed with a sonic scream, so she was transported into the thunderbolt dimension, where she aged normally but was comatose, and Dinah and Larry had their memories wiped of her! Like, what!? But wait, there's more when Larry died and Dinah moved from Earth-Two to Earth-One, Dinah began to die of radiation poisoning, so Superman detoured into the thunderbolt dimension and switched the consciousnesses of the mother and the daughter, so the mother has actually been in her daughter's body since 1969, as the daughter remains trapped, comatose, in her mother's radiation-ravaged body in another dimension! Only Dinah had no idea this happened to her. So much for informed consent! What is all this? It's terrible. Like, c'mon Roy, just say she got zapped with a youth spell. (Indeed, during his run on All-Star Squadron, Thomas would establish that many JSA members had had their aging slowed.) It's a terrible idea, and it makes for a terrible story. There may have been some JSA-related downsides to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but one of its upsides was the new generational history for Black Canary that was developed.

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #232
(script by Kurt Busiek, art by Alan Kupperberg)

I felt that Family Crisis! started strong, with narration from an unknown narrator testing some of the heroes of Earths-One and -Two during their annual team-up. The whole thing is about a scientist whose mind gets taken over by an alien conqueror, but also his family was involved. Part two devolves into a pretty generic punch-up, though, and the family thread never really takes off, unfortunately.

The last JLA-JSA team-up actually took place during Crisis on Infinite Earths. As JLA-JSA crossovers go, there's not much to it; the JSA barely features in favor of Infinity, Inc., but Infinity, Inc. barely matter to the story: it clearly slots into and partially resolves an ongoing story in Justice League of America. There's not much to it outside of that. In the first part, some aspects of Infinity, Inc.'s recent "Helix" three-parter (#16-18) are tied up, and then Commander Steel (also a star of All-Star Squadron, just forty years younger) comes to ask Infinity, Inc.'s help against what he claims is a bunch of renegades using the name of the JLA. They travel to Earth-One and fight the JLA (now in its "Detroit" phase). Then in part two, the JLA goes to the wrecked satellite to use its transmatter to get help from the JSA, and everyone whales on Commander Steel-- who doesn't like how his grandson Steel or the new JLA have turned out-- together. (Commander Steel is aided by Mekanique, the robot from the future who would also bedevil the All-Star Squadron.)

It's mostly a couple fights. The most effective part is the segment where the JLA drift through the wreckage of their old satellite headquarters, which is atmospherically written by Conway and atmospherically pencilled by the ever dependable Joe Staton.

I look forward to reading this story in its JLA context when I get around to reading my Justice League: The Detroit Era Omnibus in its entirety, but as the final JLA/JSA team-up, it's a whimper. The JSA are barely in it, and I feel like there was some mileage in teaming the upstarts in Infinity, Inc. up with the upstart new version of the Justice League, but Thomas and Conway get nothing out of it; they barely interact meaningfully. How would these two group of youngsters remake an old tradition?

I'm glad I read these, but I feel like the last few JLA/JSA team-ups were victims of the concept's success. Because the concept had been so popular, it had spawned ongoing Earth-Two stories in All-Star and Infinity, Inc.-- but that meant those series were carrying the weight of Earth-Two, resulting in the last few crossovers being largely inconsequential side shows that couldn't do much of note.

Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension! originally appeared in issues #219-20 of Justice League of America vol. 1 (Oct.-Nov. 1983). The story was written by Roy Thomas (#219-20) & Gerry Conway (#219), pencilled by Chuck Patton, inked by Romeo Tanghal (#219-20) & Pablo Marcos (#220), lettered by John Costanza (#219) and Cody (#220), colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Len Wein.

Family Crisis! originally appeared in issues #231-32 of Justice League of America vol. 1 (Oct.-Nov. 1984). The story was written by Kurt Busiek, illustrated by Alan Kupperberg, lettered by Ben Oda, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Alan Gold.

The Last JLA–Justice Society Team-Up! originally appeared in Infinity, Inc. vol. 1 #19 (Oct. 1985) and Justice League of America vol. 1 #244 (Nov. 1985). The story was written by Roy Thomas (#19) and Gerry Conway (#244), pencilled by Todd McFarlane (#19) and Joe Staton (#244), inked by Steve Montana (#19) and Mike Machlan (#244), co-plotted by Dann Thomas (#19), colored by Anthony Tollin (#19) & Adrienne Roy (#19) and Gene D'Angelo (#244), lettered by Cody (#19) and Albert De Guzman (#244), and edited by Roy Thomas (#19) and Alan Gold (#244).

This post is the ninth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers issues #11-53 of Infinity, Inc. 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)
   

The Making of a Black Man: Green Lantern: Mosaic

Mosaic, the four-part Green Lantern storyline by Gerard Jones, M. D. Bright, and Romeo Tanghal (vol. 3 #14-17), was followed by Green Lantern: Mosaic, an ongoing series about Green Lantern John Stewart trying to integrate the various cities plucked out of space and deposited on Oa to form "the mosaic world." Gerard Jones continued on as writer; the series's main penciller was Cully Hamner, who I know from his work over a decade later on the new Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle book. The series lasted eighteen issues, cancelled as part of a general deck-clearing in preparation for the massive reshuffling of Green Lantern that happened with Emerald Twilight.

In an early lettercol (in issue #5), Gerard Jones says he was unhappy with how the original Mosaic story went (he agrees with a writer who calls it "deadly dull") and wanted to do something different with the premise when it became an ongoing. I don't think you'd need to read the lettercol to know that, because the transition between Green Lantern #17 and Mosaic #1 is obvious and sharp. I think it's best summed up by the aliens. The aliens inhabiting the mosaic in the original miniseries are Star Trek aliens. In the ongoing, they're Farscape aliens. Everything gets weird and dark and twisted and far less human.

Which really sums up the whole approach, because it's not just the mosaic that's changed: John Stewart is weird and dark and twisted and far less human now, too. John Stewart is a man pushed beyond endurance, trying to reconcile the dozens of conflicting peoples of the mosaic, but as the story goes to great pains to point out, that's life as a man of color. His very identity is a mosaic, one that is assembled in a rickety way but must withstand the pressure of American racism. In one sense, John is going crazy because of this sci-fi scenario he's been plunged into, but in another, the story surfaces the problems John Stewart has had all along.

It reminds me of a Vertigo series in style, but it could never be a Vertigo series because of its more "mainstream" content. In fact, I wonder if it lucked out in being born in 1992, that era where DC was publishing the comics that would become Vertigo comics when the imprint was formed in 1993. You wouldn't put this alongside The Sandman, Hellblazer, and Animal Man, it has too many ties to other superhero comics, but it's pretty much like no contemporary DC comic I've read, either. Post-Vertigo, it would have no clear place in DC's line-up, but before March 1993 divides the DC world in Vertigo and not-Vertigo, it's just one of a number of boundary-pushing comics DC published in the early 1990s. Surely, as I often say, one of the publisher's most fertile periods.

One Vertigoesque attribute is it doesn't really feel like a setup for an ongoing set of stories, more like one big story in many chapters. Jones's run was curtailed, and that shows, but I'm doubtful it's the kind of series that could run one hundred or even fifty-plus issues and still remain fresh.

That said, what's here is excellent. The opening issue is fantastic, a strange tour of the mosaic that lets you into John Stewart's mind at the same time: "This is my world... '...and welcome to it.' James Thurber." The second issue is bizarre and dark, the notorious death of Ch'p, the squirrel Green Lantern, but what made it more noteworthy to me is the way Jones and Hamner make Ch'p into something alien himself, not just a comedy alien Green Lantern.

Issue #4 is one of the series's occasional forays into life in the mosaic: the inhabitants of the American town have largely given up hope, and express their despair by watching reruns of classic television ad nauseam, not to mention days-long binge-drinking sex orgies. The issue is told from the perspective of their children who see the mosaic as an opportunity; the don't want to wallow in tv nostalgia, but to push forward into the new, no matter how dangerous. The series didn't often do this kind of thing, but it was usually worthwhile when done. Who would have thought that Green Lantern: Mosaic, of all series, could support a special Christmas issue!? Yet #9 was super-weird and super-fascinating.

The best issue is probably #5, "The Child-Man and the Great White Hero." Hal Jordan comes to confront John over how he's been handling the mosaic, and we get a great, dark insight into John and the way he thinks about Hal Jordan, about how he envies Hal's casual heroism, his whiteness. As John says to Hal, "You fight to prove your rightness, you score your total victories, and you stride out as you entered. I never score a total victory!" The book even gives Hal some casual (or perhaps more than casual) racism: he doesn't like that his old romantic interest Rose is now with John... but he can't quite vocalize why.

There is the occasional misstep; seeing John step outside the mosaic in #6 and into a more clichéd Green Lantern narrative wasn't particularly interesting. The one with the music aliens (#7) wasn't as good as it ought to have been.

The last few issues push John in an interesting direction, as we (spoiler) find out that it wasn't the mad old Guardian who brought all these cities to Oa, but John itself. Yet this idea feels squandered as one of many introduced as the series wraps up; it would have been nice for the series to have the room to actually explore it. The implications of this don't really get the time they deserve. In the final issue, John becomes a Guardian of the Universe himself, or maybe something else: "What's man in me. What's American in me. And what's black in me... I'll nurture every day... as I become a new kind of being."

Yet this would never be explored; John Stewart next appeared in Darkstars, no longer a Guardian or even a Green Lantern, recruited as the head of NEMO (the organization that supports the Darkstars), with no sign of the baggage or characterization introduced here.  

Mosaic is, like so many comic book premises, a great idea cut short by the constraints of the medium. Or, perhaps we might say, cobbled together from disparate parts in crazy ad hockery to make something worth viewing from a distance, even if each individual piece might not shine on its own. That is to say, of course, a mosaic.

Review: Green Lantern: Mosaic by Gerard Jones, M. D. Bright, and Romeo Tanghal

Green Lantern: Mosaic is one of those cult classic comics runs-- I don't think it was successful in its time, and it's never been collected, but people who have read it speak highly of it, and I was sufficiently intrigued to break my rule of only picking up those space-based DC comics that do not feature Green Lantern. But before Green Lantern: Mosaic, the ongoing series, there was Mosaic, the four-part Green Lantern story. (That's not confusing at all.)

There was obviously even some set-up before this, but it works on its own well-enough; in fact, despite having been originally published in 1991, it reads like something optimized for the trade paperback era. The background is pretty easy to work out: one Guardian of the Universe, the so-called "Old Timer" (the same one who traveled America with Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen) went mad and died, but not before using his power to bring one settlement each from a number of planets to Oa, clustering them together into a sort of a "mosaic" world. While Hal Jordan cruises the universe re-establishing the Green Lantern Corps (I'm not sure why it needs re-establishment to be honest, it seems like the Corps is always being un- and re-founded), John Stewart has been assigned to watch over the settlements on Oa.

Gerard Jones seems to me to be a perennially underrated writer. I know his career is over now, but it seems to me that in the early 1990s he was putting out quality stuff on a regular basis but he never made it big like some of his contemporaries did. In addition to a redefining run on Green Lantern and various spin-offs, he also wrote or co-wrote much of Justice League Europe (issues #14-50), and he was responsible for the only Elongated Man series ever published, Europe '92. The more I read of him, the more I see what a versatile writer he was. Mosaic is not just the story of people having to learn to co-exist on an alien planet (and failing), it's a deep dive into the traumas and history of John Stewart.

The main plot of Mosaic is the conflict between the various way of thinking on the mosaic world, some of which are quite alien; the whole thing kicks off when an alien race with an irrepressible desire to expand at all costs kills a couple innocent humans. Armed conflict between the two species quickly escalates, despite the best efforts of both John Stewart and a woman named Rose Hardin. John can't come up with any solutions other than brute force: giant walls between settlements that his ring needs his force of will to maintain. But things keep getting worse. There's some pointed commentary on race, especially as humans start finding allies among the aliens-- allies in a desire to tear down the walls so that the fighting can resume.

But the real story of the book is the mind of John Stewart. Jones's script brings together a number of incidents from John's past to give us a broken man: his history as an architect, his perennial outsider status, the death of Katma Tui in Action Comics Weekly, the destruction of Xanshi in Cosmic Odyssey. Jones does a great job of uniting these disparate threads into a picture of a desperate man, suffering from tragedy (he even deftly justifies John's poor judgement in Cosmic Odyssey as a consequence of him overcompensating for the powerlessness he felt after Katma Tui died), who his whole life has tried to build structures that turned out to be more like strictures-- and now he has to try his hand at sculptures for the first time if he's going to save the planet and save himself.

I mostly knew Jones for comedy with a tinge of character in JLE and Elongated Man, and for more straightforward cosmic adventures in the other bits of his Green Lantern I'd read. Oh, and for whatever the heck Batman: Fortunate Son was meant to be. But here he shows himself to be capable of complicated psychological tragedy. I look forward to seeing where the mosaic world and John Stewart go when Jones and I return to it in the Green Lantern: Mosaic ongoing series that began eight months after this storyline came to an end.

Perhaps unjustly, I haven't said much about it here, but I enjoyed the artwork of M. D. Bright and Romeo Tanghal here. Bright was one of the, ahem, bright spots of the otherwise dismal run of Green Lantern in Action Comics Weekly, especially his out-there space adventure stuff in the story in Green Lantern Special #2 that tied up the whole storyline. He's just as good here, handling Jones's human drama and far-out space plots with equal skill. The kind of artist I wish I saw more of. As for Romeo Tanghal, the man was basically ubiquitous as an inker at DC from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, and he's never disappointed me. It's just a shame neither man really returns for the Mosaic ongoing, but hopefully its actual artists will be quality ones as well.

Mosaic originally appeared in issues #14-17 of Green Lantern vol. 3 (July-Oct. 1991). The story was written by Gerard Jones, pencilled by M. D. Bright, inked by Romeo Tanghal, colored by Anthony Tollin (#14-16) and Matt Hollingsworth (#17), lettered by Albert DeGuzman, and edited by Andy Helfer.

Review: Sun Devils by Dan Jurgens, Gerry Conway, Steve Mitchell, et al.

 

DC was really pumping out its Star Wars-inspired space-opera limited series in the 1980s. Spanner's Galaxy's six parts were entirely published during the twelve parts of Sun Devils, an epic series that sadly remains uncollected. Sun Devils begins with daredevil pilot Rik Sunn, inhabitant of a human colony, who's about to begin his career as a diplomat. Rik believes a diplomatic solution to the expansionist Sauroids of the Triad Confederacy can be found, but is quickly proven wrong when his family and their entire planet are obliterated by the Sauroids. Rik travels to Earth to enlist and fight the Sauroids, but the Earth government is as complacent as he was.

Misadventures eventually take him to Centauri, where he becomes the leader of a crack team of fighter pilots / commandos called the Sun Devils, consisting of Anomie Zitar, a sexy gene-edited human escaped slave; Scyla, a sexy Belter smuggler; Shikon, a Sauroid slave who fights to free his caste; One, Two, and Three, cloned mechanics; and Myste, a sexy scientist turned into a noncorporeal being. The Sun Devils wear matching uniforms and work directly for the Prime Speaker of Centauri, trying to stop the Sauroids, especially when it becomes clear the Sauroids are developing a superweapon capable of exploding suns.

Sun Devils was originally developed by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, who brought aboard a young Dan Jurgens as artist. Thomas didn't have time to contribute, so the series was written by Conway, but as time went on, Jurgens's role increased; eventually he was doing the dialogue for Conway's plots, and by the end of it all he was writing and illustrating. Jurgens went on to a highly successful career, and this was his first big break-- some of his earliest comics art, and his earliest published writing.

It's easy to see why. Jurgens is easy to dismiss as workmanlike at times if you're ungenerous, but here he's clearly already a master craftsman. His layouts are dynamic, the action is clear, and the characters expressive. Big and small moments alike land perfectly. The art is aided by the fact that this is one of the 1980s' so-called "Baxter books," printed on high-quality paper that really make the colors pop, particularly the black inks. (To be honest, I think this is my favorite kind of comic coloring. Superior to the Silver Age stuff in quality and clarity, but not taken over by the more subdued "realism" computer coloring enabled in the 1990s.)

The twelve issues are divided up into four stories-- The Gathering (#1-3), The Rescue (#4-6), To Steal a Sun (#7-9), and The Last Battle (#10-12)-- each having its own beginning and end, but with a larger story running through it all. It's a nice structure, like maybe watching a four-part tv miniseries. In The Gathering, the team comes together; in The Rescue, they go to the Sauroid homeworld to rescue an imprisoned scientist; in To Steal a Sun, they try to build a superweapon; and in The Last Battle, they try to stop a Sauroid superweapon. There are some surprisingly complex and adult moments, but also it's a fun, action-driven series about a colorful group of characters.

Occasionally the plotting is a bit wonky (there's a bad guy introduced in the final three parts who doesn't really go anywhere, or there's one issue where the opening four pages are spent showing Scyla in a barfight-- a thing we've seen already!), and I found the last issue unsatisfying (the characters have an unrealistic level of trust in a bad guy, because they bizarrely overestimate the leverage they hold over him), but I enjoyed the story on the whole, and it's a shame there wasn't a sequel. I think the ending is setting one up, though I suppose it might be an "...and the adventure continues..."-type ending.

Dan Jurgens did continue the story, kind of, in a 1994 issue of Superman (vol. 2 #86). Even though Sun Devils clearly takes place in the future, a lost-in-space Superman runs into a spaceship piloted by an aged Rik and the daughter of Scyla, chasing down a surprise-not-dead Sauroid ruler. (There's a throwaway line where Scyla's daughter says she doesn't know what century they're in anymore.) I found it a dissatisfying conclusion, a bit too downbeat, and not really an organic outgrowth of where we left the characters in Sun Devils #12.

Sun Devils was originally published in twelve issues (July 1984–June 1985). The series was created by Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas, and Dan Jurgens; plotted by Gerry Conway (#1-9) and Dan Jurgens (#10-12); dialogued by Gerry Conway (#1-6), Paul Kupperberg (#7), and Dan Jurgens (#8-12); pencilled by Dan Jurgens; inked by Rick Magyar (#1), Romeo Tanghal (#2-4), and Steve Mitchell (#5-12); lettered by John Costanza (#1-6, 8, 12) and David Cody Weiss (#7, 9-11); colored by Tom Ziuko; and edited by Gerry Conway.