Warning: I'm going to talk at very great length about the next Justice League line-up

A few weeks ago, DC’s year-long bi-weekly series Brightest Day, which brought long-time Justice Leaguers Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman and Firestorm back from the dead and gave them slight redesigns and adjusted status quos, came to a close with its 24th and final issue.

Around the same time, DC’s other year-long bi-weekly series, Justice League: Generation Lost also came to an end—it also tweaked some former Justice Leaguers’ costumes, powers and origins, and gave them a new status quo (see the very last panel of the series, above).

Meanwhile, Superman’s year-long exile in outer space doing New Krypton stuff and his seems-like-ten-years-long walk around America, a story arc so dull the guy who thought of it checked out halfway through to do more interesting things, is coming to a close, and DC’s letting Superman star in Action Comics again for the first time since 2009.

And Wonder Woman is similarly coming to the end of her J. Michael Straczynski-driven unavailability, and Batman Bruce Wayne has, of course, been alive and returned to the mainstream, present-day DC Universe for quite some time now.

So what’s up with the Justice League of America right now?

The team’s current monthly comic is up to its 56th issue, although during those past 56 issues the roster never really seemed to settle down to something stable for more than an arc or two. After a rough start, writer James Robinson and DC finally have seemed to be able to stabilize the team, using a roster consisting mainly of younger and mostly female versions of the classic Big Seven line-up plus a few Robinson favorites.

It’s a decent line-up, for the most part, but it’s starting to feel wrong with all these other Justice Leaguers now hanging around the DC Universe not being on the Justice League.

One night earlier this week, while I lay in awake in the darkness of my bedroom, waiting for sleep to come, I was thinking about this. Sleep was slow coming that night, so I probably spent a good hour or more lying there in my bed, thinking about the Justice League. Yes, sometimes I the state of the Justice League line-up keeps me up at night, what of it?

What I was mostly thinking was this: If I were, I don’t know, Jim Lee, Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio, and all of me sat down to reinvent the Justice League for a hit series right now—Like, right now, Sunday, May 22—what might that Justice League look like?

As a refresher, here are the pools of Justice Leaguers we’re dealing with:

1.) Blackest Night/Brightest Day returnees Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Hawkman and the new Firestorm (Original Firestorm component Ronnie Raymond fused with Firestorm II component Jason Rusch), plus some other characters newly returned to the spotlight and roles of prominence in the DCU.

2.) Justice League: Generation Lost stars set to appear in an upcoming (but still unsolicited) Justice League International series Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle III and the new Rocket Red, and maybe Power Girl, who was hanging around a lot near the end (as were Batman Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman).

3.) The current, official Justice League of America at the moment, Batman Dick Grayson, Supergirl, Donna Troy, Jade, Jesse Quick, Congorilla and Starman Mikaal Tomas, and maybe Blue Lantern Saint Walker (I quit reading it when Brett Booth took over). So then here’s the League I’d put together right now. Note this isn’t, like, my favorite or ideal League or anything (for one thing, Plastic Man and Captain Marvel aren't on it), it's just what I’d put together if I were DC looking at the pieces as they currently stand and with the idea of putting together what would hopefully be a top ten book and the publisher’s undisputed, must-read flagship team title.

SUPERMAN: Back on Earth and done walking around like a chump, there’s no good in-story or real-world reason not to have DC’s flagship character and perennial JLA character and the DCU’s natural leader back on the team. He left in spring of 2009, by the way, due to the goings-on in his own books, and has since just popped up as an occasional guest-star, as in Len Wein and Tom Derenick’s JLA vs. The Royal Flush Gang fill-in arc, and during one of Robinson and Mark Bagley’s stories, to give his personal seal of approval to the current line-up.

BATMAN DICK GRAYSON: While Bruce Wayne is back from being time-lost and considered dead at the end of 2008-2009 series Final Crisis, and while he’s only starring in a couple Batman books, writer Grant Morrison continues to have big plans for him, plans best isolated from the month-to-month business of a million other guest-appearances. In-story, he’s also busy building his own Justice Leaguer, or perhaps his own Global Guardians, with his international Batman Inc venture.

Additionally, I think that, within the stories, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson and all of their peers would agree that Grayson is a more natural leader, a better team player and easier to be around than Bruce, and if they’re going to have two Batmen for a while, why not have Dick’s Batman be the JLA’s Batman for a while longer?

It would also have more dramatic possibilities than just putting the regular old Batman back on the team, as we’ve got to see Dick lead a few different incarnations of the Justice League so far, but they’ve all been second-stringer Leagues. It would be fun to see him working with or butting heads with the likes of J’onn J’onnz, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and other, older heroes who know him better as a sidekick.

Bruce could and should show-up whenever he’s needed by the characters or creators—Geoff Johns has used the Bruce Wayne Batman instead of the Dick Grayson a few times for “League business” already, consulting with Superman at the climax of Brightest Day or offering the League’s help to Hal Jordan in the “New Guardians” arc of Green Lantern—but I think I’d have Dick be the dude dressed like a bat who’s sitting in the silver chair with a bat-symbol on the back at the League’s official meeting table.

WONDER WOMAN: Like the other points of the Trinity, she left the League in spring of 2009, although the reasons why weren’t very clear or easy to understand (She wasn’t temporarily bumped out of present DCU continuity by JMS’ story until August of 2010. The JMS status quo is coming to an end, which would presumably put her back into play with the rest of the DCU. Donna Troy, a thoroughly unlikable character who’s hard to explain to people, is currently filling Wonder Woman’s role on the team. From the earlier parts of Robinson’s run, it seemed like he was very much writing her as a fill-in Wonder Woman, so it would be nice to have the real one back in the League.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: What else is J’onn going to do? Given his activity with the Justice League since at least Crisis on Infinite Earths, it’s usually strange to have J’onn in the DCU and not on some Justice League or other. J’onn has been dead for about a year or two, killed early on in Final Crisis, but he hasn’t actually been on the JLA since the “Crisis of Conscience” arc in JLA #115-#119 way back in 2005. (2005!!!)

I believe he didn’t rejoin the Brad Meltzer-assembled team due to whatever nonsense he was doing following Infinite Crisis—he absorbed too much of Black Adams’ pissy attitude while fighting him in World War III, and then was involved in some government experience in a crappy miniseries, maybe?—but he’s got a new lease on life now, and, following the end of Brightest Day, is more committed to preserving Earth than ever.

So why wouldn’t he be on the team that saves the world every day, the team he founded and spent more time on than just about anyone else?

AQUAMAN: Like J’onn, Aquaman left the team in 2005 in the same story, and never rejoined—he mutated, lost his memory, died and came back to life. Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis are apparently launching a new Aquaman comic, which is probably the best thing DC can do in an attempt to make the character marketable again, but it wouldn’t hurt to put him back on the Justice League. That’s the place most comics readers met him, and the place where he belongs if the idea is to keep him among the top tier of DC superheroes. Also like J’onn, in-story, he founded the team, spent an awful lot of time on it, and doesn’t have another, alternate home book (aside from the Johns-written project, which may not last all that long).

GREEN LANTERNS HAL JORDAN AND JOHN STEWART: I don’t really like Hal Jordan as a character and, despite his co-founder status and the amount of time he spent with the league pre-Crisis, I don’t think he really fits in with the team as well as John Stewart or Kyle Rayner do (In fact, Hal’s not playing well with others and dealing with structure have become an inherent part of his characterization of late).

That said, it seems completely insane to not have the only DC superhero with a movie out this year, the DC superhero with the best-selling comic and the most visible DC hero on the Justice League—especially since he’s a rather natural fit on the team.

I think it would also help keep Hal Jordan more involved with Earth and standard superheroing in general. Lately it seems like all he does is deal with Lantern intrigue in space, and he doesn’t do things, like, go on dates with his supposed girlfriend or fight supervillains or anything anymore.

However, those are mostly real-world reasons. In-story, John Stewart is a better Green Lantern to have on the League. Especially since he hardly ever shows up in Green Lantern…and he’s also the Green Lanterns a lot of folks expect to be on the League, thanks to the cartoon series. And there’s the fact that he’s black, and the JLA needs more color. It’s 2011, green and blue skin or golden gorilla hair don’t count as diversity anymore.

So I’d put both of them on the official roster, leaving it to the particular story to dictate which of them shows up for which mission or whatever. And when something really big is going on, they can both be there.

Hal Jordan hadn’t been on any Justice League for years, due to the fact that he was dead for so long, but he joined the Trinity-led League at the start of the Meltzer/Benes run in 2006. John, meanwhile, left around the time of “Crisis of Conscience.” In 2007, Hal bowed out and gave his slot to John, but John’s membership didn’t last any longer than Dwayne McDuffie’s run on the title. After the aforementioned Wein/Derenick 2009 fill-in and a Blackest Night tie-in arc, John disappeared from the book. Hal briefly rejoined for about four issues at the beginning of the James Robinson/Mark Bagley run in spring of 2010, and then he too disappeared.

Jade has been filling in as the team’s Person Who Controls Green-Colored Energy ever since.

THE FLASH: I honestly don’t care which, Barry Allen or Wally West, but I’m baffled why neither of them is on the League at the moment. I can see DC wanting to keep Barry confined to his own title for a while after his return so that writer Geoff Johns might want to keep Barry Allen in the Flash title only for a while so that he can clearly establish the new old Flash's status quo, new personality and particular take, but, if that is the case, I can’t guess why Wally West isn’t on the League instead.

Basically, there are two dudes named the Flash with identical powers and nearly identical costumes (they tweaked Wally’s Flash costume to better distinguish it from Barry’s during Flash: Rebirth) who have both spent years and years on the Justice League, but currently neither is on the Justice League.

I think either would be fine for use on the team. Barry would be interesting because it’s been so very long since he’s been on the Justice League—decades, our time—while Wally has a personality. Barry’s the prime, “head” Flash, and thus seems deserving to be among The World’s Greatest Heroes for being the original legacy Flash, although if Barry is going to be headlining the next Flash monthly comic, then it would make sense for the book-less Wally to get a part in the JLA cast.

At any rate, both are preferable to Jesse Quick, the former Titan who left the Justice Society of America to serve on the JLA as their speedster.

Wally’s place on the team has been uncertain for a long time now. He left around the time of “Crisis of Conscience,” briefly appeared early in the Meltzer/Benes run before officially joining around #12 in 2007, disappeared for awhile, recommitted in 2008’s #20 and then disappeared again a few months later.

There’s our Big Seven, with Dick in for Bruce, John sharing Hal’s spot and the identity of the guy in red pajamas left undetermined due to ambivalence of me and I assume most readers. But seven is the most boring number! Let’s make this League huge and exciting!

HAWKMAN: I never really cared for this guy, and like his current Conan-dressed-like-Hawkman characterization even less, although it can be occasionally hilarious (I seriously love that scene of him literally striding through pools of blood in Brightest Day). Oh, and some of his Golden Age headgear was funny.

I’m sticking him here because I’m assuming he’s going to be on the next League line-up, based on where his story left of at the end of Brightest Day. Ditto the next dude on the list.

FIRESTORM: Since his story strand ended with a cliffhanger, I assume DC already knows where he’s going next, and I have to imagine it’s a post-Flashpoint Justice League (along with Hawkman, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter).

The original Firestorm had a kind of Kitty Pryde function when he first joined the Justice League, as a younger, point-of-view character, and now that he’s formed by two different people combining, the character again has a new learning curve that hanging out with the Justice League solve.

Like John Stewart, he’d also provide much-needed color to the team. The superhero is now formed by Jason Rusch and Ronnie Raymond combining; the former’s black and the latter’s white. What color Firestorm’s skin is changes from appearance to appearance, and is sometimes hard to tell because the coloring and art on the Firestorm sequences in Brightest Day were so poorly done. It would be nice if their Firestorm identity had black skin though.

Firestorm has been on a couple different Justice Leagues, including the Satellite Era team and the one featured in Extreme Justice. His last stint on the League was a brief one, between JLA #69-#89 or so (2003-2004).

CONGORILLA: The former big game hunter whose mind is trapped in the body of a giant golden gorilla didn’t officially join the team until around JLoA #41 in spring of 2010, after having an adventure that intersected with that of some other Justice Leaguer ins Justice League: Cry For Justice (don’t read it). Around that time he also gained superpowers, including the ability to grow to various bigger sizes, a power apparently inspired by Cry artist Mauro Cascioli’s inability to maintain the character’s scale in relation to other characters.

Unlike much of the current line-up, Congorilla doesn’t duplicate the powers of another, more popular Justice Leaguer. And since he just got there, it would be a shame to kick him out so soon.

STARMAN: Alien Mikaal Tomas appeared in a single 1976 issue of 1st Issue Special, until writer James Robinson made him a fairly major part of the cast of his critically acclaimed 1994-2001 series Starman. He joined the Justice League at the same time as Congorilla (although he did have a very brief, single-issue stint on Superman’s short-lived Justice League of Aliens). Also like Congorilla, he just got on the League, doesn’t duplicate any more popular characters who make sense being on the team more than him and seems League-worthy, so why not leave him around? Additionally, keeping Congorilla and Starman help validate the current team to a certain extent–that is, they weren’t just a time-wasting, lark of a line-up to keep a JLA comic on the stands until the rest of the line could reorganize itself enough to allow for the “real” Justice League to return.

MERA: I don’t think Aquaman’s on-again, off-again wife Mera has ever actually been a member of the Justice League, not even an honorary one, but she’s certainly appeared in the book and rubbed shoulders with the characters for a long time.

Starting with Blackest Night, Geoff Johns devoted a great deal of attention on the character, transforming her from simply the love interest of a hero into a hero in her own right. After Blackest Night, she appeared alongside Aquaman throughout Brightest Day as his partner.

Why not now have her join the Justice League alongside her husband? Her powers are pretty different than his, so it’s not like there would just be two Aquamen on the team all of a sudden, and her addition would be a fresh one, opening up possibilities for lots of different types of character interactions. The best Justice League line-ups, in my opinion, are the ones that mix the biggest, best-loved characters with new (to the League) characters.

Additionally, Mera is a woman, which would help keep the League from sliding into a default, A Bunch of White Guys and Wonder Woman mode.

DEADMAN: After being alive for a year serving the White Lantern, poor old Deadman got killed again and returned to (almost) the exact same status quo he had at the beginning of Brightest Day. That seems kind of lame. I assume he’ll have some more stuff to do in Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing, but maybe this would be a good opportunity to put him in a new, more superheroic role for a while? Like membership on the Justice League (whom he’s worked with repeatedly, but never earned official membership from).

Of course, the fact that he’s a ghost who can’t bee seen or heard by anyone unless he’s possessing the body of a living person could make serving on a team kind of complicated. Unless…

HAWK AND DOVE: Bird theme aside, I think they fit in with the superheroes of The Justice League moreso than the vigilantes of Birds of Prey. Hawk is a totally asshole, which could make for some interesting interaction with the rest of the team (depending on whether or not Hawkman is on the team; two assholes named after Hawks might be too many on a single superhero team), and Dove is another woman whose kinda sorta pacifism could bring an interesting perspective to the team. Of course, the main reason to put them there would be so that Dove could translate for Deadman, as she is apparently the only person who can see and hear him at the moment.

SWAMP THING: If you’re going to put him in the DC Universe again, why not really put him in the DC Universe? He’s probably the least likely character on this list to actually ever make it on the team, but I think he fits my personal criteria for League membership just fine, and his role in Brightest Day cemented his centrality to the DCU of the moment.

Additionally, this is for all intents and purposes a brand-new Swamp Thing, one without the memories and personality of the Alan Moore-written Swamp Thing, so there’s no reason he can’t be a more superheroic swamp monster.

I don’t know that he would necessarily have to show up for meetings or have monitor duty, but I think putting him on the Justice League would be an exciting, bold move.

Finally, I would officially make BOOSTER GOLD, FIRE, ICE, BLUE BEETLE, ROCKET RED and CAPTAIN ATOM members of the Justice League, even if they appear in their own Justice League International monthly comic instead of Justice League of America. They could function as their own team-within-a-team, or their own distinct sub- or side-League, and still have JLA membership, appearing alongside the other Leaguers and in the main Justice League book as needed. Not every member of the team needs to be in every single issue, after all.

That gives us a pretty big, and pretty exciting, Justice League, stocked with A-List heroes, the folks you expect to see when you open up a comic book called Justice League of America, a bunch of surprise character you wouldn’t expect to see and a some emerging characters who would benefit from the shared esteem of being around all those other heroes.

That’s the Justice League I’d put together tonight, if I were the person at DC in charge of putting together the new Justice League.

Wait a minute. While that is a big League, consisting of 23 superheroes (unless I miscounted), and while there are some hints of diversity there—including five female Leaguers—it’s still a pretty white team, isn’t it? There are more aliens (Martian Manunter, Starman, Superman) and former human beings (Deadman, Swamp Thing, Congorilla) than black folk, of which we’d only have part-time John Stewart and Firestorm, who is actually only half-black.

That’s why I would include some combination of STEEL, BLACK LIGHTNING, CYBORG and VIXEN. All four have been members, and all four left under mysterious (and, frankly, dubious) reasons, and could easily be brought back at the drop of a hat.

No in-story rationale was ever given for Steel’s disappearance from the team. He joined the League in 1998’s JLA #16 and was on the team through 2000’s JLA #42 and JLA: Heaven’s Ladder. When Grant Morrison left the title and Mark Waid replaced him, Steel was simply no longer there (I recall reading that Waid would have used him, as he did in Heaven’s Ladder, but had believed that Steel and a few others weren’t going to survive Morrison’s final arc, “World War III”). No in-story eason for Steel leaving and never rejoining the team was ever given to my knowledge, although he would appear as a guest-star here or there.

Black Lightning never officially joined the Justice League until the current volume of Justice League of America, around 2006 or 2007. His tenure was ridiculously short though. He was gone by 2009, apparently to star in The Outsiders. The title has since been canceled, so it’s not like Black Lightning the character has another book to be appearing in. If the idea is to keep him on The Outsdiers in-story, there’s no reason he can’t also be on the League is there? They have teleporters, after all, and in a JLA with a roster of almost 30 heroes, it’s not like they’d need Black Lightning on every mission.

Poor Cyborg was there even less time. He joined the team in JLoA #41, and was gone by #44. He did appear in some back-up strips in JLoA for awhile, during which he was offered a job at STAR labs. I’m not sure if that is why he disappeared from the team or not (If so, he’s lazy; Superman holds down a full-time job and can be on the Justice League. And jeez, can you imagine how busy Batman Bruce Wayne and Aquaman and Wonder Woman must be?). I don’t see why Cyborg can’t be on the League now, especially since he’s not appearing anywhere else, and there’s no Titans book with a line-up that needs him at the moment.

Finally Vixen had a healthy run on the team back in the ‘80s during the Detroit era League, but rejoined the team at the same time Black Lightning did. She lasted just a few issues longer than he did though, deciding to leave during the Blackest Night tie-in arc that ran in 2009’s JLoA #38-40, after the damage she sustained in Cry. Broken bones heal though.

So I think that’s the League I’d put together right now, if it were my job to do so. Maybe only a third to a half of those characters would ever actually appear in each story arc, unless there were arcs so big a whole army of Justice Leaguers were needed, though, with some of them being only part-timers (Hal and John Stewart) or getting their own League book (the JLI stars).

I’m quite curious to see DC’s post Flashpoint plans, as it does seem like JLoA is going to be canceled and relaunched, almost definitely with a new roster hewing closely to the Big Seven formula. I wonder what line-up they’ll ultimately choose will be, whether J’onn will appear in the main book or in JLI and who will be writing and drawing it.

They screwed up the last book pretty badly by launching it with a poor creative team, including a writer who was only around long enough to write two story arcs (“The Tornado’s Path” and “The Lightning Saga”) and two one-issue stories (JLoA #11 and #12) and an artist who was an unfortunate combination of ill-suited to the material, not very good and unable to keep a deadline.

League Line-Ups That Never Existed (But Should Have) #7

Okay, so here's the cover of DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book (which I discussed at some length here):I like it.

Here's the back cover: I like that too.

Because of the nature of the book—poster-sized reproductions of DC Comics covers as a visual history of the company—all of the images within are full covers, which means there are no panels or grids in it, but the cover uses the basic comic book lay-out of pictures in grids and white gutters of space to evoke the look of a comic book. It also manages to not choose a favorite, and simply put one of the covers contained inside on the cover of the collection.

And by varying the sizes of the panels, the bulk of the cover space goes to six big, partial covers, so relatively little about the images within are necessarily "spoiled."

For our purposes here, in this extremely occasional feature in which I see a group of DC heroes gathered outside of a DC comic book—a group generally selected for their iconic status rather than for their fitness for Justice League service—and wonder aloud, "Hey, would this be a good Justice League line up?", I wanted to take a look at those six panels given prominence.

On the front cover are DC's trinity of Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman, obviously, but they needed three more for the back cover, and there choices are...interesting. No surprise that number four and five are Green Lantern and Flash, really, but Hawkman is a surprise. I would have assumed the dubious honor of DC's Sixth Most Iconic Hero would go to Aquaman (Although Captain Marvel would be a good bet too).

But no, not only does Aquaman not make the back cover of this collection, he's hardly even on the inside. There are no covers form an Aquaman comic book contained within the book, he only appears on the cover of Justice League of America #21, along with 13 other superheroes. (Selections were made based on the historical importance of the images, the books they were attached to, and the people who drew them, more than any sort of fan-favorite or recognize-ability of the characters, which is why Mr. District Attorney, Leave it To Binky, Prez, Hawk and Dove, The Creeper, Angel and The Ape and Weird Western Tales Starring Scalphunter are included, but no issue of Aquaman is).

Instead, that spot goes to Hawkman, who at least has a literal icon to highlight—that little yelling hawk profile on the red oval in the middle of his harness.

Also interesting about the selections are that, because of the way they're cropped, even relatively unflattering images look heroic and exciting (Check out the full Superman cover below), and the particular images chosen.

Whoever made these decisions could easily have found pictures of the various hero-symbols in which those symbols are front and center, the focus of the image. But preference was given to the symbols in action. That's not a picture of Wonder Woman's double-W's, but of them hanging from her tunic-thingee as she poses. The Bat-symbols not just resting on Batman's bat-shirt, but it's caught in the a circle of a flashlight as the guy wearing lurks in the shadows. Superman's S-shield is, of course, flying.

Green Lantern is the only character of these six whose chest-symbol isn't shown; rather, the ring his symbol symbolizes is highlighted, giving him an exterior, detachable hero-icon (And perhaps this speaks to the interchangeability of the Green Lantern hero identity, at least in passing—Green Lantern is the only one of these heroes whose costumed identity and power or skill-set can literally be slipped off the finger and handed to someone—anyone, really—else. Batman can hand me his costume, but I'd just be Caleb in a Batman suit, getting my ass-kicked by the first criminal I tried to apprehend. But if Green Lantern handed me his ring (and I guess if I had the necessary "will power" or whatever), BAM! I'm a superhero!).

So, let's take a closer look at the heroes that this book's cover design posits as the six most highlight-worthy DC characters:





All six have been Justice Leaguers before, obviously, so this is hardly a daring line-up, more questionable for who isn't included than who is. What would you think of this half-dozen superheroes as a Justice League? Flash, like Green Lantern, could be any of 'em really—the cover-designer went with Jay Garrick, but I imagine that has more to do with the quality of the image than the desire to use the original character instead of one of his more popular successors and their more iconic costumes (The only other Flash covers were from Flash #123, The "Flash of Two Worlds" one, and #125 and #129, as smaller reproductions on the back of the featured covers)

I think that would make a fine Justice League, personally, if a little small and homogeneous, and would read a JLA comic with them in it (Depending on the creative team, of course, because I am an old snob).

How about you?

So who wants to hear me talk about the latest Justice League line-up at (probably way too) great length?

If you do, I have a piece up on Blog@Newsarama responding to the above ad, which appeared in at least one DC book this week. You can read it here.

Because (one of) you demanded (well, asked for) it!: 1,500 words about how JLoA is no damn good and what I think of those black splotches

Robert, an EDILW reader, emailed me last weekend to ask if I’d be doing a post about the semi-announced line-up of James Robinson and Mark Bagley’s upcoming run on Justice League of America, as he was wondering what I thought about it.

Because I am a jerk, I haven’t yet emailed Robert back. But, because I am also an eager-to-please jerk, I figured I would do a post about it.

This is that post.

So, if you haven’t seen the image, here it is again:

DC is using the old blacked-out characters on the cover gag, which they’ve done repeatedly with JLA line-up changes over the years, most recently with the new team that would be starring in the newly re-launched, 2006 Justice League of America.

At last week’s San Diego Comic Con, writer James Robinson confirmed that the team would include Donna Troy, Mon-El in a new Superman-esque costume (and hopefully going by the new codename SuperMon) and Batman Dick Grayson (In one of his Comics Of The Weak features, Tucker Stone asked if Dickbat was this new Batman’s clever nickname; has the Internet decided yet? I kind of like DickBats, as it is parallel to the AzBats construction used to refer to the Jean-Paul Valley-as-Batman character, and also because it sounds like a terrible venereal disease), Hal Jordan and Congorilla, who is apparently the big gorilla-shaped silhouette in the upper right hand corner.

As far as what I think, I guess my main response is that I just don’t really care anymore.

Well, I care a little (enough to devote several hundred words to the subject, and how I don’t care all that much), but not like I did in 2006. This current volume of the Justice League comic has really dulled my enthusiasm is Justice League comics, to a point I didn’t even think was possible.

A big part of that problem is just how bad Justice League of America has been.

Yesterday the thirty-fifth issue of the series was released. It was written by Len Wein, the fourth writer to work on the title in just three years (following Brad Meltzer, Dwayne McDuffie and Alan Burnett). I can’t even guess how many pencillers and inkers were involved up until this point, but, off the top of my head, the pencil artists included Ed Benes, Eric Wight, Joe Benitez, Rags Morales, Carlos Pacheco, Allan Jefferson, Shane Davis, Gene Ha, Ethan Van Sciver, Allan Goldman, CrissCross, Eddy Barrows, Adrian Syaf, Tom Derenick and Pow Rodrix. Some of those guys are really great artists, some of those guys I’m honestly surprised DC would even hire, but that is a lot of pencillers on a single book, let alone in the first three years of a book.

The direction of the book has reflected the slipshod nature of the visuals. There was a three-part crossover with Justice Society of America, a half-issue story devoted to setting up a Tangent miniseries, three and a half issues tying into Salvation Run (itself a tie-in to Countdown…a tie-in/prelude to Final Crisis), one issue devoted to tying into Final Crisis, and an eight-issue arc bringing the Milestone Universe characters into the DCU, while reacting to events in Final Crisis, the Superman books, the Batman books, Wonder Woman and Justice League: Cry for Justice, which hadn’t even been released yet.

How can anyone read a book produced in this fashion, let alone like doing so?

The other problem is that the narrative choices made by the writers and editors—granted, some of them in reaction to what was going on in other books and thus events beyond their control—reinforced the perception that Justice League of America doesn’t matter at all.

Brad Meltzer spent the first twelve issues of the book—the entirety of his run on it, and a third of it’s overall issues up to this point—telling an origin story for his line-up. Among the characters joining the team was long-time sidekick and Teen Titan Roy Harper, adopting a new codename and costume specifically to mark his “graduating” to the Justice League, and Black Lightning, another B-lister who, after decades on lower tier super team, finally made it to the big leagues. Oh, and after about a year of appearing in the title but emphatically not being on the team, Geo-Force consents to joining the team.

Then Geo-Force immediately leaves the team (in the pages of Batman and the Outsiders, not in JLoA), presumably so he can be on the Outsiders again. Roy Harper leaves unceremoniously after the events of Final Crisis, to mourn his girlfriend who died during Final Crisis in one draft of McDuffie’s script for an issue, although he later changed it when he was informed Roy’s girlfriend didn’t die after all (it was retroactively decided that she survived her suicide mission in FC, so that she could be murdered in the pages of Blackest Night). Harper has been appearing in Titans. Likewise, Black Lightning disappeared from the title, and has been appearing in Outsiders.

In all three cases, that’s an awful lot of build-up to what was presented as major events in these fictional characters’ “lives,” which were quickly and unceremoniously reversed.

Given the state of the title then, it’s hard to give a shit that Dick Grayson might be re-joining the Justice League temporarily or whatever, as who knows how long that will last, or why it might matter at all.

Long story short, I don’t really care about the Justice League any more, since DC seems to not really care about the Justice League anymore, and have been actively encouraging readers to not care either.

As it currently stands, there are two Justice League-related teams. The team in JLoA (as far as I understand) consists of Firestorm II, Dr. Light II, Vixen, Green Lantern John Stewart and Zatanna, with several other characters on some form of leave absence or sabbatical or whatever.

The team in Cry For Justice, which is of course written by the incoming writer Robinson, will consist of Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, The Atom Ray Palmer, Supergirl, Batwoman, Starman Mikaal, Congorilla and whatever they’re calling Captain Marvel Jr. these days.

It’s probably safe to assume the new team will entail some combination of the two, with Supergirl, Batwoman, Captain Marvel Jr. and Starman least likely to stick around for various reasons (If SuperMon and DickBats are in for Superman and Batman, the lady versions of the characters become rather redundant. The Marvel Family needs some time out of the spotlight to let the radioactivity of Judd Winick’s attempts to rework them wear off, and as for Mikaal, having a Starman on the JSA and the JLA seems a little excessive for a character who doesn’t belong to one of the bigger character dynasties).

John Stewart is almost definitely out, since it seems unlikely Robinson would want to write two Green Lanterns on the team. (I hope I’m wrong though; giving Hal both Green Lantern and JLoA seems pretty unfair, and would make John the only of the five Lanterns without a book to call his own).

Dr. Light is almost definitely in, as Robinson has been writing her in Superman, and recently advertised a sub-plot with her continuing in JLoA.

Beyond that, I couldn’t even offer guesses, although I guess I’ll try.

The silhouettes on the Bagley cover make it pretty difficult too, as the bright white light of the background overlaps the borders of the characters, making the blacked-out ones seem less distinct and hard to see clearly.

Let’s see, he character just below DickBats is pretty obviously Starfire, whom I wouldn’t really expect to ever join the Justice League. Given that there are already at least two former Titans—Donna and Dick—adding Starfire seems like Titans overkill. Additionally, there’s the matter of the Titans. What are all these characters doing in JLoA when they’ve got a perfectly good Titans book to star in (And that book, by the way, is dedicated to the grown-up, former Teen Titans like Starfire, Dick and Donna, so filling up the roster on that book is a lot harder than it would be on, say, Teen Titans, where there are dozens of super-teens to choose from at all times).

Looking at figure behind Mon-El’s left boot. That looks a bit like Raven of the Titans, but I’m going to guess that’s Dr. Light, who wears a cape, and that perhaps explains the bright, luminous background.

Just to the left of Donna’s hip is an archer character; you can see the bottom half of the bow, and a quiver full of arrows. Both Roy “Red Arrow” Harper and Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen make equal amounts of sense. Roy was just on the team, and had just taken some time off to mourn his not-dead girlfriend, so could easily return, and he would certainly fit in with Donna, Dick and Starfire. However, Ollie is co-starring with Hal in Robinson’s Cry For Justice, and would thus make sense if this team includes Hal on it. So I’m going to guess it’s Green Arrow Ollie Queen.

As for the remaining shapes, theyre too abstract for me even to guess where one figure begins and another ends, so I got nothing. I can’t figure out what could possibly be in the lower right hand corner to fill that space (looks like a second gorilla to me, but that would be pretty crazy), or what could account for the vaguely mushroom-like shape beneath the “Trinity” characters there.

I’ll be pretty surprised if Flash Barry Allen isn’t on the team (unless Geoff Johns is doing his own Justice League book…but then wouldn’t Johns want his boyfriend Hal on his team…?), and from the few issues of JLoA I’ve read lately, I don’t see any reason why Vixen or Firestorm II would quit the team, so maybe they’re part of those blobs somehow…?

Of course, DC could have just released a somewhat doctored image, to mess with fans, like they did last time.


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This concludes my ranting and raving about a single cover image. If any of you have a topic you would like to see me rant and rave about, please feel free to suggest it in the comments section (and/or just ask questions you’d like me to answer). I can’t promise I’ll get to them in anything approaching a timely fashion (or at all if they are super-dumb or along the lines of "Why do you suck so much, Caleb?"), but next time a post falls through because I can’t get to a scanner or I’m plumb out of ideas, I’ll try and take some of ‘em or all of ‘em up.

So request and/or ask away!


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RELATED: I have a post that also spun out of that JLoA cover image above over at Blog@Newsarama today that may be of interest. It's much shorter and has more pictures. You can check it out here.

Because No One Demanded It: The Batman's Christmas List Post-Mortem

As I did after the last bad joke and drawing theme month here on EDILW, I thought I’d do a sort of post-mortem to share some of what I learned. Also, it allows for an easy, totally phoned-in post requiring no real original thought, perfect for this between holiday week, during which most of the comics blogosphere seems to have gone dark.

Spending a couple weeks drawing superhero costumes over and over is actually a pretty interesting way to relate to them, giving one a better appreciation for how the artists one might complain about online all the time approach their work.

I found myself liking some costumes I’d previously hated, and hating other less than I used to, and appreciating details I’d never noticed before. Like just how much detail is in Catwoman’s current costume, for example, or how much Metamorpho has changed since the ‘60s.

I also found myself respecting the pros a lot more. I mean, I think Ed Benes is a horrible comic book artist, and a terrible storyteller, but I do appreciate the fact that he can draw the same faces and bodies over and over (the same exact faces and body types over and over) kind of admirable. That’s a skill in the cartoonist’s toolbox that I’ve never been able to master (which is part of the reason I draw myself all the time…it’s not just because I’m vain, but because I’m easy visual reference, and want to eventually be able to draw at least one character consistent from image to image). Like, just getting Batman’s ears the same length in different images (or both his ears the same length in the same image), or keeping the heights of two characters consistent form panel to panel is really freaking hard.

So Benes may be terrible compared to most other professional comics artists…he’s still a good draftsman, and has basic cartooning skills that are really hard to master.

Anyway, before I get into random observation mode, I thought I’d share some behind the scenes stuff with you because, well, remember what I said about phoning a post in?

I draw these all on index cards, as they are about 75 cents for 120 cards or something like that, and the cards form natural panels, so I can try to keep everything the same size for when the elves in the computer do whatever they do when they take something form the public library’s scanner and put it on my blog. (Close-ups are generally half an index card).

When I’m writing them, though, they’re a mixture of very vague drawings and indecipherable handwriting, which I developed during my time as a newspaper reporter. It’s so hard to read that even I can’t make it out. In a few months, I will likely have no idea what it says. But while it’s relatively fresh in my mind, I can remember writing it, and therefore am able to read it.

So, here’s what they look like when I first write them down. This is the page on which I wrote the Superman and Flash ones:


My house is full of pages and pages of things like this, illegible first drafts of comics and graphic novels. If I die tomorrow, whoever has the unfortunate job of dealing with my belongings is going to find folders and boxes crammed with these types of scribbled up pages that I myself can just barely make out.

Here’s another, featuring two I didn’t use. The top one was Oracle, the bottom one was the beginning of the Vixen one, which I scrapped:



Here’s something else I ended up not pursuing, Martian Santahunter:



And finally, when I realized I wouldn’t be able to draw Pete Woods’ Bat-Santa, I decided to go with a Christmas-colored version of the Bat-suit I’d been drawing all month, but wasn’t sure about how to color it, red and white, or red white and green.




I’m still not sure the red and white was best. Like, Batman’s normal costume is black and gray with a little bit of yellow (the utility belt). Maybe Bat-Sanata shoulda been red and white, with a green utility belt.

Now, on to the eight random thoughts on the JLA and Outsiders I had while drawing them on index cards…



1.) Vixen: When I planned these out, I was originally planning to do the whole month of December, which meant 31 of ‘em. Then I realized there was no point of doing them after Christmas, because why would Batman still be giving Christmas presents afterwards? And surely we would all be sick of Christmas by then anyway, right? So that knocked it down to 23-25 or so.

I was thinking I’d do everyone that was on one of Batman’s two teams, plus his sidekicks/allies, like Robin, Nightwing, Oracle, Commissioner Gordon and Alfred. But I axed all of those not on one of his two teams because none of them were the least bit funny (and considering how unfunny the ones I did post were, that’s really saying something).

Anyway, it wasn’t until I had drawn almost all of them and was halfway through posting them that I suddenly remembered that Vixen was on the Justice League again.

Does this mean I have a pretty bad memory, or that Vixen has had pretty much nothing to do in JLoA so far?

Or a little bit of both?

In the first arc, she really just came out of left field at the end, not really teaming up with either of the factions of heroes that would ultimately come together to form Metlzer’s League. The only thing I remember her doing in “Lightning Saga” was saying she was borrowing a cheetah’s speed to keep pace with The Flash (explained in the next story, I understand), and then I dropped it until McDuffie took over.

I had a reeaalllly hard time thinking of a Vixen joke; with the exception of Red Tornado, for whom I did two and settled on the second one, Vixen’s the only character I did, like, drafts of. The final one was the fourth idea I came up with, the first three being much, much, much worse (One involved her trying to suck bee powers out of Red Bee’s partner Michael though; I just really love drawing bees).

Anyway, I do like Vixen being on the JLA again. She’s a really good character for the book, because she works best in team settings, I think, and it’s nice to have characters from each discernible era involved with the book.

And I kinda like her current look. I never cared for the Wolverine/Beast-esque hair shaped like animal ears that she sported during the Detroit Era. I did like the dreadlocks she was rocking off-and-on during the period between Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, but the current short hairstyle (or the more slick version she had on JLU) probably make more sense for a model, as it would more easily allow her to wear hats and wigs than her long locks did.

I do kinda wish she’d get a mask similar to the one she wore in her original Cancelled Comics Cavalcade costume at some point though.



2.) Diversity: The League is the most diverse it’s ever been, and The Outsiders are also very diverse for a DCU super-team.

As of “Unlimited” and the first two issues of Batman and the Outsiders, here’s how things were looking, regarding gender and race on the two teams:

Justice League

4 white men (Batman, Red Arrow, Hal Jordan and Geo-Force)

3 black men (Black Lighting, John Stewart, Firestorm)

1 alien that just so happens to look like a white man (Superman)

2 white women (Hawkgirl, Black Canary)

1 black woman (Vixen)

1 magical golem who looks like a white woman (Wonder Woman)

1 red android whose secret identity used to be a white man, and who inhabited a white man’s body for a few issues there


The Outsiders

1 white man (Batman)

2 white women (Catwoman, Grace)

1 black woman (Thunder)

1 Asian woman (Katana)

1 half-Asian woman (Batgirl)

1 white/purple/orange/brown/silver man who used to be a caucasian guy (Metamorpho)

1 green Martian


Regarding sexuality, everyone on the League is straight. Batman and Wonder Woman can be argued about to differing degrees of seriousness, but Batman’s always done it with and dated ladies, and Wonder Woman’s only dated men. I understand there are some arguments over whether she’s a virgin or not. Let’s not get into it. Anyway, they’re all straight as far as we know.

In the Outsiders, there are two lesbians (Thunder and Grace), and everyone else seems to be straight (Batgirl isn’t sexually active; she’s kissed three boys and no girls, though).

Could the teams be more diverse? Sure, I suppose. I mean, the thing about diversity is it could almost always be more diverse, you know?

But the League is probably as diverse as it’s ever been. With Stewart and Firestorm II joining during “Unlimited,” there are now five black folks on the League at the same time. And with Black Canary, Hawkgirl and Vixen on the team, there are now four women. Considering Wonder Woman has been pretty much the only woman since the Morrison/Porter relaunch (Oracle, Big Barda, Faith and a few others joining for more brief stints during that time, of course), I think that’s pretty significant.

Should there be a hero of Hispanic on the team now? Or an Asian hero? Or a Native American? Or a gay person? Or a person with a physical disability? Looking around DC’s hero pool, I don’t know how much more diverse the League could get until some new heroes are created.

I can’t think of a single Hispanic hero who would work on the League at the moment; I know there are some out there, but none that have served on the League and/or seem iconic enough to be there at the moment.

As for Asian heroes, Dr. Light II is the only one that springs to mind, and I think she’s unfortunately sullied by her namesake’s retcon. She really, really, reeeaaaalllly needs a new codename. It’s only logical, you know? In the real world, if you’re name was, say, O.J. Simpson, chances are you would have started going by Othniel J. Simpson or whatever after the other version of your name became synonymous with that guy who may or may not have totally killed his wife, you know? If you found out your totally voluntary codename was the same as a guy who totally raped a colleague, why on earth would you keep using it?

Katana would be a possibility, even though she’s not quite iconic. Problem is, the League is pretty lousy with Outsiders right now, just as its lousy with people who have her exact same skill set that Tatsu boasts (beating people up with their bare hands).

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Again, most of the promising Asian heroes are too new. The current Atom could work on the strength of his predecessor’s place in the League, and the fact that he doesn’t belong on any of the other teams anymore (he’s not really a Golden Age legacy except on a technicality so he doesn’t belong on the JSA, he’s not a teenager so he doesn’t belong on the Titans, he’s not an outsider so he doesn’t belong on the Outsiders).

For Native American heroes, I thought Manitou Raven was awesome, filling both the magic guy role and the Apache Chief legacy. Like Black Vulcan’s history with the League via Superfriends kind of grandfathers Black Lightning in, I think Apache Chief’s role on the cartoons grandfathers in any Native Americans who can grow gigantic by saying “Inukchuk!” Sadly, he kinda sorta died, to be replaced by Manitou Dawn, who’s a bit less interesting.

The only openly gay hero to have been on the League, or to approach the popularity/power/icon status necessary to be on the league is Obsidian, and he’s in the Justice Society, which is a better fit for him anyway, given the book he was created for and his parentage. The Question II and Batwoman both seem too street-level, particularly at a time when the League already has Batman, Black Canary, an Arrow and Hawkgirl.

And physical disability? Oracle, naturally. Oracle should always be on the League. I think it’s ridiculous that she’s ever not on the League, since her close relationship with pretty much every hero on the team anyway always makes her a sort of de facto member. Why not give the lady a gold key, certificate and occasional nod in the damn roll calls, you know?



3.) Katana: I really, really, really liked Katana’s all red costume and short hair in the first two issues of the new Batman and The Outsiders. Poor Katana has had some really terrible costumes over the years, from her primary-colored samurai get-up to that horrible right-breast-as-Japan’s-rising-sun look (Which Judomaster II has taken over in the pages of JSoA).

In Batman and The Outsiders #3, however, she’s back in her most recent red and yellow costume, so now I’m not sure if the look I liked the most was just a coloring mistake, and/or the penciller removed that weird half-skirt thing she wears now either because it would be impractical to parachute in, or because it interfered with his ability to draw close-ups of her ass.



4.) Thunder: I like Thunder’s newer costume, too. I believe it’s about one million times better than her original costume. I hated the wig and the overall design, but it was the realistic lightning design on the sleeves that drove me nuts. I wouldn’t have been able to even attempt to draw that.

I still don’t care for the character much, in part because I’ve read so few stories with her I’m sure, but it also just seems weird for Black Lightning to suddenly have an adult daughter that was never mentioned before, not to mention that him having a grown-up daughter messes with age perception in the fragile fictional environment of the DCU (I smell another long-ass tangent coming on!).

See, if she’s 20 (let’s say she graduated form college a few years early) and Jefferson Pierce impregnated her mother when he was only 18, that means he’s at least 38. But probably older, as his daughter is more likely 23 (four years of college plus the One Year Later year) and he was hopefully a little older than 18 when he sired her.

Personally, I think 38-45 is a fine age for Black Lighting to be, but it doesn’t really work so well on DC’s unofficial-official timeline, in which the main heroes are all in their late-twenties, early-thirties. I mean, Batman and Black Lightning are probably the same age, right? Jeff isn’t, like, ten or fifteen years older than Batman, is he?

And if so, does that mean he became Black Lighining that late in his life? Like, in his mid-thirties, he just decided to put on that dated-ass costume and start fighting crime?

Connor Hawke creates a similar problem for Oliver Queen (although Connor’s younger than Anissa, at least potentially so, and Ollie’s always been played as older than some of his peers). It doesn’t bug me at all, as I tend to think of Ollie’s generation of heroes as being of an older, more dad-like age of, say, late thirties or forties, but the official DC line is that these are all twenty- and thirtysomethings.

What was I talking about? Costumes, or something?



5.) Black Lightning:The more I draw Black Lightining’s costume, the more I like it. Maybe if they’d just fix his mask—losing the yellow lenses, at least, but perhaps switching it out for an older mask, I could live with the current costume.

I still think it’s weird there’s no black lightning anywhere on his costume though.



6.) Batgirl: The current Batgirl’s costume was not made for colored pencils, which is why it’s miscolored it. If I drew her eyes black and her bat-symbol black, she would have looked even more blob-like. I do like her costume a lot—the Spider-Man eyes and bulbous head, the Batman cape and cowl, on that little body with the giant utility belt—but she could stand to lose the stitched-up mouth and instead have a mouthless cowl (ala Spider-Man) or one akin to the Batwoman from that direct-to-DVD animated movie.



7.) Metamorpho: What are those…things on Metamorpho’s face? The greenish/blueish lines that are on his head and face, and that are on the orange half of his upper body. I know the Metamorpho fragment that went by the name Shift had them, and it seems Metamorpho himself has adopted Shift’s old look, dress pants, black eyes and those weird lines and all. Are they to be read as solid, like tattoos, or some kind of lava lamp-like whorls, resultant form his body being a sort of living periodic table?

Just wondering. I like his old head design better. I don’t mind costumes being tweaked now and then, but I guess I just think head re-design is taking things too far.

Speaking of which…



8.) Martian Manhunter: I was totally shocked by how much love the new Martian Manhunter costume got in the comments section for that post. It’s another look that I despised at first sight, but have been slowly growing more used to. Maybe in another eight years or so I’ll even dig it. But that head shape…if I hadn’t read so many comics about the shape of J’onn’s head, and why it looks one way in public and another in private, or if his new public head-shape resembled a Martian headshape, that would be one thing, but it’s just so random. I don’t get why they made him look so Skrull-y, either.

Anyway, I think I’m going to examine the fashion taste of Martian Manhunter in a near future post. He has worn a few outfits other than his original costume and his new one, and that guy looks good in just about anything. Except red. It clashes with his skin tone. Violently.

League Line-Ups That Never Existed (But Should Have) #6

While tooling around arflovers.com reasearching a book Craig Yoe put together, I came across this entry about an old "Songs and Stories" record featuring The Justice League of America.

I re-posted the image of the cover above, but you'll want to follow the link, as you can play the JLA theme song there, and hear the various heroes' voices when they do the roll call. Some of them are absolutely perfect—particularly Superman and Metamorpho—but Wonder Woman is clearly played by a man not trying very hard and Batman sounds...decidedly un-Batman-like. I don't know, maybe the Haney-written Batman of the '60s might have sounded like that. A little.

(A qucik aside: Someone's downloaded the totally awesome Metamorpho theme song onto youtube.com. Give it a listen. In a few verses it pretty much sums up his origin, powers and conflict in life. And here Dan Jurgens and company are spending six issues explaining what can be summed up thusly: "Rex Mason was his real name, a soldier of fortune, didn't care about fame/ Until fate took a hand in the game/ What a change! So strange!/ Trapped in a pyramid he saw a light/ It came from a glowing meteorite/ Shooting cosmic rays stronger than the sun/ Through his body and brain and when it was done ...there stood the Element Man." And goddam, that chorus will be with you all fucking day. I want to go reread the Showcase Presents with that playing in the background now).

Anyway, the good people of Power Records, a division of Peter Pan, seem to have come up with a pretty interesting League line-up there.

You've got your traditional Justice League second bananas The Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman, plus Plastic Man and Metamorpho, neither of whom would officially join the team for years and years (Metamorpho teamed-up with them back in the day and was asked to join, however). And, of course, Superman and Batman (not pictured), because who really wants to read about a group of superheroes that doesn't include those two?

All seven of them meet my personal criteria for what makes someone Justice League material—the terms "world's greatest heroes" could apply to them and nobody would snicker, they're somewhat iconic, they have a symbol that can be put on the back of a silver chair. Rex is probably the squarest peg, since he's only starred in, like, two episodes of one cartoon, and thus isn't likely to be recognized outside a comic shop like the rest of that line-up, and having two guys who can do that with their necks might seem a little redundant, but I'd let him in anyway on the grounds of general awesomeness. He'd bring a welcome infusion of zany slang and surly attitude to the group.

Man Up, Martian Manhunter! Pt. 1: Doomsday

On paper, the Martian Manhunter is probably the last person in the DC Universe you want to get into a fight with. Seriously, if the Justice League gave you a choice between two doors, with Superman kicking your ass behind one and Martian Manhunter kicking your ass behind the other, you’re going to want to go with Superman.

As J’onn himself recently explained on his blog* in discussin the current Justice League line-up, “I've got all of Superman's cooler powers plus mind-reading plus shapeshifting plus intangibility plus I'm not a monumental d-bag like Geo-Force. Ooo, lava blasts? Martian Vision, bitch."

Now, J’onn’s probably exaggerating a little bit there. I mean, he’s super-fast, almost as fast as Superman, but he can’t tie the Flash in a race like Supes can. And he’s extremely strong and extremely durable, but probably not quite as strong and durable as Superman. But for the most part, he’s like Superman with a head cold, or Superman on two hours of sleep...only with a bunch of other powers too, to compensate for not being able to beat Supes in a hundred-yard dash or juggle as many planets.

Think Superman and Charles Xavier and the Vision and Plastic Man all rolled into one, and that's pretty much Martian Manhunter.

I mean, he’s a guy who once took out Despero one-on-one using only his mental powersand just plain buried Ultraman, the evil Superman doppelganger from a neighboring antimatter universeYou hear him talking smack there? It’s not even a fight, the moment you think maybe you want to fight him, then bam! you’re DDDUUNNNNN, as Ultraman himself put it.

It’s a good thing for the supervillains of the DC Universe then that J’onn is a colossal pussy.

Really, that’s the only explanation I can think of for why a guy with that much power gets taken down constantly. At this point, he’s probably been rescued by Superman more times than Lois Lane. He’s been clobbered by such inferior opponents as Superboy-Prime and Black Adam. He’s been known to spend days at a time in space crying.

You can’t really blame the whole vulnerability-to-fire thing. While this has come and gone from story-to-story, in aggregate it would appear that fire is a psychological weakness of J’onn's, which, when he allows it to get the better of him, causes him to lose concentration on his powers and turn into a puddle of goo, but, when he’s concentrating (or has had his Martian version of Zoloft that day), it doesn’t hurt him any more than laser beams or lightning bolts.

J’onn’s perennial whipping boy status really seems to simply come down to a matter of a lack of confidence on his part. What he seems to need is a coach, someone to grab him by the shoulders, look him in the ruby reds and say, “Man up, Manhunter!”

That’s where Every Day Is Like Wednesday comes in.

For the first installment of our new feature, we’re going to examine an opponent J’onn should have been able to take or, at the very least, not gotten completely, embarrassingly destroyed by in a few panels.

His name? That’s right, Doomsday, the monster that killed Superman. Well, actually, he didn’t really kill-kill Superman; he simply beat Superman really, really, really badly, exhausting almost every ounce of solar energy Superman’s cells had gathered, draining him like a battery and sending him into a death-like state that lasted months.

As was revealed in Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey (Collected in big, fat omnibus collection Superman/Doomsday: The Collected Edition, which I recently fishished reading), the big D was created over the course of centuries of brutal experimentation to be an unkillable killing machine. He has no internal organs and is almost solid throughout. He’s powered by solar energy, can survive any environment and, in the off-chance anything ever kills him, he returns to life, evolved so that he can’t be killed in the same way again.

In other words, Doomsday is one tough customer. In Hunter/Prey, dude shrugs off Darkseid’s Omega Effect (so named because no one shrugs that shit off), and mortally wounds the dark god. Orion’s astroforce doesn’t phase Doomsday, and in a short story we see a Green Lantern empty its ring on Doomsday, to little effect.

Now, given the level of awesomeness that is Doomsday (Superman only ends up defeating him at the end of Superman/Doomsday by having him hurtled forward through time to the absolute end of the universe), it seems logical that Doomsday could probably take J’onn in a fight, right? But at the very least, J’onn should be able to give the gray giant a run for his money. After all, an opponent can’t even punch J’onn if he goes all ghosty on them.The omnibus contained multiple fights between Doomsday and J’onn, and, I’m sorry to report, that J’onn does about as well against him as he did back when he was inadvertently impersonating Bloodwynd (Yeah, J'onn thought he was Bloodwynd for a while...it's a whole thing).

So, not counting that first time when the Manhunter thought he was Bloodwynd, J'onn and Doomsday first faced off in Superman: The Doomsday Wars, by Dan Jurgens and inker Norm Rapmund (also collected in the omnibus). The Watchtower Era JLA is responding a distress call from "the Georgia authorities," and it's a pretty serious line-up that goes to survey the damage. J'onn's there alongside Wonder Woman, Orion, Plastic Man, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, The Flash (Wally West) and, um, the Huntress.

The Leaguers all split up and investigate, and, before you know it, Huntress and Orion find the rest of the team all laid out flat......except J'onn, who's not only knocked out, but hung up by his cape. Sigh. Oh J'onn...

Now Huntress doesn't realize it yet, but we the readers know that it was Doomsday that just pwned the whole Justice League. Actually, it's Doomsday with Brainiac's brain in him. Or mind. How is this possible, if Doomsday doesn't have any internal organs? I don't know, so let's ignore it. Well, let's first state that if Doomsday doesn't have a brain and/or a mind, then he should be invulnerable to J'onn's telepathy, meaning that J'onn can't give him the old Martain mindfuck that he used to take out Despero, nor can he read his mind to anticipate his moves as he did Ultraman. So maybe that explains why J'onn can't lay a glove on the guy.

Actually, J'onn makes some more excuses...Okay, we know Doomsday must be super, super fast, because he fights Superman hand-to-hand, and Superman's, like, Flash fast. And J'onn says he got nailed before he had a chance to phase. Okay, I'll buy that. Of course, I thinkt he Martian doth protest too much, because he also says he was protecting someone, which is another good excuse for getting beaten up by Doomsday and hung by his own cape...he couldn't phase because he was protecting a bystander, and if he went intangible instead of taking the punch, the bystander woulda been pulped. I'd buy that too. The two excuses don't work in concert, but whatever. This is a Dan Jurgens story, not a Grant Morrison one, so we let little things slide a little.

Okay so now J'onn knows he's up against Doomsday, the monster that killed Superman. He knows just how fast he is and how hard he hits. Now he's ready for him. Time to get back in there and show Doomsday what Martians are made of!Just four panels later, J'onn returns.Oh J'onn...

To be fair, GL, Flash, Orion and Wonder Woman don't do much better. We can assume Wondy's lariat didn't work because Doomsday's invulnerable, being mindless (although he has Brainiac's mind here) and he's invulnerable to GL because he's evolved around Green Lantern rings from his previous encounters with GLs and Guardians. There's no reason why Flash couldn't have pushed him at lightspeed and sent him off-planet though. Anyway, I only mention this to make more excuses for J'onn. Maybe it's not his fault he got taken down so easily here; so did a bunch of other people that should be able to take Doomsday out, if their powers were written as they were being written in JLA and their own titles back then.

Jurgens has the League fold like a a set of lawn furniture before the fury of Doomsday, and so the Brainiac-possessed engine of destruction takes them back to his HQ, putting them all in silly little traps that incapacitate their powers.

I don't know if anyone's pointed this out before, but Superman can kinda be sort of a dick sometimes, huh?

After storming Braniac/Doomsday's city, tearing off his shirt and resucing the League, he tells them that he's teleported Doomsday to the moon, and he's going up there to tackle him head on. When Orion's like, "Yeah, let's go get him," Superman gives him a patronizing..."Alright, fine, but don't come crying to me if you get impaled on a bone shard!" Dick.

The plan is for Superman to assemble a bunch of teleporter tubes and set them up in a loop, so Doomsday is in a state of constant teleportation. To do that, he'll need Orion and Martian Manhunter to buy him some time—one minute, exactly. He doesn't think that the two heroes, each of whom could go 100 rounds with Superman, can do it, but, as Jurgens writes the pair, hes's right.Sigh. Oh J'onn...

At any rate, Superman's plan works, and he saves the day. Yeah, Superman! Why can't you be more like that strange visitor from another world in a fight, J'onn?

J'onn would get another chance to fight Doomsday a few years later, during Lex Luthor's presidency (2001's Superman #175, to be exact). This story was written by Jeph Loeb and, like most Jeph Loeb stories, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and it makes much less sense when thought about in the context of previous stories. (This was also around about the time Loeb was either losing his mind, or testing to see just what he could get away with in a comic book script and still get paid for it; this issue, for example, is intercut with quotes from President Luthor's state of the union speech for some reason. Other Loeb-written issues from this period had random speeches from American history used as narration for "Our Worlds At War" chapters.)

Now at some point during the "Our Worlds At War" story, Doomsday was freed from the teleportation loop, skeletonized by Imperiex, brought back to life, and then, in this very issue, given Joker venom. Oh, and he can talk and think now and is, for some reason, really, really weak, to the point where Superman beats him down solo, somethng he's never been able to do before.

J'onn, on the other hand, still can't put up a good showing against the monster. He tries the old Martian mindfuck on Doomsday, and then throws a couple of punches. Now, we've established that Doomsday's probably invulnerable to telepathic attack already, right? Or else how else could he have taken the Manhunter out so easily during Doomsday Wars? Plus, he doesn't have a brain or mind, so telepathy shouldn't work, right?

Well, it doesn't. But this is weird. In the second panel here, J'onn says "Sentient!" Like he's suprrised that Doomsday's sentient. Like he just discovered it when Doomsday started talking to him. But if he didn't think DD possessed any sentience, why was he trying to mess with his mind on the last page?

Oh, and I like how Doomsday breathes fire all of a sudden here. When the hell did he get that power?

J'onn, as always, comports himself with dignity, even in defeat. "Ackkkk!" Sigh. Oh, J'onn....

Luckily, Superman flies in and saves J'onn's ass from Doomsday. Again.

For J'onn's sake, let's hope he never finds himself having to fight Doomsday again, but if he does, what should he do? Other than, of course, manning the fuck up?

Don't worry, J'onn, we're here for you. I say you shapechange to resemble Superman, but lower your mass until your intangible, so that Doomsday will be totally focused on you, but unable to hit you. Then you can lead him away from bystanders and into a trap of some sort you can arrange with your fellow superheroes via telepathy.

If you want to take a more active approach, you can always throw him into space (22,300 will put him in orbit of Earth, right? So that he neither just falls back down or goes hurtling into some other poor planet). Or throw him into the sun. And if you're afraid of grappling with him (hey, I would be too), you can always turn completely invivible, fly at him at top speed, and straight up knock him into space like that.

But most importantly J'onn, and I just can't stress this enough, the first thing you need to do is man up. Or Martian up. Whatever. Just get it together, guy.


*Okay, actually it was Facedowninthegutters.blogspot.com, but click on that link anyway because it’s hilarious. DC oughta get J’onn to write the introduction to “The Tornado’s Path” hardcover collection

Related: Actually Essential Storylines: Martian Manhunter