Wonder Woman Wednesdays: A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

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

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

A Complete History of the Amazon Peoples

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Some Amazon heroines of note include:



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

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



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

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



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

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

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



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





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

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

Batman Beatdown #3

You can't win 'em all, even if you're Batman, and you therefore win about 99-percent of 'em.

In our ongoing efforts to chronicle the best ass-kickings that Batman, one of comicdom's premier assk-kickers, has endured, we've previously seen Deathstroke totally take him apart, and watched Etrigan, The Demon beat the hell out of him. Clearly Batman has a little more trouble dealing with metahumans and supernatural beings than your plain old regular joes.

There is one regular joe who has suceeded in taking Batman down, however—one Joe Dredd.

It happened in this comic book,



1991's Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgment on Gotham, which was written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, and fully-painted by Simon Bisley.

This is Fourteen-Year-Old Caleb's favortie comic book, and even Thirty-Year-Old Caleb still sees a lot to like about. It's significant for several reasons. Personally, it was my fourth Batman comic and my first Judge Dredd comic. Less personally, it was the first of the three prestige-format comic book meetings between Batman and Dredd, and the only good one.

The plot involves Mean Machine Angel coming to Gotham City via somekind of teleporting maguffin machine. Judge Death follows him, and meets up with the Scarecrow, and it takes the combined forces of Batman, Dredd and Judge Anderson to settle the villains' collective hash.

But first, Dredd and Batman meet, when the latter is accidentally teleported to the future or alternate dimension or alternate dimension's future or whereever it is exactly that Mega City One is located in relation to Gotham City.

They come into conflict immediately, and, unlike 'Stroke and Etrigan, Dredd drops Batman without even exerting himself at all.

Let's watch:


(Click to mega-size it)

Oh my God! Did you see that?! One hit! He knocked Batman out with just one hit! From conscious to unconscious and unmasked in the space of just three-panels!

Now, Dredd may be as human as Batman, but he's no slouch when it comes to beating people up. While he doesn't have any superpowers or robot parts in him, he was born and bred specifically to beat up lawbreakers. Still, taking Batman out in one panel? Pretty damn amazing.

Now to be fair to Batman, this did occur at a point in his career when he was quite used to working with law enforcement officials, so chances are he had his guard down and wasn't expecting that nightstick to the head.

Later in the same book, he does punch Dredd in the face and knock him on his ass, and even has a sweet moment where Dredd's like, "Assaulting a judge, that's ten years!" and Batman responds curtly, "Make it twenty" while kicking Dredd.

Of course, while Batman does knock Dredd down with one hit, he doesn't knock him out. And it was something of a sucker punch, since Dredd was arguing with another character when Batman hit him. So we may never know whom could take whom in a fair fight (Unless that's settled in one of the two sequels to this story, whcih I've completely forgotten the contents of, on account of them not being very good).

But for now, let the record show that Judge Dredd once totally beat down Batman.

Don't Look Now, Judd Winick!

From Deadman: Dead Again #2 by Steve Vance, Jim Aparo and Rich Burchett (DC Comics; 2001)

Monday Morning Man vs. Cephalopod Moment

Just click on the images to enlarge, and thus better enjoy the best swordfight with an octopus you're likely to see today.






From Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola (Dark Horse Comics; 2007)

Attention, Burglars:

Blows to the head only mildly irritate Popeye.

The Long, Slow Death of Bart Allen

In Wednesday’s The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13, the title character was killed in what turned out to be the last book of the recently relaunched series; the previous of the four Flashes will be returning to star in the now un-cancelled previous volume of the series.

For those who haven’t been reading Flash or at least, like me, picking it up and flipping through it once a month while sadly shaking your head and placing it back on your local comic book shop’s shelf, the dead Flash isn’t Wally West, but his replacement, Bart Allen, a.k.a. Flash IV, previously known as Kid Flash and, prior to that, Impulse.

How did he die? Nothing so dramatic as saving the whole universe, as his grandfather Barry Allen did, or even saving the whole world, as Ice did. Rather, he was killed by his archenemy Inertia and a motley crew of perennial Flash villains like Captain Cold, Heatwave, Mirror Master II and the like. In the actual comic, it took a committee of bad guys to kill Bart Allen, and in real life, it likewise took a committee of people to kill him off.

See, the truth of the matter is that DC has been killing Bart Allen for a long time now. Geoff Johns actually started the process a few years back, putting Bart on a path that could really only lead to Bart’s death.

It probably began around the time that Johns assumed the reigns of the Flash monthly (with 2000’s #164). I know Johns’ run was a very popular one, but my initial impression was pretty negative. I tried out the first story arc, solely on the strength of the fantastic Brian Bolland covers and curiosity about what the writer of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. would be able to do with the Flash characters, and six issues later, decided it just wasn’t for me—dull, mediocre and unimaginative, it was just another superhero comic, which I didn’t need any more of. I’ve since gone back and read Johns’ entire run in trade (and actually started picking it up monthly when Howard Porter joined the art team), and now have a much higher opinion of it. I guess Johns just took a few stories to really find his footing on the title (and/or I needed a few months to get used to the change in style form the imaginative Morrison/Millar run to the more straightforward Johns one).

The run was most notable, I think, for the way Johns essentially Batman-ized the Flash, giving his rogues gallery a darker, more murderous and/or psychotic edge (Rather than colorful bank robbers with silly sci-fi gimmicks, they all had tics, like pyromania and cocaine addiction), giving them an Arkham equivalent warehouse to keep escaping from and be returned to at the end of each adventure, and giving Keystone City a personality so that the setting itself began to become something of a cast member, in much the same way Gotham City is a character unto itself in Batman stories.

Johns’ impulse to make the Flash franchise darker, grittier and more realistic had unfortunate consequences for Impulse. Johns wrote a perfectly fun and funny Impulse in Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., an Impulse fill-in and some JSA appearances. He really seemed to get the character as Mark Waid and company had originally conceived him—a little kid superhero whose adventures were played for laughs over thrills or melodrama.

But the kid with big hair, bigger feet and pictogram thought clouds didn’t really fit into Johns’ darker, grittier Flash (not that he needed too; Impulse was a member of Flash’s extended family, but wasn’t a sidekick or partner. With a title of his own, and a slot in first Young Justice and then Teen Titans, Johns could have gotten away with ignoring Impulse completely). So Johns changed Impulse into Kid Flash II, giving him a modified version of Wally’s old red-and-yellow costume. It was a move that felt forced and false to me, but that may have been simply because the very first time I met Impulse was in the pages of Zero Hour, when he introduced himself to Superman by saying, “Call me Kid Flash-- --and get your big 'S’ handed to you!”

Accompanying the name and costume change was a change in attitude. Johns wrote Bart as a teenager instead of a preteen (Odd that Bart aged more or less in real time, while his DCU peers like Robin and Superboy remained forever sixteen-ish). And after Judd Winick and Johns teamed up to decimate Young Justice and the then flailing Titans monthlies in Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day, reorganizing the teams into the new Teen Titans and the new Outsiders, Johns got the new Titans title, which by that point, was Bart Allen’s only regular title.

Though he was now writing all of the popular Young Justice characters, Johns quickly focused on the angstier aspects of them, and for Bart that meant having Deathstroke kneecap him, a traumatic event that forced Bart to grow up, unveiling a new power (unlike the other Flashes, he could remember everything he read) that turned him into a bit of a know-it-all, a 180-degree turn from the traditionally naïve, oblivious Impulse.

By that point, Johns had changed his codename, costume and characterization, wasn’t Bart already dead?

I think, for all intents and purposes, he was, even if the character was technically still alive. Then Infinite Crisis occurred, and DC made one of the several incredibly bad moves associated with IC and it’s “One Year Later” jump. Wally West disappeared into the timestream or Speed Force or wherever with his new family, Bart and Jay Garrick in tow. When Bart returned, he was aged into young adulthood (another change, pushing him father from conception), and was now the Flash, given his own book to star in, The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, with a rather unexpected (and certainly untested) writing team at the helm, Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo, newcomers to comics whose credentials included the 1990 live action Flash TV series, which lasted only 21 episodes.

Why exactly DC thought a pair of writers from a sixteen-year-old cancelled TV series would be enough to sell fans on a brand-new Flash remains a mystery. I know that, for my part, I didn’t buy a single issue of the new Flash: The Fastest Man Alive simply because of the change in lead characters, having zero interest reading about a twenty-something former Kid Flash struggling to live up to the legacy of The Flash, who had just disappeared during a Crisis. I mean, I had already read that story 20 years or so ago. (If DC really had to lose Wally temporarily, the only Flash I personally probably would have been interested in starring in a monthly was Jay Garrick; farthere away on a conceptual level, Bart becoming Flash didn’t make any sense anyway, with Jay still running around. I could see a character feeling the need to be the Flash if there was no other Flash, like when Wally assumed Barry’s mantle, but Bart’s new role was simply to be The Other Flash).

Sales on the new title were abysmal, plunging from over 120,000 to less than 47,000 in the space of eleven issues, and fan sentiment was even more negative. Soon Bilson and DeMeo were off the title, replaced by Mark Guggenheim. I thought about checking out his first issue, which promised guest appearances by both the JLoA and the Teen Titans, and picked it up in the store to give it a looksee. I got all the way to the first panel before noticing a big, huge, stupid mistake—Robin was in the wrong costume—before setting it back down.

Then the mysterious hyping began.

DC was promising big, big things with #13, and that issue and the next two were made returnable, which took some of the risk from retailers if they were unable to sell extra copies, indicating DC had confidence that this was an issue everyone would want to read. Vibe-obsessed blog The Absorbascon offered an interesting theory about who the JLoA/JSoA crossover was intending to resurrect, which seemed pretty damn plausible (Personally, I thought the return of Barry Allen would be a terrible, terrible idea, but if DC resurrected Jason Todd, then clearly there’s no idea that’s too terrible for them to try now).

Well, if you’ve read last week’s Flash, then you know what the big surprise was, and you might have been surprised at the lack of surprise (The teaser image spoiled the fact that Bart would be dying as soon as it was released, didn’t it?).

(Above: Ah, nothing like some light escapism...)

Actually, there was a big surprise to Flash #13; it wasn’t Bart’s death, it was that there was no return or resurrection of any other Flashes in it. The only thing that happened was the foregone conclusion, that Bart died (The return happened in JLoA, and it was Wally…the Flash who wasn’t really dead, and whom no one thought was dead. Except maybe Brad Meltzer, who brought the still-living Wally back to life. Or something. I don’t know, JLoA #10 doesn’t make a damn bit of sense).

The fact that DC felt the need to kill Bart Allen, essentially putting the character out of his misery after years of progressively fucking him up, moving him farther and farther away from his original conception (and not because he was growing or evolving, but because one by one the things that made him unique in the DCU were being stripped from him) is highly unfortunate, and seems to shows a lack of imagination (As well as an odd lack of understanding about how to manage a fictional universe full of character properties; there’s always more potential in a living character shunted off into off-panel limbo than a dead one rotting in a fictional graveyard, who will need a resurrection story to be used again some day… which further makes death meaningless in your universe).

There seem to be three predominant stories at DC now: Characters are either being killed, being brought back to life after having been killed, or the multiverse/continuity is being screwed with. There are exceptions aplenty, of course, but the very fact that death, resurrection and continuity tweaking are trends in the line is profoundly disturbing (I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again—How fucked up is it that DC has managed to make stories about death itself completely uninteresting?).


(Above: At least the last time Bart Allen died, it was funny)

That the character they killed was Bart Allen is even more disturbing, given that the character once embodied all that was fun and young-at-heart within the DCU. As I said, that character has been dead for a while now, and dying for even longer, and, personally I don’t see this as any kind of concerted effort to kill off all of DC’s fun or funny characters. I honestly think that the number of JLI characters (and now Young Justice characters, I guess) that are being done in is simply a matter of coincidence. The same thing that opened characters like Blue Beetle, The Dibnys, Booster Gold and Bart Allen up to being played for laughs—their expendability—is the same thing that makes them candidates for killing off.

Put another way, Batman and Superman have lines of books to sell, not to mention movies, cartoons and merchandise. They wouldn’t fit in a JLI or Young Justice-style comic book because it erodes their brand too much, just as killing them off would.

Nobody’s making a Ted Kord movie any time soon, and he couldn’t keep one book going as a serious character, let alone two or three. He can be turned into a goofball comedian then without worry. He can also be shot through the head without losing any monthly comic book sales. Bart Allen was in the same boat; his book was long since cancelled and he had gradually been turned into Wally West 2.0. Killing him off has no adverse effects for the company; the only ones who might miss him are his fans, but DC wasn’t selling them any books anyway at the moment.

And maybe not even Bart’s fans.

I mean, I read Impulse and Young Justice, and always really dug the character, but I’m not the least bit broken up about Bart’s death, because Bart hasn’t been Bart in years anyway, so it’s not like I’ll miss him anymore now that I did last week or last year.

In fact, his death might actually be a good thing for fans.

Okay, yes, having good guys Piper and Trickster I involved in murdering him was silly, and only going to cause problems for the poor bastards trying to write something coherent with them in Countdown, and, yeah, killing yet another character only makes the DCU that much darker and drearier and death-obsessed, but Bart, like Booster Gold, is a character who only exists in the present day DCU due to time travel. Bart dead? Hell, Bart’s not even born yet. He can come running out of the timestream at any moment, whenever anyone has a hankering to write him. And better yet, he can come back at the point he left the DCU in IC (i.e. as the teenaged Kid Flash), or, even better still, at some point before Johns started de-Impulsifying him, so that a pre-teen, big-haired, big-footed Imp can appear back in the DCU at any moment to stare blank faced at adversaries while Owly-esque thought clouds appear above him.

I don’t expect him too, of course, at least not for a while. But the only thing DC seems to be as interested in as killing their characters these days is resurrecting the characters their predecessors had killed, so I’d put odds of an Impulse return somewhere around…oh, let’s say…100%.

And that’s just considering Bart as a character in the fourth-dimension of New Earth; there are possibly 51 other Bart Allen’s out there.




RELATED: For those who have only known Bart Allen as Flash or Kid Flash, here are some excellent low-threshold-of-previous-knowledge-required introductions to the character back when he was still awesome, ones that also happen to be really entertaining standalone stories. Actually, pretty much any issue of Impulse is pretty reader-friendly, but these are among the most so:

Friday Night Fights: It's all in the forearms

The respite is over, and Bahlactus hungers for more beatdowns in the blogosphere.

For the first round, EDILW turns to the prince of panel-bound pugilism: Popeye. Shh, I think the announcer's about to get things started...

"In this corner, in the red shorts, weighing in at 140 pounds give or take a couple pounds, is the challenger, the Demon of the Docks, the Thug From Thimble Theater, the Captain of the Good Ship Punchyouintheface, Pop-e-e-e-e-e-y-e the Sailor!

"And in this corner, in the green shorts, weighin in at 215 pounds, is the champion, the King of Conking, the Vizier of Violence, the Count of Monte Fist-o, K-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-id (>inhale!<) J-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-olt!

"Gentleman, go to your corners and when you hear the bell, come out swinging..."





DING DING DING!





"It's a surprise right hook right to the kisser!"




"Followed by some antiquated trash talk, and a devastating, leaping uppercut! And, well blow me down... it looks like we have a new champion!"



(Stargirl image from short story "The Ropes" by David Goyer, James Robinson, David Ross and Andrew Hennessy, part of of 1999's All Star Comics 80-Page Giant #1, published by DC Comics. The Popeye vs. Kid Jolt panels are by E. C. Segar and are taken from 2006's Popeye Vol. 1: I Yam What I Yam collection, published by Fantagraphics Books. Be sure to buy a copy; I'm hoping that thing sells well enough to guarantee the rest of Segar's strip gets likewise collected.)

June 21st's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

In this week's Las Vegas Weekly column I cover the following:





You're probably gonna want to read all three, just so at the end of the year, when two of 'em are popping up on everyone's Best of 2007 lists, you'll know what they're talking about.

I don't think The Aviary is the guaranteed critical darling and sure-fire success that the other two books are, as the sense of humor might be something of an acquired taste, but it is a hell of a lot of weird, weird fun.

Weekly Haul: June 20th

Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #53 (DC Comics) Poor Black Manta. He went from being a scuba diver with an awesome helmet to a pretty cool looking man/manta monster during the Underworld Unleashed crossover, to a half-monsterized guy in his old scuba suit (in first Green Arrow, and then Wonder Woman and Aquaman), back to a normal dude (and good guy) in a scuba suit during the beginning of the latest volume of Aquaman, to a guy who could breathe underwater unaided and now it looks like he’s about to get yet another look, after the conclusion of this story.

I really like what Tad Williams and Shawn McManus did with Manta in this issue; it’s probably the coolest Manta has been in the DCU that I can remember (Alex Ross and company’s Justice version? The best he’s ever been anywhere). His fight chatter comparing Manta, Inc.’s survivor benefits to the life insurance plan of the Aquamen is great, as is his dis of young Arthur “Aquaman II” Curry: “I imagine being an apprentice Aquaman is your summer job while you struggle with junior college, right?” Ha ha, you tell him, Manta!

McManus tricks out Black Manta and his underlings to look pretty cool, with his henchpeople looking like black-colored underwater Iron Men, and he lends a welcome cartooniness to many of the characters, particularly his gigantic King Shark, crazy angry de-helmed Manta and the highly expressive Topo (it’s all in the eyes). The new team’s run has been something of a roller coaster in terms of quality, rising and falling unpredictably each issue, but this issue is definitely a hill rather than a valley. The sense that this is all just a tangent before a return to normalcy (i.e. the real Aquaman returning to reclaim his comic book from the pretender) haunts the proceedings, but Williams at least integrates the supporting casts from the last few directions of the book smoothly, and gives everybody something to do. It even seems like a new iteration of one of Peter David’s greatest Aqua-villains is joining the cast, and Orin gets one step closer to resurrection.





The Brave and the Bold #4 (DC) Another predictably pretty much perfect issue. Reading this on the very same day as the rushed and sparsely populated Countdown and the everybody-looks-the-same-but-with-different-costumes JLoA, penciller George Perez’s deft character design, full backgrounds and precise details seem even greater, and with all those pages that have more than four panels all them, reading this comic is kinda like Christmas. Writer Mark Waid does a nice job with the characters as well; I’m not terribly fond of Blue Beetle III, this Supergirl, Lobo or the Fatal Five, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t make them all seem like distinct and likable individuals (well, except the Fatal Five, but then, they’re the villains). This is an all-around fantastic comic book, maybe DC’s very best at the moment (at least among the DCU books). Now the bad news: The Waid/Perez run is only twelve-issues long, meaning we’re already a third of the way there.





Countdown #45 (DC) Okay, remember last week when I said that as much as I’ve come to loathe Countdown I’d probably continue to buy and read it because with a weekly series, it’s almost easier to keep doing so then going to the trouble of actually dropping it? (I said much the same thing in this week’s “Best Shots” col, to the disapproval of many of the posters, some of whom seem to genuinely enjoy the series).

Well, I take it back.

Apparently I just needed to suffer through one more bad issue to push me off the fence and, make no mistake, this is yet another bad issue, with hints that the thing I am kind of interested in seeing play out—the story itself—is about to get much, much worse (How can a story teaming Jason Todd up with Donna Troy get worse? How about we throw in a Monitor and Monarch…or Captain Atom in Monarch’s armor…or whatever the hell is up with Monarch post-Battle of Bludhaven).

So this week’s exciting Ed Benes cover, which features Karate Kid front and center among the assembled Justice League of America? Well, don’t get too excited about it. The only one of those characters who actually appears within this issue is K.K., as he just kinda mills around the League satellite, apparently waiting for the last chapter of “The Lightning Saga” to ship, so the Countdown creative consortium can get on with his story.

The rest of the book is devoted to two scenes. One is Jimmy Olsen talking into his tape recorder summarizing things, a speech that seems a little off, with Jimmy forgetting his own post-Crisis(on Infinite Earths) time as an “elastic lad,” and referring to Lois as “Miss Lane.” (Even if you’re suddenly on a last name basis with Lois again Jim, it’s the 21st century and you work for a newspaper; how about you call her Ms., huh?) The other is Donna Troy vs. Forerunner. As Jason (2scoops, not Todd) mentioned in last week’s comments section, the problem with Countdown is that it’s a matter of “a death by a thousand cuts,” and #45 features a few more, from tiny little things like the lack of Amazons attacking or Donna’s super-speed creating a streak effect of completely static stars to bigger problems, like the completely confusing and seemingly random Monitor storyline to the wasted space of the dull retelling of every Multiverse crossover ever in the back-up feature.

So, Countdown? I wash my hands of you. I’ll endure next week’s issue of you (which will be waiting for me to pick up next time I’m in the shop), and that’s it. If you do turn out to be worthwhile later in your run, well, I’ll see you in trades borrowed form the library in a year or so.





Justice League of America #10 (DC)
Oh, wow. I was not expecting this at all. I thought I’d successfully lowered my expectations for this title enough that I couldn’t possibly be surprised by how bad a particular issue might prove to be, but apparently Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes have managed to find a way to limbo below my lowered expectations—this was just plain god awful, among the very worst DC comics I can remember reading. Almost Teen Titans #46 bad, but not quite (This issue counts as improvement over TT in that the art doesn’t look quite as rushed, and it does compare Brainiac-5 to Hitler, in a roundabout, implied way, and that’s gotta be worth something, right?).

We start off on the wrong foot with that infamous Michael Turner/Power Girl cover, which is exactly as bad as the preview version to the right, despite the fact that some of it gets covered up by the UPC symbol and the “The Lightning Saga Concludes!” blurb. The interior is no better, although it’s worth noting that Benes is a better illustrator than Turner; yeah, sure he only draws two different figures, the anatomy is ridiculously exaggerated, and Canary and Wonder Woman might as well be bare-assed, it’s still not Turner-bad.

The main problem is that the story makes absolutely no sense. Seriously, I just could not follow what was happening in this issue at all, to the point where I spent an awful lot of time flipping back to reread pages, in case it was a matter of my just being so distracted by the little things, like why Powergirl calls Superman “Clark” on one page and “Kal” on another (Pick a first name and stick with it, huh “Karen?”) or how Black Canary knows the Legion were “Clark’”s best childhood friends, or how he’d react when his best childhood friends betrayed him since, presumably, she’s never seen him betrayed by his best childhood friends, since this is the first time he’d been betrayed by his best childhood friends, to follow the color-coding on the narration boxes and keep the universes and timelines straight in my head.

The thrust of the story is that the Bronze Age Legion Which Shouldn’t Even Exist As Far As We Know manage to complete their little resurrection ritual, despite the best efforts of the Justice teams, but it wasn’t a Legionnaire they were really there to resurrect at all, it was a Flash, and not the one you’d expect a pre-Crisis(on Infinite Earths) Legion to want to resurrect. No, the other one, and his family…although they weren’t really dead anyway. (Were they? I haven’t been reading Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, but I thought the West clan had just disappeared into the Speed Force or time stream or something like that?). Or wait, did they capture another Flash during the ritual somehow? Is that a face in Brainy’s lightning rod there in the last panel, the one in which he says “But for this universe, all I really care about-- --is that we got who we wanted.” I don’t know, I didn’t really get it. But then, I haven’t read the late-70’s stories being referenced here. Personally, I’m not really a fan of any story that requires me to spend a half hour on Wikipedia, read a post-game interview with the creators and editors, and post a bunch of questions on message boards to older fans more versed in Legion lore than I just to come up with a few alternate theories about what might have happened in the story I just read. (My own, perhaps peculiar, definition of a good comic book story is one that you can enjoy all on its own without extensive research).

The confusing badness wasn’t all that I found shocking about the “concluding” chapter of “The Lightning Saga.” I was also surprised how little was actually explained or resolved at the end; it ended with just as many questions as it began. There was no real explanation for what was up with the Legion here. Brainiac’s dialogue at the end seems to indicate they’re from a different universe than the one the Legion just visited, but, if that’s the case, then how are they still that universe’s Superman’s friends (and how is Wildfire made out of Red Tornado’s body, how is that universe’s history in their records, etc). And why are the West twins hitting puberty, rather than babies, like the last time we saw them? And what was up with those panels involving the Ultra-Humanite, Per Degaton and the 90-pound weakling version of Despero? Weren’t they supposed to be involved in this somehow?

Fun fact: Brad Meltzer has exactly two issues left in this run on the title, which means he has about 44 pages to address those questions, plus the mystery with Geo-Force’s powers, and that business about the immortals in “Tornado’s Path”, and the identity of Dr. Impossible. Why do I get the feeling that’s going to another Meltzer-made mess for some other writer to clean up somewhere else?

It wasn’t all bad though. I did like a few things. In addition to the implication that Brainiac was worse than Hitler (Oh Dreamgirl, you just lost the debate!), I liked Brainiac’s extreme dickishness (“That’s a truly inspiring and useless speech, Drake Burroughs.”), and Superman’s threatening Sensor Girl with, “You’ve got a femto-second to put that-") and the smooth, computer-aided juxtaposition of scenes from COIE and old Legion and Flash Silver Age stories into the artwork as memories or (in one case) things in Brainiac’s monitors.

Still, a few cool moments nestled among many more horrible ones, as part of a story that makes absolutely no sense at all isn’t the sort of thing that inspires confidence about the rest of Meltzer’s run. It’s way too short to actually finish any of the stories he’s started in the previous eleven issues, but at the same time, it’s still two issues too many. Dropped until #13, when Dwayne McDuffie swoops in to hopefully save what used to be my favorite DC title.





Shadowpact #14 (DC) I bought my first issue of this series last month with #13 (behold the power of the Zauriel cover appearance!), and the amount of Zauriel within this issue prompted me to pick this one up too. Z. is under heavenly orders to kill Blue Devil, whose continued existence as a superhero is apparently glamorizing selling one’s soul to the devil, but the two former Justice Leaguers decide on another course of action. B.D. hires a lawyer to take on hell for him (nice), and Zauriel is forced to replace him in the Shadowpact line-up, despite the fact that the ‘pact all seem to hate him. I don’t much care for writer Bill Willingham’s portrayal of Zauriel as a henchman for Heaven (which continues the portrayal Steve Gerber initiated in Helmet of Fate: Zauriel); I preferred the character as the rebel, fallen angel who became a superhero to do the right thing, no matter what Heaven’s opinion of creation and/or humanity was (They decided to scrap it and start over when Mageddon had Earth on the ropes). But I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. The rest of the team barely appears here, but the Blue Devil storyline is a pretty interesting one, as is this weird sun god waiting in the wings. New penciller Tom Derenick is something of a personal favorite, and it’s nice to see there’s a place to get a monthly does of him in the DCU now (Although his Detective Chimp can use some work, and his Oblivion patrons don’t seem as cameo-tastic as usual).





Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four #3 (Marvel Comics)
Oh Jeff Parker, Mike Wieringo and Wade von Grawbadger, how did you know exactly what I’d need to read the Wednesday after seeing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer? Your Doctor Doom appearance, in his classic green house dress and cape combo over full body armor, spouting lines like “Fah!” and “The Four! Wretched curs!”, is exactly what I needed to cleanse my mind of Tim Story and Julian Sands’ portayal of Victor Von Doom as just another jackass who isn’t much fun to work with.

In the penultimate chapter, Spidey and three of the FF head to first the High Evolutionary’s Beast Men and then good old Doc Doom for help with a whattayacallit that might halt the silver aliens’ invasion of earth. It’s good old-fashioned, old-school Marvel Comics fun, and I don’t mean that in a bad way at all; Parker hits all the character notes that made these Marvels so well-loved back in the day, but he uses the characters in a story that is just as sophisticated as anything else being published today. As for Wieringo’s pencils, I admit it took a big to get used to his more loose-limbed, gorilla-like version of the Thing, but I’m used to it now, and I like it. The rest of the characters are all well designed and rendered, and I especially like his thin, regular guy like version of Spidey, which recalls John Romita Jr.’s in terms of build.





The Spirit #7 (DC) Now this is a fill-in! Few could actually successfully fill in for writer/artist Darwyn Cooke, a fact DC seems aware of, which might explain why in this first Cooke-less issue of the series, they brought in a half-dozen creators to make us miss Cooke less. Three shorts make up this “Summer Special,” each by a different creative team. Walter Simonson, Chris Sprouse and Karl Story present “Harder Than Diamonds,” in which an Eisner-esque femme fatale leads the CCPD and the Spirit on a series of fals trails after a diamond heist. Jimmy Palmiotti and Jordi Bernet offer up an even more Eisner-esque story featuring an entire tenement apartment building worth of characters with their own plotlines, all of which are elegantly solved when the Spirit chases a crook up the stairs and onto the roof. The least Eisner-esque is probably Kyle Baker’s, a rather complicated murder mystery packed with gags, the punchlines of which are most often expressed via Ellen’s oversized, rolling eyes. My favorite Baker joke comes early, when Spirit answers the phone, “Murder? In a filthy alley? I’ll be right there,” although the Sin City panel and Dolan and Spirit’s meat dinner come close. I’m really glad to see Baker doing a Spirit story, because that means now he’s done both Plastic Man and The Spirit, which makes him a good candidate for creating a story along these lines:








Ultimate Spider-Man #110 (Marvel) Is this still the most consistently best written, best illustrated and most entertaining Spider-Man monthly on the shelves? Yes, yes it is. Is this still one of the best superhero monthlies from any company on the shelves? Yes, yes it is. This issue features the conclusion of the guest star-packed “Ultimate Knights” story arc, and, if you watch the backgrounds, the first appearance of Ultimate Cloak and Dagger.

Dear Dwayne McDuffie,

Congratulations on your new gig!

Even a few years ago, I probably would have greeted the news that Dwayne McDuffie was going to be writing JL(o)A with a "Who?" instead of "Woo hoo!" (despite having enjoyed so much of your past Milestone work, back when I didn’t pay much attention to the credit boxes).

But is it just me, or have you seriously stepped up your game lately?

As someone who doesn't really pay much attention to the names of television writers on shows I watch (I have no idea if you were the genius who had Flash-in-Luthor's-body not wash his hands after going to the bathroom because he was evil or not, for example), I'm not even referring to any work you may have done on the generally excellent Justice League Unlimited. I mean instead the last few issues of Firestorm (including the sublime Orion vs. Stompa fight), the wonderfully old-school Beyond! (which took a handful of characters I didn't care the least for and weaved a highly entertaining story around them), the tons of fun Fantastic Four and, hell, even last week's Avengers Classic back-up.

Now, from what Dan Didio has said, it sounds like you'll be whittling the cast of JLoA down somewhat, as it's rather large for your (or his?) taste. Which I was surprised to hear, seeing as there are only ten people in the League at the moment, eleven if you count Geo-Force, and the best runs on the team have been those with the largest casts (Giffen/DeMatteis had two teams spread over two books and a quarterly; Morrison’s team swelled to around a dozen).

While everyone has their own ideal League line-ups, I'll try my hardest not to bore you with mine here. I did want to share some advice with you, though. Not that you need it, but rather because if there's one thing we at EDILW like doing, it's sharing advice about Justice League comics that no one ever listens to.

So, regarding that line-up: It's integral to remember that the Justice League formula that works the very best is “The Big Seven” plus a few more. The Leagues that have worked the best financially and critically without that foundation of the Big Seven (i.e. the Giffen/DeMatteis run) did so despite rather than because of the deviation from the Big Seven plus more formula, and they did have the advantage of Batman going for them (If you're only going to use one of the Seven, that's the one you want, especially around the early '90s).

The argument is often made that it's hard to tell League stories with these seven characters because so many of them have their own books, or, in Superman and Batman's cases, whole lines of books, and will thus not only remain static but, if they're to change/develop at all, it will be in those books, not JLoA. To that I say: “So what?” JLoA doesn't need to focus on the superheroes as characters, but rather on the interaction between them. There are a lot of books about Batman, and one about Wonder Woman, but this is the only book about the Batman and Wonder Woman's relationship to one another.

Now, I understand the line-up you'll be inheriting is devoid of three of the traditional Big Seven (again, the fact that this is DC's bestselling book is despite rather than because the variation of the formula; I don't think anyone believes Geo-Force, Roy Harper and Red Tornado are more popular than Flash, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter, and the current line-up still has the three biggest of the Big Seven on it). Ideally, you'll want to add the Flash, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter as soon as possible, but that might take a while. We don't know who the Flash will be (Wally's an immediate in; Bart and Barry might want to wait a bit), Aquaman's dead for the moment and Martian Manhunter is more unlikable in his current costume and characterization than he's ever been.

So that gives us the Big Seven Minus Three, meaning you can add at least three. Roy Harper is a must-keep, if only because Meltzer made such a big deal about it, changing his name and costume to get him there. Black Lightning is also a must-keep; some of us have been waiting forever to get him there and, again, he just joined. Hawkgirl and Vixen both seem like good candidates for sticking around, in part because they just re-upped; the former is more iconic, but the latter is more unique. Tough call.

As for trimming, no one would mind if Geo-Force decided he didn't want to stick around after all. Seriously, I can't think of a single person in Internetland who likes Geo-Force, or at least hasn't made fun of him repeatedly. (Here are some of my favorite jokes at Geo-Force's expense).

Red Tornado is similarly annoying, particularly as Meltzer has written him, although he has a larger fan base (that is, he has some fans). I could take or leave him, personally; if he sticks around, I do hope you'll find an interesting way to write him. The whole Pinocchio Syndrome Android-with-human-emotions-who-wishes-he-was-real plotline has been something pretty much anyone who's ever touched Red Tornado and Marvel’s Vision has hammered on over the last, what, 30 years now? That’s kind of…tired.

Black Canary has fans and certainly belongs in the League more than Geo-Force, but, at the same time, I don't think she brings much of anything to the team. If they need someone to beat someone up without using superpowers for some reason, they could just have Batman do it. He loves beating people up. Her upcoming nuptials will give her a good excuse to step down for a while too, or put herself on reserve status, or maybe just be like the Phantom Stranger, and just show up when she feels like it or is really needed.

Which is the advantage of a gigantic line-up. The more people on the League, the better, even if we don't see them all the time. For example, I love Steel and, in a DCU that operates on a sort of logic beyond "That Which the Person Writing Likes Is What Is," I don't know why he would have quit the League after Morrison’s “World War III” or why no one's asked him to rejoin. How many brilliant inventors and super-engineers who can also catch falling jetliners and knock giant robots' heads off with their big ass hammers are there in the talent pool? And while the Trinity are all scientists, I think the League needs a dedicated tech guy. I'd be happy to see Steel on the team, even if he's only there doing tech support, monitor duty and joining them for, like, one out of every fifteen fights. I think that's how a lot of fans feel; they want their favorites in the League, even if those favorites don’t actually star in every single issue.

So big rosters are great, and, barring that, a large number of official reservists who occasionally guest-star and/or just check in is definitely the next best thing.

Other add-ins to consider, beyond Aquaman, a Flash and J'onn? Well, obviously Plastic Man and Captain Marvel, once the Judd Winick experiment is scrapped and things get back to normal with him. I know those two superheroes belong among any gathering of The World's Greatest Heroes just as much as any of the Big Seven, you know they belong among any gathering of the World's Greatest Heroes just as much as any of the Big Seven, so why not finally officially make it so?

Oh hey, and the Green Lantern situation? Who should be the Green Lantern? It's Hal currently, which never made much sense to me. Though a founder, he was on the League less than Kyle and Guy. He was also evil for a long stint, so evil that he actually destroyed the universe temporarily, and even killed Batman temporarily before undoing all of creation (yeah, yeah a space bug did it; whatever) and he was a member of "The Power Pact" which was less than ethical (another strike against Canary, come to think of it), and his coming on seemed a little unnatural. I mean, they were just working with John, who was place-holding for Kyle, when Hal came in. Did they just fire John? Stop returning his calls? Was he so deep undercover as Hunger Dog that he couldn't join the new Meltzer-ized League? It should have been John, as we all know (Kyle's life seems even more complicated now then when he asked John to replace him, and the League needs a Lantern in it's line-up, not an, um, Ion…whatever that is exactly).

Of course, now the problem is that Hal's there, and they'd have to kick him out to make room for John. I'm not sure how to handle this, or how quickly it should happen, but I have faith that you'll find a smart, believable way to do it. John is currently the only book-less Lantern, and JLoA is the ideal place for him now. If Hal gets the monthly, Guy the Corps book and Kyle all the stupid Countdown spin-offs, then let's get John back in the League, huh?

Thanks for your time, and good luck.

Sincerely,
Caleb

P.S. Zauriel! Scott "Mister Miracle" Free! Steel! J'onn! Aquaman! Plastic Man! De-Winick-ified Captain Marvel! Moon Maiden! Janissary! Maybe even Cyborg!

Marvel's September previews reviewed

AVENGERS CLASSIC #4 Written by STAN LEE & DWAYNE MCDUFFIE. Penciled by JACK KIRBY & MICHAEL AVON OEMING. Cover by ART ADAMS. Captain America may be dead, but witness his classic rebirth into the Marvel Universe in "Captain America Joins…the Avengers!" -- a tale destined to become a magnificent milestone in the Marvel Age of Comics! Witness the tragic death of Bucky and the triumphant return of the Golden Age’s greatest hero in an instant classic that could only be told by legends Stan Lee and Jack Kirby! Plus: take a new look at the ultimate man out of time, as writer Dwayne McDuffie (FANTASTIC FOUR) and artist Michael Avon Oeming (POWERS) craft an all-new 9-page story starring the one-and-only Captain America!

I’m curious to see how long Marvel will let McDuffie write these Avengers back ups (not to mention Fantastic Four). If he doesn’t leave the book, under whatever circumstances, would that make him the first writer to handle both the Avengers and the Justice League simultaneously?






CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN #1 & 2 (of 6) Written by David Morrell. Pencils & 50/50 Cover by Mitch Breitweiser.50/50 Cover by TRAVIS CHAREST. New York Times best-selling novelist and creator of Rambo, David Morrell, takes on Captain America in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE CHOSEN—a six-issue Marvel Knights limited series in the tradition of SPIDER-MAN: REIGN! Super-star-to-be Mitch Breitweiser provides the finest art of his career as he chronicles the last days of Captain America.

“In the tradition of Spider-Man: Regin,” huh? Does that mean we can expect Cap’s super soldier serum tainted semen to have an unexpected effect on Sharon Carter?







I like Skottie Young’s “Capool” a lot better than Ariel Olivetti’s “Capunisher.”








I love Marko Djurdjevic’s artwork. I hate his version of the Daredevil costume though.








Sill no feet or backgrounds, but Michael Turner’s FF is definitely improving. Thing’s jaw looks like it belongs on his face now, for example, and the elongated torsos he so loves actually works pretty well for someone whose powers include the ability to elongate his torso to inhuman proportions.







I won’t buy this series, not caring that much about Iron Man, but that is a really nice cover, isn’t it?






IRREDEEMABLE ANT-MAN #12 Written by ROBERT KIRKMAN. Art by PHIL HESTER & ANDRE PARKS. Cover by PHIL HESTER. FINAL ISSUE! The story of Eric O'Grady comes to an end--or does it? Who lives, who dies, who gets double-crossed? The answers to these questions and many more in this final issue of the series everyone who read loved! So get your 'Save Irredeemable Ant-Man' campaigns ready. Hey, it worked for Runaways and She-Hulk. Why not Ant-Man?


Nooooooooooooo! Well, the writing’s been on the wall for a while, and, as the clever solicitation copy itself notes, there’s always hope that this book’s cancellation will be more She-Hulk than The Thing. At the very least, I hope Eric O’ Grady sticks around the Marvel Universe, complete with his ant-suit. It’s the best Ant-Man costume design yet (I know that’s not saying a whole lot) and he certainly makes crowd scenes look cooler.







MARVEL ADVENTURES SPIDER-MAN #31Written by PETER DAVID. Penciled by POP MHAN. Cover by PATRICK SCHERBERGER. HOT HOT HEAT!!! Spidey gets caught in the crossfire of the Human Torch AND Pyro! ONE hothead would be rough enough…but TWO? It’s Spidey flambé, brought to you by the one-two punch of David and Mhan!!!


Don’t worry about Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man being cancelled Peter David fans. PAD’s still got one Spider-Man monthly, and this one’s guaranteed to be completely alternate universe Uncle Ben and bonde claw free! Nice to see the Spyboy creative team reunited, and I do so love me some Spidey/Torch crossover action.







MARVEL ADVENTURES THE AVENGERS #16Written by JEFF PARKER. Penciled by CAFU. Cover by TOM GRUMMETT. Look, sorry pal- ow- but this isn't Robin Hood and the Merry Men- ow-ow-, this is The Avengers- ow! Hey, watch it with those thi- ow, ow, OW! Fine. What did you say your name was, Hawk-something?


How many times have I said this is the best and/or my favorite Avengers title? Fourteen? Fifteen? Well, I’m saying it again. I love this book. Heck, even the solicitation copy is fun.






MARVEL ZOMBIES: THE BOOK OF ANGELS, DEMONS & VARIOUS MONSTROSITIES Written by JEFF CHRISTIANSEN, MICHAEL HOSKIN, STUART VANDAL, CHAD ANDERSON, MADISON CARTER, DAVID WILTFONG, RONALD BYRD, ERIC J. MOREELS, ANTHONY FLAMINI & AL SJOERDSMA. Cover by GREG LAND. Think you know everything there is to know about the things that go bump in the night? Think again! Discover the events that led to the infectious Marvel Zombies. What does Belasco have in store for the X-Men? What is lurking in the unknown? Is it the Lurking Unknown or something worse? Think Set and Seth are one and the same? What is the most powerful black magic tome on Earth? What are the Azazel, Brain, Lord of Death and Voyager? Find out all of this and more as we explore the dark depths of the Marvel Universe and beyond – featuring Demons (a massive eight-page profile), Angels, Werewolves, Vampires, death gods Damballah and Pluto, and much more! Oh yeah, and did we mention Marvel Zombies?

Okay, I don’t get it. What the hell is this exactly? An Official Guide to the Marvel Universe style book of profile pieces, with the “Marvel Zombies” shoehorned in and added to the title to cash in on their unlikely popularity? Did I get that right?







PENANCE: RELENTLESS #1 (of 5)Written by PAUL JENKINS. Pencils and Cover by PAUL GULACY. From the pages of Civil War: Front Line and Thunderbolts! Once he was a hero, now only a shell of Robbie Baldwin remains. As Penance, he begins a slow descent into madness: the most hated man in America, blamed for the disaster at Stamford, tortured by visions of his failure and obsessed with strange, seemingly meaningless numbers. A relentless pursuit begins...

Because no one demanded it!







THUNDERBOLTS #117
Written by WARREN ELLIS
Penciled by MIKE DEODATO
Cover by MARKO DJURDJEVIC
"Caged Angels" continues as we delve into the psyche of the Thunderbolts’ most elusive member, Penance, the man formerly known as Speedball. While Thunderbolts Mountain remains in a perpetual state of discord, the greater chaos might be within Robbie Baldwin’s own mind!

Crave more brooding melodrama starring Robbie Baldwin? Then heads-up, Dark Speedball fans! Guess who takes center stage in September's issue of Thunderbolts!










I’m trade-waiting the Sub-Mariner series, but that cover is going to be hard to pass up on the stands.







As much as I dislike Greg Land’s art, and I dislike it a little more every time I see it, do you know what I’d totally buy? A collection of Land covers and sequential pages, complete with the official photoreference he used in the creation of it. Kind of a behind-the-scenes book about Land’s process. I have a feeling it would have to be a Max book though.