Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #147

Justice League of America #147 (1977); “Crisis In the 30th Century!” by Paul Levitz, Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin


Let’s see, the JLoA, JSoA and LoSH…Gee, I wonder if Brad Meltzer and Geoff Johns have read this issue?

Regardless, you just know this is going to be an exciting story, and not just because there are three teams of heroes within, but because it’s broken up into chapters, and each one of them has an exclamation point in its name!


Chapter 1: “Terror of the Time Plunderer!”

On the Justice League satellite, we find a few members of the Justice Society, who are about ready to return home to Earth-Two with Psycho-Pirate in tow.









See kids, this is why they collapsed the Multiverse in the first place.

Any time you need more than one panel full of text explaining which dimension a story is taking place in, it’s officially too confusing. That goes quadruple for explanations requiring a drawing of a giant hand halting the reader.


The heroes from the two teams do a little bonding, and that bonding is awfully damn creepy, at least when it comes to Power Girl and Superman:



Like, they’re still cousins, right? Even if from alternate universes?


Before Power Girl and Superman can make a mistake they’ll both regret, they and the rest of their assembled teammates are whisked away to the year 2977, by the power of Mordru, back when his wardrobe was less Matrix and more disco-meets-Dungeons & Dragons.




Meanwhile, back in 1977, the Joker attacks a ringmaster with a blowgun, in an attempt to get a little payback for being turned down from a job as a clown at the circus.





You know, that must be the most roundabout way to stop the Joker ever. Once they figured that he was the Joker, why not, oh, call the police?

(On the subject of Delicious Hostess Fruit Pies, after reading a half-dozen or so of these ads in the course of my Satellite Era back issue reading, I went out and bought a Hostess Cherry Pie because I haven’t had one in…well, at least a decade, maybe two. They’re not really that good. I mean, they’re okay, and probably worth the buck oh five they cost, but the “real fruit filling” didn’t taste all that real to me, nor did the tender crust seem especially tender. I call bullshit on these ads.)

When the heroes try to go all Lilliputian on Mordru’s ass,



he captures them in the Gloden Globe of Transkalla, and has them at his mercy. So, naturally, he decides to tell them all an exposition-filled story about his plot to use the fabled bell, wheel and jar to summon the Demons Three and steal their powers and blah blah blah.

Originally he captured some Legionnaires in an attempt to force the rest of the Legion to go out and acquire the artifacts for him, but they failed. So now he sticks Black Canary and Green Arrow in a giant hourglass and sends the rest of the Justice teams out to succeed where the Legionnaires had failed. Which brings us to…


Chapter 2: “Crisis on a Cosmic Quest!”

So, just how annoying is Legion continuity?



Even Hawkman finds it annoying to think about it, and that guy’s been rebooted exactly as many times as the Legion.

So, those Wheel People Hawks mentioned? They’re some primitive shapechangers who have found the Wheel of Nyorlath (recently seen in 52 disguised as a wheelchair wheel) and, being primitives, decided to worship it and transform themselves to resemble it.

They’d also totally captured Sun Boy (who really looks as if he should be going by Sun Man now…he looks, like, 35 at least) and Wildfire, who could easily escape, but not without inadvertently killing some wheel people, so they had no choice but to remain hostages forever.

Good thing Dr. Fate and Superman tricked the Wheel People into worshipping fireworks, rescued the Legionnaires and absconded with the wheel.

Meanwhile, on the planet Vaxon, Batman and the two GLs find a species of giant space dragons hovering around the outer atmosphere, apparently too scared of the “Bonng”-ing sound of the magical Green Bell of Uthool to descend.

Brainiac and Princess Projectra have been negotiating with the Vaxonites to acquire the bell, but they’re using it to scare off the space dragons, and won’t part with it.

Luckily, Batman has a plan:



"In fact, I know one you guys can have! Just give us a minute to pop back to Earth and get Dr. Crane out of his cell in Arkham!"

No, actually the plan is to have the GLs create gigantic sculpting tools to terraform the entire planet into the shape of a Xanthor, the space-dragons’ only natural predator, thus scaring them off permanently, so the Vaxonites no longer need the bell.

This, by the way, is the origin of the term “a plan so crazy it just might work.”

And what's a Xanthor look like? Like this:



I'm almost positive I've seen one on the side of a cabinet of an arcade game at the roller rink when I was eight-years-old.

So that was Chapter 3: “For What the Bell Tolls…”

The final errand occurs in Chapter 4: “The Final Errand!” for which The Flash (original flavor) and Power Girl go into interdimensional limbo and encounter some frog people things to get the jar.

With the artifacts finally his, Mordru performs his ritual and releases the Demons Three, who turn on him and seek to destroy the artifacts, leaving them free forever to rule the world:



But I don’t have that next issue. So I guess I’ll never know if the Demons Three ended up killing all the good guys or not.

June 7th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's Las Vegas Weekly column features reviews of Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola's excellent Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser trade



and Jeff Lemire's excellent Essex County Vol. 1: Tales From the Farm.



That's an awful lot of excellence, right there.

And be sure to check out the sketches and samples and Lemire's website when you get a chance.

Why?



That's why.

Weekly Haul: June 6th

Avengers: The Initiative #3 (Marvel Comics) I wonder why Dan Slott isn’t on a regular Spider-Man title yet? If there’s a better Spider-Man writer currently working at Marvel, I’ve yet to read his work. Slott gets a chance to write the wall-crawler during a fight with the “lame half of the Sinister Syndicate” in this issue, a fight that the Initiative swoops in to break up. Slott is a writer who knows the lay of the land of the Marvel Universe with an unparalleled depth, and he seems so at home there that when he busts out a dozen guest-stars, it seems completely natural, rather than some sort of forced name-dropping. In addition to the Camp Hammond staffers and recruits, plus Spidey and his villains, this issue also sees brief appearances by Dani Moonstar, Beast, Thing, Stingray, Hellcat, Black Widow and Curt Connors, all while moving the several subplots forward. If I were forced to give up all but one Marvel title, I think this would be the one I’d hang on to, as it seems to be the one in which you get more of the Marvel Universe than any other title (and Slott even adds new characters to the mix).

As for the art end of things, I’ve been a fan of Steffano Caselli’s work since before his first Marvel gig, and I think he only gets better with each issue of this title. In addition to making everyone look cool—and Justice’s costume, for example, is not an easy one to make cool—he gets every little thing right, like the highly expressive faces on various characters, or the quilted look of the Shocker’s oven mitt looking costume, and, heck, even the panel of Spidey using his webbing to slam that vehicle into War Machine's on page 19 is drawn exactly right (Now put him on the covers!) With none of the awkward real world parallels to the War on Terror that marred the first two issues, Avengers: The Initiative #3 is pretty much a perfect Marvel comic book.




Birds of Prey #107 (DC Comics) (Note: This is going to be a long one, so if you don’t feel up to hearing me blabber about the cheapness of death in the DC Universe, you might just want to skip down to the next review).

I don’t think killing off superheroes and villains in either of the Big Two universes is ever a very good idea, mainly because in both cases the settings are much bigger and longer lived than a single creator (or set of creators), and there’s always more story potential for a living character than a dead character. So just because the X-writers of the late ‘90s didn’t think they had any Colossus stories left in them, for example, it didn’t mean that Joss Whedon wouldn’t badly want to write him a few years later, and make the character a part of one of the company’s best-selling titles. Now, there are times when killing off a character is actually a smart and dramatic move—Barry Allen in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marvel’s original Captain Marvel in The Death of Captain Marvel, Jason Todd in “A Death in the Family,” for a few popular examples—but the impulse to bring characters back from the dead has slowly eroded the drama inherent in killing characters off. When the death and resurrection is intended and telegraphed as temporary, it’s understandable (Superman’s, Wonder Woman’s, Spider-Man’s and Donna Troy’s come to mind as deaths everyone knew would be reversed while they were occurring), but when relatively minor characters are clearly meant to killed off permanent-like (Think Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen, Colossus, Starman Will Payton and even Marvel’s original Captain Marvel) only to be resurrected later, it cheapens both the idea of death-of-a-hero stories, as well as resurrection-of-a-dead-hero stories.

At DC, death is probably more meaningless than it’s ever been, and stories involving the death of a live character or the resurrection of a dead character have not only gotten boring, but annoyingly, aggressively boring. I remember being pretty upset (or as upset as one can get about the death of a fictional character) by the deaths of Ted Kord and Sue Dibny, but the sheer number of people dying (the Wizard Shazam, Black Condor II, Phantom Lady II, Pantha, Wildebeest, Neptune Perkins, a bunch of New Bloods, Superboy, Aquaman, Rocket Red, Nyssa al Ghul, Ralph Dibny, The Question, The Ventriloquist, Orca, Terra II, Duela Dent) and coming back (Jericho, Hippolyta) between the point that Max Lord put a bullet in Kord’s head and the death of Lightray last week has rendered it all pretty meaningless (to say nothing of the multiple continuity reboots that have occurred in that short time, with yet another promised to occur within the year).

I think the resurrection of Jason Todd was the stake through the heart of death in the DCU, but even smaller resurrections like that of Jericho, or completely random ones (Lynx showing up alive in Robin months after her death for some reason—simply to be killed again, for example), have further eroded the concept of death as one with even the least bit of drama.

And that takes some doing—to render completely meaningless and uninteresting that which we fear the most, that event that defines all human life.

This is all just an extremely long lead-in to the review of this issue of Birds Of Prey which centered around the resurrection of a long, unequivocally dead superhero.

Gail Simone’s scripting is, in matters not related to resurrection, rather tight. She writes fantastic dialogue, and the charming bastards that compose her Secret Six are as much fun as ever, if not more so (As much as I liked the Mad Hatter on the team, this may be their strongest line-up yet. Quite selfishly, I kind of hope Gen 13, Welcome to Tranquilityand The All-New Atom, all of which are selling pretty terribly, will hurry up and get cancelled already, so Simone will have room in her schedule to focus on a Secret Six monthly).

I mean, come on, Simone’s Secret Six is awesome. Check this out:



Penciller Nicola Scott is pretty great too, although I have to point out that this sequence is pretty lame:



If this were old school Marvel and I was a letterhack looking for a No-Prize, I'd say that Eether Zinda is the world’s fastest walker, or that perhaps the cold generated by Ice was so extremely cold must have frozen those Rocket Reds in the foreground, which is why they don't change positions at all i the few minutes the three panels are meant to represent. But that can't be it; it looks instead like Scott recycled the same drawing twice, and forgot to alter it's other moving parts, and no one caugh her on it. (Some fault goes to Simone too, though; since there's dialogue before and after the sequence, as if that huge group of people all just silently stood around and watched Zinda walk off into the wilderness before resuming their conversations).

But on to the larger issue, the resurrection of Tora “Ice” Olaffsdotter.

Now, her death happened at a fairly low point in Justice League history— the 1994 “Judgment Day” crossover, which occurred during the valley of League quality between the peaks of the Giffen/DeMatteis era and Morrison era—but it still happened. It was a good superhero death, sacrificing her life to save the whole world, she had a funeral, was buried, went to the afterlife, effected character development among other characters (specifically Martian Manhunter and Guy Gardner in their own titles, and the pair of them as well as Fire, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle in the League titles). She was also replaced by Ice Maiden, so if someone wanted to write about a woman in the Justice League with ice powers, they were all set. If they wanted to write about Tora, well, they could do a story set in the past. I mean, there’s a whole monthly comic book devoted to telling stories set in the Justice League’s past.

Now if a writer wants to write about Tora in the current DCU, then I guess they have to go and bring her back from the dead, which is apparently what Simone wanted, and what she did. The story wasn’t an appropriately complicated or unique resurrection story, along the lines of Green Lantern: Rebirth or Green Arrow: Quiver; the agency of the resurrection was simply “magic” and the story itself was simply a big fight between the Birds and the Six. In a very real sense, Tora was literally just the maguffin in her own resurrection story.

I have a hard time understanding why this story took place here of all places as well. Tora has only the most tenuous connection to any of these characters—Huntress was mind-controlled into joining Tora’s iteration of the League briefly, although I don’t recall the two of them forming any kind of relationship, and Barda was married to a longtime ally of Tora’s in that version of the League. Wouldn’t a Tora resurrection story make more sense in Guy Gardner’s title, Green Lantern Corps, or Fire’s, Checkmate? Or, better still, in a Justice League special or miniseries or, best of all, a JLA: Classified arc, in which Tora’s old teammates—Guy, Fire, J’onn, Superman—could be involved and react? It’s not like DC’s doing anything with JLA: Classified at the moment anyway, other than filling it up with years-old inventory stories, stories that aren’t exactly selling well. As is, bringing Ice back to the land of the living in the pages of Birds of Prey is a little like having Hal Jordan’s “rebirth” take place in the pages of Outsiders. Unless Ice is joining the line-up of the Birds, which, while an odd place for her, at least justifies this story’s existence (Of course Simone will be leaving BoP shortly, whcih means she won't have control on whether Ice is on the team or not in a few more issues).

And, by way of a parting nitpick before moving on to the rest of this week’s haul. While I prefer the look Ice is sporting here, that’s not what her hair looked or what she was wearing when she died, ot in the weeks leading up to her death.

This is:





Black Summer #0 (Avatar Press) Don’t be fooled by the zero. While a lot of Avatar’s zero issues have tended to lean toward the preview-y, this specially-priced 99-cent issue reads exactly like the first chapter of a story, in which a popular superhero kills an unnamed president and vice-president (but given the fact that they’re killed because of having stolen the last two elections and invading Iraq under false pretenses, it’s safe to say it was Bush and Cheney) and then gives a press conference, saying new elections will be held in a few days time. It’s an intriguing opening chapter, and one that could go still either way (writer Warren Ellis seems to be playing it a tad safe here, as the superhero responsible for killing Bush and Cheney seems to be the Bad Guy, speaking not for Ellis but for the forces of Evil).

That said, however, does it seem like maybe there are seventy or eighty Justice League and Avengers analogues in these sorts of stories already? I mean, it was cool when Marvel introduced the Squadron Supreme, or when Giffen/DeMatteis told their stories involving the Silver Sorceress, Scarlet Skier and General Glory, and even Kurt Busiek and company’s Astro City analogues and Alan Moore’s use of Supreme as Superman were cool, but after having read Powers, The Pro, Worldwatch, Invincible, The American Way, Hero Squared, The Boys, and Ellis’ own (repeated use) of Justice League-like teams in his runs on WildStorm titles, I think I’ve seen more than enough comics about JLA-like teams of superheroes. The fact that this comic involves a team called The Seven Guns, and seems to be a “What If…the Avengers Murdered President Bush?” story seems like a strike against it right off the bat. It’s only Ellis’ fault in that he seems to be crafting Interesting Twist On a Story Involving a Justice League-Like Team #278, instead of inventing something a little more original. Relying on the Justice League/Avengers archetype to tell a superhero genre mash-up story is a crutch, a cliché that gets more tired with each usage.

But I’ll definitely be back for #1.






Countdown #47 (DC) You know, when I first saw this cover, I found it incredibly depressing. Of course, that was before Marvel unveiled their “Heroes for Hentai” cover, which lowered the bar for inappropriately sexual images so far that Benes’ creepy image of Mary Marvel having an orgasm while lightning strikes her tits seem positively tasteful.

I still think it’s less-than-appropriate, however. Now, Countdown is unquestionably DC’s book devoted purely to pushing the buttons of their most hardcore fanboys (As one of those fanboys, I think it’s something of a failure, but surely it’s intended to cater to people who can keep up with Jason Todd and Donna Troy’s backstories). If there’s a place for tarted up superheroines in DCU comics, it’s definitely within the pages of Countdown.

However, the cover of Countdown is something else entirely (the outrage over that HFH cover would be lessened at least a degree, I think, if the image weren’t on the cover for all random passersby to see...and were it not on the cover, it wouldn't have been in solicitations, and chances are no one would have noticed it beyond the 45 people who read the troubled title).

And Mary Marvel is one of the last characters that should ever be dressed in a skirt that doesn’t cover her ass. It’s a little hard to keep the Marvel Family mythology straight now that Judd Winick has been allowed to have his crazy, crazy way with it, but Mary Batson/Bromfield is a little girl—at the oldest (DC has gradually aged the Marvels until they were older and older teenagers) she can’t be older than 17, cand she? And, well, like the constant ogling of the current teenaged Supergirl, that’s kind of, um, wrong, isn’t it? Unlike Billy Batson, who was a child who became an adult when he said “Shazam!,” Freddy Freeman and Mary Batson/Bromfield didn’t turn into adult superheroes, they just gained superpowers in their normal forms. But again, maybe that’s changed. Maybe Mary was 17 during Infinite Crisis, and is thus now of age. Still, whether she's technically 18 in the DCU or not, it's still pretty creepy, considering that generations of readers have been thought to regard her as a teenager and/or little girl and, well, this is how she’s currently being portrayed in another DC comic book currently in publication:





So that cover? Ewwwwww!. Say what you want about the Mary Jane Laundry Statue, but at least MJ's an adult.

As for the interior of the issue, it's much, much, much better than the last few. Sean McKeever, who writes this issue “with” Paul Dini is able to avoid any head-banging, hair-tearing continuity mistakes of the sort that punctuated the first four issues of the series, and he even provides a scene that is quite clever, in which the Trickster and Pied Piper have trouble talking to one another without accidentally coming up with metaphors that sound really, really gay (Like, for example, “It’s my turn to have you over a barrel for once. So to speak.”) There are also check-ins with Jimmy Olsen, Black Adam and Mary, the Monitors and “Holly Robinson,” whom I guess used to be Catwoman II and killed a cop or something…? (I don't know; I quit reading Catwoman around the time the Paul Pope covers stopped).

The art comes courtesy of Tom Derenick and a trio of inkers, and is by far the best looking of the series thus far. He even draws Mary as a teenager (she gains a few inches and cup-sizes when the Black Adam’s magic lightning finally hits her), but as good as his portrayal of the characters are in this issue, it just kind of underlines the fact that the previous pencillers drew a smaller, less-imposing Black Adam, and a bigger, bustier Mary.

In the Dan Jurgens penned and penciled back-up feature, the Monitors continue to summarize the Crisis on Multiple Earths trades. They’re now only up to The Anti-Matter Man, which means we're in for a long, long haul yet.




Detective Comics#833 (DC) You know, I bet if it wasn’t for that two-part fill-in about the terrorist Vox threatening to blow up Wayne Tower, this story would have hit with a lot more force, given the fact that this is writer Paul Dini’s very first multi-part story on the title, so that when it ends with a cliffhanger, not only are you (artificially) worried about the welfare of Batman (I’m pretty sure he’ll live), but the very fact that there is a cliffhanger is pretty exciting…when was the last time Dini made us wait to see how things would turn out on a Batman case? I hesitate to talk much about this issue at all, given that a good deal of the pleasure comes form the surprises in it. Suffice it to say that stage magician Ivar Loxias returns, and Batman calls on Zatanna for some good old-fashioned Brave and the Bold action. And the case takes an unexpected turn. This is Dini writing some of his favorite characters, and it shows. The writer does a good job of extrapolating a prior relationship between the Waynes and the Zataras, as well as acknowledging the post-Identity Crisis tension between the two heroes (which, quite honestly, I hope never goes away—Batman just isn’t a forgive and forget type, and it kind of galls me that he doesn’t punch Hal Jordan in the face every single time he sees him, or that he hasn’t found some reason to put Hawkman in jail yet). Don Kramer is a fine artist, and while I’ll probably never stop wishing that Bruce Timm, Ronnie del Carmen, Ty Templeton, Rick Burchett or someone with a similar aesthetic were teamed with Dini on the title, Kramer does a fine job as always, particularly in the silent magic trick sequence set in a flash back.




The Irredeemable Ant-Man #9 (Marvel) So it would appear that less than 16,000 reader’s checked out April’s Irredeemable Ant-Man #7, which is a pity. I realize that few people want to read about a complete bastard of a “hero,” that fewer still want to read about a hero named “Ant-Man,” and that Phil Hester’s chunky, flat arc style may not be to most Marvel fans’ liking (me, I love it). Still, if you haven’t yet at least tried an issue of this hilarious series yet, do me a favor and do so this month or next (that’s be the big World War Hulk tie-in). It should be easy to spot among the other Marvels.

It’s the one in which the title character plays Nintendo Wii with The Silver Fox.



This month’s issue also had a four-page Mini Marvel back-up by Chris Giarrusso entitled “Hulk Date.” Hulk is taking Betty Ross out on a date, and the other Marvels all give him advice. The panel in which Hulk tries to use Thor’s advice is perhaps my favorite single panel of the week, and I laughed aloud at the line, “Hulk not have surname.” Ha!




The Lone Ranger #6 (Dynamite Entertainment) Given the drag-ass pace of writer Brett Matthews’ last five issues, an awful lot occurs in this particular one, which brings the secret origin of the Lone Ranger, and all of the various elements of his myth (Tonto, the silver bullets, Silver, the mask) to a close. An all-around great Western comic; if you missed the singles, don’t sleep on the upcoming trade.



Midnighter #8 (WildStorm/DC) After writer Garth Ennis’ original story arc about Midnighter going back in time to kill Hitler wrapped, the title apparently became an anthology series. Ennis’ #6 wasn’t very good (and didn’t really make any sense), but Brian K. Vaughan’s #7 was great, and so to is this done-in-one by writer Christos Gage and artist John Paul Leon. After brutally killing a bad guy, Jack Hawksmoor challenged Midnighter to go on a mission that doesn’t involve brutally killing a bad guy, like helping a little girl find her cat. Begrudgingly, Midnighter agrees, and, as fate would have it, the case of the missing cat quickly morphs into something more his speed. The coloring seemed a little too garish for Leon’s work, but the pencils and inks are just plain beautiful (on a second read through, I kept finding myself pausing to stare at certain panels), and Gage manages several laugh out loud moments.

And could “Thank you, Scary Leather Man. I love you.” be the line of the week? Deinitely—were it not the same week as "Hulk not have surname."



Superman #663 (DC) The New Genesian Young Gods come to Metropolis and wreak havoc, and their chaperones, the pre-Countdown Lightray and Fastbak, get them in line while Superman reaches his decision regarding Arion’s warning that he quit the superhero game for the betterment of mankind. It’s great stuff. A wonderful script full of clever action and dialogue, strong characterization and the sort of continuity adherence that is far too rare at DC these days (Busiek explains why it seemed Arion cameo-ed in the Day of Vengenace Special when those who’ve read JSA knew he had died). Carlos Pacheco and Jose Merino’s art is absolutely perfect, from that great cover, to the images of the Daily Planet building to the designs and rendering of the young New Gods and the middle-aged New Gods to the magical heroes hanging out in the background at the Oblivion Bar.

"Prince Valiant Smash!"

I don't normally read the Sunday funnies because, good God, have you read an actual Sunday comics page lately? I can't think of anything more depressing. But when visitors left a copy of the local daily at my apartment recently, I took the opportunity to see how bad the Sunday comics page had gotten, and, lo and behold, I found what might just be the single best Prince Valiant panel of all time.

How its creators arrived at such an image can be demonstrated by simple arithmetic.






PLUS





EQUALS

Superman's Pal, Caleb Mozzocco

Black Canary Isn't a Very Good Chairperson

(Click to enlarge)







Source: Amazons Attack #2, written by Will Pfeifer, drawn by Pete Woods, and expertly lettered by Rob Leigh, copyright DC Comics.

Oh noes! Lightray is dead!!!!!!!!!!

So, did you read this week's issue of Countdown yet? If so, you've probably heard:



Lightray's dead!

Don't take my word for it; just listen to Jimmy Olsen and Superman:



And Superman's pretty upset about it. In fact, he's so upset that, as Rachelle pointed out at EDILW favorite LBW, he's speaking in fonts.

Man, Lighray—dead. Can you believe it? What's that? Who's Lightray, you ask?

Let's ask Jack Kirby:



(And if that's not enough info to acquaint you with the happy-go-lucky New God, I go on about him at length here).

While I kinda liked Lightray, and certainly thought he had more story potential alive than dead, I'm not exactly broken up about his death. I mean, he was pronounced dead in a comic book co-starring Jason Todd. And really, once you bring Jason Todd back from the dead, death in your little fictional universe is essentially meaningless.

But at the same time, if he really is dead (Problem #29 With Countdown: How are you gonna kill a New God and not have the Black Racer show up? That's his whole deal!) I suppose we should at least go through the motions of mourning for the poor guy's death.

So let's take off our hats, lower our heads and spend a few moments thinking about poor Solis of New Genesis' many virtues.

He was fun-loving



he was polite and well-mannered



he was respectful of others' property



and he was so comfortable with himself and his own appearance that he wasn't afraid to have the second-worst hair in the entire history of the DC Universe, while standing next to the guy with the worst hair in the entire history of the DC Universe




But what I liked most about Lightray? Not only were his powers pretty awesome, but he knew they were awesome, and he told people they were awesome—using the word "awesome."



And that is awesome.

Vaya con los dios nuevos, Lightray.

Friday Night Fights: Batman Beatdown #2

Slade Wilson isn't the only one who has handed Batman a severe beating. Being one of the world's greatest martial artists, wearing a belt full of bat-shaped anti-personnel weapons and being a bit of a psycho, a bit of a dick and a bit of a cheater may be enough to make the Dark Knight the king of most hills, but whenever he ventures outside his own weight class, he increases his chances of getting his spandex-clad ass beaten.

And you don't get much more out of Batman's weight class than Etrigan, the Demon.

I'm not sure if or when the two caped Gothamites found themselves at odds prior to tonight's fight, but I know they've crossed paths repeatedly since, and, as far as I know, this is their best battle (and all around best story). It also happens to be one of the best Batman stories I've ever read. And one of the best Etrigan stories.

It comes courtesy of Alan Grant, who, I've recently learned, was writing Etrigan for the very first time (Grant would go on to write him a lot more, when DC launched a Demon monthly with Grant in the writer's chair). His portrayal of the yellow-skinned, flame- and rhyme-breathing demon hewed close to that of Alan Moore's version of Etrigan in Swamp Thing, only rather than a sort of buddy-cop team policing the borders between hell and earth, Grant presented Jason Blood as a brooding, conflicted, cursed man, and Etrigan as completely mad—a pretty scary proposition considering his powers.

The art is provided by Norm Breyfogle, whom I consider the definitive Batman artist. Breyfogle found the perfect balance between the realistic portrayal of Batman as a normal man in a costume and the more expressionistic, symbolic/iconic take on the character as a mysterious, almost supernatural creature of the night. Breyfogle's Batman was recognizably human in his expressions and musculature, but his cape and cowl would flare out menacingly and blend into shadows to reduce Batman into a pair of angry white triangles and a set of sneering teeth when he needed to be scary. There have been so many great artists to handle Batman over the years that picking a "best" seems foolish, but I don't think anyone has accomplished as much characterization through the imagery alone as Breyfogle has; certainly not within the last few decades.

It probably helps that the Grant/Breyfogle team was together for so long—From their run on TEC through Batman and then their own Shadow of The Bat, and a handful of specials. Was there a writer/artist team on the character for that length of time before? There certainly hasn't been since.

Breyfogle's style is as well-suited to the Demon as it is to Batman, for the exact same reasons. His Etrigan seems physically real and unreal at the same time, and his bearing whips from mischeivous to noble to horrifying from panel to panel, while remaining consistently the same character (Breyfogle would again draw Etrigan in the Anarky miniseries, also written by Grant).

So, the fight.

It goes down in the last issue of three-part story "Tulpa," which ran from 1989'sTEC #601 through #603. Some criminal types have been shaking Gothamites down for protection money, and one of their targets turns out to be an occultist who summons a demon to protect him, and, like most demon summonings, things go awfully awry—the four-armed, axe-weilding, crown-skulls-wearing giant calling itself Mahakala is too much to control, andit soon starts cutting a bloody swathe through Gotham.

Batman goes to Jason Blood for help, but Blood's all like, "What? No way am I summoning Etrigan to fight that guy! That's like fighting a grease fire with a forest fire!" (I'm totally paraphrasing, by the way). So Batman soldiers on solo. When our fight begins in TEC #603's "When Demons Clash!", Batman has already gone a few rounds with Mahakala, "The Great Black One-- The Angry Destroyer!", which accounts for his battle-damaged look (You know Batman's been getting his ass-kicked when he loses an ear from his cowl.)

Just as he's about to take a battle axe to the face, Etrigan swoops in and saves the day (Blood had caved), making short, short work of Mahakala.

It's worth noting, for our purposes here (i.e. watching Batman get beat down) that Bats is therefore going into this likely weary and a little wounded. So while Batman in top form probably couldn't hang with Etrigan's inhuman speed and endurance, super-strength, flame-breath, energy bolts, magic and poetry, a tired-out, roughed-up, one-eared Batman doesn't have a prayer.

Etrigan's in the middle of gloating over the pile of ashes that was until recently Mahakala, when Batman rolls up to thank the heroic demon and shake hands (Grant's Batman is a little serious and driven, but he's not a sociopath social incompetent). Click on the images to read the dialogue, and better appreciate the unbridled awesomeness that is Breyfogle's Batman.




Etrigan's not here to save Batman or shake hands though, he's here to eat bad guys.



Batman steps up and sets a stern hand on his shoulder, but instead of pulling a Hal Jordan on Batman, Etrigan just free-styles a rhyme while his skin burns through Batman's glove (no one talks shit like Etrigan!) Note an art mistake in above panel—Batman places his right hand on Etrigan's shoulder, but is then shown clutching his burning left hand.

Demon or no, Batman isn't letting anyone get away with murder (unless it's Jason Todd or Cassandra Cain; Batman makes exceptions for people he's personally trained when it comes to getting away with murder). So it's time for a judo throw into a pile of cinder blocks.



What a great page. See how elegantly Grant and Breyfogle detail Etrigan's speed in relation to Batman's—he clears twenty yards in the space of a second, and we get one word thoughts in each panel, to place further context for the rate of the actions. Wow. And that face...see how quickly Breyfogle has Etrigan's face twist from "Did Batman just throw me into a pile of bricks for some reason? That's rather irritating" to "GAAAR! DROOL! FOAM!"





This is another great page. Note how the panels are starting to reflect the action. While the first scenes of their encounter are rigid, straight and formal, now they grow angles and shift perspectives—the page is falling apart and slipping towards oblivion, just as Batman is.

He summons his waning strength for one last strike because if Batman's going out, he's going out with a double-barrelled ear boxing.



Batman's blow accomplishes his goal, but in an unpredictable way. Etrigan finds it so adorable that Batman would even try punching his way out of the situation that Etrigan just cracks up at the thought. This leads to my second favorite Batman panel of all time, wherein Etrigan throws his arm around Batman to tell him he likes his style, and Batman is just completley bewildered.




And there's my first favorite Batman panel of all-time. The one in which Etrigan concludes their conflict the way a raving lunatic from Hell might—with a smek.

In fact, that's so awesome, let's see that again:



Recognizing that Bruce Wayne, like Jason Blood, has a demon living within him, Etrigan sees the Batman as a kindred spirit and spares him, forefeiting the fight.

WINNER: BATMAN

One of the half-dozen or so things that bugged me about Countdown #48

Like each of the previous three issues, there was a whole lot to dislike about this week's Countdown. This time out, a lot of it came on page nine, a brief five-panel scene between Donna Troy and Jason Todd that is breathtaking in the amount of continuity mistakes it manages to cram into such a small space.

Donna Troy is standing over the fresh grave of former Titan Duela Dent, The Joker's Daughter, and up walks former Titan and former Robin Jason Todd, who is currently a multiple-murderer and fugitive from justice, a walking threat to Donna's pal Nightwing's very existence as a costumed hero (not to mention Robin and Batman's).

Instead of smacking Jason across the cemetery or calmly asking him to surrender himself to the proper authorities, Donna just kind of chats with him.

Even if I wanted to be extremely generous with writers Adam Beechen and Paul Dini and assume that maybe Donna doesn't know about all the guys Jason has beheaded, and that she for some reason trusts him not to ever reveal Nightwing's secret identity to anyone, I still can't understand why she's not a little more pissed at the guy.

After all, as far as I know, the last time the two of them crossed paths was in this comic book



Now, it was a terrible comic book, probably the worst issue of Titans with Geoff Johns' name on it prior to "Titans East," so I can hardly blame Dini and Beechen for not wanting to read it.

In fact, I've tried very hard to block it out of my own memory because this issue, primarily because, in addition to containing Jason Todd (alive, aged, and evil), it also features an incredibly stupid scene in which he rips off his Red Hood costume



to reveal this costume


which he was apparently wearing underneath his Red Hood get-up...cape, gloves, boots and all.

But anyway, in that issue, Jason Todd broke into Titans Tower, gassed Raven in her sleep, shot Cyborg and Beast Boy with some kind of electricity-emitting darks that knock them both out, and then attacked Robin, beating him into unconsciousness and knocking down the Donna Troy memorial statue in the Titan's creepy Hall of Statues of Dead Titans.

Donna, who has arrived at the Tower in search of cannon fodder to take into her space battle against Alexander Luthor's giant space hands, is there when the team finds her nominal teammate Robin,



who tells them all that Jason Todd just did this to him.

So I gather Donna either has very bad short-term memory (this happened just before Infinite Crisis, so it was only about a year ago her time), or she really, really, really doesn't like Tim Drake.

That, or Beechen and Dini didn't read Teen Titans #29. Like I said, I don't blame them for not wanting to read it, and I'd excuse them both, if they weren't using both of those characters in this story.

Beechen is an even worse offender here though, since he took over Teen Titans from Geoff Johns. Apparently I don't understand what is involved with writing universe comics for one of the Big Two, but I always thought that part of preparing to take over as a writer for a pre-existing title included reading the previous issues.

I mean, it's not like Beechen was taking over Action Comics or Detective Comics here, where there are hundreds of issues featuring characters who have weathered thousands of appearances that no one could keep track of every single one of, but Titans was only forty-some issues old when he took over...that's an afternoon's worth of "research."