Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #156

Justice League of America #156 (1978); "The Fiend With Five Faces," by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin

Dateline: Honolulu, Hawaii

An exhasted, weakened Aquaman stumbles out of the ocean and heads for downtown Honolulu. He hails a cab, and takes it to The Bristol Building.



Hey, have you ever wondered what movie star Aquaman looks like?


Wow.

We never learn why the cabbie continues to assume the soaking wet guy wearing Aquman's costume and talking about teleporters and the Justice League is Steve McQueen, nor do we learn why Aquaman volunteered the location of a secret teleporter tube to this total stranger, or why the Justice League didn't put one of them in Atlantis or the ol' Aquacave. No time for any of that, because there's an emergency brewing.

Once on the satellite headquarters of the JLoA, Aquaman asks Ralph Dibny to summon the other Leaguers. The call goes out, finding many of the other heroes right in the middle of somethin.

Black Canary, for example, is in Star City, battling The Boxer Bandits…



…and her mortal enemy, math:



Ray "The Atom" Palmer, meanwhile, is hanging out in a park with his finacee, Jean Loring, with quite a lot on his mind:


Uh, yes. If you’re going to marry someone, you should probably let them know pretty much everything about you. Or, at the very least, the broad strokes. Like whether you have any superpowers, for example, or have a costumed alter ego and have to attend meetings in orbiting space satellites once a week.

The only Leaguers who are unaccounted for are Flash and Green Lantern, who are busy investigating some weird plant growth, and find an even weirder culprit behind it—


Yikes! Dude, if you’re going to wear a leaf loincloth to cover yourself, you might want to avoid standing in the treetops and talking to people who are below you like that.

He gets the drop on them both using his crazy plant powers, capturing them both in vines.

Meanwhile, the Joker tries to steal a painting, seeking to distract the guards with clowns and Hostess Fruit Pies, but he apparently took his sweet time stealing the painting, as they had time to enjoy the real fruit filling and the light, tender crust and catch up to him.



Now, couple things here. First, this story seems to deviate from the pattern of all other scenes of DC supervillains being undone by Hostess Fruit Pies. See, usually the pies distract the villains from their perfidy with their real fruit filling and light, tender crust. But here, the Joker uses the pies on the crowds and police to distract them while he commits a crime, right? But the pies obviously don't really work, because the cops still catch him. Did he just take his sweet time stealing the painting? Did he overestimate how long it would take the cops to eat Hostess Fruit Pies and continue with their patrol of the museum? Or was it all part of his plan, all along? Were those pies all fille not with real fruit filling, but deadly Joker venom? I assume we'll return to the subplot later.

The other thing worth noting is that the last panel in this scene contradicts clearly established continuity regarding the Joker's feelings about Hostess Fruit Pies. In JLoA #147 he flatly turned down an offer of delicious Hostess Fruit Pies, thus revealing himself to be insane and thus, in all likelihood, the Joker. So which is it DC—does the Joker like delicious Hostess Fruit Pies or does he not like delicious Hostess Fruit Pies?

Anyway, back to the Justice League. Once assembled around the table, Aquaman relates his tale. It seems he was swimming along, minding his own business, when a volcanic island with a crazy living statue atop of it straight up rose out of the sea


The statue focused its ten pairs of eyes on him and unleashed a volley of eye beams. There was a flash of light and a thunderous "Zzzzzarom!" and then he lost consciousness. He lay on the ocean floor for two weeks, tended to by his sea subjects, who were responding to subconscious commands to keep him alive.

I don’t know if that’s cute or gross. Maybe a little of both.

When he awoke, he swam straight to the nearest teleporter tube, conveniently placed on top of a very tall building on land, and went to alert the League of the powerful five-faced fiend he had encountered.

Suddenly NATO calls and is all like, “Justice League! Halp! Some of our guys are fighting some Warsaw Pact guys, and we’re using ancient weapons and they’re using super-futuristic spaceships and lasers! You’ve gotta help us sort out this temporal crisis, or at least switch it so our guys have the good stuff!”

Recognizing some kind of time anamoly and/or magic hoodoo, the League responds to these multiple threats by doing what it does best—splitting into smaller teams!

This shit is so serious that The Phantom Stranger, who was then a member of the team whenever he felt like it, finally decided to deign the other Leaguers with his presence.


He joined Batman, Red Tornado and The Atom to investigate the island that Aquaman told them about. On the way, Phantom Stranger shows off his super wing-walking powers.

Once they arrive, Batman warns Red Tornado to stick with the others,


but the android is intent on setting destiny up for a punchline: “No way could a column ever collapse on me while my back was turned!”

Inside the temple, the heroes encounter some sort of intangible guardian demon, which the Atom takes care of by punching its molecules. How does taht work? I don't know, but he says it's simply physics, and since he's a physics teacher and I'm not, I'm in no position to challenge him.

On another front, The Elongated Man, Black Canary and Superman have traveled to Eastern Europe, and just as they arrive, Supes’ acid really starts to kicks in…


Sure dude. A black unicorn. Whatever.

Oh no wait, no there really is a black unicorn! And astride it is a dude who appears to be Gehngis Khan wearing a power-suit designed by Jack Kirby. He says his name “may be Ku, War-God of Ancient Oceania,” and using his magic sword, he kicks the crap out of Superman! Ssshham!

Meanwhile, the other two Leaguers encounter another, even weirder-looking guy—

Canary’s flesh crawls at the mere sight of his costume. And considering the fact that she looks at Red Tornado's costume every single day, that's really saying something.

This strange figure is Rongo, Jester of Oceania, one of five gods of that ancient civilization who was trapped in the five-faced statue, as he exposits to Canary:

Tangora the Wise, the guy who looks a little like Oliver Queesn, is the one who imprisoned them in the statue, and he himself is currently imprisoned in the temple while the other four run amok. Or other three, anyway. I'm not sure where Mauri the Love-Goddess is at.

Meanwhile, Superman uses his super-brain to outwit and defeat Ku, the Stranger uses his magic to free Tangora, Hal Jordan outwints Tane the Nature-God (no, seriously!).

But what of Rongo, well, Black Canary uses her feminine wiles to seduce him and, then, when he's guard's down, to hit him at point blank range in the face with her sonic blast:

Dirty pool, Canary, dirty pool.

Freed by the Stranger, the head god puts them all back in their temple and sinks the island.

Back on the satellite, Ray realizes that this adventure wasn’t just about Earth being jeopardized by ancient gods, it was really all about him:

When he asks his fellow Leaguers whether he should keep such a big, huge important secret like his being The Atom from his wife or not, they all say different things.

Batman advises keeping it secret…because if there’s one thing Batman knows, it’s how to sustain a relationship. Flash tried going the whole lying-to-his-own-wife route, but ended up telling her in his sleep. Hal says to go ahead and tell her: “Trust Jean! She may be the only person you ever can trust completely," he says.

Adding, “Hell, don’t just tell her your identity, tell her all of ours too! And the identity of Batman’s current sidekick, and the identities of any and all future sidekicks he might someday have! What harm could possibly ever come of it?”

What does Ralph Dibny have to say of the matter?

Oh really Steve McQu—I mean, Aquaman. You don't think Ralph would have it any other way? Well, let's check back with him in 27 years or so, huh?

So what's it going to be, Ray?

Aw man, this issue leaves us hanging. It's to be continued in “’Till Doom Do Us Part,” the next issue, which I don’t have.

Well, whatever happened, I’m sure the Palmers ended up living happily ever after…

Delayed Reaction: Mister i

Mister i (NBM), by Lewis Trondheim

Why’d I wait?: I didn’t even know this book existed. According to the not 100% reliable (particularly where comics are concerned) Amazon.com, this book came out in January of this year, but I don’t remember seeing anything about it anywhere, nor do I recall seeing it on the shelves of my local comic book shop. So, clearly, NBM needs to do a better job of letting me know when they’ve got great books coming out. Or I need to do a better job of paying attention to what’s being released. Or maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle. Whatttaya say, NBM?

Why Now:? I saw it on the shelf at one of my local libraries, and recognized the name “Lewis Trondheim” on the spine as that guy who does all those great comics with Joan Sfar that First Second has been importing (though not fast enough for my liking; I’d like a new Dungeon gn once a week, if possible).

Well?: This is apparently a sequel of sorts to another Trondheim book published by NBM which I’ve never heard of, Mister O.

Mister O’s protagonist is a little pink “O” shape with stick figure arms and legs, two dots for eyes, and a line for a mouth. I’m assuming he’s named for his shape, just as Mister i is named for his. He looks kind of like a hotdog with two dots for eyes and the same stick figure arms and legs. “Mister Hotdog” doesn’t sound as good as “Mister i" though, nor does it fit with Mister O, so Mister i it is.

Trondheim, whose work you may now from Tiny Tyrant, A.L.I.E.E.E.N. and Lil’ Santa (in addition to the Dungeon books) has reduced his art style to about as minimal as it can get while still conveying enough information to let us know that this is a person, or that’s a tree, or that’s a bull, and so on.

Each page is a complete stand-alone story with a beginning, middle and satisfying end, a trick Trondheim accomplishes by dividing every single page into sixty panels. Yes, sixty.

The stories are all wordless, and all involve our hapless protagonist trying to acquire something to eat. His favorite seems to be a pie cooling on a windowsill, but he also tries picking apples and berries and garden produce, and fishing and hunting. His means of acquiring the food generally involves dastardly acts—stealing the pie, stealing candy form a baby—but crime never pays, and at the end of each story Mister i dies horribly (There’s quite a bit of blood, but it’s hardly gory, considering the abstract nature of the character doing the dying, and the world in which he dies).


(Above: One of the stories from Trondheim’s Mister i. Click here to read it)

The slapstick is wildly inventive, and Trondheim indulges in some scatological humor that left me laughing with disbelief that he’d even attempt visual gags so gross. It adds up to a book that tells the same story over and over without ever feeling repetitive. Rarely has horrible violence been so hilarious, but beyond the pure entertainment value of the book, I found myself increasingly fascinated with how it was made.

Every story is exactly sixty panels long, meaning every single story, as different as they all are, has been so rigorously, mathematically planned out, and yet they feel completely effortless and capricious, with no signs of Trondheim stalling or delaying the action to make sure Mister i dies in panel 59 and his blood pools around his corpse in panel 60.

But not only is the book funny, brilliantly created comics, it also has an important message. And that message is: don’t steal pies left to cool on windowsills. Because you never know if the person who baked the pie will catch you in the act and force the still scalding hot pie, pan and all, into your mouth and down your throat, choking you to death while your mouth and throat swell and burn from the inside.

Would I Travel Back in Time to Buy it Off the Shelf?: Hmm, this is a tough one this time out. It’s priced at $13.95 for a book that’s only 32 pages long. But then, it’s a nice format, sized like a children’s picture book and featuring a hard cover. And 32 of these pages are certainly constitute a lot more reading time than, say, 32 pages of a super-comic or manga. Sure, I’ve already read it for free from the library, so the question becomes is this something I would have liked to have owned in January? Or is this something I’ll want to read again and again over the years?

I’m thinking it will reward re-readings. Particularly after a few months or years when I’ve forgotten the exact happenings of each story.

So I suppose if time travel were possible, but only to purchase books new that I missed the first time around, I might go back and pick this up eight months ago, depending on how sound my finances were that week.

Since time travel’s not possible, I think I’ll simply add this to my “To Buy When I’m Rich or Reasonably Well Off Enough to Blow $14 on a Book I've Alread Read” list.

Batman vs. Harvey Pekar

Okay, yes, it says he's "Topsy-Turvy Man" in the story.

But I think Topsy-Turvy Man's secret identity should be pretty clear to comics fans.

I mean, just look at this picture, mentally edit out the insane delight at the sight of Hostess Fruit Pies, and add in some curmudgeonly crankiness, and what have you got?





That's right. Harvey Pekar. Fighting Batman. Over pie. Now that is a comic book.