Not, it's worth stressing, because the series was a mess, of course, nor because its last few arcs were any worse than its first few, but because DC cancelled all of its books at the time, closing out their post-Crisis continuity for their biggest, hardest reboot ever, September of 2011's The New 52 initiative.
This trade, then, represents not just the end of the JLoA series, but the end of the 25-year post-Crisis Justice League saga.
It is, I am disappointed to say, not very good, and the sort of historical nature of the story makes it more disappointing still. Were 25 years of stories all leading up to this? No, this was just a placeholder story, something to keep a Justice League comic on the shelves while DC worked on a new, New 52 version of their flagship team title, one that would prove to be a sales hit (and, if you ask me, creative flop).
But let's stay on topic.
The comics collected herein are all written by James Robinson, and drawn by pencil artists Brett Booth, Daniel Sempere, Jesus Merino and Miguel Sepulveda and inked by Sepulveda and three other artists. That may seem like a lot of artists, but Booth draws most of the book, including all but one chapter of the title story, with Sampere and Sepulveda penciling the one issue he does not.
But let's stay on topic.
The comics collected herein are all written by James Robinson, and drawn by pencil artists Brett Booth, Daniel Sempere, Jesus Merino and Miguel Sepulveda and inked by Sepulveda and three other artists. That may seem like a lot of artists, but Booth draws most of the book, including all but one chapter of the title story, with Sampere and Sepulveda penciling the one issue he does not.
Booth's presence, by the way, is why I had never before read these comics. I was not (and am still not, I find) a fan of Booth's style, so this is the point at which I finally dropped JLoA, after faithfully reading JLA and JLoA month in and month out since 1997.
Therefore, I opened the cover—a featuring a fairly nice image by Ivan Reis that originally ran on the cover of the final issue of the series, JLoA #60—somewhat tensed, expecting the worst. Even so, I was sort of surprised to find, on the second page of the trade, the words, "A Dark Things Epilogue." The book starts with an epilogue to a different story...?
Indeed. Even odder, the issue doesn't feature any members of the current Justice League. Instead, it is one long scene in which Green Lantern Alan Scott and his son Obsidian talk to one another on the moon, the rest of their team, the Justice Society of America finally showing up on the last page. The only Justice League of America characters that show up during the course of this particular issue, do so in crowd scenes filling its many splash pages, depicting possible futures.
I would discover the why of this later. This particular issue isn't even an issue of JLoA, rather it is JSoA #43. The "Dark Things" story arc was a crossover involving both of the Justice...of America titles. My guess is that this ended up in a JLoA trade because DC probably published "Dark Things" under the more popular JLoA title in trade. That, or maybe DC didn't collect the last issues of JSoA into trade at all, and thus there was nowhere else to stick this. It does have some bearing on "Rise of Eclipso," introducing readers who might have skipped "Dark Things" (or, like me, read it like 15 years ago and forgotten it), to The Emerald City.
This is a massive city on the moon, built by the Starheart, the magical source of Alan Scott's Green Lantern ring and its magical powers. I'm not sure when exactly the Starheart entered DC lore, but it's been around since at least the '90s. It was a way to incorporate Alan into the greater Green Lantern mythology, from which he was originally had nothing to do with when Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corpse were created in the Silver Age.
Anyway, whatever happened during the course of "Dark Things," the Starheart's power has now created a massive city composed of Green Lantern construct buildings, and various magical creatures from Earth have been "called" there and have made it their home. Alan is sort of its sheriff and administrator. He gives his son a tour of the place, and they angst about a current bit of drama involving their family: Obsidian and his sister Jade can no longer come within a half mile of one another, or risk combining into some weird composite form that will bring about the end of the world.
Alan says that he and Dr. Fate ran through every conceivable scenario to fix things, but all they found were alternate futures in which, say, Earth's vampire and fairy populations go to war and superheroes get caught in the middle or all of the superheroes with Earth powers will go insane.
The issue is notable for two reasons. First, despite Merino providing the best pencil art of the whole trade, this issue looks like it must have been thrown together in a hurry: Of its 22 pages, six are spent on double-page splashes and three on single-page splashes. (There are also a couple of pages with only two panels apiece, which are practically splashes.)
Some of those double-page splashes do have a lot of figures in them, like the one depicting the aforementioned war, but man, 2011 Caleb would have been so pissed if he spent three bucks on a comic that was, like, half splash pages...
The other notable thing is just to what degree Robinson seems to be treating the endeavor as a "toybox" comic. He's always set his work deeply into the DC Universe setting, of course, often finding and using lesser-known characters in interesting new ways and keeping an admirable fidelity to DC continuity. Here, though, that aspect of his work seems turned up to 11 (and it will stay so throughout the trade). Aside from various JSoA character, Mordu, Nightmaster, Gemworld, Monolith, Zara, Andrew Bennet, Geomancer and Tara II are either namedropped or make cameos of sorts and, of course, that spread with depicting the war is full of various superheroes, at least one of whom I couldn't even identify.
That out of the way, "Rise" begins in earnest and it, too, gets off to a bad start.
This is a massive city on the moon, built by the Starheart, the magical source of Alan Scott's Green Lantern ring and its magical powers. I'm not sure when exactly the Starheart entered DC lore, but it's been around since at least the '90s. It was a way to incorporate Alan into the greater Green Lantern mythology, from which he was originally had nothing to do with when Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corpse were created in the Silver Age.
Anyway, whatever happened during the course of "Dark Things," the Starheart's power has now created a massive city composed of Green Lantern construct buildings, and various magical creatures from Earth have been "called" there and have made it their home. Alan is sort of its sheriff and administrator. He gives his son a tour of the place, and they angst about a current bit of drama involving their family: Obsidian and his sister Jade can no longer come within a half mile of one another, or risk combining into some weird composite form that will bring about the end of the world.
Alan says that he and Dr. Fate ran through every conceivable scenario to fix things, but all they found were alternate futures in which, say, Earth's vampire and fairy populations go to war and superheroes get caught in the middle or all of the superheroes with Earth powers will go insane.
The issue is notable for two reasons. First, despite Merino providing the best pencil art of the whole trade, this issue looks like it must have been thrown together in a hurry: Of its 22 pages, six are spent on double-page splashes and three on single-page splashes. (There are also a couple of pages with only two panels apiece, which are practically splashes.)
Some of those double-page splashes do have a lot of figures in them, like the one depicting the aforementioned war, but man, 2011 Caleb would have been so pissed if he spent three bucks on a comic that was, like, half splash pages...
The other notable thing is just to what degree Robinson seems to be treating the endeavor as a "toybox" comic. He's always set his work deeply into the DC Universe setting, of course, often finding and using lesser-known characters in interesting new ways and keeping an admirable fidelity to DC continuity. Here, though, that aspect of his work seems turned up to 11 (and it will stay so throughout the trade). Aside from various JSoA character, Mordu, Nightmaster, Gemworld, Monolith, Zara, Andrew Bennet, Geomancer and Tara II are either namedropped or make cameos of sorts and, of course, that spread with depicting the war is full of various superheroes, at least one of whom I couldn't even identify.
That out of the way, "Rise" begins in earnest and it, too, gets off to a bad start.
Take a look:
The very first page of "Rise" consists of two panels. The first has narration, white type in black boxes (just like Obsidian's dialogue in the previous chapter, although this is not Obsidian talking). It reads:
At a time of grave crisis, the world's greatest heroes banded together to combat evil.
The name of this team......The Justice League of America.
The image in this first panel shows the original (pre-Crisis, post-Infinite Crisis) Justice League founders, the seven heroes from 1960's The Brave and the Bold #28, but, in the background, we see the Hall of Justice...which wasn't actually the headquarters of any Justice League in the comics until Brad Meltzer imported it from the Super Friends cartoons in the early issues of this particular volume of JLoA, so circa 2006 or so.
The second panel, accounting for the bottom half of the page, has narration reading:
Other heroes joined this group...other champions. The roll call changing year by year.
Here Booth draws a mostly random assortment of later Leaguers, stretching from the likes of Green Arrow and Hawkman to Red Arrow and Black Lightning.
Between these two panels, but more on the bottom than the top, is...a mysterious object, a colorful box with what looks like a "7" on it (It's on the right edge of the page above). I could not for the life of me figure out what the hell this was supposed to be, especially since it seemed to be reaching onto the page from somewhere off page. I flipped to the next page to see if this was a mistake of layout, and maybe something on the next page explained it, but no.
Eventually I decided it must be a TV news microphone, from a Channel 7, perhaps being pointed at the JLoA founders, as if they were giving a press conference (If you look closely, there's the tip of another tiny microphone in the bottom right corner of the first panel, near Batman's crotch).
I'm not sure why Booth drew it, but I am sure he should not have.
Eventually I decided it must be a TV news microphone, from a Channel 7, perhaps being pointed at the JLoA founders, as if they were giving a press conference (If you look closely, there's the tip of another tiny microphone in the bottom right corner of the first panel, near Batman's crotch).
I'm not sure why Booth drew it, but I am sure he should not have.
And then onto the second page of the issue, a full-page splash featuring the current line-up fighting what, upon close inspection, turn out to be green hard-light constructs of Alan Scott, presumably generated by Jade during "Dark Things."
Here the narration tells us the team has changed again, and that this version of the team came together during the events of "Dark Things." The line-up during this volume of JLoA seemed to shift each story arc, something I have to assume was not Robinson's doing, nor to his liking (His predecessor on the title, the late Dwayne McDuffie, complained about editorial taking characters he was using or planning to use out of circulation on a regular basis. If you've read much of Robinson's run, you'll find the "official" line-up more fluid still).
I did appreciate this page, as it tries to contextualize this team as a Justice League, and make the constant changes in team make-up seem like part of the overall Justice League story. That, and it told me who was actually supposed to be on the team at this point: Jade, Supergirl, Congorilla, Donna Troy, Jesse Quick, Batman Dick Grayson and Starman Mikaal Tomas.
Here the narration tells us the team has changed again, and that this version of the team came together during the events of "Dark Things." The line-up during this volume of JLoA seemed to shift each story arc, something I have to assume was not Robinson's doing, nor to his liking (His predecessor on the title, the late Dwayne McDuffie, complained about editorial taking characters he was using or planning to use out of circulation on a regular basis. If you've read much of Robinson's run, you'll find the "official" line-up more fluid still).
I did appreciate this page, as it tries to contextualize this team as a Justice League, and make the constant changes in team make-up seem like part of the overall Justice League story. That, and it told me who was actually supposed to be on the team at this point: Jade, Supergirl, Congorilla, Donna Troy, Jesse Quick, Batman Dick Grayson and Starman Mikaal Tomas.
So, notably, it's a couple of fun, unlikely characters (Congorilla and Starman), and a bunch of legacy characters plucked from the extended "families" of founding Leaguers (everyone else), some of whom might not have been the second, third, or even fourth choice to fill those roles (Green Lantern-like Jade and speedster Jesse Quick, for example).
Still, it's a noteworthy line-up in just how many women are on it. In fact, I think this may be the first and only time the number of women outnumbered the number of men on the team...?
Still, it's a noteworthy line-up in just how many women are on it. In fact, I think this may be the first and only time the number of women outnumbered the number of men on the team...?
From here, the scene shifts from the battle scene on the moon to Earth, where Bruce Gordon takes over the narration, and, ultimately, somehow transforms into Eclipso, despite there not being an eclipse. From here on out, the book will mostly be narrated by a conversation between Eclipso and Gordon, the latter of whom is reduced to a voice in the former's head.
Gordon's words appear in very light gray, almost white narration boxes. Eclispo's appear in purple boxes. There is occasionally omniscient narration too, with this in white boxes, which can easily be confused as Gordon's thoughts. And there is at least one instance where Eclipso's dialogue appears in a light gray box, as if it were Gordon's. Again, it's remarkably slipshod for a DC comic, I thought, and I was kinda surprised that mistakes like this made it into the trade, as surely someone would have noticed it the first time the book was published, and then fixed it before it was published a second time, no?
Gordon's words appear in very light gray, almost white narration boxes. Eclispo's appear in purple boxes. There is occasionally omniscient narration too, with this in white boxes, which can easily be confused as Gordon's thoughts. And there is at least one instance where Eclipso's dialogue appears in a light gray box, as if it were Gordon's. Again, it's remarkably slipshod for a DC comic, I thought, and I was kinda surprised that mistakes like this made it into the trade, as surely someone would have noticed it the first time the book was published, and then fixed it before it was published a second time, no?
This first chapter of "Rise" is, aside from that splash page introducing them, devoid of the Justice League, instead following Eclipso as he goes around gathering allies with various shadow-based powers and "eclipsing" them: The Shade, Nightshade, Acrata and Shadow Thief, plus two more I had never heard of, Dark-Crow and Bete-Noir (this Bete-Noir character being a skull-faced gorilla who speaks French, not to be confused with Martian Manhunter villain Bette Noir). (Oh, I guess there's a good reason I never heard of these two; they are new characters appearing here for the first time. Neat.)
Oh, and Eclipso also awakens a slumbering elder god for his team, an off-brand Cthulhu, named Syththunu.
As for what Eclipso is up to this time, well, it's a very complicated plan, and it is revealed only gradually throughout the story arc, but essentially he plans to kill God by destroying the Earth, Robinson proposing a rather interesting idea that, in the DC Universe, Earth is a sort of conduit between God and the universe, transferring energy back and forth (I'm not entirely sure if this is all Robinson's idea, though, as the events of Brightest Day are referenced in relation to this, specifically the White Lanterns and that weird White Lantern entity).
On the last pages of this chapter, we see Alan Scott in the Emerald City. He is now bald and emaciated, laying in a bed with an IV. What happened to him between the first issue collected in this trade and the second? No clue.
(Oddly, when events from other books are reflected in the issues, there are no asterisks and editorial boxes letting a reader know where they might have occurred...but there are a few editorial boxes referring back to very old stories, like one reading "Way back in Brave & The Bold #115", which was the 1974 issue in which The Atom entered a braindead Batman's brain and hopped around, "piloting" it).
The next issue is a good example of just how messy this series is. Though it's entitled "Eclipso Rising Part Two: Mayhem", it's actually also a tie-in to a Superman event (The original cover, which you can see here on comics.org, includes a "Reign of Doomsday" banner along the top).
The next issue is a good example of just how messy this series is. Though it's entitled "Eclipso Rising Part Two: Mayhem", it's actually also a tie-in to a Superman event (The original cover, which you can see here on comics.org, includes a "Reign of Doomsday" banner along the top).
Supergirl, wearing a black and white costume, is floating around the wreckage of New Krypton, when Batman shows up in a spaceship. And so does cyborg "Alpha Lantern" Boodikka. And then Doomsday, who can now fly...? And then Starman and Blue Lantern Saint Walker (Though not officially a Leaguer, Walker is in this book more than Supergirl and, in the final issue, Dick mentions him as a potential future Leaguer).
They fight.
The last page of this issue features two reveals. On the moon, Eclipso has eclipsed Jade, and the Cyborg-Superman pops out of Boodikka on the team's satellite base.
They fight.
The last page of this issue features two reveals. On the moon, Eclipso has eclipsed Jade, and the Cyborg-Superman pops out of Boodikka on the team's satellite base.
Whatever is happening with the latter, it's not addressed in this book at all. Cyborg-Superman doesn't reappear at all, so apparently that unfolds in the Superman books, where one assumes "Reign of Doomsday" must be playing out. Those events seem to take Supergirl out of the story as well, as she won't reappear until the final pages of the JLoA #59, the concluding chapter of "Rise". (When she does, she's in red and blue again, and, when Congorilla asks where she was, she simply replies, "Long story, Bill...").
On the moon, Eclipso starts eclipsing all the elves and fairies and other magical residents of the Emerald City. The reserves are called in (which, I was surprised to see, included The Bulleteer, who I don't think was ever actually on any incarnation of the League...?), but they too get eclipsed.
Caleb-favorite character Zauriel is among the reserves, and, rather than eclipsing him, Eclipso sword-fights him, captures him, and forces him to send out some kind of weird divine distress signal, which summons The Spectre. Eclipso kills The Spectre (!), cutting him in half vertically with his giant black sword on a double-page splash printed sideways, and Eclipso thus absorbs his power. (I'm not sure who The Spectre's host is at this point, or if this is a host-less Spectre-Force. The story doesn't address that at all; at any rate, this Spectre doesn't have a goatee, so it doesn't look like the Crispus Allen version, although I would have thought Allen was still The Spectre at this point...)
Things seem very bad, but eventually the League rallies and, with the help of Obsidian, a healthy-again Alan Scott and The Atom Ray Palmer, they defeat Eclipso and save the world...and, I guess, the universe and God himself. (As for The Spectre, is he dead-dead? Unclear, but since the universe is rebooted immediately after all this anyway, I guess it doesn't matter. Corrigan is The Spectre again when introduced into New 52 continuity).
And then we get issue #60, the final issue. In it, all seven official members of the League take turns telling the rest of the team why they are deciding to quit at this particular juncture. Sure, it strains credulity—all seven decide they need to step away simultaneously?—but then, Robinson was writing these characters off for the final time here, and I don't know the best way to close out the series in these particular circumstances might have been. (Me, I think I would have had them stay together, maybe rushing off into their next adventure on the last page, at least implying that this version of the team, and of the DC Universe, might still go on, if only in the readers' imaginations...)
Between the various team members telling one another what they plan to do next, there are splash pages devoted to adventures that they apparently had in the weeks between the end of "Rise" and this particular meeting: A Construct-led robot uprising, "The Saturn-Thanagar War" and "The Battle for Gemworld".
At first, I assumed this was Robinson using up his ideas for future JLoA stories, a way of getting them into the book before he left it, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt that a writer would "waste" such ideas in such a way, and so perhaps these were just plots he thought up while writing this particular issue, random off-panel adventures that he considered the basic outlines of without really having fleshed them out, or intended to use anywhere else.
The most interesting bit, I thought, was on the last page, when Dick Grayson and Donna Troy are about to teleport back down to Earth, as the rest of the team already did. They have a short exchange about their version of the Justice League, which really sounds like Robinson talking about his run more than anything else.
"Do you think they'll remember us?" Donna asks Dick and, when he replies, "Who? Bill and the others?" she answers in such a way that it seems as if she's talking about the readers:
The most interesting bit, I thought, was on the last page, when Dick Grayson and Donna Troy are about to teleport back down to Earth, as the rest of the team already did. They have a short exchange about their version of the Justice League, which really sounds like Robinson talking about his run more than anything else.
"Do you think they'll remember us?" Donna asks Dick and, when he replies, "Who? Bill and the others?" she answers in such a way that it seems as if she's talking about the readers:
No, dummy, the people. The world. Think they'll remember this version of the J.L.A. and all that we did?
To which Dick responds:
Who can say? We did what we could with what we were given and I'm proud. I'll remember. Other people? Honestly who cares, it's not why I'm in this anyway.
Well, I hope that's how Robinson felt...and still feels. Because, despite the fact that I'm reading this story arc and writing about it 15 years later, I feel like Robinson's run has been somewhat forgotten, as has been most of the final stories of DC's books immediately preceding The New 52.
Though DC has since de-rebooted The New 52, restoring pre-Flashpoint continuity...while keeping some of the The New 52 developments that didn't contradict the previous continuity too badly...I think the Justice League continuity is more screwed-up than that of other characters and concepts within the DCU.
I'm trade-waiting Mark Waid and company's New History of the DC Universe; perhaps that will reveal if this Justice League is still canon or if it was over-written by all the various cosmic timeline altering events of the last decade or so.
Though DC has since de-rebooted The New 52, restoring pre-Flashpoint continuity...while keeping some of the The New 52 developments that didn't contradict the previous continuity too badly...I think the Justice League continuity is more screwed-up than that of other characters and concepts within the DCU.
I'm trade-waiting Mark Waid and company's New History of the DC Universe; perhaps that will reveal if this Justice League is still canon or if it was over-written by all the various cosmic timeline altering events of the last decade or so.
***********************
Among all of the things that were wrong with this trade paperback, the wrongest thing is something I didn't yet mention.
I don't know why this is the case, or if it was the case with all of the copies of the trade that were published, or just the one I happened to borrow from the library, but there was apparently some kind of printing mess up.
For some reason, all of the narration boxes and dialogue balloons that were on the far side of the pages were cut off throughout. Here's an example; note Jesse's dialogue in the first panel:
I don't know why this is the case, or if it was the case with all of the copies of the trade that were published, or just the one I happened to borrow from the library, but there was apparently some kind of printing mess up.
For some reason, all of the narration boxes and dialogue balloons that were on the far side of the pages were cut off throughout. Here's an example; note Jesse's dialogue in the first panel:
In all cases, there is enough of the cut-off words to guess what they are supposed to be, but it's really weird, isn't it?
**********************|
Oh, and if you're wondering why on Earth I'm writing about this particular book at this particular time, well, I'll tell you.
As I mentioned a while back, after reading the last half-dozen or so JLA arcs, I had considered re-reading the book that followed the end of JLA, Justice League of America. I ultimately decided not to because a) I didn't care for it the first time around and b) my library system didn't have every volume of it available in trade (They do have them all available electronically, but I'm not a fan of reading comics on my laptop or phone).
**********************|
Oh, and if you're wondering why on Earth I'm writing about this particular book at this particular time, well, I'll tell you.
As I mentioned a while back, after reading the last half-dozen or so JLA arcs, I had considered re-reading the book that followed the end of JLA, Justice League of America. I ultimately decided not to because a) I didn't care for it the first time around and b) my library system didn't have every volume of it available in trade (They do have them all available electronically, but I'm not a fan of reading comics on my laptop or phone).
So, the idea of revisiting JLoA was already in the back of my mind.
And then I read The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus Vol. 1, which made me curious about more recent Spectre comics that followed their series..specifically, the character's storyline after Hal Jordan stopped being the host of The Spectre. Also, during the events of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre, the title character seems to rather definitively defeat Eclipso, smashing him to ashes, and I found myself wondering how he came back from that, so I was a bit curious about later Eclipso stories too.
When looking for later Spectre comics, then, I saw that "Rise of Eclipso" featured both Eclipso and the Spectre and, given when it was published, these would have been the last appearances of each character in the Crisis to Flashpoint timeline, so that was two reasons to check this story arc out.
And then I read The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus Vol. 1, which made me curious about more recent Spectre comics that followed their series..specifically, the character's storyline after Hal Jordan stopped being the host of The Spectre. Also, during the events of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre, the title character seems to rather definitively defeat Eclipso, smashing him to ashes, and I found myself wondering how he came back from that, so I was a bit curious about later Eclipso stories too.
When looking for later Spectre comics, then, I saw that "Rise of Eclipso" featured both Eclipso and the Spectre and, given when it was published, these would have been the last appearances of each character in the Crisis to Flashpoint timeline, so that was two reasons to check this story arc out.
I plan on writing a few more Spectre-related posts in the near future too, so I hope that's something you guys are interested in reading about...
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