The End of JLA Pt. 5: "Syndicate Rules"

After 15 issues devoted to three story arcs that read a lot like fill-ins, interrupted only by the Justice League Elite-launching JLA #100 by the last regular creative team on the title, DC seemed to get the title back on track with 2004-2005's "Syndicate Rules", an eight-part epic by Kurt Busiek, Ron Garney and Dan Green. 

Unlike the rather disconnected fill-in arcs that preceded it, the story, which ran in issues #107-114, was built on stories that preceded it. Not within the pages of JLA proper, but in other, related books with "JLA" in the title. 

It was a fairly direct sequel to Busiek's own 2003 JLA/Avengers series, for example, and it further built on characters and ideas from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's 2000 original graphic novel JLA: Earth 2, which introduced the then-modern version of the League's old evil opposites, The Crime Syndicate of America.

That said, "Syndicate Rules" is well written enough that I don't think one necessarily needs to read "homework" in order to follow and enjoy it. Certainly its original audience was likely already very familiar with JLA/Avengers and JLA: Earth 2, and while anyone trying to read this story for the first time in 2025 might have some trouble getting their hands on that DC/Marvel crossover, the story makes sense without one necessarily having read it, I think. 

The necessary events are explained in the dialogue, even if Busiek obviously can't write the word "Avengers" here. Reading the crossover is really no more necessary than having read, say, the stories that introduced older characters like The Construct or the residents of Qward, who also appear in this story. (Although, having re-read JLA/Avengers not long before re-reading this, I think it does add a depth to "Syndicate Rules", and makes it feel relevant and, well, "important", something super-comics readers certainly like their comics to be).

Now, if you did read JLA/Avengers, you know that the Crime Syndicate of Amerika (with a "k"), which Morrison situated on the Earth of the anti-matter universe, since post-Crisis their home universe Earth-3 no longer existed, were in the midst of attacking Qward when Krona destroyed that universe. During the events of the series, the DC and Marvel Universes were pretty heavily messed with, ultimately being erased and re-created once the heroes managed to set things right.

If you didn't read that, don't worry. Early in this arc, Busiek essentially retells those events from the CSA's perspective, rewinding to show readers what lead up to the CSA finding and attacking Qward, and then what happened after their universe was "rebooted." The fact that it was rebooted is the main driver of the arc's plot.

The story actually begins in the pages of JLA Secret Files 2004 #1, with a ten-page story set on the CSA's Earth, wherein the villains conquer the last remaining country that had been resisting them, Modora. 

Then, bored, they start looking for new horizons to conquer. (The short is notable for introducing the CSA's enemies, The Justice Underground, featuring heroic versions of regular DCU villains. One of them, the good guy version of The Riddler, would end up reappearing in Busiek and company's 2008-2009 series Trinity, which I now plan on revisiting in the near-ish future too). 

In the pages of JLA proper, "Syndicate Rules" starts off with a leisurely pace that is unusual for the title, something that helps, I think, the eventually collected version of the story read more like a true graphic novel than simply a collection of a serially-produced story arc; it is, despite the foundation borrowed from earlier works and references to the goings-on throughout the DC Universe, quite complete unto itself.

Much of the current JLA (Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern John Stewart, The Atom and Aquaman, the latter of whom seems to have officially rejoined sometime before the arc begins) are off in space, studying the "cosmic egg", the baby universe that Krona was trapped in at the end of JLA/Avengers. 

Meanwhile, back in their lunar Watchtower base, Martian Manhunter and The Flash are engaged in the routine maintenance apparently assigned to two Leaguers on the third Thursday of each month.

Personally, I love this sort of day-in-the-life, behind-the-scenes business, which here includes checking in with various parties (like Shiloh Norman, the security chief of The Slab, as seen in 2001's Joker: Last Laugh) and making sure the containment system set up for The Construct is still working as it should be. 

Busiek has chosen the best odd couple for such scenes, as the meticulous J'onn has dedicated his whole life and career to Justice League stuff, while The Flash has his own life (and own book) that he's eager to get back to, and his super-speed impatience leads to him to doing origami, crossword puzzles and cleaning the whole HQ between their various assigned tasks.

This first issue ends with The Syndicate in a Green Lantern Power Ring bubble, looking in on the Watchtower. Notably, the spikey blond-haired, visor-wearing Power Ring, meant to be the evil equivalent of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner from Earth-2 and that Secret Files story, is here replaced by what looks like John Stewart's evil opposite, with a smooth bald head and a goatee, the true mark of a bad guy from a mirror dimension.

In the second issue, we flashback to sixth months ago on the Earth of the anti-matter universe, where Busiek reminds us of the characters of the CSA, their relationships and the nature of their world. When Power Ring finds a new planet, Qward, they set out to conquer it. 

Busiek and Garney devote six pages of this issue to introducing various characters on Qward and the particulars of their culture, something it's kind of impossible to imagine, say, Morrison doing (Had Morrison wrote this story, one imagines it would have only been about three issues, maybe four tops). 

This will tun out to be important groundwork, though, as the Qwardians will be major players in the story, and Busiek splits the focus between them, the Syndicate and The League; sure, two of those groups might be villainous ones, but Busiek gets us inside their heads and allows us to see their motivations and machinations in a way that is highly unusual for this particular title.

Anyway, as seen in JLA/Avengers, the Syndicate invade Qward, but the battle is interrupted , the colored panels on one page seeming to drain of color and become simple black lines on white paper as they shatter like glass, only to reassemble on the next page, which replays a scene from earlier in the issue, only instead of the Kyle-inspired Power Ring flying into their base with news of the discovery of Qward, it is now the John-inspired one. 

In the next issue, Power Ring's power ring and the Syndicate's "Analytiscope" come to the same conclusion: The universe was destroyed and rebuilt some months ago, with several revisions, like this Power Ring's presence. 

The epicenter of the cataclysm? Volthoom, the entity in the ring, says it was "Far from here...Source, however, is familiar: Positive-matter universe." (Though specifically referring to the events of JLA/Avengers, DC's multiverse/reality has been reset so many times between Crisis on Infinite Earths and, I don't know what the latest was, Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths maybe?, that this story probably reads particularly evergreen in 2025. The universes are always being reset now, it seems, and so here we get a story of the characters realizing it, and thinking of themselves as the victims of continuity, setting out to do something about it...and, I should note, a few years before Superboy-Prime would debut in Infinite Crisis with a similar motivation and agenda). 

And so the CSA decides to visit the JLA's Earth, investigating it in secret (This, amusingly, they do by wearing the costumes of their opposites on the League, attempting to play hero in the DCU, as out of their nature as it may be to do so, so that Ultraman poses as Superman, Johnny Quick as The Flash, and so on).

Meanwhile, the Qwardians get a new, more pro-active and war-like leader who wants to seek out the colorful, super-powered enemies that had attacked them. But first, they must find and claim a legendary sentient mega-weapon known as The Void Hound, a planet-razing horror the capabilities of which Busiek lays out in a 10-panel sequence that reads a bit like poetry over some vague images of galactic destruction from the art team. Thus equipped, they then head for Earth, too.

Eventually, the CSA fights the JLA—which, here, means the Big Seven plus Plastic Man—and they actually send the League packing, even with the intervention of Cyborg and Beast Boy, who happen to appear because the fight was set in the Teen Titans' then hometown of San Francisco (Refeshingly, Busiek makes full use of the DCU setting throughout, even name-dropping the title super-team from his own interesting but short-lived series, The Power Company). 

Owlman points out the true significance of their victory: 

Don't you see? Their world's been changed. Our world's been changed. We just took them apart on their home turf. 

The essential difference between our universes, that kept us from ever being able to triumph here-- --it's GONE.

He's talking about an aspect about their respective worlds that Morrison verbalized in Earth-2. The Justice League, obviously, always ends up winning, right? But on the CSA's world, the old Earth-3, now rechristened "Earth-2", the opposite is true, and evil always wins. This was because the Justice League were good guys, who naturally always triumph in superhero comics, and the villains from an "opposite" world must always win there, if that world is truly opposite. 

That was just the nature of superhero comics conventions, of course, but Morrison stated it as if it were some kind of law of physics, and Busiek picks up on the concept here, positing that when the DC Universe was last rebooted, it changed that one particular law, maybe (If this all sounds more goofy than meta to you, it's worth noting that Busiek has Ultraman continually note his skepticism about the "essential difference.")

Anyway, as the story moves on towards its climax and the League finds themselves facing and invasion from the CSA and the looming threat of the Qwardian Void Hound, they call in their reserves and split into three teams.

Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and a ship-bound Martian Manhunter are joined by Faith, Captain Marvel and Power Girl in a deep-space assault on the seemingly unstoppable Void Hound, reinforcements coming in the form of New Gods (and former Leaguers) Orion, Lightray and Big Barda. 

Aquaman leads much of Justice League Elite against the CSA in Tibet, where the evildoers are attempting to set up a base for themselves (As far as I know, this is the only appearance of the JLE as a team outside of their own book proper, making it a rare acknowledgement that the book actually took place in the DCU at all, really; Manitou Raven is missing, but I'm not certain if he had been killed off at this point yet or not).

And, finally, Batman leads a team consisting of Plastic Man, Black Canary, Hawkman and Green Arrow Oliver Queen to the CSA home world, travelling via Flash's super-speed and vibrational powers, although he ends up not making the trip personally. 

So, as he did in JLA/Avengers, Busiek writes the League as a particular line-up, but one with a well of reserves it can call on when needed—another essential difference from the Syndicate; given their distrustful, back-biting nature, their roster is constrained by the fact that they are really the only five characters from their world willing to work together. This allows for a JLA adventure that features plenty of guest-stars, including various characters that various fans believe (and/or argue online) should be on the team, like Hawkman and Power Girl or whoever. 

None of the three missions go exactly as planned—notably the JLE aren't able to completely defeat the Syndicate, who end up sitting on ring-generated lawn chairs in outer space, watching the Void Hound knock Superman and company around. There are some pretty effective surprises, so well executed that reading the story now, over 20 years after I originally read it, they surprised me all over again.

Ultimately, the Syndicate and the League join forces to take on the Void Hound, the particulars of the defeat of which, like the League's neutralization of the Syndicate, was foreshadowed (or perhaps telegraphed) in the earliest chapters of this huge story.

At the end, each team returns to the world they protect or rule. The last two pages return to the cosmic egg/baby universe, and features an appearance by Metron, a scene promising that this particular story isn't yet over. (Indeed it's not, although it would take a few more years before Busiek would get to tell it, in the pages of the year-long weekly 2008 series Trinity, with collaborators including Mark Bagley, Fabian Nicieza, Tom Derenick and others.)

As I said, Garney gets a lot more to do here than he did in the quieter, more character-focused "Pain of the Gods" which, after all, only featured a half-dozen different superheroes.

Here he's drawing something like 30 costumed characters, including about a half-dozen of whom are meant to be duplicates of another half-dozen, only with variations of their costumes and, of course, different attitudes, delineated by arched eyebrows and various sneers, frowns and evil grins. It's a pretty sizable swathe of the DC Universe, really, featuring a lot of practically Perez-style grids that make for rather dense pages, and yet Garney rather ably handles everything that Busiek throws at him.

There were a couple of points where I thought there was an art mistake, but, as I read on, I realized these were small tells tipping off one surprise or another. 

I think, in a perfect world—a world in which Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis were never published—Busiek and Garney would have made up the core of a new creative team on the ongoing JLA series but, of course, ours is not a perfect world. 

Instead, DC let Brad Meltzer write the gobbledygook that turned into the murder "mystery" of Identity Crisis and then let Geoff Johns rejigger DC continuity and the nature of the multiverse for the first major time since Crisis On Infinite Earths, an obviously imperfect rejiggering that DC hasn't been able to resist regularly re-rejiggering in the almost two decades to follow.

As the next—and last—two arcs of JLA would be tie-ins to event miniseries and dedicate themselves to the winding down of this iteration of the Justice League team and book, "Syndicate Rules" now reads like a last hurrah for JLA and the JLA, one last big, crazy adventure in which the World's Greatest Heroes would band together to save the world—or worlds, really—that takes full advantage of the DC Comics toy box.

It's fun—if, perhaps, a little depressing—to imagine what might have been had DC given Busiek a full run, rather than just eight issues. After all, he managed a pretty compelling synthesis of Morrison's big ideas with Mark Waid's character work while using the newer characters introduced by Joe Kelly. It therefore seemed like the natural direction for the title to take next.

"Syndicate Rules" was collected in 2005's JLA Vol. 17: Syndicate Rules and 2017's JLA Vol. 9. 

Next: Geoff Johns, Allan Heinberg, Chris Batista and Mark Farmer's "Crisis of Conscience" from 2005's JLA #115-119. 

DC Versus Marvel: JLA/Avengers

It's perfectly appropriate that the final DC/Marvel crossover was 2003's JLA/Avengers, as that makes it the ultimate DC/Marvel crossover in both senses of the words. Writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez, the latter of whom was attached to the project when it was first in development back in the early '80s, produced the biggest and best of the 20 such comics that were published previously. 

And it's big in every way. Originally published as a four-issue mini-series, with each issue numbering 48 pages, it was nearly 200 pages along. The page count is similar to that of 1996's DC Versus Marvel, but, thanks to Perez's panel-packed pages and intricate, detailed artwork, the full series reads much denser than its closest relation in the sub-genre, more like a graphic novel than a comic book miniseries. 

The stakes are, naturally, also big: The fate of both the DC and Marvel Universes...which, of course, were also imperiled in DC Versus Marvel, but here that threat feels more immediate and visceral, more akin to Crisis on Infinite Earths than DC Versus Marvel. Indeed, the epic opens with a four-page prologue in which two alternate universes are destroyed, that of Marvel's Arkon the Magnificent and DC's Qward, which was in the process of being visited by the Crime Syndicate of Amerika. 

And the cast? Mind-boggling big. Not only does it feature both of the then-current title teams, it also features their various reserves and former members called in to help out with the crisis...as well various past, dead members temporarily resurrected by the cosmic goings-on...and characters from throughout both teams' history when their universes are temporarily fused...but, by the final issue's climactic battle, the series will feature every single hero who has ever been a member of either the Justice League or the Avengers.

Oh, and there are also plenty of characters from both universes that play small roles or make cameos, from The Spectre, Lobo, The Phantom Stranger and various Titans to The Watcher, The Thing, Spider-Man and The Defenders. It's a massive cast of characters and one that, frankly, it's hard to imagine any artist other than George Perez even attempting, let alone drawing so well. 

So it's an incredibly satisfying read, one that I have to imagine was welcomed not just by the fans of either or both title teams, but by anyone who had ever been a fan of either team...maybe (hopefully!) even those who were looking forward to the originally proposed, 1980s crossover, fans who ended up having to wait over 20 years to see Perez drawing all those heroes (Because of various time travel elements, the '80s teams do meet—in fact, I'm pretty sure Perez's original art for the original, proposed meeting was repurposed in a big panel here—and versions of the characters that existed then, like Flash Barry Allen and Green Lantern Hal Jordan, end up playing substantial roles in the proceedings). 

How do the creators manage to get all this fan service in, and still tell a compelling, let alone coherent, story? 

Well, again, much of that is due to Perez's artwork, and his ability to fit so much in each panel and on each page, while Busiek comes up with an exceedingly clever, three-stage story, one that reads a bit like several different crossovers in one. And he leaves a lot of room to explore the universes, comparing and contrasting the ways they differ in terms of, say, geography, or the way they treat their heroes or even the way their various physics work.

The story opens with Krona, a cosmic villain introduced in Green Lantern in the 1960s, whose deal was that he was seeking to unlock the secrets of creation. Here, his inquests result in the destruction of universes. After the aforementioned destruction of two alternate universes, he arrives in the Marvel Universe and meets the Grandmaster, a Marvel Universe mainstay that was first introduced in an Avengers comic from the late '60s. 

The Grandmaster negotiates with Krona, and is in possession of some pretty valuable information, as he does actually know a being who witnessed the/a universe-creating Big Bang (that would be Galactus, of course). As is his wont, The Grandmaster proposes to Krona that the two of them play a game; if Krona wins, he will give him Galactus, while if Grandmaster wins, he won't. The specific rules of the game will be explained to our heroes a bit later in the story.

Meanwhile, Busiek and Perez introduce the then-current title teams, each in a spectacular two-page spread as they face a major threat from the opposite universe, followed by a several-page sequence where they triumph, introducing readers to each team's members, powers and dynamic in the process. 

The JLA comes first, and they are in a pitched battle against the giant Terminus (Never heard of 'em; not in 2003, and not 22 years later, either. This is the relatively rare comic that could actually use an annotated edition).

The League is that which existed when Mark Waid took over JLA after Grant Morrison's departure and excised the bigger roster Morrison had gradually built up to deal with his climactic "World War III" arc. That means we're looking at the Big Seven that founded this iteration of the team, plus Plastic Man (And if you need an even more specific marker of where we are in League history, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, who Perez does a great job of drawing much younger than the other heroes, is wearing his unfortunate, Jim Lee-designed costume...although Perez will draw him in his original costume in one panel at the book's climax). 

And in the Marvel Universe, the Avengers are dealing with Starro, referred to as "The Star Conqueror." If the splash page is accurate, this team, which Busiek was actually writing for Marvel around that time, consisted of Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, Quicksilver, Warbird, She-Hulk, Yellowjacket, Thor, The Vision, Triathlon, The Wasp, Captain America and The Scarlet Witch. (I say seemingly because this book, when I originally read it in 2003, was my very first exposure to The Avengers, unless you count Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's version that existed in The Ultimates. I wouldn't buy my first Avengers comic until a few years later, when Brian Michael Bendis launched New Avengers).

As both teams begin to investigate the extradimensional visitors—with Flash Wally West using his powers to enter the Marvel Universe, where he discovers mutants, that world's hatred of mutants, and the fact that the Speed Force doesn't seem to exist there—each team gets a cosmic visitor, there to explain the basic parameters of the Krona/Grandmaster game to them.

The Grandmaster himself visits the JLA Watchtower, telling the League they must race against a team from the other world to assemble 12 items of great power from across the worlds, including the likes of The Spear of Destiny, The Cosmic Cube, Green Lantern's power battery, The Infinity Gems, The Orb of Ra, the Ultimate Nullifier, and so on. Joined by The Atom, who is there to replace The Flash, who is powerless there, they visit the Marvel Universe. After some exploration and giant monster fighting, they are repelled by The Avengers (who are joined by Hawkeye, who will play a pretty prominent role throughout the series).

The Avengers are then visited by Metron of the New Gods, who gives them a similar spiel, about a team of others and a dozen power objects, and gifts Iron Man with a Mother Box, capable of opening Boom Tubes to the DC Universe, which seven of the Avengers take there.

That's pretty much the first issue, which ends with the Avengers being confronted by the JLA, and Thor throwing his hammer at Superman.

The second issue thus opens with what one might expect as the first stage of a typical superhero crossover ritual: The fight. It's a good one, far better than any of the many fights in DC Versus Marvel, including a great splash in which the 15 heroes do battle with one another, before we get various passages of break out fights, like Flash vs. Hawkeye ("They're not so tough, Thor," Hawkeye says, "They're just Squadron Supreme Lite") and Captain America versus Batman (After an exploratory page or so of strikes and counterstrikes to test one another, the pair agree they are just pawns in a larger game, and leave the battle to work on the case together).

Much of the rest of the second issue/chapter are devoted to the teams, their rosters expanded and fortified by reserve members, playing the game. And so the JLA and Avengers break into smaller teams to pursue the items in various locales throughout the two universes, giving us scenes like Hawkman, Black Canary and Blue Beetle vs. Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver in The Flash Museum and Wonder Woman and Aquaman vs. Hercules and She-Hulk in Asgard.

This all culminates in a huge 30 hero battle in the Savage Land for the final item, the Cosmic Cube. There we get such conflicts as a Hawkeye vs. Green Arrow archer off and a fairly long Superman vs. Thor battle, which Superman eventually wins ("Sorry to...disappoint..." Superman struggles to say, holding off Mjolnir with his left hand, before delivering a knockout punch with his right, "But in...my world, it looks like...the dials... ...go up to eleven!").

When Quicksilver finally secures the cube, the game seems to end in a tie...until Captain America knocks the cube from the speedster's hands, and into those of his new ally Batman, the final score being 7-5 in the Justice League's favor. Thus Krona, who had chosen the Avengers as his champions, has lost. The Marvel Universe is saved! 

Or is it? 

Krona, being a sore loser, attacks The Grandmaster, pulls the name of Galactus from his mind, and then summons the giant planet-eater, who he then attacks. The heroes get involved, and the seemingly dying Grandmaster uses the various gathered objects of power to...do something. 

What exactly will remain mysterious for much of the third issue/chapter, which is devoted to an exploration of a new, weird, but rather neat status quo. Here, it seems that the Justice League of America and The Avengers are long-time allies, getting together for annual, cross-dimensional get-togethers in the same manner that the JLoA and the JSoA used to (Iron Man and Green Lantern Hal Jordan seem to have a friendly argument over which world is Earth-One and which is Earth-Two).

This leads to long-ish sequence that opens with what I am assuming are the Bronze Age versions of the team, with the Satellite Era Justice League meeting with an Avengers team that includes Beast, and then we get a series of cameo-filled get-togethers between various incarnations of the two teams, giving us such moments as Snapper Car and Rick Jones talking barbecuing with Jarvis, Moondragon psychically fending off Guy Gardner's would-be sexual harassment and a Wonder Woman and Wonder Man arm-wrestling match.

Throughout the sequence, both Captain America and Superman, both of whom have been acting off throughout the series, sense something is wrong with what they're experiencing, and eventually things break down, the scene shifting to snow-covered ruins of a pair of cities, New York and Metropolis, with various heroes trying to make sense of the apocalyptic cityscapes, where civilians seem to randomly shift between worlds and mind-controlled villains prowl.

Apparently, the two Earths have been smooshed together, but they are too different to be stable and are thus tearing themselves apart. Teams of Avengers and Leaguers eventually convene, and their members seem mostly composed of past versions of the characters, based on their costumes, like those worn by The Wasp, Scarlet Witch and Hank Pym, who is here a Giant Man, rather than Yellowjacket. 

Oh, and The Flash is now Barry Allen, while the Green Lantern is now Hal Jordan. 

After some intervention from The Phantom Stranger, who shows these 13 characters their futures, which involves a lot of bad for some of them, like Hal going mad and becoming Parallax and Scarlet Witch and Vision losing their children, the heroes nevertheless decide to work together to take on Krona and save their worlds and futures,. This will involve building a special ship and invading the villain's extra-dimensional base, which is built of the corpse of Galactus.

There they encounter various villains in Krona's thrall, who at first are just assorted goons from the two universes (AIM, Kobra, Moleoids, two different versions of Parademons, etc.), but will eventually include dozens of villains who have fought either team throughout their history.

After a weird bolt of black and red lightning splits a panel and Aquaman and Scarlet Witch disappear to be replaced by Quicksilver and Green Arrow (and Hank Pym switches from a Giant Man costume to a Yellowjacket one), Pym theorizes that "chronal instability" is responsible, and this will be the vehicle through which we get all of the Leaguers and Avengers (and, in some cases, many of their various costumes and designs over the decades) to show up in a huge, sprawling fight scene that sees the various heroes fight their way through a gauntlet of villains to get to Krona. 

And so we get panels featuring The Falcon in a sky full of DC's winged heroes (Zauriel, Black Condor and various Hawkpeople), of "Batroc, Ze Leapair!" challenging Batman, of Prometheus threatening Captain America, Aquaman vs. Attuma, Superman wielding Cap's shield and Thor's hammer, and an incredibly fun game of cameo-spotting.

(On my first, original read-through of the single-issues published in 2003 and then again during my re-read of a trade collection a few weeks ago, I was trying to figure out if Busiek and Perez actually managed to get everybody in, which meant lingering on each page, scanning panels for the likes of lesser Leaguers like The Yazz, L-Ron-in-Trigon's body, Justice League Antartica and Tomorrow Woman, that last of whom was only on the team for the space of a single issue, JLA #5...although she was later also featured in 1998's JLA: Tomorrow Woman one-shot. They are, indeed, all there. Hell, I saw that Moon Maiden is on the cover of issue #3, and her single appearance was in 2000's JLA 80-Page Giant #3, an excellent novel-length story in which she was a member of the League from a forgotten timeline.  I didn't have the knowledge to do the same with The Avengers, obviously. When I posted about this after my re-read on Bluesky, Busiek himself responded to confirm that they did indeed get everyone in, working from official lists provided by DC and Marvel, and they did so because Perez wanted to draw them all.)

Our heroes are, obviously, successful in the end, the two universes  are saved and Krona is defeated...but in such a particular way that he will get what he wants, to see the birth of a universe. Eventually. 

While I had originally bought and read all of these issues, for the purposes of rereading it and writing about it as part of the series on DC/Marvel crossovers I ended up doing on Every Day Is Like Wednesday, I turned to a copy of the trade collection that I was able to get from the library system I work at. 

I felt lucky to find a copy, and to find one in such good shape, considering that it was published in 2008 (There was a tear on one-page, but that was the only injury to the 17-year-old book).

And that was the last time the book was published, other than, of course, a special, limited-run edition that the Hero Initiative published in 2022 to help fundraise for the ailing Perez. 

It seems fairly insane that this particular book has not been in print since it was originally released, especially now that the Avengers brand is so much more valuable than it was then, and so much better and widely known than it was in those pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe days. 

One imagines the publishers could sell a lot of copies of it, were it to be reprinted today. With the relatively recent release of the two omnibus collections collecting the other 19 DC/Marvel crossovers, one hopes a new JLA/Avengers collection will be along before too long. 

Like I said, I have the original issues, but I'd happily buy a new collection. It would be worth it just to have the covers unencumbered by the logos and text, as are presented in the back of this collection. Not only is that of issue #3 worth spending long minutes studying, but issue #2, depicting almost 40 different heroes all actively engaged in battle with one another, is something of a masterpiece of superhero combat. 

Editors from DC and Marvel have quite recently teased a future collaboration, and, honestly, I don't envy whoever the creators who get that particular assignment might be. One imagines their work will be much smaller in scale than JLA/Avengers was (how could it not be?), but, even still, with this the last of the crossovers, it's also the one any future crossover will have to try and top and, honestly, I don't see how anyone can hope to top this comic.  

On Justice League: Their Greatest Triumphs

This bargain-priced 170-page, $9.99 trade paperback seems to have been assembled specifically to give retailers something to point anyone interested in DC's premiere super-team because of next month's movie towards.

As a long-time fan of the Justice League, I was pretty curious about its contents, as "greatest hits" collections are almost never actually that. Given that their limited page-count, they are inevitably limited to single-issue stories, and the editors generally stick to in-continuity, relevant stories rather than looking to something from, say, a comic based on a cartoon or in an alternate universe (So I wouldn't expect anything from Justice League Adventures or Justice League Unlimited, or from Adventures in The DC Universe or the Paul Dini/Alex Ross one-shot JLA: Liberty & Justice).

Of course, the sub-title here doesn't necessarily promise the greatest or best stories, but the greatest "triumphs," whatever exactly that might mean (Given that they are limited to one-issue stories, though, it's not like they can actually include their greatest triumphs, as those generally come at the end of stories of some scope and size. I guess they could use the final issues of story arcs like "Rock of Ages"...?).

These sorts of books also generally reveal more about where the publisher's collective head is regarding a franchise: What they consider the best or most important stories, which iterations of the League are the most important or relevant ones, which characters and creators they find important or relevant to the line at the moment. I knew without even cracking it I was probably going to disagree with many of the inclusions.

Looking solely at the table of contents, there are only three distinct teams or "eras" represented: Grant Morrison's "Big Seven Plus" roster (although nothing actually written by Morrison is included), Brad Meltzer's short-lived, one-arc team and Geoff Johns' post-Flashpoint team. To the extent that any earlier iteration of the team exist, it is only in flashback form in the Meltzer-written issue.

The average age of the stories is nine-years-old, with a Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong story from 1999 being the oldest, and a Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques and Scott Hanna story from 2016 being the most recent. Geoff Johns scripted three of the seven issues, with the four other writers each getting an issue a piece of the remaining ones. Three of the stories are set before Flashpoint, the other four in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe.

What accounts for the selection? The heavy representation of Johns feels slightly icky given his current prominence in the publisher's leadership--President & Chief Creative Officer--so it feels a little like flattering the boss. On the other hand, from what we know of the upcoming movie, it seems to be somewhat inspired by Johns' first Justice League story (which was also the basis of the direct-to-DVD animated film, Justice League: War), and the film's line-up reflects the post-Flashpoint, Geoff Johns inclusion of Cyborg on the team (aside from a weird, seemingly aborted line-up initiated by James Robinson, Cyborg was never on the team until Johns' relaunch).

It's possible the specific stories are included to offer suggestions of villains in the movie, but that actually seems a little unlikely, as in addition to a Parademon or two, these include The White Martians, The Construct, Ocean Master, a couple of cameos by Crime Syndicate of America and whatever the hell was going on in Bryan Hitch's first "Rebirth" Justice League arc.

Here are the comics included within...

Justice League #1
By Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair

This is the 2011 first issue of the previous Justice League series, the official launch of The New 52. Despite having the New 52 version of a Big Seven on the cover--all of whom are appearing in the film, save Green Lantern Hal Jordan--the actual issue just features Batman, Jordan and, on the last page, Superman. A pre-Cyborg Victor Stone makes an appearance (in his origin for the League, Johns tied Cyborg's origin to the invasion of Apokolips and the formation of the team), as does a Parademon or two.

Given the collection's sub-title, it seems like a random choice, with the final issue of the arc seemingly a better one (That at least features the whole roster, as well as Darkseid). Johns and Lee, another DC Comics executive, only collaborated on two story arcs, neither of which is very good, and neither of which was broken into strong individual chapters in such a way that would make the inclusion of any single issue read smoothly all on its own.

So on the one hand, while I totally get why a chapter of this arc is in here--it's Johns and Lee, it's apparently a pretty strong inspiration for the film--it also doesn't make much sense at all to include it here.

If a reader wants to find out what happens next, this story is collected as Justice League Vol. 1: Origin.

JLA #33
By Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo, Walden Wong and John Kalisz

This one actually kind of baffles me. Waid did have a decently well-written run on JLA, picking up the baton from Grant Morrison at the conclusion of Morrison's World War III arc. Waid's run kicked off with a pretty great, over-sized original graphic novel with Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary (JLA: Heaven's Ladder), and  then ran through issues #43-60 of the ongoing monthly title. Unfortunately, the art was a mess, as he was officially teamed with Hitch, who was unable to ever complete an arc (In that sense, the Waid/Hitch run peaked before it even began, as Heaven's Ladder was the only complete story Hitch managed, start to finish).

Waid was writing JLA stories before his run began though. In addition to scripting the prequel miniseries A Midsummer's Nightmare and then JLA: Year One, he wrote two great, two-issue fill-in arcs during Morrison's run, and returned again for two-issue fill-in stint in 1999, featuring two done-in-one-ish stories that kinda sorta dealt with the "No Man's Land" mega-story in the Batman titles. This was the last Waid-scripted fill-in, and it was penciled by then frequent JLA fill-in artist, Mark Pajarillo.

A follow-up to Morrison's first arc, which had the League re-forming to stave off a White Martian invasion, this issue has Batman assigning then-Leaguers Orion, Big Barda, Steel, Plastic Man and Green Lantern Kyle Rayner to investigate Bruce Wayne (actually a White Martian assuming Wayne's identity), while Superman and Wonder Woman investigate The (or is it "a"...?) Flash, a new version with a new costume who was refusing to reveal his true identity to just about everyone.

This was a fun story in several ways, including Pajarillo's drawings of Orion fighting with the tuxedo he goes undercover in, and one of Plas' skeeviest disguises as an inanimate object, plus an overall weird grouping of heroes interacting in the ways that Morrison's ongoing narrative rarely allowed for. It's still a weird choice for the book, though. Not only do few of these heroes seem to appear in the film, but it ties in to a couple of pretty specific and temporary plot points from other comics.

If DC wanted to choose a Waid-written issue, JLA #50 might have been a good one, as it was a stock-taking issue that transitioned between the arc that had just ended and the one that was beginning (and featured bearded Aquaman; he is clean shaven and short-haired in all of these issues), and aside from a compelling cliffhanger, it had some pretty classic Justice League-ing.

The best done-in-one, fill-in from during Morrison's run, however, was probably JLA #27, by Mark Millar, Pajarillo and Wong.

Essentially an Atom story, it features classic Justice League villain Amazo and the entire Justice League reserves (i.e. everyone that was a Leaguer and was still alive at the time) showing up before it's all over. It's a very clever story, too, harkening back to classic, Silver Age League comics. It feels weird suggesting anyone read a Millar comic in 2017, but this was back in the days when Millar seemed to really want to be a comic book writer, before he realized he could used comics as a stepping stone to Hollywood films, and started turning his Elseworlds pitches into analogue comics to entice filmmakers into adapting them.

Morrison had a lot of great short stories, but these were generally two issues long, rather than a single issue long. The only done-in-one of his I can think of is JLA #5, which was full of guest-stars and had some good Martian Manhunter moments but, for the most part, was a Superman and Tomorrow Woman story. Unfortuantely, Superman was going through his electric phase at that point, so I wonder if it would just confuse and repel readers of this particular trade collection...?

At any rate, I'd recommend one read the entirety of the Morrison run and, once that's finished, check out the Waid run as well...or, at the very least, Heaven's Ladder.

Justice League of America #1 #0
By Brad Meltzer, Eric Wight, Ed Benes, Alex Sinclair, and a whole bunch of artists

Huh. That's weird. The table of contents refers to this as Justice League of America #1, the first chapter of Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes and company's "The Tornado's Path" story arc, but it's actually JLoA #0. This was the start of prose novelist-turned-terrible-comics writer Brad Meltzer's run on the newly relaunched JLoA in 2006. Following the events of Infinite Crisis, this over-sized issue was mainly a vehicle for an exploration of Justice League history, as revised on the fly by Meltzer, although because it was coming off of a cosmic, continuity rejiggering, this time there was at least an in-universe explanation for the changes (Those in his Identity Crisis, on the other hand, were just mistakes).

Among those changes was to reinstate Wonder Woman as an original member of the Justice League of America--following Crisis On Infinite Earths, Black Canary II was a founding member in Wondy's stead, as Wonder Woman was being introduced into the DCU for the first time in the then-new continuity--and this issue was basically Meltzer having the "Trinity" of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman getting together to discuss who should be on the new Justice League of America line-up, flashing back to various meetings between the three at various points in DC history as it existed at that point and, oddly, a few glimpses into future meetings of the three.

It is mainly noteworthy for all the great artists involved. Ed Benes, who would be Meltzer's main pencil artist for the remainder of the writer's short, 12-issue run, drew many of the modern day scenes, and Eric Wight drew many of the earliest past scenes, with an all-star roster drawing everything in between. Among the artists were those who had worked on previous runs of Justice League comics before, including Kevin Maguire, Dan Jurgens, Howard Porter and George Perez.

In that respect, it is probably a good issue to include in here. If you want to find out what happens following this story, and I wouldn't recommend it, you can check out Justice League of America Vol. 1: The Tornado's Path. In retrospect, the most interesting thing Meltzer brought to the franchise was including new blood in the form of Black Lightning, Hawkgirl and Arsenal-turned-Red Arrow Roy Harper, but the line-up Meltzer spent 12 issues gradually assembling would begin being dismantled almost immediately.

This volume of the League book ultimately lasted five years and 60-issues, and featured work from talented writers like the late, great Dwayne McDuffie and James Robinson, but it was a complete mess, and perhaps the nadir of League history. (Seriously; I'll reread the Detroit Era and Extreme Justice before looking at these comics again.)

Justice League #16
By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Rod Reis

This is a particularly perplexing inclusion, as it is the third chapter of the six-part Justice League/Aquaman crossover "Throne of Atlantis," and, as such, doesn't really stand on its own at all. The basic story is that Aquaman's evil brother Orm, AKA "Oceanmaster," is leading the armies of Atlantis against the United States and the Justice League, and Aquaman is caught in the middle. In this particular chapter, he fights Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, while Cyborg is trying to sort everything else out elsewhere.

"Throne" was a pretty decent story, maybe the best of Johns' run, and Reis' pencil art was pretty great, but as just a single chapter, this is kind of a pointless read as anything other than perhaps an enticement to buy the trade it is collected in (Actually, this story appears in two different trades, both of which reprint the entire thing, which I imagine must have been awfully fucking frustrating for anyone following both of the Johns-written series in trade; Justice League Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis and Aquaman Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis). It does feature characters that appear in the film, so I guess there is that.

Justice League #29
By Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy and Rod Reis

This is the final inclusion from Johns' Justice League, a 2015 issue tie-in to that year's Forever Evil event series, which was also written by Johns. It has a rather striking cover, featuring the Metal Men appearing in the shapes of the Justice Leaguers, but little else to recommend it. It is basically a Cyborg solo story, and sees Vic recruiting Doc Magnus and The Metal Men to help him take on The Grid, the evil version of Cyborg that was colluding with the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3.

If you read this and find yourself dying to know what happens next (and I can't imagine you will), then it is included in context in Justice League Vol. 5: Forever Heroes, and you'll probably also want to check out the poorly-drawn Forever Evil collection.

JLA #107
By Kurt Busiek, Ron Garney, Dan Green and David Baron

So, if you had asked me at the time who should follow Mark Waid on JLA, I would have told you that Kurt Busiek would have been the ideal choice. Instead, DC chose Joe Kelly, a writer who wouldn't have even been on my radar at the time, but who nevertheless turned out a remarkably strong 30-issue run on JLA, which then continued into his Justice League Elite book and then returned for a single issue of JLA before reaching its conclusion. That was probably the last high-quality run on a League book until...well, I don't think anyone's matched it since, actually.

For whatever reason, DC de-emphasized the importance of JLA around 2004, perhaps because they were focused on Identity Crisis and the ramp-up to Infinite Crisis. The result was about two years in which the book became an anthology series, with different arcs by different creators, few of which had anything to do with one another, let alone with the DC Universe at large: Denny O'Neil and Tan Eng Huat did a forgettable two-parter; John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Jerry Ordway did a barely readable seven-part storyline that included a soft reboot of the Doom Patrol; Chuck Austen and Ron Garney did a series of solo stories which kind of defeated the purpose of the book (all of these character already had at least one solo book at the time, after all, with the exception of Martian Manhunter) and then there was "Syndicate Rules," of which this is the first chapter.

If anyone was still paying attention to JLA, they would have been rewarded with this eight-part story written by Busiek (finally!) and penciled by Garney, featuring a rematch with the Crime Syndicate, the first since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely reintroduced them in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. Entitled "Maintenance Day," it featured what was left of the Big Seven version of the League, which now included Green Lantern Jon Stewart in for Kyle Rayner and The Atom apparently out of his self-enforced semi-retirement.

While the storyline would eventually grow pretty epic in scope, this first issue is kind of a low-key start, a day-in-the-life type of story in which the impatient Flash Wally West and Martian Manhunter perform a series of tasks needed to keep the Justice League's lunar Watchtower in working order. This includes a conflict with The Construct.

It was a strong enough story arc that it became all the more depressing that the JLA/Avengers writer never had a proper run on JLA, but he would kinda sorta get his chance a few years later with the weekly Trinity series. To read all of "Syndicate Rules," you can try to track down the out-of-print JLA: Syndicate Rules trade or JLA Vol. 9, which includes it along with Geoff Johns and Allen Heinberg's Identity Crisis tie-in, "Crisis of Conscience."

Justice League: Rebirth #1
By Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Scott Hanna and Alex Sinclair

No, I don't know why these books aren't presented in anything approaching chronological order, but instead keep jumping back and forth.

After his poor showing as the pencil artist during Mark Waid's run on JLA, and a rather poor showing as a writer/artist on his own book entitled Justice League of America (which he hadn't yet finished when this series launched), Bryan Hitch got another crack at the League with the relaunched, "Rebirth" version of the title. The line-up was essentially the same as it was when Johns and Lee relaunched the rebooted League in 2011, only instead of one Green Lantern in Hal Jordan, they now had two Green Lanterns in new, Johns-created characters Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz. Oh, and instead of New 52 Superman, they now had pre-Flashpoint, post-Convergence Superman. What his deal was would eventually all get ironed out in the Superman books, but, at this point, much of the character's interactions with his teammates were colored in distrust, as they didn't know who exactly he was or understand what the fuck was going on with Superman continuity (Join the club, Justice League!).

As with all of Hitch's League writing to date, I read this--three times now!--and couldn't really tell you what happened in it, or why. It's all apocalyptic, wide-screen, disaster picture stuff, but it is also strangely boring, lifeless and unsubstantial. If you read the chapter and find yourself intrigued, however, you can see how it all plays out in the pages of Justice League Vol. 1: The Extinction Machines.

With her own Astro City analog, Orca, The Whale Woman has finally arrived

I'm not sure how much writer Kurt Busiek, artist Brent Anderson and character designer and cover artist Alex Ross would agree with me, given how reductionist it likely sounds, but the trio's on-again, off-again superhero series Astro City is more-or-less powered by its inspiration from other, older superhero comics, particularly those of DC and Marvel Comics.

As Busiek and Ross did with their seminal Marvel series, the stories quite often focus on superhero characters from the civilian sidelines, teasing out problems and solutions to real-world considerations of genre elements, and comments on aspects of comic book superheroes—and heroic fiction in general. It does so, in large part, by first building a world that is much like the one that likely existed in the creators' imaginations when they were children and young men, a sort of amalgated universe where DC, Marvel, Charlton and Hollywood heroes all share the same space.

Since they don't own the rights to any of these characters, however, they fill Astro City with analogs, some much more direct than others: The Samaritan is Superman, The Confessor and Altar Boy are Batman and Robin, The Gentleman is Captain Marvel, The First Family is The Fantastic Four and so on (Often with key, imaginative differences, sure, but, for the point of this post, I just want to focus on the fact that Astro City is populated with analog versions of some the most popular superhero characters of all time).

The latest iteration of Astro City is being published under DC's Vertigo imprint, and its latest collection was Astro City: Winged Victory, starring the Wonder Woman analog named in the sub-title. It also features a new villain in a minor role: Maneater!

She is one of several female supervillains, including Warmaiden and Jagged Jill, who tell the media that Winged Victory paid them to fight her and take dives, which is all part of a very elaborate, collection-long conspiracy to discredit and destroy Winged Victory.

In the back of the book, we're shown a sketch of Maneater:

And we also get to see some of the design notes:

Maneater is a black woman with a shark-like fin, gray shark-type skin and pointy teeth; she wears something that looks like a surfer's wetsuit, patterned like an orca.

Like an orca, huh...? Aha! Now I know why Maneater looked so familiar!

She looks so much like Orca, The Whale Woman, a minor (very minor) Batman villain introduced by Larry Hama and Scott McDaniel in 2000's Batman #579-#581, during a particularly fruitful and well-organized period for the Batman line of books (At the time, each of the several Batman books had a very distinct tone and style, and dealt with a highlighted, isolated aspect of the character: Hama and McDaniels' Batman book dealt with Batman as superhero).

If you missed that story arc, or her subsequent cameos, here's the deal with Orca: Dr. Grace Balin (Balin! Like baleen! Get it?!) was a marine biologist and social activist whose spine was paralyzed in an accident that cost her the use of her legs. Just as Dr. Kirk Langstrom looked to bats in his development a serum to combat deafness and Dr. Kurt Connors looked to lizards in his development of a serum to help people re-grow lost limbs, Balin develops a serum that can restore her spine, but with the expected side effect of turning her into a half-human, half-animal monster.

Her orca-like strength and endurance make her more than a match for Batman in a fair fight, on land or especially in water, but by the third act, and with the help of a custom-made, action figure-ready SCUBA suit (SCUBA, of course, standing for Self-Contained Underwater Batman Apparatus), he is able to save the day.

And that's pretty much the end of Orca, save for a brief appearance in Last Laugh and a briefer still one getting killed off in "One Year Later" Batman/Detective Comics story arc "Face The Face."

I always kinda liked the character, for a couple of reasons. First, she did not have the typical build and figure of, let's see, every single female supervillain ever. Second, like Killer Croc and Man-Bat (and sometimes Solomon Grundy or Clayface), she fit into the "big, tough, monster" category of Batman villain, of the sort that could give a more powerful superhero someone to fight when they team up with Batman. Third, I kinda like underwater villains, especially in the DC Universe, as poor Aquaman, a long-time favorite character of mine, never seemed to have enough cool villains of his own to fight. Fourth, she was a minor, slightly silly, oft-ridiculed Batman villain, of the sort Batman history is lousy with, and whom attain a sort of underdog status I always enjoy rooting for. Fifth, I just like typing the phrase "Orca, The Whale Woman."

Which, oddly enough, when I Google, I only find used on comics blogs making fun of Orca, like this 20008 one with the inspired title from Mr. Chris Sims (from which I stole one of those scans), or this older-still post on The Absorbascon.

Well, say what you will about Orca, and you will say more about Orca, at the very least, she now has an Astro City analog character based on her, and that's something you can't say about every Batman villain.

Incidentally, unless I missed some appearances—I don't remember her appearing as a Black Lantern during Blackest Night, which, if true, is kinda weird, as they were pretty desperate for dead Batman villains to put into the tie-ins—then Orca analog Maneater has already had one-third as many appearances as her inspiration.

Assuming she was inspired by Orca, and it wasn't just a pure coincidence that Busiek and company produced a villain that looked so much like one who appeared in like five comics. As an Orca advocate, I'm going to continue assuming that Maneater was created in knowing, loving tribute to Orca.

Wednesday Comics vs. New 52: Green Lantern

Cocky, life-of-the-party test pilot Hal Jordan faces a former rival for the U.S. space program-turned-alien monster, and learns his friend's possession is actually the first part of an alien invasion of Earth—good thing Jordan's also a super-powered space cop charged with protecting the planet! By Kurt Busiek and Joe Quinones.

Demoted, renegade Green Lantern Hal Jordan is recruited by his replacement (and former archenemy) Sinestro to fight by his side and unravel a great threat to the universe that their mutual friend foresaw, by Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke and seemingly every freelance inker whose contact info DC has.

Please stop using this expression, Kurt Busiek

Dave Gibbons' cover for 2006's Action Comics #843, written by Kurt Busiek


Detail from Trinity #47, which was written by Busiek and drawn by Mark Bagley and Art Thibert

This panel from Trinity #38 made me laugh:

The Greatest Five Panels in Kurt Busiek's Career

I've been writing a lot of pretty nice things about Kurt Busiek lately. Not only is he currently writing Superman, but thanks to the M.I.A. Action Comics creative team, he's pretty much writing that title too. The result? The Super-books are currently better-written then they've been in...well, at least since I've been reading comic books.

Busiek's comics career is long and storied, and he's done a lot of great comics (and, yeah, a couple of not-so-great ones too). Recently he attempted to do the impossible and successfully relaunch Aquaman without the book's title character, with some pretty mixed results (which is a win, considering the doomed nature of such an endeavor). And, before that, he made Conan totally awesome again.

His signature work, Astro City deserves all the accolades it's racked up over the years, and belongs on the bookshelves of anyone who loves superheroes.

Teamed with George Perez, he penned the superlative JLA/Avengers and had a stellar run on The Avengers (probably my favorite Avengers run, for what that's worth).

His Marvels collaboration with Alex Ross is one of the most essential Marvel Universe comics ever published, and his Superman: Secret Identity is mandatory reading for any and all DC super-fans.

Untold Tales of Spider-Man? Shockrockets? Arrowsmith? Thunderbolts? Great stuff.

With that much good stuff on his resume, it might seem like it would be difficult to select a single work and confidently hold it above all the others and say, "This, this is the single greatest acheivement of Kurt Busiek! This is his masterwork! This is the very best work of a very good writer!"

It might seem like it would be difficult to do that, but it's really not. That's because one of Busiek's works is so far superior to all of his others that it's on a whole other plane. Marvels and Astro City wish they were a tenth of the comic book that this series was.

And what book is this that represents the zenith of a modern master of super-scripts?




Yes, 2001's The Defenders, which Busiek co-wrote with penciler Erik Larsen. The greatest comic book ever published by human beings, Busiek and Larsen's Defenders immediately surpassed the works of all of Marvel's classic creative teams, even the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby and Lee/Ditko teams, and would ascend to a level of quality that no Marvel book since has been able to touch. The very best issues of New X-Men or Garth Ennis' Punisher comics or Ultimate Spider-Man were almost as good as the lesser issues of The Defenders (the ones featuring guest-artists instead of Larsen and his inker Klaus Janson), but they couldn't possibly compare to even the mediocre issues of Defenders.

Larsen's brilliant badness featured a primitive, primal energy that only Kirby could have hoped to achieve, only with a rough terrible-ness that Kirby couldn't have achieved no matter how fast he drew or how many corners he cut. Larsen's pencil art was a mixture of awful superhero art and great cartooning, creating a style completely unknown to Marvel readers.

Larsen and Busiek were able to find an ingenious way to reunite the original anti-team into a cohesive unit that could team up every single month, while keeping their reluctance to do so completely intact, even slowly ratcheting that reluctance up issue by issue. They also managed to distill the characters into their most iconic, mythic essences.

The Hulk was a big, stupid baby who talked like a caveman and was always breaking things. Namor was a pompous ass who hated everyone. Dr. Strange was a remote, distant, pompous ass. Silver Surfer was a remote, distant, pompous ass...on a surfboard. The other Defenders were a bunch of self-conscious losers who were just glad to be in the same comic book as Hulk and Namor.

Together they faced Red Raven and the Bi-Beast, an alliance of all of Marvel's stupidest underwater villains, the fearsome Orrgo and MODOK and his team of Headmen, and remember, this was back before the Internet told you how cool MODOK was.

The series only lasted 12 issues, ending in a completely silent "'Nuff Said" special issue that ranks up their with "The Anatomy Lesson" as one of the best and most influential single issue comics stories in history. But that was simply because it was caviar for the masses. It would take fans a few years to realize that what they had failed to buy in droves was actually the greatest thing they could ever have the chance to read in their entire lives.

But I can narrow the zenith of Busiek's writing career down even further than a single series. We can narrow it down to a single issue of this series, Defenders #2, co-written by Larsen and illustrated by Larsen and Janson. And from there we can narrow it down even further, to a single scene.

Here then, are the greatest five panels in Kurt Busiek's career:








Genius!