Long Live The JLA!!

Check out this hot preview page from the upcoming DC Universe #0!!

I freely admit, I'm not quite up on my current artists in the DC stable. Is this Benes? I'm not sure. One way or another, I'm grooving on this image, which was released by DC this weekend, just in time for the NY Comic Con. If it is Benes, then I'm impressed at how everyone's bodies seem well proportioned, especially the women.

But I'm not here to be an art critic, only to drool over this image of what must be, again, retroactively...the original seven members of the JLA, along with the early Silver Age additions to that classic team. Looks like there'll be a history lesson for us in DC Universe #0. About time.

I'm not at the convention, and it'll probably be two years before I get my hands on the trade paperback for this and Final Crisis. But at least I have places to let my imagination run as I head back out to work in the garden.

Happy Earth Day! (Oh, and Happy Earth 2 Day, and Earth 3, and 4 and so on...!)

My Martian Heart Will Go On

This morning, let's take a look at Showcase '95, issue #9 from October. Showcase was a fun, monthly anthology title that featured stories of all sorts of folks from the DC Universe. As you can see, this issue spotlights Lois Lane, Lobo and J'onn J'onzz.

What a cover (credited to Phil G. and Chip W.): looking around our modern media, I just don't think we have anyone in the real world who compares to Superman's spunky, tenacious journalist then-girlfriend. She's also smart enough to know you don't shove a microphone in Lobo's face without having the Martian Manhunter, or some other powerhouse, handy as back-up.

Really, though, they ought to have worked Jimmy Olsen into the cover (maybe getting his camera crushed by the "main man"), since he was really a co-star in Lois' interior tale.

"The Flock" (by Cindy Goff, with art by Sal Velluto and Dick Giordano)is sort of standard fare but still a good read, in which Lois and Jimmy are working a missing persons story and uncover a cult in the sewers of Metropolis, which they manage to break up without any assistance from their Kryptonian friend.

The second tale of the book features Lobo. I have to say, I've tried on any number of occasions through the years, and never really warmed to this character and his one-note lifestyle of murder and mayhem...at least, until he was re-purposed for 52.

This story "Four Funerals and a Wedding" is, wisely, uncredited. A three-eyed alien bride waits for her groom at the altar, and we learned with some horror that her husband-to-be's best man is none other than Lobo(This is NEVER a good choice, btw, as we shall see.).

Anyway, he and the groom show up late, and drunk...and the wedding quickly decays into a deathfest, as it's revealed that the bride is Maggie O'Knuckles, known as The Widowmaker, and Lobo is here in his capacity as intergalactic bounty hunter. As the title suggests, the bride and the rest of her three-eyed family are dead in short order.

Even my work experience as a jaded catering director didn't help me love this stupid, stupid tale of drunken groomsmen and nuptial blood-letting. Ugh.

Fortunately, the Martian Manhunter tale that follows is almost as efficient as Zatanna might be at wind-wiping my memory of the story and the time I wasted reading it.

In "Deep Down", writer Peter Tomasi and artist Eduardo Barreto tell a tale of the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic, several years before the frenzy of the James Cameron film or the Broadway musical.

J'onn finds a pair of bathyscaphes on the ocean floor at the site of the famous wreck, one piloted by a team of licensed salvagers. The other vehicle holds two young men, who've come from another nearby ship. When he's brought them to the surface, they won't tell J'onn why they're down there. He takes them to that other boat and he meets their great-uncle, Harold Jean Thomas, a survivor of the Titanic.

Thomas is surrounded by video monitors which show different angles on the decaying wreck down below. He's very old and breathing through an oxygen mask and he tells J'onn the heart-rending tale of how he and his wife Georgia were separated on the deck of the sinking ship that fateful night.

Mindful of the deaths of his wife and daughter, the Martian Manhunter feels a kinship with the old man, and offers to enter his mind to help bring him peace. As he does so, he's transported back in time to the night of April 15, 1912, where J'onn is intangible (naturally, as these are only memories) and he watches in horror as the historic drama unfolds.

Leaving the memories, J'onn learns that Harold and his wife had a plan to meet in their stateroom if they'd become separated. Diving under the waters, he finds the body of the old man's wife...the old man watching on the monitor screens. From the ocean floor, J'onn hears the old man turn off his oxygen tank and he dies by the time the martian is able to return to the surface.

The salvagers have an injunction to prevent J'onn or anyone from placing anything on the Titanic not related to its sinking, but J'onn pushes them aside, and gently lifts the old man, carrying him down to his long-submerged stateroom, where he is reunited with his wife.

"So late that day, I took an old man home...left him with his wife...left them there alone. Eighty-three years is a long wait to be with the one you love."

It's very interesting that this story was released two years before the feature film, which included lots of similar images and themes: the salvage teams, the video monitors of the ocean floor, the reunion of lost loves beneath the cold waves of the North Atlantic. It's certainly possible that Tomasi wrote this independently of Cameron's film...there's no copyright on the concepts, after all.

Let's chalk it up to an interesting coincidence, and just enjoy the sweet, sad story.

Detroit Duldrums

Well, you should never rely too heavily on what you think is the truth. For example, I thought that I had thoroughly sorted through all of the comic collection and gotten then sorted into long boxes, well-before our recent move was to begin.

And yet, to my (sort of...it is a big collection)surprise, on one of the last days of Moving, I discovered three smaller boxes containing an assortment of titles which I had overlooked during the earlier project. So, as I sort through these, to place them with their proper titles, I thought I'd share a few here.

The first box I opened seems to be an assortment of titles from different years, but in a range that seems to stay within 1986 to 1989. These two consecutive issues are from that first year, October's JLA #255 and November's JLA #256.

These were interesting times in the DC Universe. The Crisis on Infinite Earths had just drawn to a close, and in its wake, things were briefly a little dull, before reboots and other interesting things began to happen.

Mostly we fans were catching our breath and reviewing just what all happened in that series. The letter columns are full of people asking questions of clarification: which Wonder Woman no longer existed, and which one was ascended to Olympus with her husband Steve Trevor (it was the E2 version who was brought to Olympus, tho Diana on E1 had also married her Steve [thrice incarnated at that point]in the Crisis' final days.)? Wasn't the JLA satellite destroyed? And so on...

Since actual comic shops were only just beginning to appear here and there on the horizon, one of the most exciting things was actually finding places where you could buy comics. Excitement certainly doesn't describe how I felt as I re-read these two issues, despite two of my favorite characters--Zatanna and the Martian Manhunter--being featured on the covers.

Prior to the Crisis, the League had sort of spun apart. I can't recall the actual circumstances that caused most of the traditional members to opt out (*I promise when I file these two, I'll revisit that particular part of the run and share what I find...), but suddenly we had a version of the Justice League led by Aquaman...who's first move, oddly enough, was to move the JLA headquarters away from the coastline to the lakeshore of Detroit.

By these issues, the new League was a blend of new and old characters, with Aquaman, Batman, J'onn J'onzz, Elongated Man (and Sue!)and Zatanna providing the Experience, while newbies Vixen, Vibe, Gypsy and Steel (late of the All-Star Squadron, but thrown through time by the Crisis, if I recall correctly...)made up the Next Generation.

These two issues comprise the center of an apparently-four-issue story, so perhaps not having re-read from the beginning or reaching some satisfying conclusion colored my enjoyment. Also, I note that Gerry Conway and Michael Ellis are credited for plot and script respectively for #255, while J.M. DeMatteis (who would soon be having way more fun with a fresher version of the League) gets the writing credits for #256.

As we find our heroes, Zatanna is in bondage and has recently been operated on by a whack-job named Adam, who has stolen some of her homo magi genes to graft onto his own...which then essentially transforms him into a sort of mad god. Although she sends out an emergency alert to the rest of the Leaguers, Adam creates an illusion of Zee to send them away, claiming a false alarm.

The image of Zatanna (even a fake one) convincing Batman that there's no need for the rest of the League there took on an interesting turn in the re-read, with the more recent context of Identity Crisis: by the Detroit era, the "mind-wipe" was already a thing of the past...and you kind of get the idea of Batman as Zatanna's puppet on a string.

But meanwhile, Adam has overpowered the Manhunter and Gypsy as well, who've stumbled into Zee's situation while trying to learn who framed John Jones for murder, and that's where this bit of the story wraps with a cliffhanger.

It's sort of tepid stuff, though being the JLA, still fun. But without this dim period in League history, we wouldn't appreciate the other teams and eras properly!