Justice League America #108

Justice League America #108
"One Hand in Darkness"
Cover Date: February 1996
Writer: Gerard Jones
Artist: Chuck Wojtkiewicz (Pencils), Drew Geraci, Rick Rankin (Inkers)

Previously...

Let's see, Power Girl had an immaculate conception and gave birth to super sort of super-baby with uncertain parentage, Metamorpho was depressed about further mutations, Blue Devil made a deal with the devil that went awry, as they often do, and Obsidian was about to go on a date. Amazingly, all four of these subplots would be ignored within twelve months of the publication of this issue.

Plot

The first line of this issue is, "You've waged a long war to prevent this moment, Scarabus. But in the end you've only provided the spark that made possible....the birth of EQUINOX!" Outstanding!

Anyway, it turns out that big E is actually the grown-up version of Power Girl's son, whose father is evidently some combination of Atlantean Mages and Scarabus, though it's never made clear exactly how that works. Equinox is here to end the war between the Lords of Order and Chaos, and thus bring about "cosmic peace." Scarabus declines Equinox's offer to join him in forging this new era, and they start fighting. Power Girl is also there, but spend the entire issue sprawled on the ground asking what happened to her baby.

Interestingly enough, none of the other Justice Leaguers really do much in this issue. Nuklon is looking for some sort of exotic food so that he can trade it to Yaz, who is some sort of sentient blue Pterodactyl, for...you know what, does it really matter? It's a talking Pterodactyl! I feel like this is either the best or worst character ever created and should be the star of this comic.

And he's got a fucking vest! How did he never get a solo title?

Obsidian has a date with a woman, and it doesn't got well, probably because he had been slated to come as gay for years except no one had the guts to pull the trigger on it. Eventually it got sorted out in the Andreyenko version of Manhunter, and then Obsidian got purged with the rest of the JSA in the new 52.

Oh, and the Blue Devil is still moping about the consequences of making a deal with the devil that ended up getting his long-time love interest killed. I don't know, it's not very interesting, not even when a dominatrix pops in:

Back in the main story, Equinox gets his ass kicked by Scarabus until the Justice League finally shows up for what amounts to be a cameo appearance in their own book. Equinox uses their distraction to walk away from the battle and contemplate the nature of the universe. No, really.

"For I am Equinox, and no bastardized Eastern Philosophy is beyond my power!"

Equinox has now reached the proper state of enlightenment and just kind of erase Scarabus from existence, or as Jones puts it, "With a power that is beyond violence," Neat. And then he explains that Power Girl's destiny is now fulfilled and she can live her life freely, after which point he fades out of existence. Power Girl is understandably confused by this turn of events. So, uh, I guess that means cosmic peace for all?

Back at Justice League headquarters, Obsidian is worried that his date didin't go well, but the woman calls him back and wants to see him again, ensuring that Obsidian's presumptive heterosexuality shall survive for at least one more issue!

In related vein, Nuklon's gift does not please Yaz, but Ice (that would be the 2nd version of that character, for those keeping track) comes by to cheer him up, and inadvertently flirt with Nuklon. This will not go well, since this version of Ice is exactly two issues away from coming out as a lesbian. The End!

Commentary

Let's be honest, this run of Justice League may have been the worst ever, but it did have its high points like...

The Greatest Cliffhanger in DC Comics history!

The mind-boggling origin of Mariachi Man!

And other goooooooood times!


Damage Stars: There aren't enough stars in the universe....

Green Arrow (v3) #44

Green Arrow (v3) #44
"New Blood, Part Five: Positive"
Cover Date: January 2005
Writer: Judd Winick
Artist: Phil Hester (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously...

Okay, so Judd Winick was on one of the early season of The Real World, and that season had a roommate who had AIDS. Anyway, Judd Winick later wrote a comic about said roommate called Pedro and Me that was basically the only critically acclaimed thing he has ever done. So he decided to see if lightning could strike twice, I guess.

In terms of where Green Arrow is at this moment in time, well, it's still Ollie Queen, and his son Connor is hanging around, as well as a teenage girl he picked up named Mia. She was a former teen prostitute, which I only mention because the entire issue kind of hinges on that fact.

Plot

This issue picks up right after last issue's cliffhanger, where Ollie found out that Mia tested positive for HIV. Ollie demands to know how this possibly could have happened. Mia explains that as a teen prostitute, she had lots of unprotected sex and shared needles when she shot herself up with meth. And the doctor explains that HIV is transmitted through exactly those mechanisms.

Ollie then demands to know what the difference is between AIDS and HIV. The doctor explains that too, and then we get a discussion of viral loads and drug cocktails. Shit, I have this issue, which means about seven years ago I spent $2.50 on a fucking PSA. Shit, I'm the real victim here. I mean, Mia isn't even fucking real, and only got HIV so Judd Winick could try and steal some mainstream attention. I'm the guy who's never going to get that money back.

Meanwhile, Connor and some dude are talking about a crime-lord who managed to murder the former mayor and is slowly taking over Star City. Now this is a subplot I can get behind!

But, no! The reader shall not be given respite from this very important discussion of AIDS, so Connor gets a phone call and drops everything so he can go home and talk to Mia. Kind of sucks for the people of Star City that every hero in the city has decided to take a hiatus from crime-fighting so they can talk about AIDS, but, hey, they're fighting ignorance, and isn't that a much more dangerous foe than an crime lord who just killed several high-ranked city officials?

Connor shows up and the house of archery and immuno-deficiency so the characters can talk about HIV and AIDS some more. It turns out that the anti-viral drugs have side-effects. Mia decides she's done talking about this. Winick denies us this mercy:

Later that night, Ollie gets out of bed and angrily spars with some practice dummies in his basement. This does not cure Mia's HIV.

Anyway, it's suddenly two weeks later, and Connor decides to start accusing both Mia and Ollie of being in denial. "Every time you look at her, all you see is AIDS." Green Arrow has super-vision? Oh, he meant metaphorically. Hey, could Superman see if some had AIDS just by looking at them?

Connor then goes off on a diatribe about how Mia is living with AIDS, and that she's not going anywhere, and neither is her disease. Well, not until the DC Reboot, at any rate.

But Connor is not done with his denial busting yet! Not by a long shot. He talks to Mia later that night, and manages to coax her into admitting that having HIV makes her feel 'dirty' and that 'no one will want to be with her.' I can't believe I spent $2.50 on this. Fuck!

Connor's response? Kissing her. He then clarifies to mean that while he himself wants no part of her, that the kiss symbolizes that it would theoretically be possible for someone else to want her. And then the issue ends.

Next Issue: Mia announces to everyone in her high school that she has HIV and used to be a prostitute. Apparently if Mia has HIV, she's going to make every on the god-damned planet hear about it.  Also, she becomes Green Arrow's sidekick. I spent $2.50 on that issue too. I fucking hate my life.

Commentary

$2.50! That's money I'm never going to get back!  Fuck!

Damage Stars: **************

Green Arrow (v3) #12

Green Arrow (v3) #12
"Feast and Fowl"
Cover Date: March 2002
Writer: Kevin Smith
Artist: Phil Hester (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously...

Green Arrow, the Oliver Queen version, came back from the dead in a tremendously over-long arc (10 issues!). Now he moves on to his next Herculean endeavor: Getting some.

Plot

At stately JSA manor, Green Arrow has come to pick Black Canary up for a date. As she's getting ready, Stargirl pops in to exchange mild innuendo (Shouldn't you be practicing your rod-handling' 'funny that's what I was gonna tell you') and inform Dinah that Ollie is hanging out in the lobby with the also-recently-returned-from-the-dead Hawkman. Dinah informs Stargirl and the reader that this is a bad thing, since Green Arrow and Hawkman are "the ultimate liberal and the ultimate conservative" respectively, and they must therefore be kept apart at all times. I realize that I probably am going to have to do DC Universe: Decisions one of these days, and that thought makes me sad.

But, lo and behold, the pair are actually exchanging good-humored anecdotes about the travails of being resurrected. Black Canary is surprised by this development. Hawkman gives Green Arrow advice that boils down to, "Given the circumstances, you probably shouldn't fuck Black Canary on your first date."

Anyway, Black Canary and Green Arrow go to a restaurant, and Dinah informs Ollie that there's no way she's sleeping with him tonight. At this point, there's roughly a 0% chance that Green Arrow won't be having sex with Black Canary by the end of this issue. Dinah and Ollie chat about all the men Black Canary has seen while Ollie was dead. Unsurprisingly, this is an awkward conversation.

Fortunately, it's time for the perfunctory fight scene. And who's the villain tapped to show up and get his ass kicked in seven pages or less? It's the Riddler. He bursts in quipping, "What a guy gotta do to get a table in this joint?" He then follows that up with a Who Wants to be a Millionaire Reference? I feel like the universe is punishing us all for thinking that Clerks was a good movie.

The Riddler, of course, is just fodder, so he gets taken out quick, including a bit where Ollie creates a bow out of some skewers and a harp. I guess that makes sense as long as you don't think about it for more than about five seconds. Riddler and his henchmen get routed, and that inspires Green Arrow and Black Canary to go back to her room at the JSA's headquarters and have sex. Which they do. Repeatedly.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, we meet a super-heroine named Virago. She then gets shot to death by a villain named Onomatopoeia. This villain's gimmick is that he only talks in, wait for it, onomatopoeia. Really, Kevin Smith? Really?

Back at JSA headquarters, Ollie realizes that sleeping with Dinah wasn't the smartest thing he ever did, so decides to double down by sneaking out while she's sleeping. Hawkman catches up to him before he gets out of the building and looks none too pleased. To Be Continued!

Commentary

Green Arrow may be the worst hero that DC has published regularly. I mean, he's a dude with a bow and arrow. He's not a master of the martial arts, he's not a master detective, he's not a super-genius, he's just got the bow. Or, more to the point, he's a character so uninspiring that Kevin Smith felt compelled to let Ollie MacGuyver up a makeshift bow out of  a harp so that he'd have a credible chance of taking out the Riddler.

The only really good run the Oliver Queen version of Green Arrow ever had was when Mike Grell moved him to Seattle and basically refused to let him interact with any hero with actual powers. By doing that, he almost made a dude with a Robin Hood beard and bow seem halfway decent. But when you put him next to really any other hero, he just seems completely outclassed.


Of course, the first ten issues of this volume of Green Arrow featured a god-like managing to find a way to resurrect the body of Ollie without his soul, and also involved the copious use of magic, and was really the worst possible way to bring Ollie back since he spent just about the entire story wandering around while demi-gods fought each other in the background. In fact, Queen's most heroic moment in the story is when he allows his best friend, who is know the divine spirit of vengeance, to reinsert his soul into his body.

You know what, I have a simpler explanation for Green Arrow. Years ago, there was this joke on The Simpsons where the titular family is watching a show called "Knightboat" and the joke is that there's always some inlet or canal that lets Knightboat get around the fact the criminals can just escape on dry land. Essentially, Green Arrow is the "Knightboat" of super-heroes, in that you always have to come up with a contrived reason for why a guy with a bow and arrow is able to make it in a world with heat vision, telekinesis, and firearms.

Damage Stars: ****

Teen Titans (v3) #2

Teen Titans (v3) #2
 "Child's Play"
Cover Date: October 2003
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Mike McKone

Previously...

DC took their fifth shot at trying to resurrect the Titans as an A-list franchise.  For sake of reference, here are the previous four listed with the fatal flaw that did them in:

1. New Titans (1994)  (Used Damage as cast member)
2. Teen Titans (1996)  (Was generally terrible, had nothing to do with Titans to begin with)
3. Titans (1998) (Used Damage as cast member)
4. Titans (2000) (I like Tom Peyer, but I'm about the only one)

Anyway, so DC turned to Geoff Johns to sort it out. Johns decided to emphasize the 'teen' in Teen Titans, showing these young heroes growing into adulthood and finding their place in world. A noble goal. So Johns held over a few of the older Titans as mentors, roped in Superboy, Robin, Impulse, and Wonder Girl, and set them up in San Francisco. The idea was that the teen heroes would live their normal lives during the week, and then all hang out together on weekends. I'm not sure what happened if a supervillain struck San Francisco during the work week. I'd assume the police would show up and politely ask them to please reschedule at such time as the Teen Titans would be available to contest them.

In Teen Titans #1, the team had assembled, and they were all bummed because being a teenager is so hard. Also, Superboy found out that his human half came from Lex Luthor, which must have almost seemed like a good idea at the time.

Plot

Deathstroke is chilling in his pad, admiring the mounted head of his former valet, Wintergreen, and discussing how 'Deathstroke hunts alone'. Personally, I've never understood the appeal of Deathstroke, but hell, he's the biggest name villain the Titans ever had, so you might as well throw him out there.

At stately Titans Tower, Superboy is going for a swim when Robin starts bugging him about doing a DNA test to figure out whether or not Superboy has Luthor's DNA. Superboy doesn't really want to know, but Robin manages to take one of his hairs while he's not looking. This must have been more interesting at the time it was published.

Elsewhere in the tower, Impulse and Beast Boy are horsing around, as they are wont to do. Starfire shows up and, since it is not yet the New 52, does not offer to blow either of them. Ah, Starfire, it is amazing how quickly one bad moment can ruin a character. She breaks up the fight.

Wonder Girl, who has been watching this, decides to get up and leave the Titans. I can't say I blame her. Impulse pursues her and we are treating to an life-changing exchange between the two:

Oh, man, really? Well, at least it can't get any wo-

Why must you hate subtlety, Geoff Johns?

But this conversation is cut short when Alcatraz Island is attacked. The Titans spring into action, clearing the tourists who are there as the island explodes around them.

Impulse gets separated from the rest of the team and runs into Deathstroke, who had set all of this up as a trap. He manages to hit Impulse with a tranquilizer dart, which apparently is all a villain needs to completely shut down the kid's super-speed, then trots up to Impulse, explains his scheme, as well as his larger intention of discouraging teen vigilantism, before blowing out Impulse's knee with a shotgun. In fairness, it wouldn't be a Geoff Johns comic without some act of hyper-violence, now would it? To Be Continued!

Commentary

You know, I don't dislike Geoff Johns, it's just that he typically has the subtlety of...well, a shotgun blast to the knee, I suppose. For example, in these first few issues, Superboy learns that Lex Luthor is his father, and then Wonder Girl learns that Zeus is her father. I can't help but feel that Johns could have pushed the 'reveal of paternity causes teenager to re-evaluate place in the world, ultimately coming to the conclusion that they are not defined by there parentage' theme with just one of them.

I guess the real problem with a book about teenage super-heroes is that it never really seems like these characters are real teenagers.  Let's be honest; teenagers are, by and large, assholes. They'd be terrible heroes.  Fuck, I know if I had superpowers as a teenager, I'd use them in all sorts of irresponsible ways. But instead, you've got these guys, who essentially never do anything even remotely selfish with their powers except angst. A lot.

Damage Stars: Three Shotgun Blasts the Knee!

Wonder Woman (v2) #73

Wonder Woman (v2) #73
 "Losses"
Cover Date: April 1993
Writer: William Messner-Loebs
Artist: Les Mendes (Pencils), Ande Parks (Inks)

Previously....

Wonder Woman's home island of Themyscira was blown up. I don't know, I really just picked this issue because of the cover, I mean, aren't you curious about how Wonder Woman got a job at the local Taco Bell rip-off?

No? Not even a little bit?


Well, we're doing this anyway.

Plot

So, Diana is looking at the expanse of ocean where Themyscira used to be before it got blown up. She finds Steve Trevor just kind of floating in the water in scuba gear, and they chat for a bit, about how Themyscira will exist as long as people remember or it gets retconned out of existence during the next reboot of Wonder Woman's origin or something. Then, Wonder Woman, depressed about the destruction of her homeland, decides to go crash in her friend's basement for a while. But...uh...she does it heroically.

Anyway, eventually Diana decides to find a job, which proves difficult as she has no work experience or skills, so she finds the going tough. Eventually she starts bitterly complaining about how the economic realities of modern America make finding good work so difficult for the underclass. Man, I could just imagine a kid spending $1.25 on this issue to read about the heroic adventures of Wonder Woman and her epic struggle with chronic unemployment.

Diana eventually lands a job with Taco Whiz, the litigation-avoiding version of Taco Bell, and meets Hoppy, her new sassy African-American boss whose speech patterns seem to vary from sentence to sentence. She explains to Diana, "I seen on TV where Taco Whiz is the biggest employer in the country now, right behind the Japanese an' the Federal Government." Thrilling. Also, I can't help but note that by 1993, 'the Japanese' were in the middle of their 'Lost Decade' so I'm not sure-  You know what, let's just finish this damn thing.

Right, so time for Wonder Woman to fight a villain, then? No! It's time for Diana to look for an apartment! Because if there's one thing more exciting that watching a super-hero get a minimum wage job, it's watching them look at apartments. It turns out that working a minimum wage job does not allow you to afford much of an apartment, so Diana ends up renting a room in a boarding house.

The next day, Diana is walking to work when a guy with sunglasses who had been stalking her finally puts his plan into action. The plan involves intentionally picking a fight with some sort of mob boss with robotic henchman...and the mob boss has some sort of helmet that allows him to turn into a demon. You know, that plot point seems pretty fucking stupid when you type it like that. I can't help but feel that there might have been more time to come up with a decent villain if I hadn't had to watch the montage of unsuccessful job interviews that took up most of the middle third of this issue.

Wonder Woman defeats the demon and her stalker offers her a job. Will Diana's new job interfere with her commitments to the Taco Whiz? To Be Continued!

Analysis

Man, there have been a lot of bad Wonder Woman comics over the years, haven't there?


William Messner-Loebs wrote Wonder Woman for over three years. It was not a good period for the character. I guess that Loebs was trying to humanize Wonder Woman a bit with this plot, and there's nothing more human than unemployment I guess.

I suppose it's really more a problem with the character in general. Wonder Woman is supposed to be a perfect child of the gods, but what the hell does that mean. Superman's already got the whole 'perfect man-god' thing covered, so where does that leave Diana? In general, there have been two main stands in trying to flesh out the character. First, there's the 'naive innocent living in world she does not really understand' interpretation, where they try to play up how this perfect being who was raised in a different world would not quite understand how the real world works, which is the model in play in this issue. The problem with that is that there's probably a time-limit for how long that type of character would work.  You couldn't have Diana being confused by income inequality in a capitalist society after living in man's world for years, after all. (Unless, of course, you reboot the franchise, meaning that it will probably be making a comeback relatively soon.)

The other main way to portray Wonder Woman is as a great 'warrior', playing up her martial abilities, and I'll talk more about that if I ever do one of those issues of Wonder Woman.

Damage Stars: ****

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1
Cover Date: Summer 1992
Writers: Various
Artists: Various

Previously...

Last time we talked about how Hal Jordan hooked up with a 14 year-old (which gets retconned down to being a 13 year-old in this issue). Anyway, that relationship lasted for the rest of that run of Green Lantern, but, by 1992, Arisia had kind of fallen off the map. Now, you might think that the writers of Green Lantern would celebrate the fact that they no longer had to deal with that...unpleasantness, but Gerard Jones wasn't your typical writer. No, Jones decided to address the situation head-on....

Plot

So the framing story for this anthology is Hal and a bunch of other Green Lanterns looking at the Book of Oa, which tells them about famous Green Lanterns. The other stories are particularly memorable, but eventually Gerard Jones gets his chance to explain what happened to Arisia after we say her last.

Well, at some point after the end of the second volume of Green Lantern, Arisia decided to make a trip back to the old Green Lantern Corps headquarters in L.A., which unfortunately coincided with Guy Gardner and Kilowog accidentally demolishing it. The upshot is that Arisia gets hit on the head and reverts back to her 13 year-old personality, but still has the body of an adult.

This inspires her to have a flashback where it's revealed that she never really had a fully mature brain, but instead was using her power ring to fake having an adult personality so she could seduce Hal Jordan, which, uh...turned out to work like a charm.

You know, it's funny, because Gerard Jones was the writer who objected to the story where Hal went crazy and killed the Green Lantern Corps because, you know, he felt like it would ruin Hal's character, but revealing that Hal was sleeping with what was essentially a 13 year-old, that's apparently okay.

Anyway, Arisia, using her quasi-adult brain, also became a model, because apparently Jones felt like his story wasn't making the audience feel uncomfortable enough:

Anyway, her brains still scrambled, Arisia manages to get into a car wreck, which gives her amnesia. Meanwhile, back on Oa, Hal and his buddies have been watching the whole fucking story, and Hal vows to fix everything, whenever he gets a chance to head back to Earth. Then he decides just to go onto the next story, since, you know, what's the worst that could happen leaving a 13 year-old with amnesia and the body of a fashion model alone for a few weeks? To Be Continued!

Commentary

Here's the thing, when Hal Jordan got replaced as Green Lantern in 1994, this was probably exactly the sort of shit that made DC editorial say to themselves, "Yeah, it's time for a new Green Lantern." The Jones version of Hal Jordan was interesting, if only because Jones seemed to really have it out for Hal. I mean, this was a period where Hal was portrayed as a chronically unemployed, graying ex-test pilot with jail time on his record. And then you add the fact that his last relationship was retconned into having the mind of a child? Hal would've better off getting written out of the book three years earlier.

Damage Stars: *****

Green Lantern (v2) #206

Green Lantern (v2) #206
"In Deep"
Cover Date: November 1986
Writer: Steve Englehart
Artist: Joe Slaton (Pencils) Mark Farmer (Inks)

Previously...

After the first Crisis, most franchises in the DC universe took an opportunity to try new things out. Superman and Wonder Woman got new origins, Flash got a new protagonist, and Green Lantern...well....

For whatever reason, the people writing Green Lantern decided the transform the book from a book about a (mostly) solo hero working in deep space, to one about an Earth-based team. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, to make it happen, the Guardians of the Universe, who run the Green Lantern Corps, decide that they're going to retire to another dimension, and that individual Green Lanterns are now free to do whatever the fuck they want. Instead of using their rings to crave out empires in space, a bunch of them, led by Hal Jordan, decide to go live in L.A..

More importantly for this issue, though, Arisia, the token plucky teenager, has been ill over the past few issues.

Plot

Hal Jordan and Arisia have fallen down into a mine shaft as the result of last issue's fight with Black Hand. Their rings are also out of power. Jordan gets up and notices something...different about Arisia.

I don't think I like where this is headed.

Arisia kind of freaks out, so Hal helpfully calms her down the only way he knows how:

Awesome. You couldn't destroy Hal Jordan's character any faster if you were trying.

Anyway, the rest of the Green Lanterns are still above ground. They decide to regroup, and some reporter follows them and starts asking questions about how they're going to handle Black Hand. Kilowog, the biggest member of the team, decides to handle it in the most appropriate manner he can think of:

So...we're sure the Green Lanterns are the heroes of this book, right? Anyway, the reporter leaves, and Jon Stewart explains to Kilowog that the beating of reporters is generally looked down in America. The rest of the Green Lanterns disagree.

Back in the mine shaft, Arisia explains that she must have subconsciously used her power ring to age her to adulthood so she could fuck Hal Jordan. Hal seems mildly disturbed by this revelation. She then tries to sell him on the idea that her mind has matured as well, so it would be totally right for them to get it on. Hal essentially accepts this premise, explaining, "I believe your mind matured! Coming to me and admitting your problem proves that!" Yeah, that's ironclad logic there. Hal then tries to get out of the conversation by claiming that he's not ready to love again after his string of ill-fated romances in the past hundred issues or so of this comic.

Black Hand attacks, and the Green Lanterns try to fight him off, only for the villain to start draining the power from their rings, causing the team to immediately run away. The Green Lanterns in this issue could not possibly seem more pathetic.

Back in the mine shaft of forbidden love, Arisia asks about Hal's ex-girlfriends, and we learn that they were, in order, a woman who was occasionally possessed by an alien gem, a woman who lived in the future, and his friend's girlfriend who Hal stole when said friend was in a coma. And then Arisia and Hal get attacked by a mountain lion. Did you know Steve Englehart was generally regarded as a decent writer back in his day? You're not buying it, huh? Hal and Arisia fight off the mountain lion for a bit.

In the meantime, Black Hand is using the Green Lantern power he stole from Hal and Arisia to lift Angels Stadium into the air. Has enough time passed to make a Donny Moore joke? Anyway, the Green Lanterns finally get their shit together and stop him. They then decide to look for Hal and Arisia and...

Hey, don't judge Hal, he held out against Arisia's underage charms for nearly one full issue. What more could be asked of him?

Next Issue:

Hal's Greatest Challenge Yet!

Commentary

Well, this was a thing, then.

I guess Englehart thought to himself, "Well, Hal needs a love interest, and I've got a spare female member of the team, so what if she's 14...?"


Also, you wouldn't think that they'd ever bring up this story again, but Arisia is still an adult, and still alive and kicking in the Green Lantern titles even today, despite the fact that her modern depiction traces from this very issue. It's kind of amazing what sticks and what doesn't. You'd think DC editorial would do everything it could to erase the Hal Jordan's re-enactment of Lolita but no, as far as I know, it's still canon.

Damage Stars: *****

Hawkman (v3) #0

Hawkman (v3) #0
"Eyes of the Hawk, Prologue: Old Scores"
Cover Date: October 1994
Writer: William Messner-Loebs
Artist: Steve Lieber (Pencils), Curt Schoultz (Inker)

Previously...

Okay, let's try and keep this manageable. But in the '40s, DC published some stories about Hawkman, who was really Carter Hall, an archaeologist who was really the reincarnation of an Egyptian prine. Now, admittedly, the Egyptians' actual religious beliefs were about as far from reincarnation as you can get, but sure. Now, flashfoward to the Silver Age, where DC retcons the original Hawkman to Earth-2, and introduces a new Hawkman on Earth-1, where he's Katar Hol, an alien police officer who's hanging on Earth for a variety of reasons. Okay, the Crisis hits, and Earth-2 and Earth-1 get merged. The Golden Age Hawkman then gets (effectively) killed off to make things a bit simpler. The Silver Age Hawkman is still around, though, and even gets another (short-lived) ongoing. A couple of years after that, DC decides to retcon Katar Hol's origin. Now, this version of Hawkman is already appearing in other DC books at the time, so the revised origin, told in the Hawkworld mini-series, has to take place in the past, since it ends with him arriving on Earth for the first time. Except DC decided that, no, from now on, Katar Hol had only just arrived on Earth.

Now, that was a problem, since that meant that literally hundreds of stories now needed to be patched, since Katar Hol had appeared in them, but, per his new origin, he should not be there. So DC decided that all of Hawkman's appearances up to the first Crisis were really the Golden Age Hawkman, and all of the subsequent appearances had been a new character that was really a Thanagarian spy, who was then gotten rid of as quickly as possible.

At this point, things were already a bit complicated, and then the Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl returned to the main DC continuity, making things even harder to follow. DC then decided to use the Zero Hour event to consolidate the conflicting origins of Hawkman by...literally consolidating the Golden Age Hawkman, the Golden Age Hawkgirl, and the current Hawkman into one body, which seems to be the least helpful solution you could think of, but that's where this issue begins...

Plot

The issue starts with a monologue by Hawkman that includes gems like 'Good and evil...madness and sanity...life and death...they seem like two sides of the same coin to me now.' So, at the very least, it appears that this incarnation of Hawkman has the combined pretentiousness of his predecessors.

Anyway, he decides to fly back to his apartment and hang out with his supporting cast. We've got a Native American mechanic, Hawkman's Native American mother, a dude with three arms, some crippled former villain from Thanagar, and Hawkwoman. The agree that he's still basically the same old Hawkman, except bigger, has hawk eyes, and real wings growing out of his back. Oh, and he's got the minds of all of the other Hawkmen floating around in his mind.

At that exact moment, a guy named Badblood burst into the room with a gang of heavily armed mutants to kill Hawkman. I then check to see if that really happened, or I was just being unnecessarily snide....okay, no, it actually happened.

Anyway, ol' Badblood is pissed off about Hawkman foiling his previous schemes. Now, you'd think that if you open fire in the relatively small room, you'd be able to kill at least one person, but no, Badblood strikes out. We do learn, though, that Hawkman's wings, since they are now made of flesh, can now be hurt by bullets, and that Badblood can apparently use his spilled blood as a weapon, hence the name. Still, Badblood's gang gets beaten off. Hawkman then decides that, for the good of everyone, that he must hunt down Badblood alone, and picks up some new weapons, most notably a punch dagger.

Katar heads off into the city, and does a little more philosophizing before fighting off some more mutants. He notes, "I can barely remember the names of the groundlings beneath me." Please stop talking, Katar. He then finds Badblood and precedes to start beating the fuck out of him. Badblood tries to use his blood as a weapon, but Hawkman just keeps slashing at him until Badblood's bad blood somehow turns on the villain and kills him. Well, either that or the fact that Hawkman just slashed him with his punch dagger about a hundred times.

Elsewhere, Vandal Savage observes the fight from a close-circuit monitor and muses about how Hawkman's changed.

Commentary

Here's is an incontrovertible truth: Hawkman sucks. Hawkman has always sucked. Hawkman will always suck. No good has ever come from using Hawkman in a story.

I mean, here's the thing, his main power is that he can fly. That's...a tad underwhelming, especially since he's always been portrayed as a dude with a mace or some other close-combat weapon, which would seem to negate his one tactical advantage. So, that's a problem.

In fact, let's summarize the different takes that writers have had on Hawkman:

1940s: Hawkman is the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince who also has some magical metal that he turns into wings that let him fly. He then decides to be a super-hero, on the premise of 'might as well.'

1950s-1980s: Hawkman is an alien policeman come to Earth from the utopian world of Thanagar. His wings come from alien technology. He's also the conservative counterweight to Green Arrow in the Justice League, a fact that every subsequent writer of Hawkman or Green Arrow will be contractually obligated to acknowledge should the both of them appear in the same story.

late 1980s-mid 1990s: Hawkman is an alien policeman come to Earth from the dystopian world of Thanagar. Otherwise, he's basically the same, except he's got a different costume.

mid 1990s: Hawkman is a merged being consisting of a handful of former Hawkmen and some sort of Hawk God. This proves to be such a miscalculation that DC throws the character into limbo for the better part of a decade.

2000s: Hawkman is back to being a reincarnated Egyptian prince, but now he's lived through bunches of past lives, which makes him a great warrior or something. This typically translates to him being an ersatz Conan the Barbarian with wings.

2010s: Hawkman gets a new ongoing, under the theory that, "Fifth time's the charm!"

Damage Stars: ****

Superboy and the Ravers #17

Superboy and the Ravers #17
"Love is All That Anti-Matters, Part One: No Weddings and a Funeral"
Cover Date: January 1998
Writer: Steve Matheson and Karl Kesel
Artist: John Hood (Pencils), Dan Davis (Inker)

Previously...

Well, someone thought 'Superboy and the Ravers' was a good title for a comic book. That was a pretty shocking twist.

Plot

In the anti-matter universe of Qward, Kindred Grim is trying to marry Kindred Sol in order to unite their energies, which would make him super-powerful, which will then allow him to merge Qward with the regular universe, which is evidently very good for him, and very bad for everyone else. He's hired recurring villains 'Red Shift' in order to assist him.

Back in the regular universe, Kindred Marx, Grim's brother, is explaining to Superboy that they need to rescue Sol or else everyone's fucked. Marx, you see, knows Superboy because he owns the titular rave, that's right, the team is headquartered at some sort of permanent rave hosted by an alien. I can only assume this issue was meant to read with the aid of several tabs of ecstasy. Anyway, Superboy declares Sol to be 'Da Bomb in purple leotards.' Huh, with dialogue like that, I'm not sure the universe ought to be saved.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Sparx tells her grandmother that she doesn't want to ever go back to the rave because she thinks Superboy has eyes for someone else, and her jealousy is killing her. Sparx's grandmother explains that if she doesn't go back, people are going to die. (Note: after re-reading the comic, I found out that Sparx was actually have trouble with the fact that Hero was gay, which apparently really bothered. Which isn't a bad idea for a subplot in and of itself, I guess, except, you know, they're based at a rave, which kind of makes you wonder how the fuck Sparx lasted more than five minutes there if she was that offended by gay people. Oh, and Hero's love interest is named Leander after the myth, which did not end well for either character.)

Back at the Rave, the imaginatively-named 'Hero' is looking with fellow Raver Half-Life for another Raver named 'Kaliber'. Ah, the '90s, when you could non-ironically name a character 'Kaliber'. Anyway, they don't find him, and Superboy and Marx show up to explain that the need to stop that wedding from taking place. Rex the Wonder Dog shows up to help them Sol since the dog is 'saturated with [Sol's] essence' and so can lead them there. Somehow I don't think the guy from mightygodking.com is ever going to use panels from this issue on his blog. They all head to Qward.

And, in fact, that's where Kaliber has been this entire time. It turns out that he's gone permanently blind due to something happening in a prior issue that I don't care to read.

But, before we going any further with that, a team member named 'Lindsey' is beating up her father for killing her number. Just as she's about to finish him off, he begs her to stop so he can explain why he killed Lindsay's mother. He then explains that he killed her because she had super-powers, and therefore needed to be killed, much like Lindsey herself. Well, I'll give the dude credit, he's got stones.

Back to Qward, everyone else is looking for Kaliber and Sol, which doesn't take them very long. Red Shift then attacks in a fight scene that has exactly zero characters I care about. Half-Life then blows himself up to take out a whole bunch of enemies, and his fate is the issue's cliffhanger. To Be Continued!

Next Issue

Half-Life is totally dead.

Commentary

First of all, the 'Ravers'? I mean, I guess I've got to give Karl Kesel credit for actually trying to make the name meaningful, but, well, the name still sucks.

Anyway, this isn't a very good book. From a purely plot-based view, it sucks because the first two-thirds of the book involves the Ravers just kind of milling about, not accomplishing much of anything until Rex the Wonder Dog shows up and magically gives them the information they need to move forward with the plot. 

Beyond that, it's just kind of a mediocre book. I mean, the dialogue is occasionally funny in an unintentional way, but that's only because no DC comic has ever featured a teenage super-hero who sounds like an actual teenager. Fuck, even when Jim Shooter was writing the Legion when he was a teenager it didn't sound natural.

All in all, another book designed to fill the gap of 'Teenage super-group' that had existed in the DC universe that had existed since the Teen Titans stopped being teenagers around 1987. Incidentally, I'm not sure that they really ever have. When Superboy and the Ravers got axed, they then launched new versions of Titans, as well as starting up Young Justice, but that version of the Titans wasn't very good, and Young Justice really only appealed to fans of Peter David, so they eventually tried again with the Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, which really wasn't much better. It's kind of interesting because ever since the Wolfman/Perez run became such a big hit, DC has seemed determined to keep trying to make a team that will recapture that magic, with pretty shitty results.

Damage Stars ****

Bonus

Who were the Ravers?

Superboy- the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor who has been reinvented, like clockwork, every five years.

Hero Cruz- a gay Latino who taught us all that sexuality and race are no real barriers to starring in a terrible team book.

Kaliber- a renegade Qwardian who filled the stoic alien warrior cliche.

Sparx- a repressed Canadian girl who has electrical powers.

Aura- the character I kept referring to as 'Lindsey' up above. Some sort of magnetic powers, I guess?

Half-Life- a teenager from the '50s whose family and girlfriend got killed in an alien-related incident that turned him into some sort of shambling half-dead grotesque.

Primal Force #0

Primal Force #0
"The Call"
Cover Date: October 1994
Writer: Steven Seagle
Artist: Ken Hooper (pencils), Barbara Kaalberg (inker)

Plot

In Northern Ireland, a hero named Jack O'Lantern flies in to save a girl from a burning school bus. He has your standard comic book Irish accent, as is mandatory under the Chris Claremont Accents Directive of 1981. Anyway, he saves the girl, but accidentally get her cut with glass in the process and so immediately gets depressed and is glumly walking away when a mysterious old lady shows up and tell him to go into the water.

Elsewhere, a guy named Dr. Mist is using his foster daughter as a medium. The daughter foretells that a bad guy named 'Cataclysm is about to appear. On the next page, a random guy named Harold Ross is in Peru, throws himself into the well in a village, and Cataclysm flies out. The girl's prophecy might have been more helpful had she given it more than five seconds before it came to fruition, but, well, I guess being an oracle is an inexact science.

Hong Kong! Some guy named Silver Dragon fights a guy named Claw! The old lady from before shows up and Claw disappears into a pool of water. That's some succinctness I can get behind!

Oh, and the broken-down Red Tornado flies out of the Grand Canyon, where he had been just kind of lying there, and in Louisiana, a character named Golem is getting hunted down when he too disappears into a pool of water. All of these characters are terrible. I mean, even the Red Tornado is pretty awful.

Back in New York, Dr. Mist calls a meeting of the Leyman, who, as far as I know, made exactly one appearance before this issue, in Zero Hour, where a bunch of them got killed as part of the crossover. The remaining Leymen immediately resign en masse rather than deal with Cataclysm, and tell Dr. Mist to find new Leymen.

Dr. Mist is less than thrilled, but, well, what's he going to do? He heads to the pool of water that summons new heroes and begins the ritual, which is interrupted when Cataclysm shows up and starts drowning Dr. Mist is the pool. I don't know that I would trust a single character in this book to save us from a villain named 'Minor Inconvenience' let alone a guy named 'Cataclysm'.

But wait, there's still one character left to introduce. There's a woman, she's teaching a karate class, she's from New York, her name is Meridian, and she also falls into a pool of water. Wait, 'Meridian'? Come on, book, I know it's the mid-90's and all, but would it have killed you to use a little subtlety?

Anyway, at long last our heroes come together as they appear in the room where Dr. Mist was summoning them from, just in time to meet his drowned corpse. Claw immediately starts trying to kill everybody, and Dr. Mist wakes up just in time for the issue to end. To Be Continued!

Commentary

Actually, this isn't too bad of a first issue (it's technically labeled #0 because that's just how things were in 1994), it introduces all of the new characters in pretty economical fashion, which is pretty hard seeing as the only character anyone had heard of before this issue was Red Tornado, and he's reduced to a broken-down mute shell.

For what it's worth, it also does a good job of explaining why makes this super-team different than the other dozen or so team books DC was publishing at the time. Granted, the 'ancient, mystic order intakes new members to take on a new crisis' isn't a completely fresh idea, but, well, it's a start.

The biggest problem this book has, and what probably ended up killing it 15 issues later, is that no one really cares about any of these characters. I mean, who are they? I actually looked it up, and it turns out that most of them actually were pre-existing characters, which surprised the fuck out of me.

I don't really have a lot more to say negatively about the book. I mean, it's pretty good, but it's not so great that I really feel compelled to learn anything else about the characters or read any more issues of Primal Force.

Damage Stars: **

Bonus

Part of the problem with Primal Force is that it came out at time when there were tons of similar team books. Here's a list of all the team books published in October 1994, when this issue was released:

Justice League (Pre-Morrison version)
Titans (Last gasp of Wolfman version)
Outsiders
Extreme Justice
Justice League: Task Force (Christopher Priest version) 
Darkstars
Legion of Super-Heroes (Reboot version)
R.E.B.E.L.S.
Xenobrood

That's a lot, and most of those were pretty dire. That version of the Justice League was probably the worst extended run that franchise's history. In fact, the only titles on this list that weren't completely awful were Justice League: Task Force (and that had problems of its own), and the Waid Reboot Legion. Still, asking Primal Force to survive that crowded environment was too much.

Identity Crisis #2

Identity Crisis #2
"House of Lies"
Cover Date: September 2004
Writer: Brad Meltzer
Artist: Rags Morales

Previously...

Okay, let's stop dicking around. I've spent the last couple of reviews talking about dinky little retcons in the early-90s Legion, and they were bad, and they caused problems, but still, they were pretty fucking minor. I mean, who really cares if Lightning Lad was really someone else, it doesn't really change the character of earlier issues.  But this...well, this is different.

Ir has been the better part of a decade since Identity Crisis came out, and I think it's fair to say that its reputation has not been great. But is that fair?

Now, in the first issue of the miniseries, Sue Dibny, Elongated Man's wife had been killed, and, at her funeral, Elongated Man vowed to take his revenge on Doctor Light, for clearly this heinous act was the work of Megaman.

Okay, not really, Dr. Light is actually just a C-List supervillain. But imagine how much this story would have been if the real villain was Megaman. Just think about it.

Plot

Below the church where Sue's funeral service was held, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hawkman, the Atom, Zatanna and the Elongated Man are talking about the pros and cons of hunting down Dr. Light. The Wally West Flash and the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern show up, and that gives Green Arrow a chance to explain just what's going on.

So, years and years ago, when the former six characters formed the majority of the Justice League, Sue was spending a pleasant evening on their satellite. Suddenly, Dr. Light showed up and decided to rape her. And he did. Holy fuck, no wonder DC has had trouble attracting new readers. I mean, centering your big summer crossover about rape and lobotomies? Shit, I'm kind of amazed that DC even made to 2011. The Justice League eventually make it back to their satellite and beat the fuck out of Dr. Light, as well they might.

Where was I, oh, yeah, so back in the present, Dr. Light knows his goose is cooked, and so head's off to the super-secret satellite where all of the super-villains hang out. He wants to hire somebody to protect him from the Justice League, despite the fact that all of the super-villains on the satellite have basically made a career out of getting the shit beaten out of them by said Justice League.

The heroes have made it to Roxbury, Massachusetts, the last known whereabouts of Dr. Light. At this point, Meltzer decides to double-down on the horrifying retcons. It turns out that after the Justice League had captured Dr. Light and given him the customary memory wipe, Hawkman pointed out that there was no reason Dr. Light couldn't still try and do something as horrible again. He proposes they alter his personality using Zatanna's powers. They vote on it, and Barry Allen casts the deciding vote in favor of the personality alteration. It turns out that because Zatanna didn't really know what she was doing, the effect was basically to lobotomize Dr. Light. Whoops. Anyway, Dr. Light shows up with Deathstroke as his bodyguard, and the Justice Leaguers prepare to take the pair on...next issue.

Elsewhere, Dr. Midnight is doing an autopsy on Sue Dibny. It turns out that she wasn't murdered by Dr. Light at all. So this was all just a crazy misunderstanding! To Be Continued!

Commentary

Shit, it was as bad as I remembered it. Although, to be fair, the writing and art are both quite technically excellent. I mean, Meltzer knows how to write, and I've always liked Morales' pencils. Still, the fact that two talented guys came up with this just makes the shittiness of the issue even worse. I mean, they could have given us a really good story, but this?

First of all, if you want to use rape as a key plot point in your story, that's fine, but putting in a Super-Hero context? Really? Super-Hero comics are escapism. Rape is...not. That's just an elemental fact.

I don't really understand why you'd want to write a story like this. I guess it did make the Silver Age heroes a bit more 'human' in a sense, but what does that even really get you. These are super-heroes, they're wear brightly colored costumes and punch alien threats that seek to conquer the planet.

Anyway, it's worth noting that this mini-series had longstanding ramifications. It triggered a run of similar stories, like the one in Flash where it was revealed that Barry Allen had gotten Zatanna to miss with the minds of one of his enemies. Even worse, Meltzer, a couple of issues hence, revealed that Batman had got wind of what the rest of the Justice League was up to, and the other Justice Leaguers mind-wiped him too, which set off a whole series of stories where Batman became increasingly paranoid, culminating when he built Brother Eye, leading to even more horrible stories.

Eventually, this story helped lead into Infinite Crisis, which the writers promised would spark a return to a lighter, more fan-friendly DCU, where recurring characters weren't raped and brutally murdered to  add shock value to stories.

That didn't quite work out either.

Damage Stars: *****

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #33

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #33
"Untitled"
Cover Date: September 1992
Writer: Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Artist: David A. Williams, Chris Sprouse

Previously...

The Legion is still fighting the Dominators for control of Earth, as is the other, younger Legion. It was just that sort of time for the Legion.

Plot

Get your tinfoil hats on people, because it's time for some double-barrelled Bierbaum retcon action! Fortunately, I'll be here to keep it all manageable.

Chameleon Boy (the adult one, since his SW6 counterpart died in the previous issue) is on the planet Val to meet with his father R.J. Brande. (Finding out that R.J. Brande was actually a Durlan and Chameleon Boy's father was one of the first and most respected of all of the Legion's retcons).

Meanwhile, on Winath, Adult!Lightning Lad meets with Proty II, the Legion's old team pet/mascot thing. Lightning Lad wishes that he had gone to help Kid Quantum. (Because, you see, he is actually the soul of the first Proty who basically possessed Lightning Lad after the later had died, although very few characters know this fact. This was another fan theory that the Bierbaums wrote into their Legion run.) So, two pages, two retcons mentioned already? We are making good time!

On Earth, a head Dominator hears about the 'Soul of Antares' and so hires a guy named Adam Orion, the Hunter to go capture it.

Totally, definitely, not a rip-off of Kraven.

Anyway, back on Val, a man named Rouvin heads to the local saloon, flirts with the bar-tender, and bribes a robo-sheriff, before heading back to his cabin which contains a Legion Flag, a Legion costume, could he be the mysterious Kid Quantum? And, more importantly, can he convince the readers that he isn't a terrible character that has no reason for existing? Spoiler Alert: Yes, and emphatically no, respectively.

But now it is time for some exposition. Both the Dominators and R.J. Brande and Chameleon Boy have conversations that, between the two of them, give the audience the backstory here. So, it turns out that there was a planet called Antares where a species of telepathic shapeshifters lived, but Glorith, who at this point is essentially the arch-enemy of the Legion, wanted to enslave them, so they...and bear with me here....put their species' sentience into one of their number, who was stripped of his telepathy and shapeshifting skills for some reason. Anyway, he is the Soul of Antares.

And there's some more. So, the Soul of Antares decided to create a new identity for himself, that of James Cullen, Kid Quantum, who had some sort of belt that let him manipulate quantum...stuff. But his identity got compromised, so he faked his own death and has been hiding out on the planet Val ever since.

Okay, almost done. Apparently, seven other Antareans also had their sentience preserved, and so have been bugging R.J. Brande and Adult!Lightning Lad to find the Soul of Antares/Kid Quantum for a while now. Yeah, well, let's just go with it.

So, Adam Orion shows up on Val, and starts wrecking shit and taking hostages, looking for Kid Quantum, Chameleon Boy and Brande try and stop him and fail horribly. So, finally, Kid Quantum shows up to save his friends, but, before he can do that, we really need a page where the characters try and talk themselves into the idea that this whole set-up makes even the slightest bit of sense.

"Yep...no need to question it any further."

 

 

 

But, just as Adam Orion is about to do us all a favor and plug Kid Quantum in the skull, those sentient Antareans from earlier show up and stop him. And so Brande, Cham, and the Kid Quantum head off to Antares to restore the spirit of the Antareans people, except the Emerald Eye shows up to redirect them to a planet called Gallan. I'm beyond caring at this point.

Back on Earth, SW6!Lightning Lad is pissed that a bunch of his SW6 friends got killed last issue. SW6!Saturn Girl shows up and wonders why Garth is being such a dick. The short answer: because of retcon bullshit. The long answer...

The Long Answer (Take Two Aspirin Before Reading)

At this moment in Legion continuity, it had been established that when Lightning Lad was brought back to life, it was really just his body being possessed by the soul of Proty. Now, the SW6 Legion were originally from a time after Lightning Lad had died and come back to life, but, for some convoluted reason, the Bierbaums decided that SW6!Lightning Lad would have the soul of the real Lightning Lad, even though, from a continuity perspective, he should have the soul of Proty. The change in souls also affected Lightning Lad's personality, so SW6!Saturn Girl is confused to why Lightning Lad had reverted to the way he acted before he died, rather than his new personality after he came back from life. And that is exactly the sort of story knowledge and intuition you need in order to make sense of the closing scenes of this issue, which basically explains everything that was wrong with the Legion at the time.

Commentary

Why? Why did they make this story. I mean, if you want to make a new character, fine (although at this moment, readers already had to keep track of something like forty characters). But why retcon another new character into Legion history? It just makes the entire continuity that much more unstable.

As for the Kid Quantum character, well, he's a complete dud. I mean, he's such a dud that when Mark Waid had an edict from editorial to kill off a Legionnaire in the first issues of the reboot Legion, Kid Quantum was his sacrificial lamb.

But, yeah, he's the sort of character where, just due to his backstory, the other characters continually go, "Oh, man, remember the awesome times we had with Kid Quantum", even though no such stories were ever printed, which means if feels like we're something like 80% of the way to fanfiction.

So, yeah,  in summary, 1992 was a shitty year to be a Legion fan.

Damage Stars: *****
 

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #31

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #31
"The Elements of Heartbreak"
Cover Date: July 1992
Writer: Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Artist: Coleen Doran and Curt Swan(!)

Previously...

Okay, get some Tylenol because we're now in the part of Legion history where the stories make no God-damned sense unless you've read thirty years worth of Legion stories AND know exactly how the retcons have affected them.

The adult Legion (I'll get to that in a minute) is on Earth. In five-year gap between Levitz' and Giffen's runs, Earth has been secretly taken over by the Dominators, who, as you might guess, aren't great dudes. Anyway, the revolution against Dominator rule has starter, and the Legion has spent the better part of last year fighting them.

But wait, there's more! As part of the story, some stasis chambers under the surface of the Earth have been opened, releasing the SW6 Legion, who are essentially younger versions of the Legionnaires, meaning that, in addition to the two dozen or so characters already in the Giffen run, now you've got another entire Legion to keep track of. Oh, and no one knows if they're clones or not or where they've come from, but they're fighting the Dominators too.

Oh, and for the past dozen years or so, Jan Arrah, known as Element Lad, has had an on-again, off-again relationship with a Science Cop named Shvaughn Erin. Okay, ready? No, you aren't, but let's get on with it anyway.

Plot

On the wartorn Earth, adult!Element Lad breaks into a drug store to get some pills for Shvaughn. 

At the same time, and not too far away, SW6!Chameleon Boy and SW6!Element Lad are attacking a Dominator patrol squad. SW6!Element Lad fucks up and accidentally kills a bunch of them, so runs off alone out of shame.

Adult!Element Lad get the drugs back to Shvaugn, who is taking them to help her get through her ProFem withdrawal. You know the second you hear the word 'ProFem' that things are about to go off of the rails. Anyway, Shvaughn wants something to take her mind off the pain, so asks Adult!Element Lad to tell her a story.

Not missing the chance to use a tired dramatic device, Adult!Element Lad's narration of the story is juxtaposed with SW6!Element Lad's running around being sad. The story is about a Trommite kid (on Trom everyone had the power to transmute the elements at will, but they all got killed, and now Jan is the only one left). So, the kid asks his father why he can't kill things with his powers. His dad answers "A Trommite can kill no one if not himself." The kid does not respond well to this zen bullshit, and so kills his dad by turning him into "flakes of carbon."

Around this time, Shvaugn cuts her hair and insists on being called 'Sean', but wants Adult!Element Lad to finish the story. So, it turns out that all of the people and animals of the planet Trom shun the kid for killing his father, and, depressed by the isolation, the kid kills himself by turning himself into "flakes of carbon." The End.

The lesson that Sean takes from the story is that he has to go through the rest of this transition on his own, which does not seem like a particularly good interpretation of the story that Adult!Element Lad told. He leaves, and Adult!Element Lad lets him go. Sean stumbles around for awhile, and then collapses into a snow bank, and who should happen by but SW6!Element Lad, they talk for a bit, and SW6!Element Lad gets retrieved by SW6!Saturn Girl while Sean just kind of wanders off.

Meanwhile, in space, SW6!Valor meets Adult!Valor, and they're mighty confused by this turn of events. Also, the Emerald Eye teases a return, but it's hard to get excited about that.

Finally, as was the custom of this era's Legion, there are a couple of text pieces that give important exposition. It's really a testament to how continuity-heavy this Legion was that, even with Keith Giffen using a Watchmen-esque nine-panel grid for every page of his run, they still didn't have enough room to get all of the necessary information in the actual comic.

The important text piece her is a letter written by Shvaugn Erin right before she became Sean. She explains she grew up as a dude on a planet with some seriously regressive gender-identity norms, so he had trouble fitting in, and he had a crush on the young Element Lad, so this led him to run away to some sort of future-hippie commune on Earth, and then decided to become a woman for some vague reasons about not being comfortable with who he was, also, so as to make the wooing of Element Lad slightly easier. And she had been doing it ever since, except the Dominators outlawed ProFem, and now she's about to turn back into a man.

Commentary

I suppose my first question is...why? I mean, on the one hand, I guess making a long-term recurring character a transgender person is a novel form of retcon, but this probably isn't the way to do it, not the least of which is because it kind of conflates being gay and being transgender in a way that's confusing at best.

I've heard two theories about why they made Shvaugn Erin into a man. Keith Giffen in an interview he did for the Legion Companion said that he wanted to kill Erin off, but some other member of the creative staff was against is. Giffen said the only way he wouldn't kill her off is if she had some sort of interesting hook he could use. The other guy blurted out 'She's really a man' and there you go.

The other theory has to do with the Bierbaums, who were longtime fans of the Legion before they became writers. There was a popular fan theory that Element Lad was gay, primarily centered around the fact that he originally wore a pink costume and didn't have an established girlfriend. Eventually, when Paul Levitz took over, he gave Element Lad a new costume and a girlfriend in the guise of Shvaughn Erin, thus foiling the fan's speculation. Ten years later, the Bierbaums find a way to make continuity conform to their wishes by making Shvaugn into a man, which would then lead to Element Lad becoming gay or something.

Anyway, either way, those theories do kind of point to the problems the Legion were having at the time. On the one hand, you had a guy like Giffen, who could be a tad bit capricious, and on the other you had the Bierbaums, whose stories often teetered close to fan-fiction. Incidentally, their partnership ended about as badly as you might think, with Keith Giffen blowing up the Earth in his last issue, and then the Bierbaums moving on to a spinoff featuring the SW6 Legionnaires.

Just not a good moment for the Legion.

Damage Stars: *****

Teen Titans (v2) #9

Teen Titans (v2) #9
"The Lost World of Skartaris, Part 1 (of 3)"
Cover Date: June 1997
Writer: Dan Jurgens
Artist: Dan Jurgens (Pencils), George Perez (Finished Art)

Previously...

Well, okay, these Titans are actually half-alien hybrids sent to Earth to help the aliens conquer it, but they decided to become heroes instead. Also, the Ray Palmer Atom is on the team, except he's a teenager due to some shenanigans leftover from Zero Hour. Beyond that, Prysm, the energy chick on the cover, somehow fell into Skartaris.

Plot

Prysm almost gets eaten by a T-Rex, but then the Warlord shows up to save her. He then goes to kill the T-Rex, but Prysm starts whining about not killing animals. Warlord and Prysm then briefly exposit what's going on: They're in a place called Skartaris, where there are T-Rexes and magic and a bunch of other shit that sold great in the '80s but not so much since then.

Meanwhile, the other Titans are trying to find Prysm. It only takes them about five seconds to crash the jet they were flying right into Skartaris.

Prysm and Warlord then talk about what the Warlord's been up to since his solo title was canceled. It turns out that he has a daughter who's missing and he's trying to find her.

The other Titans leave the wreckage of their jet to find some barbarians, and, as you might expect, get into a brawl. The Atom pulls out a sword, which is supposed to be a callback to the time in the early '80s where they decided that the perfect development for a super-hero who was a scientist and had the power to shrink was to become some sort of Conan-esque hero. I guess you had to be there. It does lead to the line of the issue, where Risk, the Titan who would later go on to be famous for having his arm gruesomely ripped off in Infinite Crisis, explains, "Palmer handles that sword as well as Michael Jordan handles a basketball!" Awesome.

And that's how Risk ruined similes for everyone

Anyway, some chick with a fur bikini shows up and realizes that the Titans all speak English, just like the Warlord, so they're probably connected to him somehow, and demands they lead her to him.

Meanwhile, Prysm and Warlord get ambushed and knocked out by an evil-looking sorceress. To Be Continued!

Commentary

Well, I'll give DC this much credit, back in the day, they weren't afraid to roll out new characters to try and revive moribund franchises. I mean, it never seemed to work, but they tried.

These are the Jurgens-era Teen Titans. Marv Wolfman had been writing the Titans since 1980, but, by the mid-90s, it had gotten kind of stale, mainly because Wolfman hadn't created a good new character in something like a decade. Eventually, it was decided that the Titans needed to start over.

So they turned to Dan Jurgens, the guy who wrote "The Death of Superman". Jurgens decided that he'd create a brand new team of teenagers and decided to pair them with a de-aged Atom because...I don't know, I guess because he could. There was only one small problem: no one liked the new characters.

Now, in fairness, comic fans hate new characters for the most part. So, for Jurgens to succeed, he would have had to have come up with some pretty fucking awesome characters. The Titans just kind of ended up being rather bland, to the point where Risk getting his arm ripped off in Infinite Crisis was about the biggest exposure any of this group of Titans would have after their title got canceled.

Also, this book has a Warlord team-up, a mere eight years after the Warlord's ongoing ended. The Warlord, in case I never get around to doing an issue of it, was a story about an Air Force pilot who crashed his jet into a hole in the north pole that led him into a world of fantasy. It ran for a 133 issues, which just goes to show you how fucking different things were back then. Quite why Jurgens decided the Titans and Warlord would make a good team-up is beyond me, but I suppose he gets points for creativity.

Looking at the book now, though, it's not so bad. Sure, the dialogue isn't great, but the writing's good enough that you can pick up this book and be able to tell the characters apart, which, in the '90s, wasn't particularly common in team books. The art's pretty great, too. So, it's got a few things going for it. I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy issues from this run, but I'll say that the Jurgens run is far from the worst the Titans franchise has to offer.

Damage Stars ****

 

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #4

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #4
"Untitled"
Cover Date: February 1990
Writer: Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Artist: Keith Giffen (Pencils), Al Gordon (Inks)

Previously...
 
A ton of stuff, but the only story that really mattered was the one where the Legion fought the Time Trapper and killed him, but Mon-El got mortally wounded in the process. It's been five years since then.

Plot

On Talok VIII, Shadow Lass is still in mourning for Mon-El, her husband, and gets removed from her position as planetary protector as a result.

Mon-El, however, isn't quite dead, and rises from his grave to find Shadow Lass. The problem is that his body is hosting not only the essence of the Time Trapper, but also the essence of another guy, who we'll hear more about a bit later. The Time Trapper starts making some noise about this all being part of his plan.

Mon-El and Shadow Lass reunite, but he feels compelled to inform her of his possession problem/ They fly off to Colu to meet with Brainiac 5, who will presumably come up with some sort of science-y solution to their problem. Meanwhile, the spirit of the Time Trapper explains who the third voice is. It turns out it's from a guy named Eltro Gand, who was the descendant of Mon-El (just go with it, okay.) Anyway, in an earlier story, it was prophesied that Mon-El would die soon, so Eltro Gand showed up to save him. Of course, prophecy usually wins out, so in trying to prevent Mon-El's death, he accidentally caused it. So, as an act of contrition, he sacrificed his life-force to bring Mon-El back to life, but, as it turns out, that also ended up transplanting Eltro Gand's soul into Mon-El's body, which is the retcon for why Mon-El had been acting kind of erratically for the latter part of Paul Levitz's run.

Anyway, Brainiac 5 figures out how to get the essence of the Time Trapper out of Mon-El's body, but the Time Trapper decides it's time to step in, and manages to spirit Mon-El away to the Pocket Universe (I'll explain in a minute), while siccing Brainiac 5's erstwhile android assistant on Brainy and Shadow Lass.

In the Pocket Universe, the Time Trapper explains that what he really wants is to take full possession of Mon-El's immortal body, and the two start to fighting. Mon-El manages to eventually wear the Time Trapper down, so the villain decides to explain exactly what the fuck is going on. And here we go:

The Time Trapper, who is the personification of entropy and the ruler of the end of time, decided that he wanted to conquer some eras in history where people actually, you know, lived. But, looking back through time, he noticed that the 30th century was ruled by the wizard (and perennial Legion villain) Mordru. The Trapper knew he couldn't beat Mordru in a straight-up fight, so he decided on an insanely convoluted scheme. He wanted a team of super-heroes that would keep Mordru out of power, and then be swept aside by the Trapper himself. To that end, he created a Pocket Universe with its own Superboy that would inspire the creation of the Legion, and made sure that when the Legion traveled back in time, they always ended up in the Pocket Universe. He also put Mon-El in the Pocket Universe as a failsafe, so that the Trapper would have an invulnerable body to retreat into in case of emergency. Finally, he pulled R.J. Brande, the Legion's original financier, from the regular universe's 20th century. The upshot is that the Legion would not exist were it not for the Time Trapper's machinations.

But wait, there's one more catch. Because of the Time Trapper's relationship with time, if Mon-El kills him now, then the Trapper will retroactively cease to exist, erasing all of the things he's done, including the creation of the Legion and the prevention of Mordru's conquering the galaxy. Mon-El's reaction to this news? Well...

"Better oblivion than retcon, motherfucker!"

 

 

And that's the end of the issue.

Commentary

In case you're wondering, this wasn't actually a reboot. What happened was that Levitz had set up the Pocket Universe explanation to get around the fact that Superboy, who was crucial to most of the Legion's early stories, was no longer in the main continuity. It was a pretty good work-around, but after he left, the Superman editorial staff issued an edict that no Superman or Superman-related characters could appear in Legion stories anymore. Giffen and the Bierbaums had a choice between either never mentioning the vast majority of past Legion stories, since they contained the offending material, or rewriting continuity to remove all instances of Superboy and the Pocket Universe. They elected the latter.

So, this issue was the set-up for the next issue, where history is restored, but with several notable changes, starting a period known as the "Glorith continuity". Honestly, though, it was just a bad idea all over. Almost every single story had some sort of retcon in it, whether from which characters were in it to much more drastic changes. For example, in Legion of Super-Heroes (v3) #50, a group of Legionnaires traveled to the end of time to kill the Time Trapper for killing the Pocket Universe Superboy. In the revised continuity, a group of Legionnaires traveled to Glorith's home planet to get revenge on her for destroying Daxam. And these stories are supposed to occupy the same slot in the Legion's history.

Really, this was basically end of the first incarnation of the Legion. Once Giffen and company were forced to rewrite the continuity this heavily, things were never going to work right, because virtually every story was somehow different. Not that Giffen and the Bierbaums are blameless, since the Bierbaums, who had started the careers as two of the more prominent fans of the Legion, seemingly couldn't help themselves from retconning things for no particularly good reason. In this issue alone, they decided that Mon-El's character over the past five years or so of Legion comics hadn't been to their liking, so they decided he was acting oddly because he was possessed by Eltro Gand. And they did stuff like that every issue, culminating in the infamous issue where they decided, since the popular fan theory had been that Element Lad was gay, but had since been paired, in continuity with a female character, that they would retcon the woman into really being a man, which would somehow square things. Not coincidentally, shortly thereafter Paul Levitz ordered a hard reboot for the Legion's continuity.