Justice League of America (vol. 2) #40

Issue Credits

Writer: James Robinson
Penciller: Mark Bagley
Inker: Rob Hunter, Scott Hanna, and Marlo Alquiza
Colours: Pete Pantazis
Letters: John J. Hill
Associate Editor: Adam Schlagman
Editor: Eddie Berganza
Cover: Mark Bagley, Rob Hunter, and Pete Pantazis

Characters

Featuring

Doctor Light IV (Kimiyo Hoshi, appeared last issue)
Plastic Man (Eel O’Brien, appeared last issue)
Red Tornado (John Smith, appeared last issue)
Vixen (Mari Jiwe McCabe, appeared last issue)
Zatanna Zatara (appeared last issue)

Guest-Stars

Gypsy (Cindy Reynolds, appeared last issue)

Villains

Black Lantern Doctor Light III (Arthur Light, cameoed last issue, destroyed this issue)
Black Lantern Steel (Hank Heywood, cameoed last issue, this the grandson of the WWII Commander Steel and the cousin of the JSA’s Citizen Steel, destroyed this issue)
Black Lantern Vibe (Paco Ramone, appeared last issue, destroyed this issue)

Synopsis

Previously: In Blackest Night: The Black Rings of Nekron have descended upon the universe, reanimating, recreating the dead as Black Lanterns. These are sick and twisted corruptions of the dead who taunt and bully the living to promote an extreme emotional response (hate, fear, terror, etc). When their target is taken to that emotional limit the Black Lantern rips out their heart in a ritual designed to aid Nekron’s journey into the living world. In JLA #39: A group of Black Lanterns are stalking the survivors of the Justice League in the blacked out Hall of Justice. Zatanna fights her undead father, Doctor Light (Kimiyo) faces Black Lantern Arthur Light, and Gypsy and Vixen face Black Lantern Vibe and Steel.

A Black Lantern ring downloads the memories of Hank Heywood III, the superhero Steel. The Heywood dynasty began with Hank’s grandfather. He was a WWII costumed hero, the prototype cyborg, called Commander Steel. After the war the senior Heywood patented the technology that had been used to create his cyborg body and became a wealthy industrialist. He wanted to push the technology further and cannibalized his grandson, Hank, as a test subject. Hank became a second Steel and joined the Detroit Justice League. He eventually forced to fight his grandfather for his independence. Hank was killed by Professor Ivo’s robots before he fulfilled his full potential. With the command of “Hank Heywood of Earth, Rise!” Black Lantern Steel rose from his grave.

Black Lantern Vibe, Steel’s team-mate in the Detroit League, had already revealed himself to the current League. He had blown apart the Red Tornado and seemingly killed Plastic Man, before turning his attention to Gypsy and Vixen (Steel and Vibe’s surviving colleagues from the Detroit League). The two women find themselves facing off against the two Black Lanterns. Vixen takes the offensive against Vibe, but he breaks her arm by throwing her against a replica of Rocket Red’s armour. Gypsy uses her illusion casting powers to play evade Steel, but he baits her by pointing out that she’s just a spoilt suburban-kid and not a real nomadic Gypsy.

Meanwhile, Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi, the Japanese superheroine) awakes to find herself being talked to by Black Lantern Doctor Light (Arthur Light, the deceased American villain). She repulses him with a blast of light, but Arthur takes his time slowly wearing her down with taunts about her being a cheap copy of himself, over her attitude to her father, her homeland, and her reserved attitude. She continues to fight back, but Arthur’s shadow powers seem stronger – particularly as she becomes increasingly exhausted. It’s only when he threatens her children that Kimiyo cuts loose with a devastating blast of white light that destroys the Black Ring animating Arthur Light’s corpse.

Black Lantern Vibe and Steel eventually corner Vixen and Gypsy. The nearly liquid Plastic Man tries helping them by magnify the light from Vixen’s Hatchetfish fish, but it isn’t strong enough. Fortunately, they’re saved by the sudden arrival of Doctor Light who blasts Vibe and Steel with white light, destroying the rings that had animated them. The exhausted Doctor Light then collapses into Gypsy’s arms. Vixen’s adrenalin wears off and she too passes out from her injuries. Seconds later, Zatanna teleports back after defeating the Black Lantern version of her father.

The Justice League have defeated the Black Lantern’s in the Hall of Justice, but the cost has been high. The Red Tornado was destroyed again. Plastic Man, Vixen, and Doctor Light are out of commission and Zatanna is exhausted. Only the weakest of them, Gypsy, survived without injury.

Commentary

Cover

The cover of this issue forms one half of a single picture when combined with last issues cover. The solicited covers have the backgrounds blacked out and only showed the foreground figures.

Annotations: Steel’s Flashback

Numbers count for page dot panel.

1.1: The happy Heywood Family, however, this is only Hank’s wish of what it had been like. Hank’s father, Henry Heywood II, and his unnamed mother both died before he was one-year old and he was raised by Dale Gunn, his father’s best friend (Justice League of America v1 #235, Feb 1985).
1.3: The elder Steel, later known as Commander Steel, first appeared in Steel, The Indestructible Man written by Gerry Conway with art by Don Heck and Joe Giella. It started in 1978, but was cancelled after 5 issues, a casualty of the DC Implosion. The character was later folded into the All-Star Squadron series by Roy Thomas.
2-3.1: The origin of Steel as recounted in Justice League of America v1 #235 (Feb 1985). When Gerry Conway needed to remodel the 1980s Justice League he used the character concept from his cancelled Steel, The Indestructible Man series and updated the alter ego to be the grandson of the original.
2-3.2: The Detroit League versus Shatterfist and Blackmass from Justice League of America v1 #236 (Mar 1985).
2-3.3: Steel versus Commander Steel from Justice League of America v1 #244 (Nov 1985). The easiest way to tell them apart is that Commander Steel has a fin on his head.
2-3.4: The death of Steel from Justice League of America v1 #260 (Mar 1987) at the hands of Professor Ivo’s androids. It was later revealed that some part of Steel survived on a life support machine, but that was destroyed by Despero in Justice League America #38 (May 1990).

Annotations: The rest of the book

8.5: Gypsy’s real name is Cindy Reynolds. Her parents were killed by Despero in Justice League America#38 (May 1990).
9.1: Firestorm’s girlfriend is Gehenna. She was transformed into a salt statue in Blackest Night #3. Black Lantern Doctor Light (Arthur) was found nibbling on her remains last issue.
11.3: The armour of Rocket Red #4. This is a suit of armour from the Russian super-soldier team that was designed by Green Lantern Kilowog. This particular suit is a replica (the original was destroyed by Lobo) of that worn by Dimitri Pushkin, the Rocket Red who was a member of the Justice League International. Pushkin was killed fighting OMACs during the OMAC Project #5 (Oct 2005) and reappeared as a Black Lantern in Blackest Night #4 (Nov 2009) although he doesn’t appear in this issue.
14.2: Vixen is clutching her arm. She broke it being thrown against the Rocket Red armour.
14.4: The Black Rings are the antithesis of the emotional spectrum. The combined power from two different coloured power rings can weaken a Black Ring, but they can only be destroyed if one of the two rings is a Green Lantern ring. Alternatively, the black rings can be destroyed by white light, incredibly powerful or spiritually pure white light.
15.2: Kimiyo first appeared as Doctor Light in Crisis on Infinite Earths #4 (July 1985). At the time no explanation was given about why she adopted a villain’s costume.
15.3: It was revealed in Secret Origins #37 (Feb 1989) that Arthur Light’s costume had been designed by a co-worker called Jacob Finlay, but it wasn’t until DC Universe Holiday Special #1 (Feb 2009), twenty years later, that Finlay was revealed to also have worked with Kimiyo’s father (thus explaining why Kimiyo wore the same costume as the villain). Whether Arthur actually murdered Jacob is debatable in the original story, but it suits his retconned post-Identity Crisis personality. Kimiyo’s father’s collaborator is called Jacob Findley, but he was called Jacob Finlay in Secret Origins and the DC Universe Holiday Special.
15.4: In her first appearance Kimiyo berates her father and his scientists as cowards for not continuing to work through the red skies and chaos of the Crisis. He dies off-scene soon afterwards, and she is later (Showcase ‘96 #9, Oct 1996) shown finding solace by talking to his grave.
16-17.2: Arthur Light is lying. Kimiyo returned to Japan after her brief time in the Justice League. Only later, after he stole her powers, did she take a job at STAR Labs in Metropolis. She hated having to leave Japan (Justice League of America #27, Jan 2009), but it wasn’t until she’d regained her powers that she let her self enjoy her new job (DC Universe Holiday Special).
16-17.5: This is the first sign of what happened when Kimiyo divorced her husband. We know nothing about him except that he’s still living in Japan (she took the kids back to visit him in Superman #689, Aug 2009).
19.1: Doctor Lights swapping bodies. It took me ages to remember this. Arthur Light has been dead before. He was first “killed” way back in the page of Suicide Squad and made a deal with a demon to escape Hell. That involved his spirit possessing Kimiyo whilst she was experimenting with astral projection. Needless to say, Arthur is over-remembering his experiences to torture Kimiyo.
19.4: “invented by your august father” Kimiyo’s powers weren’t invented by her father. The original Doctor Light suit developed by Kimiyo’s father and used by Jacob Finlay and Arthur Light did indeed grant the wearer light based powers (which Arthur Light later internalized due to a deal with a different demon). However, Kimiyo got her powers from the Monitor and was a meta-human from the start. She only wore the suit because it coincidentally matched her new set of powers.
20-21.3: Negative Woman was a permutation of the Negative Man from the Doom Patrol. She was killed in the Final Crisis and returned as a Black Lantern in Doom Patrol v5 #4 (Jan 2010). Triumph was a hero from the same generation as Barry Allen and Hal Jordan and should have been a founding member of the Justice League, but he slipped through time and emerged, still of rookie, ten years later. He’s rather bitter about that and is currently hanging out as a statue somewhere in the JLA trophy room. Bloodpack are, well, a bit useless really. A group of new heroes that were created out of the same 1990s crossover that created Hitman.
22.1: We assume here that Black Lantern Doctor Light was destroyed, but there is no caption saying “Connection Severed” which usually accompanies a Black Lantern’s destruction.
24.1: Vixen’s JLA defeated the Royal Flush Gang in Justice League of America v2 #35-37 (Sept-Nov 2009), the story immediately before Robinson and Bagley took over. She was principal in defeating Amazo in Justice League of America v2 #7 (April 2007).
24.2: General Maksai was Vixen’s uncle, he murdered her father and later tried to steal the Tantu Totem that gives her superpowers. He died in Justice League of America #239 (June 1984). Abu Kwesi was an Intergang thug that threatened the village where Vixen had grown up in the 2009 Vixen mini-series.
24.5: Plastic Man’s alive. Bummer… no Black Lantern Plastic Man.
27.3: Zatanna has seen her father die at least three times. The first time was during the Crisis when he melted in front of her, the second time was when she destroyed his soul in hell, and this third time is when she has been forced to destroy Black Lantern Zatara.

People’s Opinions

Hervé St-Louis at Comicbookbin appreciates the level to detail involved in this story,

Here Robinson pulls no punches and uses every hint written or perceived about the characters in this story to show their inner weaknesses.

However, Mart Gray from Too Dangerous For A Girl is worried about the cumulative effect on new readers.

I realise there’s a difference between the writer’s own views of a character and what he has someone in a story say about them. But intention or not – and I suspect there is some deliberate diminishment going on here – the cumulative effect of page after page of characters being torn down is that newer readers could begin to think the dissers have a point.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice (which has their own rather nice annotations) takes issue with why Kimiyo ends up naked,

But why the hell does Kimiyo need to lose her clothing so that she’s totally naked by the time the issue’s over? Why? What purpose does it serve? Is it a metaphor about how she’s “stripped bare” and “naked to the world”? Does it show her vulnerability? Make her more of a target? Do we relate to her more?

Yeah, I just don’t buy it. I’m all for Black Lantern Doctor Light doing and saying what he needs to in order to wear her down, but the pointless nudity? Not necessary for the story. Sorry.

I think I agree with them. The Arthur Light, super-rapist, angle has been beaten-to-death. The confrontation was excellently handled, but I can’t shake the feeling that it was just a little too much.

It wasn’t so much each slur used by Steel and Arthur Light (which really fired some people up) that wore me down, but it was the sheer unrelenting barrage. Black Lanterns are meant to be vile, but the emotional attacks on Vixen and Kimiyo got really nasty here. James Robinson manages to find a new level of nastiness that leaves the reader as drained as the characters in the story.

Greg McElhatton @ CBR is probably one of the least appreciative of those who have reviewed this issue. He doesn’t like the change in Mark Bagley’s art,

Mark Bagley’s pencils here look rushed, and with three inkers assigned that’s almost certainly the case. His art on “Trinity” and “Batman” looked much nicer than this; it’s jagged in places and cluttered, something I’m not used to seeing with Bagley.

This issue is very claustrophobic and I’m not so sure it’s the best fit for a traditional superhero artist like Mark Bagley, but there are some brilliantly rendered scenes. The intense battles between the two Doctor Lights are my favourite.

It’s hard to place these last two issues. If they’d been put out as a Blackest Night: Justice League of America mini-series they’d probably have been regarded differently or accepted as filler material. However, they’re in the main-JLA book and they are launching the new creative team. That could make you expect some sort of wide-screen, big-bang adventure, but these issues are claustrophobic, very dark and quite edgy.

The story will stand-up quite well if Vixen and co’s experiences are followed-up, but I get the feeling that many reviewers just expect these characters to be thrown away as if this story is just house cleaning. Personally I hope that isn’t so, but only time will tell.

The Verdict

	Site	Reviewer	Original Score	%
Reviews Portal	Comic Book Resources	Greg McElthatton	1.5/5	30
Reviews Portal	IGN	Shawn Hill	2.5/5	50
Community Reviews	Comics Vine User Reviews	Ave of 1 review/s	4/5	80
Community Reviews	iFanboy	410 pulls	3.3/5	66
Character Site	Superman Homepage	Michael Bailey	1 (story) & 4 (art)/5	50
Reviews Blog	Comic Book Bin	Herve St-Louis	N/A	N/A
Reviews Blog	A Comic Book Blog	Wayland	35/100	35
This Site	Captain’s JLA Blog	Jason Kirk		60%
		Grand Average		53%