On 1994's Justice League America Annual #8

Why am I writing about this particular comic this particular week? Well, because I had just read it for the first time. And as to why I just read it, well, having briefly mentioned 1991's Armageddon 2001 crossover event the other day, I thought about trying to track down the many annuals from the event I had never read, and started with Justice League American Annual #5; I couldn't find it, but I stumbled across this one instead. Given that its cover featured a League of A-listers—and this was from the period when the Justice League/s generally featured an A-lister or two among a bunch of C-listers—I was curious to read it. 

Now, this annual is from 1994. After a few years of the annuals all being part of a big crossover event story—1991's Armageddon 2001, 1992's Eclipso: The Darkness Within, 1993's Bloodline—DC switched to doing annuals that weren't connected by a particular storyline, but instead united by a theme. This was the first year of those thematic annuals, and the theme, as you can see from the cover above, was Elseworlds, DC's updated version of their old "Imaginary Stories", wherein the comics presented alternate universe takes on the characters. 

(The Elseworlds annuals would then be followed by Year One annuals, Legends of the Dead Earth ones set in alternate futures, and Pulp Heroes, after which point DC's line of annuals contracted greatly, so that only a handful of books got annuals. As I do every time I bring their annuals up, I would like to again state my wish that DC would collect all of these, preferably into DC Finest volumes. In terms of quality, the Pulp Heroes seemed to be the best of all of these, but then, I've only read all of the sets of annuals piecemeal over the decades, and there are plenty I've yet to track down).

This annual consists of two stories, the 46-page cover story and an eight-page back-up; I assume it is the latter that will be of greater interest to readers today, given the characters and light tone. And while a couple of bits of dialogue probably wouldn't have been published as is today, this second story is more evergreen and less, well, nineties looking than the former.

Both are written by Dan Vado, the Slave Labor Graphics and Alternative Press Expo founder who was, at the time, one of the several Justice League writers. He wrote Justice League America for a time, and then the unfortunately titled Extreme Justice (Which, from what I've read from back issue bins, is not as bad as it sounds...nor as bad as the art on the first issues certainly suggests it is). 

The lead story was penciled by a Norman Felchle, whom I have never heard of, and inked by Jon Stokes and a Rich Rankin (the latter of whom I don't think I've ever heard of either).  The back-up was drawn by Evan Dorkin...although he's credited as Evan DokinO, for reasons that will become apparent when we get to the story. 

Neither the credits nor the Grand Comics Database entry credit the cover artist, but I think it's safe to assume that it is Howard Porter, right? His style has changed a bit over the decades, but those poses all seem like pure Porter, don't they? 

And, as you can see, that cover features a Justice League with some big guns (and Hawkman), albeit they are all slightly off: Wonder Woman's hair is the wrong color, Superman's wearing gold armbands and The Flash looks like Darkstar Ferrin Colos. What goes on...?

Well, this Elseworlds story is a little like a Marvel "What If...?", the particulars of the question being "What If...Felix Faust Destroyed the Original Justice League and a Century Later a New One Rose to Oppose Him?" I guess that doesn't quite fit on a comic book cover, though, so maybe a Marvel editor of old would have been able to think of a shorter, punchier way to say that.

But yes, we open with the original Justice League: Superman! Batman! Wonder Woman! Green Lantern Hal Jordan! The Flash Barry Allen! Martian Manhunter!

Where's Aquaman? I do not know; he's never mentioned. And as for Wondy being there instead of Black Canary, who, in the DC timeline as it existed in 1994, was a founding member of the League while Wonder Woman was not, well, this is an Elseworlds story, right?

Apparently, Faust—who here lacks his old headdress—has very publicly challenged the Justice League, and they answer his challenge, arriving at what looks like a huge crater. They are immediately set upon by what Superman calls demons, and they chatter with one another during the fight; the demons aren't really a great threat to them, but they do keep them busy.

I was tempted to complain that Hal is able to use his ring against them despite the fact that they are yellow, but then I remembered this is an Elseworlds story...so maybe this Hal's ring worked against yellow...? Seems an odd choice though; they should have just colored the demons any other color. 

When the demons retreat, J'onn follows them in an attempt to locate Faust, but it is just then that the villain springs his trap. Calling on the powers of Abnegazar, Rath and Ghast (you know, the traditional Justice League villains The Demons Three), Faust summons a magical mushroom cloud that FWA-KOOOOMs the Justice League to death:

(Note their bones in the last panel on that page above; gnarly!)

Now empowered by demons from hell, and without the Big Seven Six to oppose him, the immortal Faust quickly conquers the Earth and, as he approaches the 100th year of his reign, he's starting to get a little bored, having never been able to recapture the high of killing the Justice League.

This new world looks oddly high-tech for one ruled by a wizard, but perhaps that is because Vado and Felche want to demonstrate the fact that is now somewhere in the latter half of the 21st century. (That said, Faust hasn't changed his look up, nor have his henchmen, who wear generic helmets, visors and armor that make them look like goons that the Image heroes of the 1990s might have fought.)

In this new, apparently utopian world, the only resistance to Faust comes from The Children of Justice, lead by Doctor Jonas, and old man with a flowing white beard who looks a bit like the Wizard Shazam and dresses like a superhero, wearing a cape and tights, with breifs over them. He goes around telling stories about the old, dead Justice League and how much Faust sucks, aided by totally normal, non-costumed and non-powered guys with familiar names like Ted Kord and Ralph Dibny. When we first meet Jonas, there's a Jimmy Olsen questioning his anti-Faust rhetoric.

Jonas and the Children are doing more than spreading stories, though. They are also conducting metagene experiments, and end up creating a new Justice League, consisting of new versions of the dead Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Flash, as well as a Hawkman and a Red Tornado. 

These have familiar sounding secret identities. The new Superman is Perry Ross, for example. And most of their costumes look like those of the originals, albeit with a variation here or there, like Supeman's armbands, or Wonder Woman wearing thigh-high boots. The more dramatic makeovers are those of Hawkman and the new Tornado.

Hawkman's costume is basically just a helmet, a pair of underwear and a bunch of straps that somehow make him look more nude than if he didn't have the straps, while Reddy's redesign is so radical you probably wouldn't recognize him as a Red Tornado until he started shooting tornadoes from his hands (It Looks slightly Deadpool-ish, doesn't it...? Or maybe Red Tool-ish...? Although Red Tool is supposed to be a Deadpool analogue, so maybe it's the same thing...)

Is this new League going to be enough to stop Faust, who vows to capture them and execute them on the 100th anniversary of when he killed the original League...?

Well, I mean, of course they are, but in order to keep it interesting, Vado has one of them turn out to be a traitor working with Faust, you probably haven't forgotten that Martian Manhunter has been alive all these years (and, apparently, taking his sweet time in attempting to bring Faust to justice), and then the good guys get some completely unexpected help from a rather out-of-left field source to finish off the bad guys.

(Spoiler warning for a 32-year-old comic, I guess...?)

The art, for better or worse, seems very much of its time. When Felchle draws the original Justice League, they have an unusual thickness or stoutness that reminded me of the way Mike Sekowsky drew them in their original adventures, but the more one reads on, the more awkward all of the figures look. Their heads often seem just a little too small, their limbs and hands too big. 

As I said, I'm not familiar with the artist—the credits on the GCD indicate that he's worked for Slave Labor, and collaborated with Vado on DC comics The Griffin and The STAR Corps and he has a couple of Marvel books to his name—but I have to wonder to what extent he was drawing in his own personal style, and to what extent he might have been trying to draw in a style that was popular at the time, which I suspect was behind a lot of the weirder comics art of the early to mid-90s.

Take, for example, this establishing shot of Faust's headquarters within the White House: 

(Also, let's stop to appreciate the fact that even in a comic book story about a dystopian future where a literal supervillain rules the world, the creators didn't imagine said villain would tear down the east wing of the White House.)

See the giant guns the goons guarding the White House are carrying? The one on the left, colored all blue, looks like the sort of over-sized gun we might expect to see Marvel's Cable or an Image guy toting around. But the one on the right, the red one? It looks ridiculously large, not like a gigantic rifle, but a cartoonishly large pistol. 

This panel is one of the many (many, many) examples of "extreme" art from DC Comics during this period where I suspect the artist might have been drawing at least somewhat sarcastically. That is, is Felchle here drawing guys with big guns because that's what the story calls for, or is he, perhaps, parodying comics where guys carry big guns...? 

It's not clear, really. In this panel, he does seem to be having a laugh at the extremes of '90s art, but, given that it's the only instance of such exaggeration within, it probably isn't likely. 

The art in the back up is, perhaps unexpectedly, straighter and more realistic looking at this point, even though Dorkin has a reputation of a cartoonist who draws funny comics.

Entitled "Attack of the O Squad!!! Or, What If They Staged an Invasion and Nobody Came?", the premise of the story is borne of the realization of just how many Justice League villains have names that end in the letter "O". Starro, Amazo, Despero, Kanjar Ro...you get the gist. 

This story is divided into two narrative strands. 

In one, the members of a Justice League sit around their base, bored out of their minds and, every time we check in with them, they are talking about how bored they are or attempting to do something to stave off boredom. An Elseworlds League, this particular line-up isn't one that ever actually existed: Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Flash, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Red Tornado and Hawkman.

In the other strand, Starro has gathered all of the Justice League villains whose names end with "o" mentioned above, along with other such villains as Sinestro, Bizarro, Chemo, Titano, Metallo and Professor T.R. Morrow, all of whom wear little "Hello My Name is..." nametags (If one of those villains jumped out of you as not belonging, don't worry, that's part of the story). 

Not content with just using all those guys, Vado also has Starro start to explain the absence of other such "o" villains: 

Alas, five of us are absent! 

I could not reach Deconstructo, nor Professor Ivo. Muto's ex-mate knows not where he is, and Eclipso seems to answer his phone half the time.  As for--

Here, Morrow interrupts Starro: "Hey! Don't any evil girls' names end in 'O'?"

Indeed, this villain team-up is a real sausage fest. 

Now, the problem with villain teams is that because they are inherently comprised of a bunch of unscrupulous people who never trust or respect one another, they collapse when the villains turn on one another. For some reason, the various Injustice Gangs and Legions of Doom never think to wait to start betraying one another until after they defeat the good guys. 

The O Squad is speeding towards Earth in a gigantic spaceship of Starro's, a rather cool design from Dorkin, which is hidden in a meteor shower. It is apparently effective camouflage, as the League hasn't noticed them, and so The Flash is channel surfing at super-speed, Reddy is wandering around with one of those paddles with a ball attached to it by a rubber band and so on.

When they begin to bicker about who will get which part of Earth after they conquer it, the team-up is on the verge of dissolving...until Starro calls in a lawyer to help them divvy up Earth equitably. But once they all sign "the evil document," they noticed that Morrow spelled his name with a "W" at the end (On his name tag, his name is "T.O. Morro").

Soon, everyone comes to blows and, as if things weren't bad enough for the bad guys, another sometimes Justice League adversary whose name also ends with an "O" appears. 

It's all great fun, and I particularly enjoyed Dorkin's take on the villains, all of whom appear to be in their original, Silver Age designs (Dig the forehead on Sinestro, too!). 

I am quite fond of this particular take on Starro, where he is a giant starfish that walks around on two of his arms, and, despite how alien he might look, he still talks and acts like your standard issue supervillain. (This Starro reminded me of Scott Snyder's Starro in 2018 miniseries Justice League: No Justice, although this story predates that one; now I wonder if Snyder had read and was perhaps inspired by this back-up...)

Perhaps my favorite bits were a particularly crass character referring to Chemo as "a punch bowl shaped like a fat guy," and this panel, wherein we see some of the little, face-hugging Starros holding pens:

Oh, and J'onn dismissing War of the Worlds as "anti-Martian propaganda" made me smile too. 

(As for the bits I don't think would have appeared were this written and published today, at one point Wonder Woman refers to Evil Star's Starlings as "those midget henchmen" and Bizzaro is excited when he thinks he is being "gypped".)

I wasn't terribly happy to see Cleveland used as a punchline...

...but otherwise, this was a very fun story with lots of little pleasures to be had, and Dorkin fills the panels with visual gags that reward one for poring over them. 

While DC has yet to collect all 1994's Elseworlds-themed annuals together, some of them have been collected here and there and this particular annual was collected in this year's Elseworlds: Justice League Omnibus. 

Review: Elseworlds: Justice League Vol. 3

Technically only one of the five 1999-2001 comics stories collected in Elseworlds: Justice League Vol. 3 is branded as a Justice League story—that would be 2000's JLA: Created Equal—so DC seems to be rather generous with what it's considering a Justice League story. 

Two of the stories here are Elseworlds comics featuring long-time Justice League members (1999's Flashpoint, 2001's Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights), another features an alternate DC Universe in general (1999's Conjurors) and the final one examines DC Comics itself as a milieu (2000's Batman and Superman: World's Funnest). One assumes, then, that there just weren't enough, say, Flash and Green Lantern Elseworlds to make up their own trade collections, or perhaps the words "Justice League" in the title were deemed of greater sales potential than anything else they might have called this.

The crown jewel in this collection is the Evan Dorkin-written World's Funnest, which was re-released in 2016. Originally a prestige format one-shot, the book opened with an 18-page section drawn by Dave Gibbons set in the Silver Age, as Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite intervene at the conclusion of a World's Finest team-up. The imps cause their usual trouble, but things take a dark turn when Mxy threatens to kill Bat-Mite and Batman ends up walking into the line of fire.

The Dark Knight is dead, and things spiral out of control quickly, with Bat-Mite killing Superman in retaliation and then pretty much the whole Silver Age gets slaughtered in short order. When the two have succeeded in wiping out the entire universe, and are left floating in a white void, Bat-Mite decides to run for it, with Mxy in hot pursuit. 

From there it becomes a jam issue, with a different great and/or popular (usually both) artists drawing each new locale, a page or two at a time. What follows is a race through the old Multiverse (Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-X, Earth-S, Earth-C) and into various other stories (The Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, Crisis On Infinite Earths), mass media adaptations (the Super Friends cartoon, storyboards for The Animated Series versions of the characters) and even the real world, where Stephen DeStefano draws imps over photos.

Adding to the fun is that the ideal candidates are generally chosen for each locale, so that, for example, Alex Ross paints the three pages set during Kingdom Come, Frank Miller the three set during Dark Knight Returns, Scott Shaw draws the visit to Earth-C and so on. It's a real who's who. It blew my mind when I read it originally, and it seems even more impressive now that I know who each and every one of the contributors are, and am familiar with all of the various DC Multiversal locales. 

As much fun as it is seeing Dorkin and company go at all of DC's most sacred, money-making cows, perhaps the sharpest bit is a four-page sequence set in the "real" DC Universe of 2000, as drawn by Doug Mahnke and Norm Rapmund. Bat-Mite s quickly reduced to tears b what he sees: "Nobody knows me in this icky universe! M-maybe they're all super-villains like on Earth-3....why else would they look and act that way?"

Particularly interesting to revisit in 2021 is writer Fabian Nicieza's JLA: Created Equal, a two-part series with a premise very similar to one put to greater use a few years later in Brian K. Vaughan's 2002 Y: The Last Man ongoing series for DC: A cosmic storm passes Earth, and its radiation somehow kills every single male human being (and alien) on Earth. The only exceptions are Superman, whose Kryptonian DNA seemed to make him invulnerable in a way that J'onn J'onnz's Martian DNA did not, and Lex Luthor, who took the precaution of sealing himself in a super-suit before the storm hit.

The story is only 96-pages long, so it is perhaps unfair to compare it with Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra much more expansive Y, but the fact that the same fantastical premise is used by the same publisher twice in such close proximity begs a certain degree of comparing and contrasting. Perhaps the most immediate similarity between the two is that male-written comics are all about men; Y follows the last-ish surviving man Yorick, while the focus of Created Equal remains squarely on Superman and, in the second half, Luthor. 

After some trials and tribulations for society, things work out pretty well, all things considered. DC has more than enough female superheroes and supervillains that a whole DC line of comics set in this weird milieu would have no problem carrying on, but while society is remade off-panel in the comic, the focus is on Superman and Luthor fathering a new generation of male children (the former mostly through artificial insemination, the latter through cloning) and warring philosophies of Superman and the Amazons, who have remade the world with a New World Order  (they actually call it that, too) and Luthor, who wants to continue capitalism for some poorly expressed reasons (his sexism is particularly cartoonish near the climax, where he's one of the few people with a Y chromosome left on planet Earth). 

Someone could, and perhaps should, write a long essay comparing the worlds of Y: The Last Man and JLA: Created Equal, but I'm not that person; I read the former too long ago. On the other hand, while Y was getting some reexamination thanks to the television adaptation, I understand it's already been canceled, so perhaps there is no point in that anyway. 

Part of me wishes that Nicieza  had more space to tell a story, as the DC universe is so big and weird that such a change has dozens of avenues to explore, some of which are barely touched on (Swamp Thing, a male, makes a rare pre-Brightest Day appearance in a DCU comic, for example), but then little interesting happens with the space he was allotted, some of it rather embarrassing, like Wonder Woman all but begging Superman to impregnate her the second he's done using his heat-vision to etch Batman's grave stone ("The Fall", as the death of mankind is called, all happens between panels).

The remaining three stories in the collection are mostly of interest for their art, I think.

The Chuck Dixon-written Conjurors is drawn by Eduardo Barreto, who redesigns the many minor DC characters it stars, some of them quite dramatically (Like the much scarier version of Stanley's monster, from Stanley and His Monster, for example). It imagines a DC Universe in which not only is magic real, but it is much more prevalent than it usually is, to the point where science is frowned upon.

The premise is somewhat confused, and Dixon doesn't follow through with it in a particularly even way. In one scene Ted Kord, who keeps filing patents for various scientific advancements, is shown laboring over the designs for a helicopter, which he then rips up when he sees a man with a magic wand flying by his window. Meanwhile, there are airplanes, and they figure rather prominently in the plotting of the story.

That story involves "The Father of Magic," The Phantom Stranger, who stole magic from an alternate universe of Lovecraftian gods in prehistoric times, eventually founding a tribe of magic-users that today accounts for ten percent of the population. This DCU is devoid of the heroes of the normal DCU, but various magical and magic-adjacent heroes fill its pages: Warlord's Jennifer Morgan, Brother Power, Deadman, Klarion the Witch Boy, Madame Xandadu and, somewhat oddly, The Challengers of the Unknown.

I'm curious if Zatana was off-limis to Dixon for some reason, as the version of Jennifer Morgan that appears in here seems to be written as Zatanna in an earlier draft, her name, hair color and way of doing magic re-written at some point.

It's an interesting-enough alternate history, but it mainly seems to exist as a way to keep some pretty obscure DC characters in usage, and, again, as a showcase for Baretto's artwork.

Flashpoint is also a bit of alternate history, although it is of perhaps greatest interest because Geoff Johns recycled the title for his big 2011 crossover story, the one that ultimately ushered in the New 52 and a decade of extremely confusing continuity at DC.

In this Flashpoint, written by Pat McGreal and drawn by Norm Breyfogle, Flash Barry Allen was the only superhero, but he lost the use of his body when he was struck by the "magic bullet" that was fired at President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Barry Allen foiled the assassination attempt—and JFK is still president as the millennium turns—but the super-fast superhero is now bound to a wheelchair. His mind still works at super-speed though, and so he lives on a space station and devotes himself to super-science with the input of his friend, Vandal Savage.

The story involves private investigator Ralph Dibny, a manhunter from Mars after an artifact that can summon the speed force, and glimpses to an alternate timeline where Allen is friends with the Martian and there are other colorfully-costumed heroes. 

I was, as I said, mainly interested in it for Breyfogle's' art work. He's so associated with Batman that it is always interesting to see him tackle different heroes and settings other than Gotham City, and while there's less super-heroics in this than in many superhero comics, his highly-expressive and dynamic art style is a great fit for The Flash.

The final story in the collection is Green Lantern: 1001 Emerald Nights, by writer Terry LoBan and artist Rebeca Guay, two creators I am unfamiliar with. It is, exactly as it sounds, something of a mash-up between the Green Lantern franchise and 1001 Nights. 

Here Prince Ibn Rayner is the sultan who spends each night with a different girl, only to have her killed the next morning—but, being a good guy, it is actually his wicked vizier responsible for the scheme. Kyle, er, Ibn is ignorant of it. Scheherazade, who wields the power of the Green Lanterns, comes to assassinate him one night, until she realizes he's ignorant of what's being done in his name.

So she tells him stories with cliffhanger endings that prolong their nights together, stories starring a poor fisherman who finds a magic green lamp with a genie in it, a fisherman named Al Jhor Dan. After several adventures with his genie, who Guay paints to resemble Kilowog, Jhor Dan and Scheherazade have inspired Rayner to be a good ruler, and to stand up to and ultimately defeat his vizier.

It's a pretty weird smooshing together of two things that don't quite belong together, despite the similarities of a wish-granting genie and a wish-granting ring, and I'm actually kind of curious if the outdated orientalism of the proceedings proved offensive to anyone at the time of original release...although, I suppose, orientalism was pretty key to the Western 1001 Nights anyway, and there's a long, long tradition of a white washed Middle East present in previous adaptations of those stories.

Guay's fully-painted art is pretty extraordinary though, and, like every other story in this collection, is remarkable enough to justify the existence of the story. 

Is this every Zook and Cryll shared appearance from the past ten years...?

The other I mentioned Sholly Fisch, Rick Burchett and Dan Davis' latest issue of The All-New Batman: The Brave and The Bold, which featured a few uncredited cameos by old-school alien sidekicks Zook and Cryll, who used to pal around with Martian Manhunter and Space Ranger. Those are the panels above (I have a feeling some of those other aliens running about may also be "Easter Egg" style cameos, based on how specific their designs are and how strongly they vary from one another, but I didn't recognize any of them).

Would you like to see more of Zook and Cryll, in other DC Comics? I can't think of a better story to start with than "Without You, I'm Nothing," which was written by Evan Dorkin and drawn by Steven Weissman and appeared in 2001's hardcover anthology Bizarro Comics.

It begins with various obscure, semi-forgotten sidekicks standing around like day-laborers, waiting for someone to come along and take them on a superhero adventure. You can see Cryll and Zook front and center.

The sidekicks who don't get picked up retire to a bar to complain about their lot in life. After kicking things around for a while, Cryll suggests they do what other sidekicks before them have done: It doesn't work out all that well for them:After Evil Star hands them their asses, Cryll comes up with another idea: Some other stuff happens after that, but I don't want to spoil it, as it's a very sort story (Like all of those in the Bizarro Comics book, save the Stephen DeStefano-drawn Mxyzptlk/Bizarro team-up that bookends the contents).

I basically just wanted to share Weissman's takes on a lot of these weird characters (You can see his Tawky Tawny in that first panel; like Batman and The Scarecrow, he's a character I love seeing different artists draw for some reason). The story is a ton of fun, in large part because of all the rich little details Weissman works into each panel. For example, just in the four above, look at his Ace The Bat-Hound—he never talks, but is in almost every panel of the story and his silent mimicry of the talking characters' actions never fails to make me smile a bit.

Also, I love the panel where Evil Star is beating them up, and one of his little minions, The Starlings, is wearing Doiby Dickles' hat. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down...

My favorite panel from Evan Dorkin and company's Superman and Batman: World's Funnest: