The End of JLA Pt. 2: "The Tenth Circle"

Certainly someone at DC Comics in 2004 thought that reteaming writer/artist John Byrne with Chris Claremont was a pretty big deal. 

Both were among the superstars of mainstream superhero comics in the1980s, thanks, in large part, to their popular work at competitor Marvel Comics throughout the decade. 

Claremont had a 17-year stint on Marvel's X-Men characters, spanning 1975 to 1992, during which time he created many of the franchise's characters, popularized others and delivered most of what are now considered the team's classic and most influential stories.

Byrne, meanwhile, had lengthy and well-regarded runs on Uncanny X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Sensational She-Hulk and X-Men spin-off Alpha Flight. Teamed with Claremont for a time on the X-Men, he drew some of those classic and influential stories, like "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past."

Byrne also did plenty of pivotal work by DC, of course, most notably recreating the Superman franchise for the modern, post-Crisis market. He also drew the crossover series Legends, served as writer/artist for a rather lengthy run on Wonder Woman and spent a few years on New Gods/Jack Kirby's Fourth World, as well as drawing and writing another event crossover miniseries, Genesis. He also had some big Elseworlds projects and a pair of inventive DC/Marvel crossovers on his resume.

Claremont's DC output up to that point, meanwhile, wasn't exactly remarkable. He created and wrote the 1995-1998 series Sovreign Seven, penned a 1997 Superman and Wonder Woman Elseworlds miniseries and contributed a 10-page Fire story to an issue of anthology title Showcase '96. Oh, and Claremont also penned a six-issue JLA miniseries in 2003, JLA: Scary Monsters, although I confess that, at this point, all I remember of it are Arthur Adams' covers. 

Still, it's easy to imagine someone at DC thinking Byrne and Claremont reuniting for a Justice League story would be a big deal, and that the creative team, rounded out by inker Jerry Ordway, would be as significant a draw as some of the past big-name creators on the title, like Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Bryan Hitch and Howard Porter. (And hey, maybe it was a draw...for any older readers who remembered the X-Men of the early '80s, anyway. In my late 20s at the time, I had barely read anything from either man, and I had considered their appearance in the pages of JLA at that particular juncture to be a particularly weird move).

Their story was "The Tenth Circle", which ran from JLA #94-99. Byrne and Claremont shared writing credits on the six-part story, while Byrne penciled it and Ordway inked it. 

It wasn't merely a matter of one of the most popular X-Men creative teams reuniting on a Justice League story, though, it was also a sort of stealth pilot for a new Doom Patrol series by Byrne (Although it's admittedly far less stealth at this point, over 20 years later; the final cover from the arc, depicting the JLA and the Doom Patrol together, was the one DC used for its first collection in 2005's JLA Vol. 15) .

Launching a new Doom Patrol out of the pages of JLA probably made some sense at the time too, as DC had in the recent-ish past used the JLA to help launch other super-team books. The 1998 JLA/Titans miniseries lead directly to a new Titans, that same year's miniseries JLA: World Without Grown-Ups immediately preceded the launch of Young Justice and 1999 JLA arc "Crisis Times Five" reunited a new version of the Justice Society, presaging the launch of JSA the month after it concluded (albeit with some significant line-up changes). 

Of course, the difference between all of those launches and this Doom Patrol launch was that Byrne and Claremont were here introducing the Doom Patrol of The Chief Niles Caulder, Robotman Cliff Steele, Negative Man Larry Trainor and Elasti-Girl Rita Farr as if they were brand-new characters being introduced here for the first time.

This, then, was to be a reboot of the then 40-year-old team, one completely unconnected to the sorts of space/time/continuity crises that DC usually organized such reboots around, not unlike the one DC did with Supergirl in the pages of Superman/Batman that year (Unlike Supergirl, though, the Doom Patrol's recent history wasn't anywhere near as weird and convoluted, nor had it drifted so far from their original conception as the post-Crisis Supergirl had; the Doom Patrol's last title was canceled just a year previously).

(And yes, admittedly it is kind of clever to put some of the X-Men's most famous creators on a story featuring the Doom Patrol, who, like Marvel's merry mutants, also debuted in 1963 and featured a wheelchair bound older man leading a team of super-powered outsiders branded as freaks by mainstream society. Interestingly, there's even a panel where Caulder uses what looks like some sort of Cerebro unit.)

So there was a lot going on in this particular story, and I don't think it all quite seemed to come together in a way that was particularly satisfying. 

In addition to telling a superhero story big enough to give each member of a sizable Justice League something to do (In addition to the "Big Seven" minus Aquaman, the team in this story also consists of The Atom, Faith and Manitou Raven), the creators also have to introduce the quartet of misfit heroes from the Doom Patrol, and they also set about introducing some new characters who would ultimately join them in the new Doom Patrol title.

The title of the story refers to the name of a group of extra-dimensional vampires, monsters that were banished from this plane of existence by Wonder Woman's mom and the other Amazons centuries ago. They currently have a representative on Earth, a vampire with an extraordinarily bad haircut and the extremely unlikely name of Crucifer. 

He lives in a castle brought over from Europe brick by brick, and commands a small band of loyal vampires, and a group of more loyal still acolytes in cloaks and hoods; these latter he is able to subjugate via mind-control, which seems to be most effective when he bites someone...but doesn't turn them all the way into vampires.

After a few chance encounters with Crucifer and his followers, the League realizes that there is a rash of child kidnappings across the county, the victims all seeming to possess the metagene and relatively minor super-powers (if this were the Marvel universe, we could call such people "mutants"), and so the heroes begin to investigate. 

Also investigating are a mysterious group based in an old Spanish fortress in the Florida Keys, a group we will gradually learn are meant to be a new, rebooted version of the original Doom Patrol (They all get something of a makeover, the most dramatic being Trainor; rather than the traditional bandages wrapping his face up like that of a mummy, he here has what looks like some kind of leather fetish mask on, and when he releases "The Negative Man," rather than the familiar streaking silhouette with an electric yellow aura, the powerful energy form now appears as a black flying skeleton in a bluish aura).

A great deal of attention is paid to a couple of kids working for Crucifer, a girl named Nudge who possesses some form of low-level mind-control and has a close relationship with a four-armed gorilla named Grunt (which is, later in the story, referred to by Caulder as a "mega-primate"), and Vortex, a boy with the power to emit some kind of powerful energy blast from his mouth, powerful enough to break through one of Green Lantern's constructs and knock him on his ass.

Meanwhile, Manitou Raven, who we see at the opening of the story, his magical telling stones and a swarm of bats presaging some upcoming disaster, has gone missing. When The Atom searches the stones for clues to his whereabouts, he ends up shrinking down to investigate them in person and then falling through some sort of dimensional portal and into a bizarre, alien microscopic world, the inhabitants of which regard visitors from our world as a god. The Atom will spend most of the arc there, and how that connects to the rest of the story isn't even suggested until the very end, making his part of the adventure feel oddly grafted-on.

Frustrating the League's efforts is the fact that, after Nudge brings a mind-controlled Superman back to the castle, Crucifer bites him on the neck, and the vampire is thus able to mentally dominate the Man of Steel (This is in rather sharp contrast with 2002's Superman #180 by Jeph Loeb and Ian Churchill, where in Dracula tries to bite Superman's neck and recoils as he burns; Superman being a "living solar battery" meaning that his blood was suffused with "the power of daylight"). 

Under Crucifer's command, Superman acts as something of a double agent, at one point kidnapping Faith (who will spend most of the arc kidnapped actually, tied to a chair in Crucifer's castle) and fighting Wonder Woman a couple of times. Crucifer even seems to kill Wonder Woman at one point, impaling her on a sword, but, thanks to the Amazons' purple ray, she gets better.

It will prove no surprise that the League eventually wins the day, our heroes storming the still-forming Doom Patrol's HQ and then teaming up with them to take on Crucifer's forces, dispatching the dumb-looking but seemingly unkillable vampire in a neat way, a sort of superhero comics twist on an element from folklore, wherein other immortals achieve their invulnerable status by hiding their hearts outside of their bodies. 

I thought Byrne and Claremont did a decent job with all of the Justice League characters, at least the ones they spent the most time juggling, and while we don't get nearly as much of the Doom Patrol, they mostly all felt like themselves (Caulder seemed a little cooler and, well, douchier than his Silver Age self, but then, he had been trending that way since Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, hadn't he?).

Byrne had drawn most of these characters before—and, in the cases of Superman and Wonder Woman, he had drawn them a lot—although I still thought it fun to see what, say, his turn-of-the-century Batman, or Atom, or John Stewart might look like. 

And, after reading the arc to completion, I even kind of developed a love/hate feeling toward Crucifer, who is in many ways your stereotypical old horror movie vampire, but so much so (and with such a ridiculous hairstyle), that he comes around to almost being kind of...neat?

The story ends with a great two-panel sequence, wherein Batman makes a deadpan joke and turns away, and we get a silent panel showing the League's shocked reaction, the Dark Knight betraying just the slightest hint of a smile. That was pretty great.

As the last issue is winding down, Faith assures Nudge how well she fought against Crucifer and says, "I'd like to help teach you," while Vortex expresses and interest in joining Nudge and Grunt with the Doom Patrol.

"I'm intrigued by all three of you," Caulder says, adding, "Faith, as well...if you're interested!" 

They all join the departing Farr, Trainor and Steele on a teleportation platform, Robotman telling the League, "You guys ever need backup, we're there! Just call on the-- --DOOM PATROL!"

It's kind of curious that Faith leaves with Doom Patrol, as she was created by Joe Kelly specifically for his JLA run, and while she lasted some 30 issues or so in the title, she was never too terribly distinct a character, neither in her ambiguous powers, nor her personality, nor her history. 

I really can't imagine what Byrne might have saw in her, aside from the fact that with Kelley's run on JLA ending and Kelly not using her on the upcoming Justice League Elite, she was available, and perhaps Byrne wanted to use her as a sort of bridge character to the Doom Patrol...? (At any rate, she would only appear twice more time in the pages of JLA; she's among the Leaguers in Kelly, Doug Mahnke and company's JLA #100, wherein Kelly has her say in an aside, "Think stickin' with the Doom Patrol for now is best..." and later, during Kurt Busiek and Ron Garney's "Syndicate Rules" arc, she's among the heroes recruited to help the League deal with twin threats from the anti-matter universe.)

She actually didn't stay with Byrne's Doom Patrol much longer, though, leaving the book and the team with issue #5. 

As for Byrne's Doom Patrol, which he wrote and penciled while Doug Hazelwood inked the majority of the series, it only lasted 18 issues, the final one shipping in January of 2006. All in all, then, it didn't even last as long as the 22 issues of the 2001-2003 John Arcudi/Tan Eng Huat series hat it followed (and, of course, rebooted), and only about as half as long as Sovereign Seven. 

If you missed it the first time around and are curious about it after reading this post, "The Tenth Circle" was collected multiple times, including in the aforementioned JLA Vol. 15 from 2005, 2016's JLA Vol. 8 and 2020's Doom Patrol by John Byrne: The Complete Series. While the Doom Patrol business now sticks out oddly, the rest of the book is fairly evergreen, and fans of Byrne's art especially should find plenty to enjoy in it.

Next: Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen's "Elitism" from 2004's JLA #100.

Credit where credit is due: Who created who in Superman

•Superman and Lois Lane were created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938's Action Comics #1.

•Lex Luthor was created by Siegel and Shuster in 1940's Action Comics #23...althgough this earliest iteration, a typical criminal scientist type, went only by "Luthor" and had a full head of hair. His signature baldness seems to have originated from an artistic mistake in the Superman daily comic strip, and in 1960 Siegel added the loss of his hair into Luthor's backstory in Adventure Comics #271 with artist Al Plastino. It was in that same year that Luthor finally got the first name Lex, 20 years after his introduction. The businessman/corporate CEO version of the character was an innovation of John Byrne's post-Crisis 1986 reboot of the franchise, which began in The Man of Steel. Following Byrne, the character is usually depicted as a synthesis of mad scientist, supervillain and businessman. 

•Krypto was created by Otto Binder, Curt Swan and Sy Barry in 1955's Adventure Comis #210.

•The original Green Lantern was created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger in 1940's All-American Comics #16, although the name and concept was refigured by John Broome, Gil Kane and Julius Schwartz and applied to new character Hal Jordan in 1959's Showcase #22. The Guy Gardner character was introduced by Broome and Kane in 1968's Green Lantern #59...although it's Steve Englehart and Joe Staton's 1985 version of the character from the pages of Green Lantern, further popularized by his appearances in various Justice League-related titles, that has become the dominant one...and informed the Superman film. (Staton seems to have originated the signature hairstyle, although artist Kevin Maguire exaggerated and perfected it.)

•The original Hawkgirl was created by Gardner Fox, Dennis Neville and Sheldon Moldoff in 1941's All Star Comics #5, in which supporting character Shiera Sanders first donned her own version of Hawkman's costume. While the film never gives its Hawkgirl's real name, the latest Hawkgirl is the Kendra Saunders version of the character, which was apparently created by writers James Robinson and David Goyer and first drawn by artists Scott Benefiel and Mark Popst in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. 

•The original Mister Terrific was created by Charles Reizenstein and Hal Sharp in 1942's Sensation Comics #1. The second version of the character, Michael Holt, was created by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake in 1997's Spectre #54 (And you can read more about that issue in my previous post). I can't figure out who designed his costume and T-Spheres, though, both of which made their first published appearance in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1, drawn by an artist credited only as "Grey."

•"Rex" is, of course, Rex Mason, better known as Metamorpho, The Element Man. He was created by Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon in 1965's The Brave and The Bold #57. His girlfriend Sapphire Stagg makes an unnamed cameo in the film, and there's a sign for her father Simon Stagg's business briefly visible at one point.

•The Engineer was created by disgraced writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch in 1999's The Authority.

•The creation of Perry White is a bit complicated, given that he was not original to the Superman comics but was instead created for the Adventures of Superman radio serial in 1940. The character's creation is credited to George Ludlam (the radio folks contributed a lot to the Superman mythos that was then integrated into the comics) and he was played by Julian Noa, who probably deserves some credit, too. Siegel and artist Wayne Boring then introduced White into the comics, in 1940's Superman #7. 

•Jimmy Olsen has a similarly convoluted creation story. He too was introduced in the Adventures of Superman radio show, and producer Bob Maxwell gets credit for his creation, although surely the show's writer or writers and voice actor deserve some credit too, right? He was introduced into the comics by Siegel and Shuster in 1941's Superman #13, although the character wouldn't really seem to become himself until actor Jack Larson's portrayal of him on the 1952 Adventures of Superman TV show popularized him. He then got his own title Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in 1954, and editor Mort Weisinger refocused the character in outlandish, comedic stories, often involving unlikely transformations.

•Eve Tessmacher and Otis were both created by director Richard Donner and writer Mario Puzo for the 1978 film Superman, and they were played by Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty, respectively. 

•Steve Lombard was created by Carey Bates and Curt Swan in 1973's Superman #264.

•Cat Grant was created by Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway in 1987's The Adventures of Superman #424.

•"Troupe" is Ron Troupe, and he was created by Jerry Ordway and Tom Grummet in 1991's The Adventures of Superman #480.

•Superman's biological parents Jor-El and Lara were introduced by Siegel and Shuster in the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939.

•The Kents had another slow-rolling creation, evolving over the years and across media. Superman's first appearance mentioned only that he was found as a baby by "a passing motorist." Siegel and Shuster introduced his adoptive parents in 1939's Superman #1, naming only Mrs. Kent as "Mary." Their names and the specifics of their finding and adopting the baby Superman changed a lot in the Golden Age, depending on the medium, and their part in the Superman story remains fairly fluid, with different comic takes and different mass media adaptations differing in the specifics of Superman being found...and whether one or both of the Kents are still alive or if they have passed away.

•Maxwell Lord was created by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire in 1987's Justice League #1.

Finally, this one gets a mild spoiler warning, although I am assuming anyone who sees the film will figure it out almost as soon as he appears on screen, if not before, as I had...

•"Ultraman" is the name of Superman's evil opposite doppelganger from Earth-3 and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky in 1964's Justice League of America #29. The version who appears in the new film is an imperfect clone of Superman made by Lex Luthor, and this backstory somewhat resembles that of John Byrne's 1986, post-Crisis origins of long-time Superman enemy Bizarro from the pages of 1986's The Man of Steel #5. (The original Bizarro, for what it's worth, was created by Otto Binder and George Papp for 1958's Superboy #68.)

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 12: Batman & Captain America #1

John Byrne returns for another DC/Marvel crossover, this one pairing Batman and Captain America, although not in the obvious, expected way. Rather than teaming the current versions of the characters, Byrne sets his story in 1945. 

It was an unusual enough effort that DC apparently felt the need to include an "Elseworlds" logo in the lower right corner of the cover, and include the Elseworlds spiel—"In Elseworlds, heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places..."—on the back of the wraparound cover. 

The setting makes this one of the most unusual of the many DC/Marvel crossovers...and one of the better ones. 

Byrne, who at this point in his career had certainly found, defined and perfected his own personal drawing style, takes inspiration from the earlier artists to work on the characters, most obviously Cap's creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and Batman artist Dick Sprang, and filters their styles through his own. The result is something of the ultimate "What if..." story, not simply a "What if...Batman met Captain America in the 1940s?", but more like "What if...DC and Timely had collaborated on a Batman/Captain America crossover in the 1940s?"

It might have gone something like this...although I think it's worth noting that as much as Byrne takes his characterization and design notes from the war-time comics, the storytelling is in a contemporary style. He doesn't try to ape the less-sophisticated format of those earlier years of the medium.

Byrne certainly draws the hell out of this book. When we discussed his first entry in the omnibus, I noted how few Byrne comics I had actually read, and I wasn't too terribly impressed with is take on Kirby's '60s and '70s designs and characters in Darkseid vs. Galactus: The Hunger. His work here seems head and shoulders above that, perhaps because of his synthesis of various styles with his own (There's even a brief appearance by Sgt. Rock and Easy Company that has the look of Joe Kubert's renderings of the characters). Or perhaps the real world, historical setting just gives readers an easier purchase into the visuals than a story sending Galactus and the Silver Surfer to Apokolips can manage.

In any case, I was impressed from the first page, a splash depicting a low-angle view of old-looking skyscrapers reaching up into the Gotham sky, their top floors all in shadow, and the bat-signal hanging above them all (These are far more stylish and detailed looking buildings than the boxier ones on the cover, by the way.) 

Perhaps I'm so used to seeing the backgrounds and skylines taken from photographic reference, sometimes just dropped straight into the art via computer, that I am now easily impressed by an artist just, you know, drawing buildings, but Byrne got me with this first page.

We first meet Batman and Robin in the midst of a car chase, in which The Joker is fleeing in his Jokermobile, with the Batmobile in hot pursuit. The Clown Prince of Crime makes an unexpected getaway thanks to an ejector seat, while Batman picks up an unusual clue from the remains of his booby-trapped vehicle.

And then it's over to the frontlines in Europe, where Captain America is fighting alongside Easy Company, although he takes the lead in tackling and defeating a giant Nazi "war wheel", like that which once menaced the Blackhawks (And which is here revealed in a splash panel showing off its great size). Cap and Bucky are ordered back to the United States, to be given a new, more urgent assignment. 

On their way back, they come across a hijacked plane, which Cap attempts to rescue by jumping onto it from his own plane, but he misjudges and is about to fall to his death...when Batman, hanging from the Batplane's rope ladder, grabs him, and together the two take on the bad guys and rescue...Robert Oppenheimer? 

"Then this priority flight is connected to the Gotham Project?" Batman asks, which readers should recognize as this comic's answer to the real-world Manhattan Project. That project to develop the atom bomb is key to the comic's plot.

The Joker has apparently been targeting elements of the project, and the U.S. Army suspects "he's just a pawn in this business...being manipulated by someone higher up." Their suspect? Millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who's so clean it seems suspicious. (Readers will of course realize that the idea of Wayne as the bad guy is ridiculous; the actual higher-up ordering The Joker around is on the back cover, Cap's archenemy The Red Skull.)

To get to the truth, the army assigns Private Steve Rogers as Bruce Wayne's bodyguard, cramping both men's styles, and ultimately leading to a scene where a suspicious Rogers jumps through Wayne's penthouse window and the two fight for a few panels, before they come to the realization that they are fighting one another in their secret identities, ultimately shaking hands as Batman and Captain America. 

Some investigating follows, in which the two heroes swap sidekicks, and it all leads to a climax in which the four heroes board the Batplane to give chase to the Red Skull's plane, which is loaded with the Gotham Project's "Fat Boy" bomb and racing to Washington D.C., where the Skull plans to drop it. 

Obviously that plan is ultimately thwarted, thanks, at least in part, to The Joker. The villains in these things often don't get along nearly as well as their heroic counterparts and end up having some kind of falling out. Here, though, The Joker's disagreement with the Skull comes from his...patriotism? 

Upon meeting the Skull in person for the first time, The Joker is shocked to learn he has been working with a Nazi. 

"I may be a criminal lunatic, but I'm an American criminal lunatic!" he says, reaching for his gun of Joker gas. (The pair end up blasting one another simultaneously with their respective poison gases but discover they're each immune to the gas of the other). 

Ultimately, the Skull has the Joker konked on the head and placed aboard his plane, and the two end up fighting atop the bomb until it's dropped, both plunging out of the plane after it. 

A two-page epilogue, which a "special thanks" box credits Roger Stern with suggesting, is set twenty years after the events of the comic and further moves the book into real Elseworlds territory...at least on the Batman side of the equation. The Captain America side is in keeping with his own history, although it is here presented with a twist specific to this crossover. 

Next: 1997's Daredevil/Batman #1

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 8: Darkseid vs. Galactus: The Hunger #1

As we saw with the first generation of DC/Marvel collaborations, those published between 1976 and 1982, the emphasis was on stories featuring the respective companies' most popular characters...as it should be. It makes the most sense, as such stories were likely to attract the most readers, to generate the most media coverage and to have the greatest chance of pulling in lapsed or new comics readers.

The 1995 publication of Darkseid vs Galactus: The Hunger is another instance in which I wish there was an introduction explaining the thinking behind the book, as it was most decidedly not a crossover featuring the publishers' most popular characters.

In fact, while Darkseid and Galactus had at that point long been recurring presences in their respective fictional universes, from 1970 and 1966 respectively, neither had ever had their own comic book—not even a miniseries or one-shot (Galactus would get a mini in 1999 in the form of Galactus the Devourer, while Darkseid would get one-shots in 1998 and 2017).

Who, exactly, was this book for...?

I suppose the obvious answer is that it was for hardcore comics fans, who would of course know that both cosmic characters are among the most feared villains in their universes, and that both were the creation of Jack Kirby. Galactus appeared during Kirby's seminal run on the Fantastic Four with Stan Lee (with whom he shares a creator credit for the character), while Darkseid was introduced in an issue of Kirby's run on Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and became a major figure in Kirby's "Fourth World" suite of books before eventually being adopted as a DCU-wide villain. 

Another guess? Maybe John Byrne pitched the book, and neither publisher was inclined to turn down an offer from a relatively popular creator of Byrne's caliber, one who had created foundational stories for both of them?

And make no mistake, this is a Byrne book, as he handles both the script and the art, the only other credit being for colorist Rick Taylor (No letterer is credited, so I'm not sure if that means that Byrne handled that himself too, or if they just left the credit off of the title page for some reason.)

Now I had missed all of the work that Byrne is best known for, his late '70s and 1980s work on The Uncanny X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Sensational She-Hulk and the post-Crisis reboot of the Superman line. I could probably count on one hand the number of Byrne books I've read (Wait, let's test that out: Man of Steel #3, Legends, Batman: The Many Deaths of the Batman, JLA arc "The Tenth Circle" and Genesis...Yep, that's only one hand!). 

So his presence here wasn't something that particularly excited me the way it might have readers a decade or so older than me; I mean, I skipped it when it was originally released in 1995, and, like the X-Men/Titans crossover discussed previously, I wasn't really looking forward to reading it here.

Like most of the DC/Marvel crossovers of the '90s, it's just 48-pages long, and the plot and basic conflict are simple and straightforward. You might have even intuited it from the title alone. Galactus, the space-faring cosmic giant who sustains himself by draining all of the energy from planets and feeding off it, has set his sights on Apokolips, the home planet that tyrannical space god Darkseid rules with an iron fist.

(Of note is a special thank you included on the title page. After a nice dedication to Kirby, "who created his own universes when ours alone proved too small to contain him, " there's a special thanks given to a Marc Galinis McFinn, "who one day said to me 'Galactus tries to eat Apokolips...'")

Byrne opens with a four-page recounting of the origins of Apokolips and New Genesis and their respective New Gods and has those on New Genesis in great excitement of a coming threat, one to which the Source suggests Highfather respond to with this cryptic message: "Hide The World."

Something must be done to get New Genesis out of the path of Galactus, of course, or else why would he choose to attack Darkseid's Apokolips, when a much more appetizing alternative is right there?

This they do, so that when Galactus' herald the Silver Surfer streaks onto the scene, in a dramatic splash page, he heads straight for Apokolips, where he's immediately swarmed by scores of Parademons. They are no match for him, of course, and he sends out the signal to his master.

While Highfather waits from his now-hidden planet, he tells Orion of Galactus' origin story, and then the giant lands on Apokolips and begins to busy himself setting up his planet-draining apparatus. From here on out, it's basically just what the title says, Darkseid vs. Galactus, the former throwing his planet's various defenses against the invader in a vain attempt to stop him.

Meanwhile, hotheaded Orion, unable to take standing by and doing nothing for so long, dons his helmet and flies into action, tackling the Silver Surfer. This leads to a fight between the two, which manages to stretch out the page count a bit (as does Darkseid's recounting of the Surfer's origin; despite what seems like a relatively niche appeal, this book is really written with potential new readers in mind). 

The Surfer eventually overpowers his New God foe, blasting him with a bolt of the power cosmic ("Let the annoyance end now") that should have killed him...but when the Black Racer arrives to collect Orion, the Surfer delays him long enough that Orion's Mother Box is able to heal him. (Certainly there are Kirby fans out there that appreciated seeing the Silver Surfer and the Black Racer sharing a panel, right?)

So where does all this fighting end up...? Well, there can't really be a victor, and not just because this is an inter-company crossover, and thus neither side's character can really thoroughly, unequivocally vanquish the other. No, because of the stakes, victory for either combatant would mean the destruction of the other, and we can't have a comic where Darksied kills off Galactus any more than we can have one where Galactus destroys Apokolips...and, presumably, all those that live there.

The back cover copy frames the conflict as "an unstoppable force meets an immovable object," which sounds about right. So how to resolve it without stopping the force or moving the object?

Byrne has an exceptionally clever twist that essentially leads to a draw, the two title characters facing one another, acknowledging one another's similarities and then dropping their conflict, leaving the status quo of either unchanged.

It ends, in other words, as it must, but Byrne comes up with an interesting rationale for it doing so, one that fits in well with Kirby's creations.

None of these characters are really my personal cup of tea, despite their strengths and attributes. That is, I find they generally work when facing off against more relatable heroes, or when in stories with point-of-view characters that ground all the cosmic opera in something approaching the real world.

Here, Orion and the Silver Surfer are as close as we get to relatable heroes though, and both of them talk in the same overblown, purple dialogue that all the other characters do. This is not the fault of Byrne, of course. It's just who these characters are and how they have always been portrayed. 

I'm not a big fan of Byrne's art style either, although, to be fair, it is here completely focused on the otherworldly, so everything he draws is essentially a "cover" of a Kirby design, and there's no visual relief from that 20th Century futuristic look, nothing to contrast it with.

There is therefore little to grab onto here; you're either a fan of Kirby's creations as recreated by Byrne, or this story probably isn't for you.

That said, Byrne does a solid job of reintroducing all the players and concepts, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that one could encounter this story and become a fan of Kirby's creations, and, thankfully, Byrne keeps the proceedings quite simple.

Not only in the basic nature of the conflict, but the storytelling. He doesn't get too deep into the histories and continuities of the various characters. The pages also feature relatively few panels each, and there are lots of splashes and big panels devoted to showcasing "moments" of import (The Surfer confronting Orion, Darkseid using the Omega Effect on Galactus, etc). It's a relatively quick, painless read.

What would happen if Galactus tried to devour Apokolips? This is Byrne's answer, in the form of a short but epic-feeling comic.

Next: 1995's Spider-Man and Batman #1

The last two times I saw John Byrne art

Whatever one may think of his art, aesthetically, or his online persona, personally, it's probably difficult to overestimate John Byrne's influence on modern American comic books, at least a generation of which he helped define, particularly through his work reinventing Marvel's X-Men from a rare Lee/Kirby flop into a direct market-shaping, top-selling book (along with Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum) and his reinvention of the post-Crisis Superman.

He's been drawing comics professionally for about 40 years now, and his style is about as mature and refined as it's likely to get. Comics readers, even those of us who didn't start reading comics until well after the conclusion of his time on Superman, should recognize his artwork at a glance, now (I think some yellowing issues of 1986-87 miniseries Legends, pulled from a quarter bin in the early aughts and fragrant with decay, accounted for my first prolonged exposure to his artwork).

I was surprised to encounter it in some unlikely places not once, but twice this week—both times in trade collections of IDW comics.

The first was the above image, the cover for Popeye Vol. 2, collecting issues #5-#8 of the Roger Langride-written series. I stared at that cover for a bit, as there was...something about it. I knew it wasn't the work of Bruce Ozella, who does an uncanny impression of E.C. Segar's work, but it was very tightly adhering to the Segar designs. And yet there was something about the line, particularly in the Popeye, Wimpy and Olive figures. I was pretty surprised to look at the title page and see that was actually John Byrne covering Segar so well that I couldn't recognize his work (although once I knew what it said, the signature was a lot easier to read).

As with the previous volume of IDW's new Popeye series (both volumes of which I recommend), there's a gallery of variant covers in various styles from relatively unlikely IDW variant cover providers. One of these is drawn by Byrne as well, although it seemed even less like his work than the cover image. Do note the Segar-ized characters our one-eyed hero seems to be punching out:

The other IDW trade I read this week was Mars Attacks IDW, collecting the quintent of Mars Attacks one-shot crossovers with other IDW franchised characters. Byrne drew that cover too:

I think that would have been an interesting cover no matter who drew it, as it would mean a single artist drawing characters whose designs come from such diverse sources: A 1960s trading-card series (adapted into a 1996 live-action movie and, of course, comics), a 1980s cartoon based on a 1980s live-action movie, a 1980s cartoon based on a 1980s American toy line adapted from a Japanese toy line, a comic strip character introduced in 1929 (and made popular in classic age animated cartoon shorts), the stage personas of a real life 1970s rock band and a character from a 21st century comic book by artist Ashley Wood.

Here are all those divergent designs as filtered through Byrne.

Perhaps the most fun part of this trade is the cover gallery in the back, as IDW commissioned covers for books that don't actually exist, like Mars Attacks Cerebus (drawn by Dave Sim!), Mars Attacks Opus (by Berkley Breathed!), Mars Attacks Rom, Spaceknight (by Sal Buscema...hey, can they do that?) and so on. Byrne provides one of these, too, a Mars Attacks Rog-2000 pin-up, featuring a character of his own creation that I had to look up on Wikipedia, as I'd never heard of him, because of my ignorance.

Where will I next encounter Byrne's art when I'm not expecting it...? I don't know. The next thing on my To Read pile is Osamu Tezuka's Unico, though, and I'm fairly confident there aren't any Byrne pin-ups in the back of that, but I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Eleven Things You Can Learn From Tales of The New Gods

The recently released Tales of The New Gods trade paperback is a pretty well-timed collection of short stories dealing with the characters created during Jack Kirby's late-seventies experiments with pop mythology for DC Comics.

With Death of the New Gods putting the characters front and center in the current DCU line, and that big, gorgeous, multi-volume Kirby omnibus project making sure the original stories are readily available, the New Gods iron is probably as hot as it's ever going to get.

Tales of the New Gods consists almost exclusively of short stories highlighing different characters and different eras of their fictional histories by different creators. Most of the stories are either written and drawn by John Byrne or written and drawn by Walt Simonson, as the bulk of the material comes from bits and pieces of Byrne's Jack Kirby's Fourth World and Simonson's Orion, but there's a real who's who of talent involved.

The list of those providing art is as varied as Erik Larsen, Arthur Adams, Howard Chaykin, Dave Gibbons and John Paul Leon. There are some real "gets" in terms of creators, like a short Frank Miller-illustrated piece, and a never before published story featuring Darkseid and his court written by Mark Millar (presumably from back in the day when he was doing whatever DC work he could get) and drawn by Steve freaking Ditko.

I was actually a little surprised there wasn't more in it, as it doesn't really strive to be a complete collection of short-pieces featuring the Fourth World characters. For example, I remember there being a tale of the young (and suprisingly hot) Granny Goodenss meeting Darkseid for the first time in a Secret Origins 80-Page Giant*, and if I were putting the thing together, I would have been sure to include the few pages of "Lost Pages" from Grant Morrison's JLA that appeared in 1998's New Gods Secret Files and Origins #1. Not because it was any good at all—it's just a couple of pages, and read like a scene cut from a movie to steamline it—but simply to add one more big creator name to the credits.

How worthwhile the reader will find the book will ultimately depend on how interested he or she is in Byrne, Simonson and/or Kirby's Fourth World characters. Personally, I didn't really need to see Darkseid and Desaad as young men, for example, or Mister Miracle and Metron hanging out in the Old West disguised as cowboys. I think the book's major value is in its ability to satiate a reader's curiosity over how well various creators tackle the Kirby characters.

And its educational value, of course. You can learn a lot of things from Tales of The New Gods.

At least eleven different things.

For example...



1.) That if anyone could make a Mister Miracle comic really work, it’s Steve Rude and Mark Evanier. Seriously, Tales of The New Gods is worthwhile for the nice reprint of their 1987 Mister Miracle Special alone.

Check out some of Rude's art from the story:


(Above: Big Barda in her action bikiki, plus Oberon and Scott performing at the circus. Quick rule of thumb: Rude + the circus = awesome)



(A full-page spread of Scott thinking on his past while locked in a safe that's about to be run over by a steamroller driven by a clown)



(Mister Miracle vs. a robot in a trap-filled funhouse erected by Granny Goodness and Darkseid)



2.) Mister Miracle had a previous wife, who had the unlikely name of Fancy Goodbody. And, despite her funny name, she was from England, not Planet Kirby



3.) That John Workman really is the greatest letterer



4.) How much sillier Darkseid’s outfit looks when, instead of a big, gray, craggy-faced, rock-looking guy, there’s a normal, human-looking dude in it:


(Byrne's drawing of the big D's brother, rocking Darkseid's look)



5.) Why Kanto dresses like someone from a medieval court



6.) The secret origin of Kanto’s moustache. Come on, you know you've always wondered.



7.) How long the Forever People have been wearing those particular outfits



8.) Just how bad a combination of John Byrne art and computer-generated graphics can look:





9.) That the whole evolution of Frank Miller’s art style seems to have been in service to drawing the most perfect Darkseid visage of them all:





10.) Baby Orion’s first utterance was “RAAAA!”



11.) If the Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld team can do Kirby’s creations any justice. Here's a hint:





*Update: I have it on reliable authority that the Granny Goodness story from that comic, "Goodness and Mercy" by Simonson, Jon Bogdanove and Bill Reinhold, was reprinted in the trade collection of Simonson's Orion, which may explain why it wasn't re-reprinted here, despite it fitting in so well with the contents of this collection.

Wonder Woman Wednesdays: A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

(Above: Or you could just read this, which features extensive back-up features written and illustrated by Phil Jimenez which condenses all of Wonder Woman's post-Crisis history into a few nice looking pages. Most of the character images near the end of the post are Jimenez's.)

Yesterday Newsarama.com ran a version of my Complete History of the Amazon Peoples (post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, post-Infinite Crisis/52). But in the off-chance that it just wasn’t wordy and/or nerdy enough for you, I’ve decide to present a previous, longer, more detailed version here, complete with some additional thoughts that just occurred to me in the last day or so, for the most masochistic among you. (Plus, it’s Wonder Woman Wednesday here at EDILW, so Amazon history seems especially apropos). Enjoy!

A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

The history of the Amazons began over 30,000 years ago, but don’t worry, I’ll be sticking to the highlights only here. Not much happened those first 27,000 years of interest anyway.

The Amazons’ story begins with a pregnant woman killed by her mate. Gaea, goddess of the Earth, took pity on the slain woman, and placed the victim’s soul in a well, known as the Well of Souls. Because it was a well in which souls were kept, you see. Over the millennia, Gaea would place the souls of all women unjustly killed by men into the well.

In 1200 B.C., the Olympian goddesses Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter and Hestia pooled their powers to create the Amazons, their very own, all-female race of human beings, each reincarnated from one of the souls from Gaea’s well.

Three thousand women strong, the Amazons founded the city-state Themyscria in Asia Minor, and looked to sister-queens Hippolyta and Antiope for leadership. The Olympian war god Ares sent Heracles and an army of men to Themyscria, where he proceeded to seduce Hippolyta, and, in short order, ransack the city and enslave it’s populace.

The defeat split the Amazons into two factions. Antiope lead the Amazons bent on vengeance into Greece after Heracles, while Hippolyta and her followers fled across the Atlantic, rebuilding Themyscira on an island in the Bermuda Triangle that was concealed by storm clouds. (It was a pretty nice place, and would later gain the nickname “Paradise Island”).

There, hidden form the rest of the outside world, Hippolyta’s Amazons were granted immortality by the goddesses and were charged with the sacred task of guarding “Doom’s Doorway,” which lead to Pandora’s Box, buried beneath the island. The Amazons took to wearing bracelets, symbols of their defeat and enslavement at the hands of men, and spent centuries in seclusion, with no man setting foot on the island.

Antiope’s faction, meanwhile, settled in Egypt, founding their own city-state of Bana-Mighdall, hidden from the outside world by sandstorms. They remained mortal, and devoted themselves to the arts of war and killing, renting themselves out as assassins and mercenaries.

A few millennia later, the Amazons started getting occasional visitors, perhaps the most notable one being U.S. pilot Diana Trevor, who crash-landed there, and joining the community, eventually giving her life in a battle against monsters from the island’s box. In honor of her, her uniform and medals were turned into a coat-of-arms (And that’s why Wonder Woman’s costume looks like the U.S. flag, got it?).




World relations took a giant leap forward when Ares launched a plot to destroy the world. Hippolyta decreed a contest to choose the single greatest warrior to send to so-called “Patriarch’s World” to challenge Ares. Her own daughter Diana, magically created out of clay and gifted by the goddesses and the god Mercury with life and super-powers, entered the contest in disguise and won.

She became known as “Wonder Woman,” fighting against Ares, joining the Justice League of America, and gradually becoming not only a superhero, but also an ambassador of the Amazonian way of life and, eventually, a political diplomat representing Themyscria in the United Nations. (For more on the contest, struggle against Ares and Diana’s debut in the U.S., see trade paperbacks Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals and Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Gods by George Perez and various; and keep in mind Infinite Crisis knocked large swathes of these stories, out of continuity, and we’re not supposed to mentally rewrite them while rereading so that they’re set about a decade earlier than they are in the actual books. Or something).

Gradually the shores of Themyscira were opened up to the outside world, and Hippolyta and other Amazons journeyed into the United States, and the goddess Circe started causing no end of trouble, initiating a “War of the Gods,” reuniting the Antiope’s descendants with the Themysciran Amazons (which leads to a civil war), and sending the whole island into another dimension for a time—ten years for those in the dimension, about one year time for those not in that dimension).

She wasn’t the only evil divinity to cause problems on Paradise Island. Apokoliptian dictator and self-proclaimed dark god Darkseid invaded Themyscira with his armies, killing over a thousand Amazons (To witness the conflict firsthand, check out Wonder Woman: Second Genesis by John Byrne).

Not long after, the Amazons went to war again, this time in another civil war between the Bana-Midghdall faction and those who have lived on the island for centuries. The conflict was settled only when Hippolyta and Diana decided to end the monarchy, renouncing their queenship and princessship (um, is that even a word?) for a more demoractic form of government. Hippolyta’s longtime friend and confidant Phillipus becomes the island’s leader, under the title of Chancellor (This round of Amazonian strife can be read about in Wonder Woman: Paradise Lost and Wonder Woman: Paradise Found by Phil Jimenez and various others).

But wait, there’s more war yet to come! The Amazons joined force with the unlikely alliance of President Lex Luthor’s United States, Superman and heroes of earth, and Darkseid’s Apokolips in a battle against Imperiex in a sort of war of the worlds (That’s Our Worlds at War to us readers here on Earth-Prime; recently re-collected from two fat trades into one giant, fat Complete Edition). Many of them lost their lives, including Hippolyta.

Afterwards, Themyscria was once again transformed, this time into a sort of university devoted to cultural exchange and learning, open to men, women and intelligent creatures from all of existence. The architecture remained Greco-Roman, but had a bit of a sci-fi twist, accentuated by the fact that the island included an archipelago of smaller islands which floated in the air. Now rather than a single Wonder Woman attempting to spread peace and Amazon ideals throughout the world, the world could come to Themyscira, and the Amazons could promote peace through open engagement, their most open engagement since they’d left Europe millennia before.

This didn’t last long either. The floating islands were destroyed in a fight between Hera and Zeus, and the Amazons again began to draw inward, just as the U.S.A. was parking battleships nearby and contemplating invasion. They were beat to it by the armies of OMAC cyborgs, lead by the hidden, artificially intelligent Brother Eye, which sent them to Themyscira to destroy Wonder Woman, revenge for her killing of Brother Eye’s boss, Maxwell Lord who (Superboy punch!) it turns out was actually an evil scumbag bent on the eradication of metahumans and world domination by his own Checkmate organization all along, and not the slick but noble leader who legitimized the Justice League as a world power with official status years ago (These stories are collected in trade, but I can’t in good conscience recommend anything past the point in which Diana regains her eyesight because, come on? OMACs? Max is a villain? Pfft).

While the Amazons fought back against the OMACs with machine guns, swords and their own ultimate weapon, the Purple Death Ray, Wonder Woman brought an end to hostilities when she realized there were innocent people trapped inside the OMACs. She left the island, while Themyscria (and everyone on it) disappeared for over a year, a year in which Wonder Woman herself would be little seen.




Some Amazon heroines of note include:



HIPPOLYTA: Queen of the Amazons, mother of Diana and, in a time travel paradox the likes of which could only occur in the DCU, she became both her daughter’s successor and predecessor in the role of Wonder Woman. When Diana temporarily died and ascended to Olympus to become the Goddess of Truth, a death Hippolyta sought to avoid by stripping Diana of the title of Wonder Woman, Hippolyta donned a star-spangled skirt and golden eagle bustier to become the second Wonder Woman, serving a brief stint with the Justice League. She also traveled back in time to the year 1942, retroactively becoming the first heroine to go by the name Wonder Woman, when she helped the Justice Society of America in their battles against the Axis Powers. Known as “Polly” to her friends like Wildcat, Jay Garrick and Alan Scott, she fought battles against Stalker in the ‘40s (The Justice Society Returns! by David S. Goyer, James Robinson, Geoff Johns and about 40 other writers and artists), and fifth-dimensional invaders in the present (JLA: Justice For All by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, et al).

When the JSA reformed at Sand Hawkins’ urging, Polly became a reserve member, helping out in their first battle against the dark lord Mordru (JSA: Justice Be Done). She died while leading the Amazons into the battle during the Imperiex War. She was next spotted in Jodi Picoult’s unreadable Wonder Woman and Amazons Attack, apparently brought back to life by Circe, totally insane and once again the queen of the Amazons.



ARTEMIS: A member of the mortal, Bana-Mighdall Amazons descended from Antiope, Artemis participated in wars against Hippolyta’s Amazons before her people settled their own part of Themyscria. When Hippolyta conceived of a second contest to see if Diana was still fit to be Wonder Woman (part of her plan to avoid Diana’s death in battle, which was prophesied to her), Artemis claimed the prize, and she journeyed to America to serve as the new Wonder Woman (Yes, this was about the time Kyle Rayner became Green Lantern, Connor Hawke became Green Arrow, John-Paul Valley became Batman and four dudes became Superman, why do you ask?), while Diana changed into a weird biker shorts, bra and jacket combo to lead her faction of the then-splintered Justice League, going as just plain old “Diana.”

Artemis, who lacked Diana’s super-powers and possessed a hot head and thirst for violence that no previous Wonder Woman was saddled with, died in a battle against the White Magician (Much of this era’s important stories are collected in Wonder Woman: The Contest by William Messner-Loebs and Mike Deodato). She was later rescued from Hades and returned to life. Since then she served as her people’s representative in Amazon government and as Themyscira’s Minister of Defense. She disappeared with Themyscira during the last crisis with a capital C, and has recently been seen in Amazons Attack, exchanging glances with Phillipus behind Hippolyte’s back and presumably, holding her finger to her ear and making the coo-coo sign whenever her queen wasn’t looking).



DONNA TROY: You know what, I don’t have any idea. And I don’t think anyone else does either, which has become a plot point in Countdown. Donna Troy’s existence was originally forced because Wonder Girl was appearing in Teen Titans along with sidekicks like Robin and Aqualad (Showcase Presents: Teen Titans Vol. 1, although Wonder Girl wasn’t actually Wonder Woman’s sidekick; rather, she was like the pre-Crisis Superboy, the star of Wonder Woman stories from when she was a girl. Oops. It’s a mistake DC has been fixing and re-fixing pretty much ever since, the last attempt being the Infinite Crisis lead-in DC Presents: The Return of Donna Troy (although, again, Countdown implies that wasn’t the last we’ve heard of Donna’s origins, perhaps for reasons discussed below)

At any rate, I think she’s still a magical twin of Diana, created to be her playmate, but captured by Dark Angel (recently seen in Supergirl) and forced to live a series of alternate lives, each full of tragedy. She was rescued by the Titans of Myth, who gave her powers and training before returning her to Earth, where she founded the Teen Titans as Wonder Girl, changed her codename and costume repeatedly (From Wonder Girl to Troia to Darkstar back to Troia to Wonder Woman for about a week and then back to Troia again), married, had a child, divorced, lost her son and ex-husband in a car crash, rejoined the Titans, was murdered by a Superman Robot, came back to life in deep space thinking herself one of the Titans of myth, lead a group of heroes to fight Alexander Luthor’s giant fingers in the middle of the universe, hung out in her swanky new space-faring base New Cronus talking to the late Harbinger’s continuity ball, took the name Wonder Woman for a few weeks around the time Black Adam was killing civilians by the millions, and she was last seen in the company of Jason Todd in Washington D.C. (New Teen Titans: Who Is Donna Troy?, Teen Titans/Outsiders: The Death and Return of Donna Troy and Infinite Crisis contain most of the pertinent parts of that complicated history, or at least readable recaps).

The interesting thing about poor Donna's origin is that, aside from needing to think up an origin to explain her existence in the first place, all of her complications as a character stemmed from Crisis on Infinite Earths, which reset Wonder Woman's timeline, so that she didn't appear until several years after the new "heroic age" had begun (that is, several years after Superman and Batman started their careers, and the Justice League was about to move into it's JLI incarnation). All the magical twin, abducted by Titans business was in reaction to the fact that Wonder Girl predated Wonder Woman (to solve all that, DC could have just rebooted Donna and the Titans alongside Wonder Woman back in the aftermath of COIE. One of the many rejiggerings of Infinite Crisis was that Wonder Woman was now a founder of the Justice League again, which meant she arrived in Man's World around the time Superman and Batman were debuting now. I didn't think much of it at the time, being so confused as to why DC was bumping all of their post-Crisis Wonder Woman/JLA stories out of continuity to replace them with all their older, worse stuff (I don't care how much anyone likes the Satellite Era, you can't honestly tell me the stories were better written than those of the JLI or Watchtower Eras). But if Wonder Woman was active during the first year or so of DC's second "heroic age," then that means she does indeed predate Donna Troy's Wonder Girl again, and we don't need any of that Titans of Myth/Dark Angel stuff anymore. DC can just revert back to their original origin for her. But...they haven't, have they? Or, if they have, nobody's mentioned it or did a story for it. In fact, the last Donna Troy origin story was the miniseries preceding Infinite Crisis, the awkwardly titled DC Presents: The Return of Donna Troy, but Phil Jiminez, Jose Garcia-Lopez and George freaking Perez, released just months before the continuity within it was going to maybe be altered, knocking it out of canon. Why on earth would you hire those three titanic talents to craft an excellent series (um, by Donna Troy standars, anyway), and then knock it out of canon immediately afteward? If it is out of canon. Like I said, there's been no indication that Donna's reverted to her pre-Crisis(On Infinite Earths) origin know that Wonder Woman's arrival was shunted backwards down the DC timeline, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to have Donna become Wonder Girl and not be inspired by Diana now that Diana was around as Wonder Woman at the same time she became Wonder Girl does it?



FURY: Helena Kosmatos’s father was killed during the Italian invasion of Greece during World War II, and seeking vengeance, she became possessed of the power of the mythological furies. Taking the name Fury, she donned a suit of golden mail to fight against fascism and the Nazis as part of the Young All-Stars, the probationary, youth faction of the war-time All-Star Squadron. Helena had super strength and the ability to fly thanks to the spirit of the Fury Tisiphone. The downside? The spirit would occasionally transform her, turning Helena into a winged, hooved monster. That big gray, bat-winged monster you see in Amazon battle scenes now and then? That’s Helena. While not an Amazon by birth, she's been living on the island for quite a while now. (None of these stories are available in trade because there is no God; that’s the only explanation for why All-Star Squadron is not available in trade that I can think of).





WONDER GIRL: Cassandra Sandsmark, daughter of Gateway City-based archaeologist Helena Sandsmark, assumed the role of Wonder Girl after swiping the Sandals of Hermes and Gauntlet of Atlas to help Diana take on a clone of Doomsday (Wonder Woman: Lifelines). Upon meeting Zeus in person, she asked for powers of her own, a request the god complied with, giving her superstrength and the ability to fly. After years of wondering who her real father was, it was eventually revealed why Zeus was so generous with the powers—he’s her father.

A former leader of the now-defunct group Young Justice, Cassie is currently a member of the Teen Titans. Though technically an American citizen and a demigod (an Olympian-American?), Wonder Girl was trained by Artemis and given the blessing to use the “Wonder” name by both Diana and Donna, making her something of an honorary Amazon.