Go see DC’s Source for all seven preview pages. CRY FOR JUSTICE #3 should hit stores this Wednesday (US) or Thursday (UK). And it looks like they’re following up on the storyline from the Superman comics of Kryptonians being banned from Earth, interesting.
Fold and assemble Justice League bobble head figures will be available with Arby’s K!DS meals. Their website still says coming soon,
but readers on the Experience Wonder message board have reported sightings in the wild.
The figures themselves were designed by Matt Hawkins of Custom Paper Toys. Matt posted pictures of the assembled figures to his Flickr account.
Unfortunately the line doesn’t include Batman for licensing reasons, but reverse the Superman figure and you get Bizarro instead.
[via Robot 9]
Justice League will be crossing over a little more closely with Titans according to Dan Didio at the 2009 Tornoto Fan Expo.
Besides some feedback on the new Batman and Robin, it was noted that with some of the changes in store for the Titans, that Dick Grayson might not fit on that team anymore.
In addition “What we’re going to see in 2010 is how the Titans and Justice League books crossover a little more than they have in the past and probably in a way they never have before” explained DiDio.
Speaking of Titans, with James Robinson bringing Donna Troy onto his upcoming Justice League, will she be getting a codename?
“She’s one of those people a nickname doesn’t stick to, like Jean Grey,” reasoned DiDio. “Troia was tough. She’s not going to be Wonder Girl anymore. Do you want to call her Darkstar? Not really. For us, Donna Troy stands for something, means something, and the name is recognizable so we’re just leaving it as is.”
There is a certain logic to this as Dick Grayson (as Batman) and Donna Troy, both current members of the Titans, are going to be moving over to the Justice League with James Robinson’s post-Blackest Night issues. How with will play out with replacement Trinity (Mon-El, Bat-Grayson, and Donna) versus the, assumed, eventual return of the actual Trinity remains to be seen. Maybe they’ll make an event of it.
I’ve just added a new page that lists all the animated Justice League and Superman episodes that I’ve written about so far. These had been and still are listed with the rest of the reviews under the Reviews page, but this new index separates them out and groups them properly.
I’ve just been looking through the logs and its rather obvious that those posts are among the most viewed posts on this blog. I’d like to post them more often, but they take quite a while to write what with the background research and the thumbnail gallery. We’re getting there slowly.
With the acquisition/licensing of the Thunder Agents, Milestone, and Red Circle (Archie) characters DC Comics looks like it reverting to a fragmentary format that goes right back to the foundation of the company. The history is a little fuzzy, but there were two brands of the company operating in the early 1940s.
Then DC made a series of acquisitions during the 1950s-80s which hovered up characters from defunct comics publishers. The parallel world structure of the DC Universe made it simple to buy a new set of heroes and then claim that they were from a new Earth.
There have been attempts to draw these characters together into a more cohesive single universe, but only the Charlton characters have achieved any great success in that respect. It may be impossible to modernise the Shazam characters, but many would argue that it shouldn’t be tried. The same goes for Plastic Man. The other minor characters (the Freedom Fighters, Bulletman, etc) have fared better in some respects, but in their end they’re really just Golden Age cannon fodder.
More recently DC has started another round of licensing characters:
DC has prior history with the Milestone and Archie characters as they served as the publisher of those lines during the 1990s. That’s eight different groups of characters that are now part of the DC Universe and I haven’t even included splits like the Legion of Superheroes or the Vertigo characters. They’ve also announced that the Batman Beyond cartoon setting will be back ported into the DC Universe.
A lot has been made about relaunching various acquired titles from these newlines, but personally I think DC is playing a long-term game. It’s fairly clear that DC is slowly and surely building up a large library of material for the book store market. All these characters represent potential archive editions, show case reprints, and classic trade paper backs.
I’m not really sure where these groups are going in terms of new material. DC have been very cautious with the Milestone characters, too cautious for some people, but their exposure in JLA and Teen Titans is arguably far, larger than the Red Circle characters will get with their own self-contained one-shots. Maybe they’re waiting to see what the sales figures are like on the Brave and Bold showcases, maybe they’re not that interested.
This is the second issue of Len Wein’s three-part Royal Flush Gang story. A continuing theme from last issue is the luck of the draw. Roulette, a gambler and a foe of the Justice Society is playing cards against Amos Fortune, the probability altering Justice League foe, aboard Fortune’s private Mississippi Riverboat. This is no usual game of cards as each of them has taken up decks that connect them to real people. Fortune is playing with his Royal Flush Gang while Roulette is encumbered with the short staffed Justice League.
The remaining active members of the Justice League – Plastic Man, Doctor Light, Firestorm, Red Tornado and the acting leader Vixen – defeat a group of minor cards in Midway City with the help of Wonder Woman. However, Fortune sacrifices his hand rather than allow them to talk under the influence of Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth. Roulette’s remark on Fortune’s ruthlessness leads him to relate the origin of the Royal Flush Gang (his childhood gang) and how he’s built them into a national criminal gang that rivals Intergang.
For their own part the League are still having problems with their roster. Vixen had offered League membership to the Titans’ Starfire (referencing the latest issue of TITANS), but she was turned down. The skeleton League are forced to divide their forces further then the Royal Flush Gang hit three events simultaneously. I never really saw Vixen as the leadership type, but her experience makes her an interesting leader for this particular roster.
Fortune makes a reference to a playing card being able to embed itself into a melon to a depth of three inches. Now, I’m a fan of the Mythbusters TV show and I know for a fact that they’ve tested this particular stunt. In one episode they could only get a card to embed itself into ballistics gel (an analogue for human flesh) by less than an inch and declared this particular lethal method “busted.”
The Roll Call of sixteen Leaguers on the second page is amusing as the majority of them are greyed out because they have become inactive. Even several of those that are shown as active, Green Lantern John Stewart and Zatanna, don’t appear in this story. It wasn’t until I re-read the original appearance of the Royal Flush Gang (see my last post) that I realised that a short handed League was also a plot point of that story (a plot device to balance the Leaguers against the five-member Gang).
I really like Fabrizio Fiorentino’s cover. The black and white pencil drawing of the dead-hand and the cards is really nicely juxtaposed with the brilliant red of the highlights. Derrick’s interior art is, in my opinion, particularly effected by who is inking him. I like some sequences better than others, but it would have been nice to have a single inker throughout the entire issue (a pet issue of mine).
| Site | Reviewer | Original Score | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reviews Portal | IGN | Jason Sacks | 2.5/5 | 50 |
| Community Reviews | Comics Vine User Reviews | Ave of 0 review/s | /5 | 0 |
| Community Reviews | iFanboy | 207 pulls | 3/5 | 60 |
| Character Site | Superman Homepage | Michael Bailey | 4 (story) & 4 (art)/5 | 80 |
| Reviews Blog | A Comic Book Blog | Wayland | 3/5 | 60 |
| Reviews Blog | Major Spoilers | Matthew Peterson | 2/5 | 40 |
| This Site | Captain’s JLA Blog | Jason Kirk |    |
50% |
| Grand Average |   |
57% |
The Royal Flush Gang, the villains in the current JLA story by Len Wein, are long standing foes of the Justice League. The brains behind the first incarnation of the Royal Flush Gang is Professor Amos Fortune, a self-confessed scientist and gambler. He’s one of the those classic mad scientists who just keeps coming up with weirder and weirder gadgets and weapons. He first faced the Justice League in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Vol. 1#6 (August-September 1961) “The Wheel of Misfortune” when he created a machine, the Stimoluck, to stimulate a persons “good-luck gland” (I kid ye not). He failed to realise that Martian’s don’t have a “good-luck gland” so the Martian Manhunter was able to resist his deathtrap.
Fortune reappeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Vol. 1#14 (September 1962) “The Menace of the ‘Atom’ Bomb!” under the alias “Mister Memory.” He’d created a device, the de-memorizer, that could make everybody is the world forget about a single person and then hired himself out to different super-villains so that they could make the world forget about their particular opponent. Fortune’s luck ran out when he made the world forget the Atom moments after the Justice League had elected him as their new member. They were curious why they’d elected somebody they’d never heard of (the Atom’s name was printed on the ballot papers) so set out to find this new hero – and in the process defeated and unmasked Fortune.
After his stimoluck and de-memoriser schemes failed Fortune turned his attention to “stellaration.” In the daffy world of comic book science stellar radiation (“stellaration”) when focused by a fortune teller renders the subject of the card reading extremely open to suggestion — to the point of forcing the subject to act out whatever prophecy the fortune tellers relates to them. Professor Amos Fortune discovered this phenomena and devised a way to saturate normal playing cards so that a single emotion or suggestion was imprinted onto them. Throw that card at a person and they would be compelled by the stellaration to act out that suggestion.
Figuring he’s need more muscle than in his first two encounters Fortune recruited the four members of his high-school gang. For those that aren’t familiar with poker “a hand” is merely that set of five random cards that a player currently holds, a “flush” is a hand that consists of five sequentially numbered cards, and royal flush is a hand where those five sequential cards are the highest ranked in the deck. This set contains the three royal cards (King, Queen, and Jack) and so earns its royal status. Fortune assumed the role of “Ace” of Clubs and his four friends became the King of Clubs, Queen of Clubs, Jack of Clubs, and Ten of Clubs.
The Royal Flush Gang first appeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Vol. 1 #43 (March 1966) in the story “The Card Crimes of the Royal Flush Gang” written by Gardner Fox, illustrated by Mike Sekowsky and Bernard Sachs, and edited by Julius Schwartz. In the story, Jack of Clubs robs a Bank and then disables Hawkman and Hawkgirl with a Seven of Spades that compels them to argue with each other and ignore him. In Central City, King steals a cubist artwork from the Metropolitan Art Gallery and blinds the Flash with the Five of Diamonds. Elsewhere, the Queen steals a diamond encrusted cloak off of Wonder Woman’s back – whilst she was modelling it at a fashion show. The Queen uses a Nine of Diamonds to force Wonder Woman to leave her alone and call a meeting of the Justice League.
The Gang then challenge the Justice League to stop them robbing the Plateau City Band. The lingering effects of the Flash’s blindness and Hawkman’s compulsive arguing hamper the team, but they’re left completely ineffective when a Nine of Spades renders Wonder Woman doubled over with sickness, a Four of Diamonds turns Batman into an unwitting betrayer, and an Ace of Spades saturated with red sun stellaration cripples Superman. Ace (Fortune) gloats that “I have won! I have gained my long sought for revenge over the Justice League! They can never threaten me again!”
The League retreat to their Secret Sanctuary to lick their wounds, but its during Hawkman’s argument with Snapper Carr that the League realise that they’ve been dosed with stellaration. Hawkman builds a similar machine to Fortune’s machine and saturates Snapper with Stellaration which turns him into their “Joker in the deck.” A single hand shake or back slap from the saturated Snapper is enough to cancel out the Gang’s compulsion. Needless to say the League are rather pleased with their young mascot…
Wonder Woman makes Snapper his own Joker costume and he joins the Justice League in an assault on the Royal Flush Gang’s hideout. Each time the Gang pull out a new card Snapper short-circuits it effect. The Gang’s final gambit is to link hands to create a super-concentrated blast of stellaration, but Batman and Wonder Woman hurl Snapper at them and he completely eliminates their stored up supply. Its then simple for the League to capture the now powerless Gang and to unmask Ace as Amos Fortune.
The Royal Flush Gang and Amos Fortune next appear in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Vol 1. #54 (June 1967) in a story called “The History-Making Costumes of the Royal-Flush Gang!”. This is again by Fox, Sekowsky, and Schwartz, but this time inker Sid Greene replaces Sachs. The Gang are on the trail of a fabulous treasure map that was discovered by an explorer called Professor Marley, but the Professor dies in chance car crash before he can find the treasure itself. Its Green Lantern, in his civilian guise as Hal Jordan, who finds the dying Professor. He tells Jordan about the treasure map and makes him promise to give the treasure to his daughter Irene. Hal goes to retrieve the treasure map from the book store in Cape City where its stored, but he’s mugged by members of the Royal Flush Gang as his leaves the shop.
The Royal Flush Gang are still using stellaration to power their abilities and weapons, but this time around they’ve adopted costumes based on the origins of their cards. As Batman later relates,
“According to the history of cards, the King of Clubs was derived from Alexander the Great, the Club Queen from Queen Elizabeth I of England — while the Jack was inspired by Sir Lancelot! The Ace is called a Serpent in Spanish! In poker, three tens is known as a Judge Duffy.”
Their new costumes allow them to use the stellaration to call forth abilities based on those new identities. Hal’s mugging leaves him critically injured in hospital and that of course gets the Justice League’s attention. This ring relates the story so far to the Flash. Batman and the Flash then save Irene Marley from being kidnapped by King (Alexander the Great) and Jack (Sir Lancelot) while the Martian Manhunter and Atom stop Ace (the Serpent Man) and Ten of Clubs (the Judge) from kidnapping Hal from hospital. When Wonder Woman stops Queen (Queen Elizabeth) from kidnapping Hal’s doctor she realises that she’s fighting somebody she’s met before. That allows the League to make the connection between their historical themed enemies and the Royal Flush Gang.
The Gang may have the treasure map, but without Irene Maclay or Hal Jordan they can’t decipher the strange annotations on it. That map shows the location of a hoard of writings and weapons salvaged by an ancient collector called Sassanos. Included in that hoard is the Trumpet of Joshua which brought down the walls of Jericho, the Mirrors of Archimedes which he used to destroy the Spartan navy, and the Magical Tripod of the Delphic Oracle. The Gang seize these treasures, but the League are hot on their trail (the Martian Manhunter read a copy of the map from the mind of the book store owner who had been looking after it). The Gang try using the ancient weapons against the Justice League, but are, of course, defeated.
The kicker at the end of the story is that the Royal Flush Gang never translated the annotations on the map. Irene translates them as a warning about the preservation of the archives. When the Gang opened the archives they let in air that instantly causes all the hundreds of ancient scolls collected by Sassanos to crumble to dust.
The Royal Flush Gang that Amos Fortune created were the Ace, Ten, Jack, Queen, and King of Clubs. This is the Gang that fought the Justice League in the 1960s and later Wonder Woman and the Joker in the 1970s, but it is not the same Gang which fought the League in the 1980s. A new Royal Flush Gang appeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #203 (June 1982), but this was a new group comprised of the Ten (Wanda Wayland), Jack, Queen (Mona Taylor) and King (Joe Carny) of Spades (a different suit). More noticeable was the shift of the Ten from a man to a woman and the replacement of Ace with a robot. This is the Gang that Maxwell Lord hired to allow Booster Gold to prove himself and again when Lord wanted to re-establish the League following the events of “Breakdowns.”
Another new hand, this time the Diamond Royal Flush Gang, appeared in SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL #121 (February 2002) written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Todd Nauck and Lary Stucker. While the basic pattern was the same, the modus operandi of this new Royal Flush Gang was different. Now they’d expanded beyond the normal 5-member team to include an entire deck. They’d started to expand through out Chicago, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and finally Metropolis. They’d take over local gangs branding them as a particular suit of cards and the 52 highest ranking members of the local Gang would each adopt the identity of one of the cards from the deck. Its the King of Spades from one of these franchises that the Joker kills in INFINITE CRISIS #2 (January 2006).
It started off with Warren Ellis citing a Jonbar Hinge in Do Anything 012 (his Bleeding Cool column). I was interested in where the phrase had come from so there was only one recourse: Wikipedia – the fountain and end point of all pointless knowledge. Well the Jonbar Hinge (a small seemingly random event that causes a branch or divergence in history) page led to the Alien Space Bats page. These are plot device aliens that are also used to explain or to create a branch and divergence in history and like the Suicide Squid they originate on usenet (maybe somebody needs to do a Usenet Bestiary). The difference between the Jonbar Hinge and the Alien Space Bats is that the latter creates a branch point that no longer relies on any sense of logic or science (e.g., what if magic suddenly reappeared).
Now think back to the events of DC’s 52 comic where Mister Mind, in Hyperfly mode, is rampaging through the Multiverse. This flight/feeding creates divergent histories in each of the 52 parallel universes.Well, those wings look more Bat-like than Moth-like to me. Could Mister Mind be a literal Alien Space Bat, a tip of the hat prehaps?
There is a new trailer for the Batman: Arkham Asylum
Now is it my imagination or does a voice say “Rise” during that final show of Dr Arkham’s grave? Could somebody be sneaking in a Blackest Night reference?
A casting of 108 Justice Leaguers has been completed by Thehawk assited by Shaman, and Joslezio85 over at Comic Book Movie.
This is, as far as I know, the largest casting ever on ComicBookMovie.com. I have casted the 108 heroes that have ever served as active members in the Justice League. I did not cast reservists of honorary members like Snapper Carr and Kilowag, only those that served on the active roster. You know hat I’m goanna throw Snapper Carr in there for the heck of it.
They cast everybody, and I mean everybody, the even did the Justice League Elite (DS9′s Alexander Siddig as Naif al-Sheikh, nice call) and the JLA from 52 (Will Ferrell as Ambush Bug, interesting choice).
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