Justice League of America (vol. 2) #1

Quotes

Kathy Sutton: I’ve been through this seven time since I first met him. Seven. People think it gets easier. They’re wrong. It always take a bit to collect the pieces. And even when there’s no League, the League does it. Hal helped this time. Last time it was Bruce. As a favor, we asked Magnus to put him together. He didn’t hesitate. He, of all people understands.

Vixen: I feel the birds first. Seagulls and terns. Danger’s coming. Then I feel the tiger. Anger overwhelms me. The place looks empty. Looks aren’t everything. They’re already here. Lion.

Credits

Synopsis “The Tornado’s Path – Chapter One: Life”

The Justice League has been out of action for over a year ever since it disintegrated during the Infinite Crisis. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman have even been through their own soul searching and have come together to in the Batcave to plan the League’s reformation.

Sequestered within the Batcave Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman review the dossiers of potential candidates for the next iteration of the Justice League. Arsenal, Green Arrow’s former sidekick, is chosen for the new team. The news is delivered by Green Lantern and Black Canary. Another candidate Black Lightning (Jefferson Pierce) has discovered that somebody is kidnapping minor super villains. It started out with Plastique and the Electrocutioner, then Trident disappeared in an explosion which implicated Plastique. In turn Trident was linked with the disappearance of Doctor Impossible. Vixen, another strong League candidate, is lured to a trap in a Hub City bar by the missing villains.

Batman has been strongly arguing for the inclusion of the Red Tornado (John Smith), but he has yet to reanimate after his latest destruction/rebuild. Kathy Sutton waits next to his android body in Will Magnus’s workshop and is unaware that John’s spirit is watching her. John Smith has become increasingly aware of his own lack of humanity and has agreed to an audacious plan. Deadman transfers John’s spirit into one of the unliving, mindless bodies left by the villain Multiplex. For the first time in his life John Smith awakes as a flesh-and-blood man. Unknown to either John or Kathy the Deadman who helped them was the sorcerer Felix Faust. His manipulations have left the way open for Doctor Impossible to steal the inactive Red Tornado android.

Continuity

• Will Magnus’s lab is in Hoboken, New Jersey.
• The Red Tornado has been destroyed and rebuilt seven times.
• The Metal Men have been redesigned.

Commentary

The Cover Panorama

The two normal covers to issue #1 are either side of a group panorama originally released by DC as piece of promotional art. The original pencilled and coloured version appeared on the Ed Benes art site and in Wizard. The published version differs from the original version by including updated costume designs and a slightly different roster.

The published version

Cover A – Ed Benes, Mariah Benes, and Alex Sinclair (signed); (front row) Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Arsenal, Black Canary, and Red Tornado; (second row) GL (Guy Gardner), Power Girl, Captain Marvel, Supergirl, Huntress, and Captain Atom; (third row, only at the centre) Phantom Stranger, GL (John Stewart), and Cyborg; (back row) somebody’s shoulder, Batwoman, Fire, Nightwing, Firehawk, Ion (Kyle Rayner), Metamorpho, Mister Miracle, Hourman II, the Manhattan Guardian’s shoulder

Cover B – Ed Benes, Mariah Benes, and Alex Sinclair (signature on Cover A); (front row) Black Lightning, Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman; (second row) Hawkman, Big Barda, Vixen, Hawkgirl, Flash (Bart Allen), Green Arrow, Zatanna; (back row) Manhattan Guardian, Mister Terrific, Blue Beetle, Doctor Fate, Donna Troy, Martian Manhunter, Firestorm, Doctor Light (Hoshi), Doctor Midnight

The Promotional Version

In the original version Black Lightning and GL John Stewart swap places, Red Tornado and Flash swap places; Guy Gardner who moves from the centre-back replaces Aquaman. Five 52 characters are dropped — Elongated Man, Booster Gold, Animal Man, Adam Strange and the Question are replaced by Green Arrow, Big Barda, Batwoman, Hourman and the Martian Manhunter. Arrow’s move is to allow Arsenal to drop down to the front row, his space at the back is filled by Nightwing. Karate Kid, surely a joke insertion, is dropped and isn’t replaced. Tempest is replaced by Mister Terrific. The two panoramas seem to be entirely separate pieces as there is different inking on the figures common to both.

Michael Turner Variant

Michael Turner had been the cover artist on Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis and that relationship was carried over for the variant covers on Meltzer’s JLA run. The cover is signed by Michael Turner and Peter Stiegerwald and features Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Black Lightning, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Black Canary, Arsenal, Red Tornado, Arsenal, Vixen, and Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl is shown on the Turner group cover, but does not appear in this issue.

Arsenal/Red Arrow

This is Arsenal’s first post-Infinite Crisis appearance. There had been some puzzlement among the fans as to where he would turn up as he was absent from Outsiders and Green Arrow. On the Word Balloon podcast Brad Meltzer noted that he had to clear Arsenal’s use with Outsider’s writer Judd Winick, his former college room-mate, and that in return for letting Arsenal go Winick got Nightwing back in Outsiders.

Opinion/Clippings

At the time this came out I was surprised by the number of Michael Turner variant covers left over in the local comics shop. It wasn’t that they weren’t selling, but there had been a mistake at Diamond resulting in a massive over send of the Turner cover – around here it was the Ed Benes covers that were the rare ones. Both artists have similar styles although Benes isn’t quite as stylised as Turner, which I personally think is a good thing. Benes has recently set up an official English language website and he’s posted up scans of the pencil pages for this issue.

One thing that did strike me whilst reading this issue is that its very easy to tell that its written by the same writer as Identity Crisis. Brad Meltzer uses the same camera angles, monologue boxes, and rapid cutting between scenes that he used there. The only thing that seems to be missing is Rags Morales and Benes comes very close, either by accident or design, to emulating him at times. On his blog Meltzer revealed some of his foreshadowing in “Archer’s Quest” and Identity Crisis, namely the early spotlighting of characters he’d later use for his League roster. He’s also been interviewed by Brain Bendis at Wizard Universe with the following quote getting picked up by those who think that Vixen and Black Lighting are perfect examples of ego characters.

Bendis: How does it feel assembling a team like this, though? It’s kind of a cool feeling and kind of unique?

Meltzer: Oh, it’s definitely the ultimate fanboy dream. If someone came to you and said, “You can pick the team of The Avengers, you can pick the team of The Justice League–or if I went back in time and I told the two of us that that’s what we’d be doing–I would basically die right there, even though we’ve been doing it in our heads since we were 10 years old. But again, the hardest part for me was not wanting to just do what I think is cool, but what actually is bigger than me. I think that there is just a history–even in the JLA, even in The Avengers–where you saw what can only be called “The Ego Character.” It’s the character that’s like, “I’m being put on the team so everyone remembers me.” I hate that character. It’s in just about every run of every Justice League and it’s in just about every run of every Avengers. There’s always one character that’s the ego character. I really wanted to not be that guy–and listen, I’m sure I’ll get called on that whether it’s for Black Lightning or someone else–but to me Black Lightning has total business being in that book.

Tom Bondurant’s Grumpy Old Fan Column at the Newsarama blog also picks up the same quote and does a nice run through of the various vanity and ego characters in the history of the Justice League.

Over at Monitor Duty Hutch raises the issue of Traya’s age. He starts off generally liking the issue,

Brad Meltzer’s story is off to a slow start, typical of the “write for the trade” style. Sure, once it’s all assembled, there will be action in the story, we just don’t get to see it in this installment. That said, it makes for an intense read with some touching moments and solid drama, and I’m especially pleased to see the attention paid to some second-string characters I’ve loved for years, namely The Metal Men and Red Tornado.

But he then goes into an analysis of what happens to neglected characters. For example, the last appearance of Traya that I can remember was in Young Justice where she’s shown as attending the same private school as Wonder Girl. Admittedly she was also shown as a kid genius who had been boosted up to the older classes, but she can’t have been much older than ten or twelve (I don’t buy the decompressed twenty year-plus timeline idea as it would put Superman and Batman in their late 40s). Yet, here she’s portrayed as not being much older than she was in her first appearance (issue #152, March 1978, of the old series) where she can’t have been much older than four years old. And is it my imagination or has Traya’s skin colour lightened since she was first introduced?

Brian Cronin’s review at Comics Should Be Good mirrored many reviews I’ve read. He channels the blogosphere by noting that:

The comic seemed ready to be a fun book, and it had quite a few nice character bits, but ultimately, for the debut issue of a major title, with thirty-eight pages to work with, the book had far too much sitting around and talking, and not nearly enough action.

Personally I didn’t mind the lack of action, but it is fairly obvious that this relaunch is going to be a different beast from the “widescreen” instant action of the previous relaunch. (A Todd Nauck-esque Doctor Impossible? I didn’t spot it to start with, but now that it’s been mentioned.)

Other People Opinions

Character Appearances

Feature Characters

The Justice League of America

• Arsenal (Roy Harper; formerly Green Arrow’s sidekick, the first Speedy)
• Batman (Bruce Wayne, appeared last issue)
• Black Lightning (Jefferson Pierce)
• Green Lantern Hal Jordan
• Red Tornado (John Smith; last appeared in 52 #52)
• Superman (appeared last issue)
• Vixen (Mari Jiwe McCabe; fashion model turned superhero)
• Wonder Woman (Diana Prince, appeared last issue)

Guest Stars

• Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)

Villains

• Felix Faust (An old magician foe of the League masquerading as Boston Brand, the Deadman)
• Mister Impossible (first appearance)
• Multiplex (that’s one of his deceased bodies the Tornado is inhabiting)
• Signalman (Phil Cobb; one of Batman’s lesser foes)

Supporting Cast

• Kathy Sutton (John Smith’s human partner; Traya’s adoptive mother; last appeared in Young Justice)
• Traya (a war orphan adopted by John Smith and Kathy Sutton; last appeared in Young Justice)

Guest Appearances

• Gold (one of the Metal Men)
• Platinium (“Tina”, one of the Metal Men)
• Will Magnus (Scientific genius; creator of the Metal Men; last appeared in 52)

Cameos Appearances

• Lian Harper (Roy Harper’s infant daughter; shown in a photograph)
• JLA Candidates – Atom II, Flash, Hawkman, Mister Terrific, Power Girl, and Supergirl

Annotations

Page 1: “My father tried to save the world,” is a reference to Jor-El and the destruction of the planet Krypton.

Page 2-3: Captain Marvel is a fifteen-year-old child who is transformed into the Worlds Mightiest Mortal by saying the name of his patron, the wizard Shazam. He is missing because after the wizard was killed in the run up to Infinite Crisis, Billy Baston was promoted to caretaker of the Rock of Eternity and chief sentinel of magic in the reordered DC Universe. His replacement as Captain Marvel, Freddy Freeman, has to yet earn access to the full scope of Captain Marvel’s powers and must under go the  Trials of Shazam to prove himself.

Page 4: Kathy Sutton and the Red Tornado. The Tornado is a powerful alien spirit that inhabits a robotic body. The body was originally was built by T.O. Morrow as a Trojan Horse intended to gain the trust of and then destroy the JSA and JLA. However, he rebelled and became a member of first the JSA and then the JLA. One downside of his perceived synthetic nature was that he had an almost suicidal urge to sacrifice himself. There was a flashback in issue #0 showing the reaction of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to one of the Tornado’s suicides. Invariably the pieces are gathered together and reassembled. He was destroyed and rebuilt by in JLA #115-119 (Aug — Late Nov 2005) by Batman in a story that bridged the events of Meltzer’s Identity Crisis and the impending Infinite Crisis.

The post-Infinite Crisis fate of the Tornado was a major subplot in the weekly 52 series. He had been in space with Donna Troy’s team when they were forced to flee a spatial rift created by Alexander Luthor. The Tornado’s unique vibrational tuned technology recorded a map of the new Multiverse as it formed, but his body was shattered and scattered. His voice box became embedded in Mal Duncan and his last words that time were “fifty-two” (the number of new universes). It was Morrow who discovered the Tornado’s body in an Australian junkyard art-exhibit.

Morrow recovered the Tornado’s remains, but the head – and the map of the Multiverse – was stolen by Booster Gold and Rip Hunter. This dialogue tells us that sometime after 52 finished Hal Jordan recovered the rest of the Tornado’s body from Morrow’s lab (which shows up later in this arc) and the head from Rip Hunter. It was shown in 52 that Will Magnus was Morrow’s student so it makes sense that he’d be the one to recommission the Tornado and check for any booby traps.

Page 5: Will Magnus and the Metal Men: Magnus is the foremost authority on robotics in the DC Universe – well the foremost authority who isn’t a super villain at least. He designed a team of robots called the Metal Men who each possess the strengths and weakness of a particular metal. They share the Red Tornado’s sacrificial drive, but they lack his subtle humanity. The female android pictured here is Platinum, she’s in love with her creator, a “flaw” in her programming that he’s tried hard to eliminate. In 52 Magnus is shown regularly visiting Morrow in prison and Morrow has described Magnus as one of his students.

Page 6: The five retro-panels are a direct cut-and-paste from page 14 of Justice League of America (vol. 1) #105 (May 1973), the first appearance of Kathy Sutton. That sequence was originally written by Len Wein and illustrated by Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano.

Page 9: Traya is a young war orphan found and adopted by Red Tornado in Justice League of America (vol. 1) #152 (March 1978).

Page 11: The Deadman, Boston Brand, a circus aerialist who came back as a ghost to hunt those responsible for his death. The interesting part here is that his appearance proves that the Tornado actually has a soul. A complex part of the Tornado’s back story is that he is actually an elemental force of nature – an air elemental – housed in an android body. Many people forget the air elemental (his spirit) and assume that he is just an android. It’s the android that turns the disembodied entity into an real person.

Page 12:

• Hal Jordan, Green Lantern. He and Batman haven’t seen eye to eye for a while after Hal became the villain Parallax, then redeemed himself as the Spectre before being resurrected in Green Lantern: Rebirth.
• Supergirl, Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin. Wonder Woman and Batman have both taken a close interest in her career and she even stayed on Themyscira before she went public.
• The Flash, Bart Allen. There have been four Flashes — Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, Wally West, and Bart Allen (Barry’s grandson). At the time this was out Barry was dead and Wally’s location hadn’t been revealed. In their absence an artificially aged Bart took over the reigns of the Flash.
• Power Girl. A survivor of an extinct parallel universe; a more mature alternative version of Supergirl. She’s been a Leaguer before, but more recently has been working with the Justice Society.

Page 13-14: Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) and Arsenal (Roy Harper). During the 1970s Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams collaborated on the celebrated “Hard Travelling Heroes” team-up between Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) and Green Lantern. Dinah, Black Canary (Dinah Lance), was Green Arrow’s then girlfriend, and Harper, then called Speedy, was his sidekick. The quip about the truck is a reference to that story. Despite being rather dysfunctional they’ve become a family with Roy seeing Oliver as his father and Hal as his uncle. Both Jordan and Queen have died and come back to life. Lian Harper is Roy’s daughter, her mother is the super villain Cheshire.

This practise of breaking down the story into each chapter headed by the characters’ logos is a signature of the original Justice League book.

Page 15-17: Jefferson Pierce, Black Lightning. He’s  been a teacher in Metropolis and a member of Batman’s Outsiders. He memorably turned down League membership in Justice League of America (vol. 1) #173 (Dec 1979) and was ripped off as Black Vulcan for the Super Friends, but that’s another story. He was Secretary of Education in President Luthor’s cabinet and has appeared in recent issues of Green Arrow’s series.

Tatsu, Katana, was another member of the Outsiders. Katana and Black Lightning are shown talking together in Identity Crisis #1 (Aug 2004) when they got the news of Sue Dibny’s murder. On his blog Brad Meltzer commented that he’d had his eye on Black Lightning as a potential member of his Justice League for sometime and that the Identity Crisis appearance was part of the set up.

Most of these villains are obscure, heck most of them aren’t even in the Official DC Encyclopaedia.

• Plastique was a French-Canadian terrorist. She had reformed and was engaged to marry Captain Atom.
• The Silver Ghost was a foe of the old Freedom Fighters.

It appears that super villains are disappearing in a chain and are being implicated in the next disappearance in the chain. This is the first mention of the new character Doctor Impossible.

Page 18: Multiplex was an enemy of Firestorm who, as it says here, was able to make duplicates of himself. When he died it appears that his duplicate bodies died as well.

Page 20:

• Mister Terrific, Michael Holt. Chairman of the Justice Society.
• The Atom, Ray Palmer. Missing since the end of Identity Crisis when it was revealed that his wife was the murderer. It’s been implied in All-New Atom that he’s been leaving clues to guide Ray Choi into becoming the new Atom. It will later be revealed that Palmer is living on another world in the Multiverse.
• Vixen, Mari Jiwe McCabe. See below.
• Hawkman, Carter Hall. A member of the original Justice Society and the classic Justice League. He was with the same space task force as the Red Tornado, but didn’t return with the rest in 52. Calling the strongman of the team “the tank” is an old bit of jargon from superhero role-playing games.

Page 21-22: The Vixen, Mari Jiwe McCabe, is an African supermodel turned superhero. I’m beginning to wonder if she was based on the African supermodel Iman or one of the other African models who were rising to fame in the US during the 1970s and early 1980s. Her superpower comes from an amulet, the Tantu Totem, which allows her to duplicate specific animal abilities.

The quote is from Anais Nin, a French diarist and noted author of female erotica. It draws Vixen to Hub City, the Question’s old stomping groups, but you’re unlikely to see him as at the time of publication he’s appearing in 52 and there is a moratorium on using the core characters of that series in other books until it finishes. Note added in update: when I first wrote these annotations I noted about the Question that “we don’t even know if he’ll survive the [52] series.” We now know that Vic Sage, the original Question, died in 52 and was succeeded by Rene Montoya. The twist here is that Vixen thinks she’s being summoned on a date by the male Sage, when the current female Question is actually a lesbian. Of course neither of them sent the message as it’s a set up for a trap.

Page 23-26: This would be the first time we’ve seen Deadman performing magic. “Zwei seelen wohnen in meiner brust” is German and means “Two souls live in my chest”. It’s a quote from Faust. Which isn’t surprising considering it is later revealed that it is being said by Felix Faust, an old League villain inspired by the literary Faust, masquerading as Deadman.

Page 27-28: The part that puzzled me about this sequence is that are Lantern and Canary assembling their own League independent of the Trinity or are they acting under orders from them?

Page 29: “Mrs. Huckle” is Ma Huckle, the original Red Tornado vigilante from the 1940s. She’s now the caretaker of the Justice Society’s Headquarters.

Page 30: “Uncle Snapper” is Snapper Carr the League’s old teenage mascot.

Page 31: Beheading Metal Men shouldn’t work. Other depictions show then as essentially pure statues of metal animated by a tiny device called a responsometer. Showing them as having more mechanistic components is a revision. They’re shapeshifters – cutting off their head shouldn’t affect their ability to operate as they’d just form a new one. If you inspect the unfinished pencilled pages for this issue on Ed Benes’s website you can see that he started out drawing the Metal Men in their original designs, but by the time he comes to pencil this sequence the design has been updated to this current form.

Page 32: The comments about the Legion flight ring replies on Superman meeting the Legion of Super-Heroes. They are a team of superheroes from a thousand years into the future, but permutations in continuity means that they’ve taken quite a battering over the years with at least three major versions existing. A later story in this title by Brad Meltzer and Geoff Johns re-establishes the original Legion and Superman’s membership of it. Batman’s mention of the ring is the first hint at the Legion’s comeback.

Page 34: Doctor Impossible, a new character, this is his first appearance. The set-up and costume states that he is Mister Miracle’s brother from Apokolips, the assumption would be that he’s another of Granny Goodness’s students who escaped. His technology is reversed from Mister Miracles, i.e his has a Father Box that goes “Pok pok” rather than a Mother Box that goes “Ping ping” and he’s got a “Hush Tube” rather than a deafening Boom Tube.

Page 35: Note Red Tornado’s JLA membership certificate on the wall behind Kathy.