Issue Credits

Writer

James Robinson

Penciller

Daniel Sampere, Miguel Sepulveda

Inker

Wayne Faucher, Miguel Sepulveda

Colourist, Cover Colourist

Andrew Dalhouse

Letterer

Rob Leigh

Cover Penciller

Brett Booth

Cover Inker

Norm Rapmund

Variant Cover Artist

Aaron Lopresti

Variant Cover Colourist

Hi-Fi

Editor

Rex Ogle, Eddie Berganza

Quotes

Atom: Big green-blue light says “follow me,” I follow.

Synopsis “Eclipso Rising Part Five: The Destined and the Dying”

Eclipso, the former spirit of vengeance, seeks to kill god by destroying the planet Earth. He has eclipsed a group of heroes and villains, each of whom has some power over shadows, and has led them in a successful assault on the Emerald City of the Starheart. Using the captured Starheart energy Eclipso summoned and apparently killed the Spectre. Then with power stolen in turn from the Spectre Eclipso cleaved the moon in two.

Eclipso’s growing power over shadows is felt even as far away as Talok VIII where the shadow priests and their congregation fall into a state of rapture. On Earth the splitting of the Moon has had disastrous consequences as tidal waves, earthquakes, and meteor storms hit major cities. On the remains of one-half of the Moon, in the ruins of the Emerald City, Batman (Dick Grayson) tells the Justice League that their goals are “fighting Eclipso and freeing everyone” he controls.

Batman and Obsidian theorise that the Shade hasn’t been totally possessed by Eclipso – even Eclipso isn’t that strong – and it is the Shade’s power which is holding everything together. If his self awareness was returned the Shade would be able to break free from Eclipso almost instantly. The plan is for the miniaturised Atom (newly summoned from Earth) and Starman to be transported into the Shade’s head via a special bullet created by Saint Walker’s ring. Once inside Shade’s brain the Atom will be able to create a brainstorm which should reawaken the Shade’s self awareness. Obsidian and the Shade go one-on-one as Obsidian tries to draw him into the open. Bill’s shot finds its mark and the tiny voyagers are injected into the Shade’s brain. They make their way into the his neocortex, but find it infested with shadow spiders.

Meanwhile Batman and rest of the Justice League rush Eclipso’s foot soldiers with the cry that “we must free Zauriel!” However, they are a decoy to distract Eclipso before he’s ambushed by Donna. Saint Walker sensed a bright light inside her, a spark undimmed by her endless trials. As she fights Eclipso she feels a wave of elation as she allows all her pain and anger to slip away. That makes her strong against Eclipso, but not strong enough and the villain runs her through with his massive sword.

Commentary

• Preview: Newsarama — First four pages + covers.

Opinion

The Justice League’s counter-attack against Eclipso involves breaking the Shade free from his control and an ill advised solo attack against Eclipso by Donna Troy. This bring Donna’s long arc to fruition and we get an explanation, of sorts, about why she’s been acting so out of character. We’re told that… we’ll I’m not really sure what we’re told… that she has anger issues caused by her repressed feelings of grief and loss? She piles all those past events together and channels them for emotional kapow. It is a leap that doesn’t really work logically, but we sort of accept it within the story. X-man reduces it to Donna trying to defeat Eclipso because “her life really sucks” while Mart Gray adds that she “is going to beat Eclipso with continuity”.

Saint Walker seems to think that  Donna is some sort of bright light, but his belief just gets her killed. Walker seems to be having something off an off day – he’s making sniper rifles (an off move for a priest) and sending young women on suicide runs (they’d love him in al’Qaeda). Although do we believe that Donna Troy is dead? It certainly wouldn’t be unexpected for a few extraneous characters to be culled or killed off prior to the big DC relaunch, but I’m not so sure. Even impalement with a six-foot sword is but a flesh wound to a superhero.

The League gets to stretch their legs properly this issue. I particularly liked the return of the Atom. He was part of Robinson’s original expanded-line, but was left on the sidelines after the group shank. However, his appearances in Titans, where he is investigating the death of his successor Ryan Choi, have shown him to still be associated with the League. His stunt with the bullet and the running around in the Shade’s brain is great fun and is just the sort of b-movie fun you’d expect from a JLA adventure.

For me there was just something about last issue that didn’t work very well. There was a vast amount of standing around and talking and for some reason it just wasn’t that entertaining. That is in stark contrast with this issue where the standing around and talking part nicely dovetails with the action (that may have been the factor missing last issue). I’m reminded of scenes from heist movies (e.g. Oceans Eleven) where the discussion about planning the heist is inter-cut with scenes of the heist itself.

Brett Booth takes his leave as the Justice League artist and only contributes the cover for this issue (he’s moved onto the upcoming Teen Titans #1). Aaron Lopresti’s variant cover is rather fun and is a nice antidote to the Donna Troy gang-grapple. The interior art is handled by Daniel Sampere and Miguel Sepulveda and is generally of a high quality. Sepulveda worked on Superman/Batman Annual #5 (which tied into the start of this story). I particularly like the double-page spread on pages 2 and 3 showing the devastation on Earth. He’s providing the art for the post-Flashpoint Stormwatch series so that could be a title to watch. I’m not so familiar with Sampere’s art, but he “brings a more classic look” (as Comicbook Heretic says on Comics Vine) and there isn’t too much of a disparity in their styles once everything is inked and coloured.

Writing in Comic Book Resources’ review of this issue Doug Zawisza disclosed that he “tore the Subway ad out” before he read this book. The first ad was daft enough although it did get lamentations from Aquaman’s fans over his use as a damsel-in-distress for Subway’s finest to rescue. I just skipped this episode. I wish I’d had Doug’s determination, but the idea of ripping it out sparked some latent, old school concern for whether the issue would still count as “near-mint”.

The Verdict

Characters

Feature Characters

Justice League of America

• Batman (Dick Grayson, appeared last issue)
• Congorilla (Congo William “Bill” Glenmorgan, appeared last issue)
• Donna Troy (appeared last issue)
• Jade (Jennifer Lynn-Hayden, appeared last issue)
• Jesse Quick (Jesse Tyler, appeared last issue)
• Starman (Mikaal Tomas, appeared last issue)

Villains

• Eclipso (spirit of Wrath, appeared last issue)

Eclipso’s Thralls

• Acrata (Andrea Rojas, Mexican superhero, appeared last issue)
• Dark-Crow (Daniel Crow-Brings-Darkness ,Canadian superhero, appeared last issue)
• Bete-Noire (Henri Zola, first appearance, French supervillain, appeared last issue)
• Nightshade (Eve Eden of the Shadowpact, appeared last issue)
• Shade (Richard Swift, appeared last issue)
• Shadow Thief (Carl Sands, appeared last issue)
• Syththunu (an Elder God, appeared last issue)

Guest Stars

• Atom II (Ray Palmer)
• Obsidian (Todd Rice, Jade’s brother and Alan Scott’s son, appeared last issue)
• Saint Walker (leader of the Blue Lanterns, appeared last issue)
• Green Lantern Alan Scott (the original Green Lantern, appeared last issue)

Justice League Reserves

• Animal Man (Buddy Baker, in background, appeared last issue)
• Bulleteer (Alix Harrower, in background, appeared last issue)
• Cyborg (Victor Stone, in background, appeared last issue)
• Doctor Light IV (Kimiyo Hoshi, in background, appeared last issue)
• Red Tornado II (John Smith,in background, appeared last issue )
• Tasmanian Devil (Hugh Dawkins, in background, appeared last issue)
• Zauriel (appeared last issue)

Cameos

• Lydea Mallor, Knight II, Squire III, Red Star, Rocket Red Brigade, the Manhattan Guardian, Superboy, Wonder Girl II, Firestorm

Annotations

Page 1. Last issue opened with Mikaal Tomas’s recollections of his childhood on Talok III while this issue opens with a sequence on Talok VIII. When Starman first appeared in First Issue Special #12 (March 1976) his home planet was not identified, but it was mentioned in the letter column that he bore a resemblance to Shadow Lass from the Legion of Superheroes. Shadow Lass is from Talok VIII and it wasn’t until Starman (vol. 2) #28 (March 1997), 21-years later, that James Robinson established that Mikaal was from a lost tribe of Talokians who had left Talok VIII at some point to establish a colony. Talok VIII was revisited in the present day L.E.G.I.O.N. series where an obscure character from a pre-Crisis story, Shadow Lass’s ancestor, was reintroduced as Lydea Mallor (who is shown in this sequence).

Page 2-3. Shown on this spread are the Knight and Squire in London (top left), Red Star and the Rocket Red Brigade in Moscow near St Peters (top right), the Manhattan Guardian in New York (center), Wonder Girl and Superboy in San Francisco (bottom right), and Firestorm (or Captain I think from the nuclear emblem) over a coastal city (bottom left).

Splitting the moon in half is a sign of the End of Times (see Annotations from last issue). However, splitting the moon in half wouldn’t actually have too much effect on the Earth in a geophysical sense. Notice that Eclipso has cleaved the Moon in two, but he hasn’t separated the two parts significantly. The moon’s radius is 1,700 km and its distance from the Earth is 380,000 km or about 220 times its own radius. So all that mass, all that material, is still in more of less the same place and at the same distance from the Earth and that is all gravity cares about. Over time that debris would be pulled out into a more disturbed orbit and that could cause a problem, but as depicted here its too soon to have an affect. Those two halves are gravitationally attracted to each other so they would probably just stay together.

There would be a large amount of debris and dust in near Earth space that would play havoc with satellites and may have environmental effects if it drifts into the atmosphere. It may even form a wide ring around the Earth. However, these effects are a lot longer term than the events show here. Its an odd thing in science fiction that the power requirements to destroy a celestial body is generally far greater than shown. And even if you could destroy a planet or moon the extra energy necessary to get it to fly apart on a time scale you can see with the naked eye (e.g. so many versions of Krypton) would require the individual pieces to be moving at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed.

Page 4-5. The figures with their backs to us are (left-to-right) Acrata, Dark-Crow, Cyborg, Bete Noire, and the Shadow Thief. Stood next to Eclipso is the Shade.

Page 6. Jesse Quick got her powers from her parents – super-speed from her father Johnny Quick and super-strength from her mother Liberty Belle.

Page 10-11. Brave and the Bold (vol. 1) #115 (Oct-Nov 1974) was a story called “The Corpse That Wouldn’t Die!” by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo. In it Batman is electrocuted by badguys and is left brain dead. The Atom is nearby and starts running around in Batman’s brain like some sort of manic microscopic neurosurgeon. It’s not just about restarting the Batman’s brain, the Atom is actually piloting Bruce.

Atom in Batman's Brain (Brave and the Bold #115; words: Bob Haney; art: Jim Aparo)

The Atom-controlled-Batman saves the day is properly resuscitated in hospital before a grateful victim gives him a big kiss. The Atom looks on and laments that “half of that reward should go to the Atom, but I doubt Debbie would want to kiss a fellow only six inches high.”

Congorilla started life as Congo Bill, a character that dates back to 1940. Congo Bill was a big game hunter, something of a homage/pastiche to characters like Allan Quatermaine. Bill never got much of a backstory, but James Robinson has slowly been dip feeding details out during his JLA run. As mentioned here Bill’s father was a Scottish Games Keeper. Robinson has history with Quatermain, he wrote the screenplay for movie version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in which Quatermain was played by Sean Connery. So try to imagine Bill speaking with Sean Connery’s distinctive Scots accent.

Bill tells us to look up the history of snipers so here we go: the first modern unit of Snipers were indeed a Scots yeomanry regiment called the Lovat Scouts who were renowned for their sharpshooting. They were the regiment who first introduced the ghillie suit. It is the camouflaged tent-like suit that a sniper wears in order to blend in with their surroundings and had first been used by “ghillies” (Scots gamekeepers).

Page 12. I find it odd that the holyman Saint Walker is quite happy to create a deadly weapon like an sniper’s rifle.

Page 14. The Atom met Edgar Allan Poe in The Atom #12 (April-May 1964) via the Time Pool  – a miniature time tunnel created by the Atom’s friend Professor Hyatt.

Page 16. Walker mentions his proximity to the Starheart’s energy. Normally a Blue Lantern ring cannot do much more than basic survival, communication, and flight. It needs to be near a Green Lantern ring to work properly as “hope” (the blue light) is powerless without “willpower” (the green light).

Page 19.  Donna:

• “Losing Terry and by boy”- Terry Long was Donna’s husband in the New Titans comics. He divorced her and got custody of their baby-son when she regained her powers. He and the baby were killed in a car crash in Wonder Woman (vol. 2) #121. It was part of a story by John Byrne which re-established Donna as Diana’s sister and explained her shifting backstory by introducing a villain called the Dark Angel, a parallel Earth version of Donna, who kept tormenting her by altering her history.
• “My own death and rebirth” – Donna was killed by a rogue Superman robot in Graduation Day #3, the mini-series that transitioned Peter David’s Young Justice into Geoff Johns Teen Titans. It also set-up her return back to life by the Titans of Myth in The Return of Donna Troy mini-series during the lead up to Infinite Crisis.
• “the Blackest Night”- Donna’s dead ex-husband and her baby son returned in Blackest Night as the sickest Black Lantern zombies in the entire series. Donna had just come to the hospital to collect their bodies when Wonder Woman approached her in Justice League of America (vol. 2) #41 about forming a new Justice League.
• “helping to form this version of the JLA” – This current run of the JLA.

Continuing this short series of JLA fan art beings us to Donna Troy. Now there is a lot of Donna art out there, a lot of it cheesecake, but I think this piece (above) by Heni Lopez captures something else. I love the way he’s taken the universe motif from her costume and carried it into the shadows in her hair.

Issue Credits

Writer

James Robinson

Penciller, Cover Penciller

Mark Bagley

Inker

Rob Hunter, Norm Rapmund, Don Ho

Cover Inker

Rob Hunter

Colourist, Cover Colourist

Hifi

Letterer

Rob Leigh

Associate Editor

Rex Ogle

Editor

Adam Schlagman, Eddie Berganza

Variant Cover Artist

David Mack

Quotes

Ultraman: Amazons. They only understand three things. Fight, fight and fight.

Donna Troy: Get the hell off my world, hag!

Synopsis “JLA: Omega Part 4: Finale”

Previously: The Anti-Matter Earth has been scorched by “dark energy” unleashed from the Multiverse by a doomsday device left behind by Alexander Luthor. The Crime Syndicate came to Earth-Zero looking to resurrect Luthor so that he could stop his weapon, but the resurrection attempt was hijacked by Doctor Impossible who unwittingly caused the energy destroying the Anti-Matter Earth to be incarnated as a figure calling itself the Omega Man. Jade managed to seal the Omega Man inside of Washington DC, but her energy dome also sealed the Syndicate and League inside with him. The Omega Man transformed Supergirl into her Dark Supergirl doppelgänger and allied himself with Ultraman. The rest of the League and Syndicate joined forced to fight the Omega Man, but he gave them an ultimatum to let him leave or he would kill them all. An ultimatum that it appears Batman has just agreed to…

The Omega Man sets Batman a deadline by which to bring down the Energy Dome, but Ultraman demands amusement and insists that Donna Troy and Super Woman fight each other for his amusement. Donna finds it increasingly difficult to control the constant rage she feels as she beats the Syndicate’s Super Woman into a pulp. Dark Supergirl finds the fight “BORING!” and clobbers both women. She then turns to the Omega Man, but he is lost in the memories of the people he destroyed whilst he was just formless dark energy. Meanwhile, Johnny Quick and Jesse Quick have run for three full days to keep the entire population of Washington hidden from the Omega Man.

Batman, Blue Jay, and Owlman have repaired Doctor Impossible’s Resurrection Machine with help from Jade who has recreated the missing parts with her energy powers. Jade is disgusted that Batman has given into the Omega Man’s demands by betting that Superman and the other heroes outside the Dome can stop the Omega Man. Owlman stuns them a neural disruptor and signals the rest of the Crime Syndicate to double-cross the Justice League. He then presents the Resurrection Machine to the Omega Man. Owlman’s secret deal gives the Syndicate the League’s Earth in exchange for their own half-destroyed Earth. However, the Omega Man is sucked into the Resurrection Machine’s portal the moment Owlman turns it on.

Batman expected Owlman’s double cross and prepared for it. He had kept the Earth-9 Green Lantern on the sidelines and had her to secretly summon Alexander Luthor’s ghost for one last act of restitution. In death he understood how Earth-Zero’s narrative laws had twisted him into a villain so he helped the League to reprogram the Resurrection Machine so that it would slingshot the Omega Man back into the Mutliverse reversing the destruction causes by his dark energy, healing all the worlds he’s passed over (including the Anti-Matter Earth and Earth-9). The League then kicks the Syndicate back through the portal. As the Earth-9 Green Lantern returns to her own world Blue Jay makes the decision to follow her and explore the Multiverse.

The Energy Dome remains over Washington even after Omega Man has gone and Jade has attempted dissipate it. It finally vanishes thanks to Malavar, a Gorilla scientist recruited by Congorilla and Starman (who had both been outside of the Dome when it first formed).

Continuity

• Alexander Luthor turned evil due to the narrative effects of Earth-Zero on Luthors.

Commentary

Until December 2011 Justice League of America cost $3.99 and included 31-pages of story. As of January 2011 (this issue) the price has dropped to $2.99 as part of DC’s “Holding The Line” promotion, but the page count has also dropped so there are now 20-pages of story. Fewer pages, lower cost.

This change played havoc to the chapter length of “JLA: Omega” as its first chapter was an oversized 50th issue. The page count for each chapter went from 46-pages for the first chapter, to 31-pages for each of the middle chapters, and then to 20-pages for the final chapter.

Opinion

Ah, the good old betrayal triple-cross with the bait-and-switch uber-gizmo. An old trope, but still a fun one. This is the story that’s been running in the background for his entire run with the kidnapping of Blue Jay in issue #38 and the first appearance of the Resurrection Machine in “Team History”. Thus is wrap feels like a big deal. James Robinson was on the Comic Vine podcast the week that this issue came out and alluded to the difficulties he’d faced with the series bouncing page count:

It [the ending] all came around from the idea that as I was planning it so they stopped the 30-pages and went down to 20-pages for this last part. As I was thinking about it I thought “you know what would be cool” [what if] there is no way they [the League] can possibly fix this in the number of pages left in this issue and yet they still do. So that was where I was working towards.

So it’s a super fast wrap up that basically involves letting Omega Man, the Crime Syndicate and anybody else outward bound for the Multiverse to vanish down the cosmic plug hole of the Resurrection Machine’s portal. It works surprisingly well and doesn’t even feel as rushed as the ending for “The Dark Things.”

Wayland @ A Comic Book Blog wryly observes the defensive tendency of characters in this book to proclaim they are indeed the Justice League:

And this is the second time in the story that we are assured “Oh, no, this team here, this IS the Justice League.” Robinson seems a mite defensive.

While Anj @ Supergirl Commentary suggests that this may actually be the entire point of this story:

The energy dome around Washington D.C. is finally dropped and the League accepts the adulation of the super-hero community which is congregated there.

In some ways I think this was the main purpose of this arc for Robinson. This team has defeated a major villain and is now recognized globally as being the Justice League of America. They are worthy of that name.

And everything is all neat and wrapped up with a bow.

And there is a sense that this is a pivot point in terms of the series. We’ve reached the end of Mark Bagley’s tenure and a fair number of those plotlines that Robinson has set up have now been wrapped. Doug @ CBR says the “decks have been cleared in this issue”. I think that things are starting to become very interesting with Robinson’s Justice League. He’s now been on the book long enough to get multiple overlapping threads running which part of what made Starman so interesting. He’s also demonstrating that things people thought were deficiencies in the plot/characterization were actually part of the grand plan (Taz in Congorilla/Starman, Donna Troy’s observations).

I smiled at Donna’s monologue as some reviewers and commenters have objected to Robinson’s characterisation of her. (I’ll full admit to agreeing with them that something was off) Well it looks (see Annotations for Page 1-3 below) that this was planned all along and is a story beat which will be addressed in the next arc. If anything it appears that the next arc will deal with even more plot threads (Jade/Obsidian, the missing Shade, Brightest Day Eclipso vision, Jesse’s shifted powers, Donna’s personality, the Rein of Doomsday tie-in).

The Verdict

	Site	Reviewer	Original Score	%
Reviews Portal	Comic Book Resources	Doug Zawisza	3.5/5	70
Community Reviews	Comics Vine User Reviews	Ave of 2 review/s	3.5/5	70
Community Reviews	iFanboy	207 pulls	3.3/5	66
Character Site	Supergirl Comic Book Commentary	Anj	B	60
Character Site	Superman Homepage	Ralph Silver	4 (story) & 4 (art)/5	80
Reviews Blog	A Comic Book Blog	Wayland	60/100	60
This Site	Captain’s JLA Blog	Jason Kirk		60%
		Grand Average		67%

Characters

Feature Characters

Justice League of America

• Batman (Dick Grayson, appeared last issue)
• Congorilla (Congo William “Bill” Glenmorgan, last appeared in Starman/Congorilla #1)
• Donna Troy (appeared last issue)
• Jade (Jennifer Lynn-Hayden, appeared last issue)
• Jesse Quick (Jesse Chambers, appeared last issue)
• Starman (Mikaal Tomas, last appeared in Starman/Congorilla #1)
• Dark Supergirl (Kara Zor-El/Linda Lang, appeared last issue)

Villains

• Omega Man (appeared last issue)

Crime Syndicate of Amerika

• Johnny Quick (Johnny Chambers of the Anti-Matter Earth, appeared last issue)
• Owlman (Thomas Wayne Junior of the Anti-Matter Earth, appeared last issue)
• Super Woman (Lois Lane of the Anti-Matter Earth, appeared last issue)
• Ultraman (Clark Kent of the Anti-Matter Earth, appeared last issue)

Guest Stars

• Alexander Luthor (last appeared alive in Infinite Crisis #7)
• Blue Jay (Jay Abrahams of Angor, appeared last issue)
• Green Lantern of Earth-9 (the spectral guardian of the Tangent Universe, appeared last issue)

Guest Appearance

• Animal Man (Buddy Baker, last appeared in Starman/Congorilla #1)
• Malavar (gorilla scientist, last appeared in Starman/Congorilla #1)
• Rex the Wonder Dog (last appeared in Starman/Congorilla #1)

Cameos

• Atom II, Atom Smasher, Citizen Steel, Cyborg, Doctor Fate, Elasti-Girl, Flash I, Flash II, Geo-Force, Green Lantern Alan Scott, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Hourman, Power Girl, Negative Man, Raven, Red Tornado, Robotman, Superboy, Superman, Wonder Girl

Annotations

Page 1- 3 - Donna’s inner monologue is interesting on these pages. Something that has come up time and again in the reviews of Robinson’s JLA run is people’s dislike of Donna Troy’s swearing and how she seems to be off character. Well this monologue acknowledges that there is indeed something wrong with Donna:

I’m angry all the time. Even when I appear calm… Dick, Jennie, my friends… none of them know the rage I feel brewing inside my head and heart. I have to change… find peace, peace of mind. And I need to stop swearing. I want to feel love again. I want the rage to ebb.

This is also something James Robinson hinted about on the Comic Vine Podcast:

Robinson: That [Donna's story] is building towards a big and very good, fans of her will be happy, a big revelation that will happen during the Eclipso arc – about why she’s such an important person in the DC Universe. [...] If you’ve watched her portray, including the people who say she swears all the time, there is a reason I’m having her swear all the time. She’s aware she shouldn’t be swearing.

Comic Vine: Why not?

Robinson: Because it just doesn’t suit her.

Page 4 - The worst thing that Ultraman has seen Super Woman do? Well with his x-ray vision he’s probably seen everything she has ever done – including her affair with Owlman.

Page 7 - Batman alluded to the events of Blackest Night and Blackest Night: Batman where his parents were raised as Black Lanterns, to Blackest Night: Superman where Supergirl’s father was raised as a Black Lantern, and to Blackest Night: Titans where Donna’s ex-husband and her baby son were raised as Black Lanterns. “Events in Gotham” is probably an allusion to the death and resurrection of Bruce Wayne.

Page 16-17 - The Green Lantern of Earth-9 (the Tangent Universe) has some unique powers. Her lantern has the ability to call back the ghost of a dead person so they can perform one last unfinished act. Alexander Luthor first appeared in the run up to Crisis on Infinite Earths as the son of Lois Lane and Alexander Luthor of the pre-Crisis Earth-Three. He was uniquely made of half-matter/half-anti-matter and was pivotal to the Monitor’s scheme to defeat the Anti-Monitor. Spin forward to Infinite Crisis and suddenly the heroic Alexander Luthor has somehow become the villain of the piece. Even then he was more misguided that actually evil – he believed he could undo the destruction of the Multiverse and create and better, brighter Earth. Nobel goals, but he really didn’t care who or what he wrenched apart to do it. He was murdered for the hubris of excluding the Joker from his plans.

Luthor’s change in character/sanity was never really explained beyond his bitterness at the imperfect world which replaced the first Multiverse. What I find interesting is that James Robinson is appealing to the narrative laws introduced to Earth-Zero by Grant Morrison in JLA: Earth-Two – that it is physically impossible for the Crime Syndicate to win on the normal Matter Earth just as it is impossible for the Justice League to win conclusively on the Anti-Matter Earth. Those same narrative laws mean that on a normal DC Earth a Lex or Alex Luthor will always turn into a bad guy eventually – he doesn’t have much choice in the matter. The only slight wrinkle in this is that this Alexander Luthor isn’t the Anti-Matter version of Lex Luthor – he is that Lex Luthor’s son from a dead version of that world.

Page 19 – This odd troop came together in Starman/Congorilla #1 (as Ed says). Starman had disappeared on a bender and Congo Bill was searching for him at the time the Energy Dome appeared over Washington. Bill found Starman, but realised that only his other missing friend Malavar would know how to bring it down.

Malavar is the Gorilla scientist who Prometheus had kidnapped in Justice League: Cry For Justice (the one he killed Bill’s troop and Freedom Beast to get to) and he’s been missing since Prometheus’s defeat. Malavar witnessed Prometheus skinning the Tasmanian Devil and was searching for the Fountain of Youth to restore him. Bill and Starman recruited Rex the Wonder Dog to lead them to the Fountain and had to recruit Animal Man to translate for them as Rex no longer speaks human.

Convoluted, but really good fun.

Credits

Writer

James Robinson

Penciller

Pow Rodrix, Robson Rocha

Inker

Christian Alamy, John Dell, Julio Ferreira, Sandra Hope, Keith Champagne, Rodney Ramos, Don Ho, Tom Nguyen, Derek Fridolf

Colourist

Rob Reis

Letterer

Rob Leigh

Assistant Editor

Rex Ogle

Associate Editor

Adam Schlagman

Editor

Eddie Berganza

Cover Penciller

Mark Bagley

Cover Inker

Rob Hunter

Cover Colourist

Ulises

Variant Cover Artist

Francis Manapul

Variant Cover Colourist

Brian Buccellato

Quotes

Donna Troy [on the Bogeyman's hateful apparitions]: I guess you could have thrown in Hyperion or Brainiac 8 killing me. Maybe Dark Angel. You could have. Wouldn’t have mattered. In reality I saw Roy lying there maimed. I saw my husband and baby come back as murderous undead Black Lanterns. Hell, I broke my own son’s neck! Not a dream, not an imaginary story. It was real and I saw it! I did it!

Batman: Now let’s go fight some crime.

Synopsis “The Bogeyman”

The JLA relaxes after their recent team-up with the Justice Society. Supergirl and Batman get something to eat after arriving back at the Bat Bunker with a giant trophy saxophone they took from a villain called the Murder Maestro. Later they return to Gotham City as Batman suspects that the Maestro may have been part of a larger scheme. Elsewhere Congo Bill swings through New York’s Central Park, Jesse Quick reconnects with her husband, and Mikal drowns his sorrows at a bar in Opal.

Donna Troy and Jade confer with the Warden of Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco over the status of the Shadow Thief. The Thief is nearly catatonic and keeps muttering the phrase “Soon he comes”. The Warden says that another prisoner has asked to speak to Donna. He’s the Bogeyman, a creepy villain Donna fought when she was with the Teen Titans, but their meeting appears pointless. Jade and Donna leave the prison and meet the Teen Titans as they cross the Bay. Teen Titans from multiple eras appear and attack Donna. She quickly realises that she is in a dream created by the Bogeyman. He is attempting to feed on her terror, but Donna is stronger than he realises.

Jade has been separated from Donna and is confronted by phantoms of her adopted parents, her biological father Alan Scott, her dead team-mates from Infinite Inc, and ex-boyfriends who all berate her for her heartlessness. Jade collapses in guilt as a version of herself dressed like a Black Lantern appears and tells her that she’ll never change, never become a better person. Donna punches through from her own dream world into Jade’s dream and jars her from the Bogeyman’s malaise. Jade’s magical powers incinerates the Bogeyman’s psychic body knocking him unconscious in the real world. They then all wake up having never left the outside of the Bogeyman’s cell. As the women fly back to San Francisco for real Donna brings up the idea of them moving there and setting up a photography studio.

Continuity

The Bogeyman (real name unrevealed) is a psychic vampire, Donna Troy described his abilities as “He can find that one moment, one event in that child’s memory — a bad memory, and feed off the emotions its evokes.” He took a particular delight in feeding off the terror of young women and girls. He attacked the Teen Titans early in the careers and would had defeated them it hadn’t been for the strength of Donna Troy. Like many early villains the Bogeyman was considered relatively harmless, but he attacked an orphanage and three children committed suicide because of the nightmares he induced. He was captured, convicted, and was eventually transferred to the reopened Alcatraz prison.

Opinion

This issue is really about Jade, Donna, and Supergirl and is one of those great old-fashioned post-crossover wrap issues. Donna Troy and Jade visit the Bogeyman and we once again get it shown to us just how messed up Jade is. Last issue she was saved by the White Lantern and Kyle Rayner and only won out because the Batman told her what to do. This time it’s Donna who pulls her fat out of the fire. You can understand why Kyle Rayner stayed in space – this superhero is seriously high maintenance. This JLA is composed of nice guys and gals so I don’t know how Jade would fair if she had to cut it with a group that included the more grumpy heroes (Hawkman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, etc).

Donna has always been a sort of limbo character. She was created as Wonder Woman’s sidekick in the Teen Titans comic, but never seems to really settle into the WW franchise. The tension between her Titans of Myth background in Teen Titans and attempts to pull her closer to the core WW mythology have left her even more undefined that she was originally. James Robinson is trying to inject a stronger, more identifiable sense of character into Donna. Ralph @ Superman Homepage summarises her current personality as

Donna is very determined and strong-willed. Mentally, she may be the toughest member of the team.

However, this version isn’t to everybody’s liking. Donna does comes across as more confident than Jade, but there has been a definite hardening of her character recently – not entirely unexpected considering the grief that she’s been put through. However, her hard life has spilled well over the line into cliché and as Read/Rant points out that:

Of course Donna’s dead baby is going to show up.  You can’t do a Donna Troy story without dead baby these days.

Even more considered opinions like Doug @ CBR take issue with the way that hardening is handled. He observes “I can’t recall her [Donna] ever being as foul-mouthed and angry as she is in this issue. ” Personally I like it that Donna’s character is being developed, but I’m still waiting for the “dead baby” and hard life clichés to fall away.

Despite the focus on Jade and Donna I most liked the brief scenes we had with Batman and Supergirl. Robinson shows that Supergirl is still hurting from the loss of her mother during the 100 Minute War. Supergirl Comic Box Commentary comments that:

Even though Supergirl is acting bright and happy, calling the two of them the new World’s Finest, Dick recognizes that inside she is lonely. Her exterior is a front. In a classy move, even though the adventure is over and they could part, Dick invites her in for a sandwich and Kara happily agrees. I thought it was great on his part to recognize what is going on in Supergirl’s life. And best of all there wasn’t a drop of sexual overtones here. It really felt like a familial relationship.

It’s great that this is being followed up. James Robinson co-wrote those events in the Superman franchise so he’s aware of what he put those characters through.

The single greatest panel of the week:

However, the art was all over the place this issue. Mostly the mix of two pencillers and NINE inkers works okay on each page, but there are moments where it comes unstuck. The most obvious one if the moment where Donna traverses from her dream world to Jade’s world while carrying the Bogeyman disguised as Wonder Girl. However, the version of Wonder Girl the Bogeyman is disguises as changes between art teams – he’s dressed as Donna on the first page and then Cassie on the second page.

Overall it was an okay issue, not amazing, the art could have been more consistent and the Bogeyman wasn’t that interesting. However, he was only ever a plot device to expose Jade and Donna psyches so nothing lost there.

The Verdict

	Site	Reviewer	Original Score	%
Reviews Portal	Comic Book Resources	Doug Zawisza	1.5/5	30
Community Reviews	Comics Vine User Reviews	Ave of 6 review/s	4.08/5	82
Community Reviews	iFanboy	268 pulls	3.4/5	68
Character Site	Supergirl Comic Book Commentary	Anj	B/B+	65
Character Site	Superman Homepage	Ralph Silver	4 (story) & 4 (art)/5	80
Reviews Blog	A Comic Book Blog	Wayland	70/100	70
Reviews Blog	Comics Per Day Reviews	Timbotron	Fair	60
This Site	Captain’s JLA Blog	Jason Kirk		50%
		Grand Average		63%

Characters

Feature Characters

The Justice League of America

• Batman (Dick Grayson, appeared last issue)
• Congorilla (William “Congo Bill” Glenmorgan, appeared last issue)
• Donna Troy (appeared last issue)
• Jade (Jennifer Lynn-Hayden, appeared last issue)
• Jesse Quick (Jesse Chambers, joined last issue)
• Starman (Mikaal Tomas)
• Supergirl (Karen Zor-El/Linda Lang, appeared last issue)

Villains

• Bogeyman (first appearance, an “old” Teen Titans foe)
• Murder Maestro (off-scene, first mention)
• Shadow Thief (in a coma, name checked in JLA)

Other Characters

• Alcatraz Prison Warden (unnamed)

Cameos

• Hourman II (Rick Tyler, appeared last issue)
• Donna’s flashback – Teen Titans – Robin (Dick Grayson), Kid Flash (Wally West), Aqualad (Garth)
• Donna’s phantoms – Wonder Girl II, Beast Boy, Raven, Superboy, Ravager, Starfire, Cyborg, Speedy I, Mal Duncan, Aquagirl I, Terry and Robert Long (ex-husband and baby son), Wonder Woman
• Jade’s phamtons – Julian and Myma Hayden (adopted parents), Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Solomon Grundy, Fury II, Northwind, Skyman, Obsidian

Annotations

Page 2-3 – This is the Bat Bunker, the urban batcave built into the under basement of the Wayne Foundation building in Gotham City. Dick Grayson moved himself, Daiman, and Alfred into the city centre location after Bruce Wayne disappeared. It is the same Bunker that Bruce Wayne used during the 1970s. The original Batcave beneath Wayne Manor was being used by Barbara Gordon whilst she oversaw Batgirl (Stephanie Brown), but she has since moved to her own city centre location. I’m not sure if it’s a connection, but “Murder, Maestro, Please” is the name of a book by Delano Ames, part of his Jane and Dagobert Brown mystery series.

Page 4 – Starman’s lament is for Tony, his lover who was killed as part of Prometheus’s schemes in Justice League: Cry For Justice.

Page 5 – Donna moved to Miami in Titans #20 (Feb 2010). She was living in the Titans compound in New York until a photography agency asked her to cover the opening of a new resort hotel in Miami. Of course there was the prerequisite super-villains gate crashers, but Donna did managed to exchange telephone numbers with an attractive bartender called Tom.

She moved to Miami at the end of that issue with the intention of restarting her personal life. However, her comments in this JLA story imply that it didn’t work out as she hoped it would. Her pulling Jade out of the Hall of Justice accommodation parallels her own journey since coming back to life – Donna’s move to Miami was also an attempt to move out of the Titans headquarters.

Page 6-7 – Donna Troy and Jade descending on Alcatraz is a reprise of a scene in Justice Society of America #41 when Mister America and Lightning visited the Rock to check on the Shadow Thief. The Thief had appeared as Starbreaker’s lieutenant in Dwayne McDuffie’s last story arc. The JSA/JLA were checking up on him because his shadow powers made him vulnerable to the Starheart’s effects. At the time Mister America noted he was in a “fetal ball babbling nonsense.” However he and Lightning were more concerned by a prison guard called Larry Burke who had suddenly manifested magnetic superpowers.

Page 8 – The Bogeyman is presented as an “old” obscure villain. The “real” bogeyman is a mythical archetype which appears in almost every culture under a myriad of names and identities. It is the fictional figure which parents invoke to made their children behave – “If you don’t go to sleep the bogeyman will get you.”

Page 9 - In the flashback the Teen Titans are depicted as Aqualad, Kid Flash, Robin and Wonder Girl – no Speedy. Which could place this flashback as happening between Donna joining (Brave and the Bold #60 , June-July 1965) and Speedy joining (Teen Titans v1 #19, Jan-Feb 1968). The Mad Mod was a Titans foe who was devoted to pop-culture. During the 1960s the British music scene was dominated by Mods (who rode motor-scooters) and Rockers (who rode motorbikes). Small Faces were a mod band who released a song called “Itchycoo Park” in 1967/68. I’m assuming that this is the song the Mod and Donna are talking about with the “Ichicoo Park” line.

Page 14-15 – A montage of those people whose hearts have been broken by Jade. The third panel shows Julian and Myma Hayden the couple who adopted Jade and panel 5 shows Alan Scott her biological father. Scott has been married twice, both times to former enemies. His first wife had a split personality as the original Rose and Thorn. She married Alan, but faked her death on the wedding night and vanished. She was pregnant with twins (Jade and Obsidian) at the time and gave them up for adoption. They were adopted by separate families with Jade being raised as Jennifer Lynn-Hayden by the Haydens. She manifested green superpowers as a teenager and became convinced that she was the daughter of the original Green Lantern. She fought to prove that and along the way found her twin brother Obsidian.

Alan Scott and Kyle Rayner mention issues that were raised during  “The Dark Things” crossover. She’s a nice enough person, but comes across as high-maintenance.

Jade and Obsidian weren’t the only descendants of JSA members and a group of them came together as the superhero team Infinity Inc. Show in panels 7 and 8 are Fury II, Northwind, and Skyman. Fury was Lyta Hall, the mother of Daniel – the current incarnation of Dream of the Endless. The man with spiky hair is Northwing although since his time with Infinity Inc he’s been redesigned to look like the Kingdom Come Hawkman.

One Infinity Inc plotline revolved around Jade befriending Solomon Grundy after Infinity Inc rescued him. He followed her around like a pet dog and actually worked with the team for a while. Unfortnately another supervillain impersonated Jade and tricked Grundy into attacking her teammates. Grundy killed Skyman (the original Star Spangled Kid) by using Mister Bones poisonous touch.

Page 17 - The Teen Titans shown here are the Titans Donna’s era and the current group. The Roy Harper from her era is shown missing an arm, something that wouldn’t happen until recently.

Page 22-23 – Donna references Hyperion, Brainiac 8, and Dark Angel. Brainiac 8 was an incarnation of Brainiac from the future which came back in time. It wiped the floor with the Young Justice and Titans before they shut it down. They didn’t realise what it was and brought it back online as Indigo who joined the Outsiders until her memory returned.

Donna was killed in the first encounter with Brainiac 8/Indigo. Her spirit was resurrected by the Hyperion and the other Titans of Myth (the parents of the Greek Gods). They wanted Donna to guide them to safety so that they could avoid the devastation of the Infinite Crisis. However, Donna threw off their brainwashing and banished them.

Dark Angel was a version of Donna Troy from the original Multiverse. She was recruited by the Anti-Monitor to he his answer to Harbinger, but she rebelled and escaped. Dark Angel has tried to replace Donna several times and was responsible for the deaths of her ex-husband Terry Long and their son Robert.

Terry and Robert were reanimated as Black Lantern in Blackest Night: Titans. The undead baby Robert was probably the sickest thing in the entire crossover.

Page 24-25 - There is a possible art gaff here. The Bogeyman has hidden in the body of Donna’s younger doppelganger, the original Wonder Girl. This is shown in Page 24, but on the following page he is shown as hiding in the body of the current Wonder Girl (Cassie).

Page 26-27 – Jade describes events that happened last issue.

Issue Credits

• Writer: James Robinson
• Penciller: Mark Bagley
• Inker: Rob Hunter, Marlo Alquiza, and Walden Wong
• Colours: Pete Pantazis
• Letters: Rob Leigh
• Associate Editor: Adam Schlagman
• Editor: Eddie Berganza
• Cover: Mark Bagley, Rob Hunter, and Pete Pantazis

Characters

Featuring

• Batman (Dick Grayson, joins the JLA this issue)
• Cyborg (Victor Stone, joins the JLA this issue)
• Donna Troy (joins the JLA this issue)
• Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi, appeared last issue)
• Guardian (Jim Harper, Head of the Metropolis Science Police)
• Mon-El (Lar Gand of Daxam)
• Starfire (Koriand’r of Tamaran, joins the JLA this issue)
• Vixen (Mari Jiwe McCabe, appeared last issue, resigns his issue)

Guest Stars

• Robin (Damian Wayne, the sidekick of Dick Grayson’s Batman)
• Wonder Woman (last appeared as a Leaguer in JLA #37)

Villains

• Atomic Skull (Joe Martin, a Superman villain fighting Mon-El)
• Neon Black (the Lightray-like villain who attacks Darwin Jones, first appearance, identified next issue)
• Three unnamed, masked hostage takers (red, blue, and green suits, at Mercy Hospital, first appearance)
• Yellow Wasp (a Wildcat villain, last appeared in JSA All-Stars #2 as part of the Injustice Society)

Other

• Darwin Jones (a scientific investigator)
• Child patents at Mercy Hospital
• Unnamed Police Detective outside Mercy Hospital

Flashback

• British Redshirts
• Miss Liberty (Bess Lynn, Revolutionary era nurse and costumed adventurer)
• Tomahawk (Thomas Hawk, Revolutionary era ranger)
• Tomahawk’s Rangers
  • Anvil
  • Dan Hunter
  • Frenchie
  • Stovepipe

Cameos

• Black Lanterns (shown in flashback on the first page)
• Red Tornado (John Smith, destroyed JLA #39, his android remains are shown)

Synopsis

Previously: The Justice League had suffered a run of narrow victories that had left them depleted and battered. The super villain Prometheus engineered a massive scheme to teleport entire cities to random places in space and time. He injured many Leaguers and ripped Red Arrow’s arm off before he was captured. He then blackmailed the Justice League, forcing them to vote to release him in exchange for the cities’ safety (Justice League: Cry For Justice #1-7). Shortly afterwards, the remaining members of the League (Vixen, Red Tornado, Doctor Light, and  Plastic Man) with Gypsy and Zatanna found themselves assaulted by Black Lanterns, corpses animated as cruel undead parodies of their original personalities. The Justice League barely survived the attack. The Black Lanterns were defeated, but the psychological and physical wounds they caused run deep (Justice League of America vol. 2 #35-37, Blackest Night #1-8).

Vixen, the leader of the Justice League during the attacks by Prometheus and the Black Lanterns, announces to Doctor Light (the only other active Leaguer) that she is standing down to give her broken leg and arm time to heal. For Donna Troy the wounds of the Blackest Night are different – she saw her late husband and infant son reanimated as Black Lantern zombies reopening a grief she thought she’d come to terms with. Donna arrives at Mercy Hospital to collect the body of her son so that she can rebury him, but she finds a hostage situation underway in the children’s ward. Donna reacts angrily to the hostage takers callousness and defeats them before Wonder Woman arrives. She admits she is on the verge of quitting public life when Wonder Woman offers her something different to fight for.

In 1777, at the height of the American War of Independence, Tomahawk and his Rangers (including Frenchie, Stovepipe, Anvil, and Dan Hunter) are preparing to ambush a group of British Red Coats in Virginia. However, they discover that emanations from a strange, futuristic device has left the Redcoats in a catatonic state. Tomahawk touches the device and experiences hallucinations of terrible monsters. Afterwards,  his ally, Lady Liberty, sends the device to Benjamin Franklin for his appraisal. It remains buried in the collections of the Smithsonian in Washington DC for centuries until it’s found by the scientific investigator Darwin Jones. He barely has time to examine it before a glowing assailant bursts in and demands it from him.

Wonder Woman has requested that Donna Troy bolster the ranks of the depleted Justice League. She visits Starfire and Cyborg, before turning towards Gotham City. Donna finds Dick Grayson, Batman since Bruce Wayne’s death, fighting the Killer Wasp. After the fight she asks Batman about the League and he happily agrees to help her. Donna, Starfire, and Cyborg then approach Doctor Light on the JLA Watchtower. She is dismissive at first as Vixen, Firestorm, Plastic Man, and Zatanna have already quit and she was intending to follow them. However, Donna convinces Doctor Light to change her mind. Doctor Light then contacts Mon-El, who has been standing in for Superman in Metropolis, and asks him if he would like to also take up Superman’s place in the JLA.

Batman and Green Lantern track Green Arrow down to offer him Justice League membership in an attempt to stop him destroying himself. However, Arrow’s singular focus on finding Prometheus threatens to divorce him from his friends and allies.

Commentary

Covers

This issue features two covers which form a single image showing the full roster of he new League. The left cover shows Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Cyborg, Green Arrow (Oliver Queen), Guardian, Atom, and Donna Troy. The right cover shows Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi), Batman (Dick Grayson), Congorilla, Mon-El, and Starfire. The Atom and Congorilla are the only characters who appear on the cover roster and not in the interior story.

Timing

This story takes place after the events in Blackest Night #1-8 and Justice League: Cry For Justice #1-7, however, Blackest Night #7 and 8 and Justice League: Cry For Justice #7 have yet to be published at the time this story appeared on the stands. It is also set before the events in the Captain Atom co-feature that started in Action Comics #884.

The Roster of Characters

Of the new roster, Doctor Light is the only character to continue over from Dwayne McDuffie’s pre-Cry For Justice, pre-Blackest Night League. Vixen, the only surviving Leaguer from Brad Meltzer’s “The Tornado’s Path” roster, resigns this issue. Hal Jordan doesn’t count as an unbroken membership as he had left the League to set up his short-lived splinter group with Green Arrow.

There are three clear surrogates for Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in Mon-El, Dick Grayson, and Donna Troy. Dick and Donna are both former members of the Titans and they are here joined by Starfire and Cyborg. I covered the recent history of the Titans and Dick, Donna, Starfire, and Cyborg  in a recent series of posts called The Graduates.

The Conway Factor here – the tendency of a JLA writer to introduce characters they have either created or are currently writing – is covered by Mon-El, Doctor Light, and the Guardian who all appear in James Robinson’s work on Superman and the Superman franchise.

Annotations

The Flash Backs.

• 1.1 Flashback to Blackest Night showing Black Lantern version of Superman, Superboy (Conner Kent), Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Animal Man, Donna Troy, and Kid Flash (Bart Allen).
• 2-3.1 Justice League: Cry For Justice #6 – Prometheus defeats the Justice League. He had posed as Freddy Freeman in order to gain access to the Justice League Watchtower’s computers. Shown here are Donna Troy (staked to the wall), Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Doctor Light (arm shown at the bottom).
• 2-3.2 Justice League: Cry For Justice #5 – Prometheus ripped off Red Arrow’s arm before he was discovered by the rest of the League.
• 2-3.3 Justice League: Cry For Justice #7 – You can see Vixen’s leg which had been broken by Prometheus in Cry For Justice #6.

Present Day:

• 4.1 – The survivors of the Black Lantern attack on the Justice League – Doctor Light and Vixen.  Black Lantern Vibe destroyed Red Tornado in Justice League of America #39 and he broke Vixen’s arm in Justice League of America #40.
• 4.2 – “This was your League” – Vixen became the leader of the chronically overstretched League after the resignation of Black Canary.
• 5.1 – If this is a previously known police detective I don’t recognise him
• 6.1 – Ditto with these villains
• 7.1 – Donna Troy has been many things and there have been many attempts to explain her back story, each of these usually have a title like “Who is Wonder Girl?”, “Who is Donna Troy?”, etc.
• 7.2 That ever-changing back story has actually been written into continuity as an assault by a character called Dark Angel (a dark version of Donna from a parallel Earth). Dark Angel forced Donna to live through many tragic permutations of her life. She survived, but she is obviously aware that her identity is never fixed.
• 8.2 Necessitas, as she sounds is the Roman goddess of necessity or destiny. Odd that the Greek Wonder Woman should invoke a Roman goddess, but the pun doesn’t work with Ananke (“personification of (unalterable) necessity or the force of destiny” ).
• 9.2 Donna’s son was reanimated as a Black Lantern in Blackest Night: Titans #1-3.

The American War of Independence

• 10-11.1 The guy in the Davy Crockett had is Tomahawk (Thomas Hawkins) and those other folks are soldiers, Tomahawk’s Rangers. The nickname comes from his skill with the Iroquois throwing axe. He first appeared in Star-Spangled Comics #69 (June 1947) and he last appeared in 2008′s The War That Time Forgot.
• 10-11.1 Stovepipe refers to the variant of top hat.
• 10-11.2 Frenchie. The French were heavily involved in the War of Independence. King Louis XVI of France was gunning for a war with the English King George III. King Louis XVI lent support to the American colonies as part of that Anglo-French War in order to tie-up England’s stretched resources. England ultimately lost the battle for the American colonies, but it won the larger war against the French. It was Louis’s unrestrained spending on the Anglo-French war that precipitated France’s own revolution.
• 10-11.3 A doxy is a prostitute. Williamsburg is a city in Virginia, the pre-Revolution capital until Thomas Jefferson moved it to the more defensible Richmond. A Canker sore is a symptom of herpes.
• 10-11.4 That tracker is Dan Hunter. Now this is where it gets complicated. The Time Masters comic-book revealed that Dan Hunter is actually Rip Hunter’s cousin. He was one of rip’s Time Master’s group, but on one mission he decided to stay in the past with Tomahawk’s group. It was revealed in the current Booster Gold series that Rip Hunter is actually Booster Gold’s son from somewhere in his personal future so that would make Dan Hunter Booster Gold’s nephew. Booster’s only got one sibling to that would mean that Dan Hunter is Goldstar’s son. That is of course if any of this is still in continuity.
• 10-11.7 Lord Shilling (real name unknown) was Tomahawk’s arch-enemy. He was a spy and a master of disguise. His trademark was to leave a shilling – a British coin – behind as a calling card. Shilling was a dashing hero, a revolutionary era James Bond, who is dedicated to protecting King and Country against those colonial scoundrels.
• 12.1 Various monsters. The two top-right look like King Kong and Godzilla. The big figure is Frankenstein’s Monster – one of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers. He is currently working for the American Government. The figure bottom-right could be the Wooden Alien from the Justice League’s origin.
• 13.4 Miss Liberty first appeared in Tomahawk’s adventure in Star-Spangled Comics #81. She is the ancestor of the All-Star Squardron Liberty Belle I and the JSA’s Liberty Belle II (Jesse Quick).
• 13.6 At the time this is set Benjamin Franklin is the American Colonies’ Ambassador to France where he is/was instrumental in securing French support against the British. So it may be a while before Franklin gets to see this particular gadget.

The Present Day

• 14.1 The Smithsonian, Washington DC. If the device was still in Franklin’s possession when he died in 1790 it would have had to have passed through several hands before it reached the Smithsonian which wasn’t established until 1846.
• 14.2 Darwin Jones first appeared in Strange Adventures #1 (Sept 1950) as a federal detective specialising in cases of extra-ordinary or unusual science. His adventures were, in many ways, a 1950s precursor to the X-Files. His appearances have been spotty over the years, he’s just another of those great background DC characters.
• 14.4 “Magnus” is Doctor Will Magnus, inventor of the Metal Men, who was indeed shown to be on medication during the 52 series. “Caulder” is Niles Caulder, a manipulative control-freak and founder of the Doom Patrol.
• 15.1 An unnamed villain at the time of first appearance. I would comment that he bares a passing resemblance to an evil version of the New God Lightray. His name is established next issue as Neon Black.
• 16.1 Donna approaches Starfire about membership of the League. Vixen had offered Starfire League membership (as recalled in Justice League of America #36 and Titans #16), but she had turned her down.
• 16.2 Donna approaches Cyborg about membership of the League. Not sure I recognise the unconscious green fellow on the floor.
• 17-18.1 Bruce Wayne died in Final Crisis #6. The Battle For the Cowl mini-series showed Dick Grayson, the original Robin, battling to prevent Jason Todd (his immediate successor as Robin) from becoming the next Batman. During the course of that battle Dick realised that only he was qualified to succeed Wayne and reluctantly became Batman. The little snot in the red and green is his the fifth Robin, Damien Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s son with Tala Al Ghul from the Michael Barr’s Son of the Demon graphic novel. In the Kingdom Come time line he’d become Ibn al Xu’ffasch. This version was trained by the League of Assassins and possesses Bruce Wayne’s fighting ability, but none of his humility or wit.
• 19-20.7 Batman refers to the villain as Yellow Wasp, an old Wildcat villain who first appeared in Sensation Comics #20. However, this Wasp is actually the Killer Wasp, the son of the original. Yellow Wasp had kidnapped Wildcat’s son years before and raised him together with his own son. The Wasp’s natural son grew jealous of the interloper and killed him and the Yellow Wasp. The Killer Wasp first appeared in JSA #9 – shortly after James Robinson left the title. He recently appeared in JSA All-Stars #2.
• 19-20.8 The Broker is indeed just that, a man who specialises in finding all those themed, derelict theme parks and fun houses for the Gotham villain with a particular compulsion to obey, He was created by Paul Dini and first appeared in Streets of Gotham #4.
• 23.1 Cyborg is eyeing the Red Tornado, I guess we know who’s going to put him back together this time.
• 23.2 The fates of the last League.
  • Zatanna - wasn’t really a member, she’d assisted the League on a series of cases and had come to recruit their help during the Blackest Night, but she wasn’t technically a member.
  • Plastic Man was tagged pretty hard by Prometheus in Cry For Justice #6 with a drug that prevented him holding his shape. He lasted through the Black Lantern assault, but was almost killed by Black Lantern Vibe. According to Doctor Light he’s now he’s at STAR Labs, San Francisco – the League’s meta loci.
  • Firestorm – Firestorm (Jason Rusch) was in the JLA Hall of Justice when the main body of Black Lantern’s attacked. Black Lantern Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond) killed Gehenna by turning her into a salt statue and then absorbed Jason. He was saved by Blue Lantern Flash in Blackest Night: Flash #2.
  • Vixen – As shown earlier, Vixen left to give her arm and leg time to heal.
• 24.3 – A new costume for Doctor Light reversing the white/black pattern
• 25.1 – Mon-El fighting the Atomic Skull. Mon-El (Lar Gand) is from the Krypton-like world Daxam. Daxamites gain superpowers under a yellow-star like Kryptonians, but they suffer from acute and fatal allergy to lead. Gand escaped the xenophobia and technophobic homeworld and crashed landed on the Kent Farm where he was found by a teenage Clark Kent. Gand has amnesia leading Clark to believe that he was his older brother from Krypton, ergo the Mon-El nickname. Clark put Mon-El in the Phantom Zone to save him from acute lead poisoning until he could create a proper cure. Over a decade later the Phantom Zone began to collapse forcing Clark, now Superman, to release Mon-El. Luckily a cure for the lead poisoning had been given to them by the Legion of Superheroes (a group of superheroes from the 31st century that Mon-El will one day join). Superman then asked Mon-El to take over as protector of Metropolis whilst he was away on New Krypton. He assumed the secret identity “Jonathan Kent” and joined the Metropolis Science Police.
• 27.1 – The Guardian (Jim Harper) is one of a series of clones created by the Cadmus Project from the DNA of the original World War II superhero. This version, their first, escaped the Project years ago and been living in anonymity until he was tracked down by Jimmy Olsen. Since then he’s become head of the Metropolis Science Police and Jonathan Kent (Mon-El)’s senior officer. The Guardian appeared in Cry For Justice #6 after he discovered one of Prometheus’s teleportation devices and was present on the JLA Satellite when Prometheus took down the League. Doctor Light knows Mon-El and the Guardian as she is currently working for STAR Labs, Metropolis and has collaborated with both on them on investigations and in action. She and Harper are both single-parents and they have socialized allowing their kid to play together. James Robinson has been writing the Superman comic while its featured Mon-El and he has used Doctor Light and the Guardian as part of his supporting cast.
• 29.1 Colouring error: notice the difference between Hal’s costume on the preceding page and on this one. This is the old colouring for Hal’s costume. Nowadays his green “tunic” stops just below his rib-cage, but the original version was green down to the tops of his legs. You can see the inked line where the tunic was meant to stop.

Opinion

The latest two issues of Justice League of America are, in my consideration, the first real issues of the run of James Robinson and Mark Bagley. They may have been on the title for three issues already, but those are really just a teaser and a two-part Blackest Night tie-in – the equivalent of a Blackest Night: Justice League mini-series.

There is some carry over from Cry For Justice, but the tone is completely different. Whereas Blackest Night, Cry For Justice, and the Rise/Fall cross-over are “grim romps” (a phrase Robinson uses in the Cry For Justice #6 text-piece) this issue of Justice League of America is brighter and more positive. It’s about the process of bringing the new team together while a prerequisite mystery is seeded.

I have to say that I liked this issue a hell of a lot more than I liked the end of Justice League: Cry For Justice and I think a lot of people agree with me. For example Shawn Hill of Comics Bulletin is glad he “stuck it out on this book”, Don Smith of Comic Book News “this will be a nice run”, and even JeffR of iFanboy who has problems with the repeated material admits that “I’ll stick with this run of Robinson’s a little bit longer.” Not a glowing endorsement perhaps, but it is symptomatic that this is a series that feels like its turning the corner.

As JeffR noted, what does feel odd is that we are retreading a lot of the material from the start of Cry For Justice – the getting the band together part that was actually quite good in CFJ. Hopefully the repetition won’t last beyond this issue. The issue is now thirty pages, 50% longer than before, and the extra-space feels well used – believe me I feel those extra pages when writing the annotations.

Mark Bagley’s art style isn’t the hyper-detailed art that a lot of people go for, but it is a style that he can maintain at a constantly high-standard and volume over a long period and nowadays that is something to be praised. His style reminds me a bit of Howard Porter’s art on Grant Morrison’s JLA series and that wasn’t to everybody’s tastes either. It’s something that Herve St-Louis hits on the nail:

Bagley is a pro. I’m more used to seeing him on a Spider-man book than on a Justice League series. So his characters have that Marvel Comics energy and looseness which is often lacking from the illustration centric DC Comics.

I haven’t read Bagley’s Marvel work, but the description of “energy and looseness” fits. It certainly fits this big, bold superhero action better than it did the horror motif of the last few issues. Although, Greg McElhatton at CBR finds it “hard to ignore Donna Troy’s ludicrously large and round chest”, but then neither he or Doug (their CBR reviewer on JLA) seem to be that impressed with the Robinson/Bagley combo. From their reviews I get a sense of that they were hoping for more than we actually got. It’s a valid argument, but one that it may be too early to judge.

Personally I liked this issue and I hope that the change in tone continues.

The Verdict

	Site	Reviewer	Original Score	%
Reviews Portal	Comic Book Resources	Greg McElthatton	2/5	40
Reviews Portal	IGN	Shawn Hill	3.5/5	70
Community Reviews	Comics Vine User Reviews	Ave of 3 review/s	3.83/5	77
Community Reviews	iFanboy	408 pulls	3.5/5	70
Character Site	Superman Homepage	Michael Bailey	4 (story) & 3 (art)/5	70
Reviews Blog	Comic Book Bin	Herve St-Louis	8/10	80
Reviews Blog	A Comic Book Blog	Wayland	60/100	60
Reviews Blog	Comics Per Day Reviews	Timbotron	Fair	60
This Site	Captain’s JLA Blog	Jason Kirk		70%
		Grand Average		66%

Donna Troy

Donna was originally introduced into the Teen Titans as Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman’s sidekick, in Brave and the Bold #60 (June-July 1960). However, Wonder Woman never had a sidekick in her own comic so Donna was a whole invention by the Teen Titans creators Bob Haney and Nick Cardy. Later creators have tried to reconcile Donna’s origin with the Wonder Woman mythology to varying degrees of success.

Donna was the first of the Titans to marry in Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (February 1985) and to have a child in the 1992 “Total Chaos” crossover. She was already estranged from her husband when he and their son were killed in a car crash in Wonder Woman vol 2. #121 (May 1997). Donna had became too old to be called Wonder Girl and had had a couple of different identities. First as Troia (as an avatar of the mythical Titans) and then as a Darkstar (a group set up by the Controllers in order to compete with the Guardian’s Green Lantern Corps). She has since defaulted back to using her own name and does not use a codename.

Donna’s recent history begins with her dead at the hands of a malfunctioning Superman Robot in 2003′s Graduation Day mini-series. This was the series that was the catalyst which saw Young Justice and the Titans reorganise into the Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans and Judd Winick’s Outsiders. It was explained in 2005′s The Return of Donna Troy mini-series that Donna had actually been reborn as one of the Titans of Myth, a group of immortals connected to the Olympian Gods, who were planning on escaping the impending chaos of the Infinite Crisis. The Teen Titans/Outsiders restored Donna’s memory and freed her from the Titans of Myth’s plans. It was explained that Donna had a unique link to the Multiverse because Dark Angel, an evil duplicate of herself from the first Multiverse, had repeatedly interfered in her past. This explains why Donna’s back story so often seems in flux.

Donna played a significant role during the Infinite Crisis when she used the resources of the Titans of Myth to transport a team of heroes to the centre of the Universe and into the heart of the Rann-Thanagar War. This set-up Starfire, Animal Man, and Adam Strange’s journey home in 52 and the discovery of the 52 Multiverse by the Red Tornado. Donna also became the custodian of the Orb of the Monitor with which she bore witness to the “History of the DC Universe” during the backups in 52. Later on, during the year shown in 52, she briefly succeeded her sister as Wonder Woman. The Monitors of the New Multiverse saw her as an anomaly as the believed that she was meant to have died during the Infinite Crisis (a wrinkle in reality mean that Jade died instead). She went on the run from them in Countdown to Final Crisis with Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern and her ex-boyfriend) and Jason Todd (the formerly dead Robin). She eventually met a another corrupted version of herself:

Once she’d returned from space and the Multiverse Donna rejoined the Titans, but she never felt settled. She described the feeling as,

Sometimes I feel like I was never young. I was saving the world before I could drive. We all grew up so fast. Well, most of us, but from the start , I was always  the adult. The big sister. The den mother. Always looking after everybody else. Always there for them. So why do I feel so alone.

Donna Troy, Titans #20 (Feb 2010) by Mike Johnson

When the monster Genocide (a Frankenstein-like aberration created by the Secret Society) attacked Wonder Woman Donna stood by her side. Psychic feedback from Genocide played on Donna’s fears and she began blaming Diana for her family’s deaths. She fought Diana on the shores of Paradise Island until wakened from her hallucinations. Unfortunately that imbroiled them in a complex powerstruggle between the Gods, the Amazons, and the newly created Olympians (Zeus’s male Amazons). She stood by Hippolyta and Diana’s side when they faced Zeus and forced him to confess his failures (Wonder Woman #36-39, Nov 09-Feb 10).

Donna had been trying to restart her private life by accepting new photography commissions (she was a photographer back when she was married), but her first job turned out to be a trap set by the Fearsome Five. Nevertheless, she rented a new apartment in Miami and began dating again (Titans #20). Donna was present at Animal Man’s house in Cry For Justice #5 when Congorilla and Starman recruited his help. And it was Donna who captured Prometheus in Cry For Justice #6.

Her live was unturned again when the corpses of her dead son Robert and ex-husband Terry were reanimated as Black Lanterns. She was bitten by one of them and began to sense Nekron’s power even before he turned her into a living Black Lantern (Blackest Night: Titans #1-3, Blackest Night #5). And for the record, that undead baby was the creepiest, sickest thing in the entire run of Blackest Night – not even undead Black Lantern Doctor Light came close. Donna was at the Hospital to retrieve Robert’s corpse for reburial when we first see her in JLA #41.

Why does Donna deserve to be in the Justice League? In one way or another she has been a principal in almost every major plot line from her return through Blackest Night. Right now she’s A-list DCU. Donna is obviously standing in for Wonder Woman, but there is a prescient for this. When Hippolyta was punished by being made Wonder Woman (following Diana’s death) she took her daughter’s place in the Justice League. Also, when Artimes took over the Wonder Woman mantle she tried to replace Diana in Justice League America. In the modern comics Donna is Diana’s twin sister, not her younger sister. She is as fast, as strong, and as tough as Diana and she may even be a more rounded person. So she’s a natural and deserving JLA candidate if and when her sister isn’t available.

The Titans

The original Teen Titans team dates from the early 1960s, but it’s really Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s team from The New Teen Titans #1 (November 1980) that most people know of as the Titans (minus the Teen prefix).

This group was composed of the three founding members of the Teen Titans – Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing), Donna Troy (Wonder Girl/Troia), Wally West (Kid Flash/Flash) – plus one Doom Patrol graduate – Garfield Logan (Changeling/Beast Boy) – and three new characters Victor Stone (Cyborg), Princess Koriand’r of Tamaran (Starfire), and Raven. The two other founding members of the original Teen Titans were Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal) and Garth (Aqualad/Tempest). This is the broadly the same group that has run in the Titans ongoing series.

Of late, the Titans have begun to grow apart. Raven and Beast Boy are the closest in age to the current Teen Titans and have moved to their team to give them more experience. Garth was killed in Blackest Night #1. Roy Harper is still a driving presence in storylines coming out of Cry For Justice, but for the moment he is still laid up in hospital. Wally West was meant to have had a co-feature in the new Flash ongoing series, but that was shelved in order to have a cleaner reintroduction of Barry Allen’s character. So over half of the team have found niches elsewhere. The remaining Titans (Donna Troy, Cyborg, Starfire, Dick Grayson) are among those who are either the most powerful or those that have had the most exposure over the last few years.

I would note that this is not the first time that there has been “graduation” from the Titans into the Justice League. Wally West was the first to graduate to the Justice League in Justice League Europe #1. Roy Harper graduated to become Red Arrow at the start of this current Justice League of America series, but lost his arm to Prometheus in Cry For Justice #5 and remains inactive. Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern/Ion) and Conner Hawke (Green Arrow) are contemporaries (in terms of age) of the original Titans and they were both members of the Justice League. In Kyle’s case he was Green Lantern for all of Grant Morrison and Mark Waid’s runs on JLA.

In many ways they are a generation of lost heroes. The Titans are really a bit to too old to be considered inexperienced or sidekicks any more, but the perpetual DC timeline means that their mentors haven’t retired yet. That has slightly changed during this last year as the big three have been taken off the map by adventures within their own books. That has allowed Donna Troy and Dick Grayson to step forward into Wonder Woman and Batman’s positions with the Justice League.

Dick Grayson has been in the League before,  he was the leader of the Batman’s replacement Justice League in Joe Kelly’s “Obsidian Age” storyline. When Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were building a list of potential members in “The Tornado Path” they even  considered Grayson as a member. Superman and Wonder Woman were in favour, but Batman noted that he’d already asked Nightwing and that he declined at that time. Cyborg’s name was also put forward by the Trinity and he was universally agreed upon – Batman noted that Dick Grayson had told him Cyborg was ready to join the League and he would definitely say yes if asked. As fate would have it Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman didn’t get to decide the roster of that League so Cyborg wasn’t asked.

My argument is that the appearance of these four Titans in the League isn’t some random chance. These characters have been built up over the five years or so to have larger presences in the DC Universe and that has naturally culminated with them joining the Justice League. They are great characters and I look forward to their adventures with the League.

A full page advert (above) in this week’s Blackest Night #3 revealed the JLA roster that had previously been blanked out on preview images. The advert proclaims “October 2009. James Robinson. Mark Bagley. Justice League of America. Issue 38. A new era begins.” It also features a copy of the preview artwork with the full cast revealed (shown below).

There are three distinct groups of overlapping characters in that picture. The first group is Green Lantern (Hal), Green Arrow (Ollie) and the Atom were members of the original League and are the feature characters in Robinson’s current JLA: Cry For Justice mini-series. Congorilla is also featured in Cry, but this is his debut as a proper Justice Leaguer.

The second group is what I’d called the “Conway members”, those members of the League added to the rollcall because the writer happens to also be writing their solo title, i.e., in the way that Gerry Conway brought his Firestorm into the satellite era League or Grant Morrison brought Aztek into the Big 7 run. In this case Robinson is currently writing Superman featuring Mon-El. The Guardian is a major supporting character in Superman and he’s been flirting with his neighbour, Doctor Light. Mon-El, Guardian, and Light are all in the above image. She’s also important as she’s the only member shown who survives from the end of Dwayne McDuffie’s League.

The third group, and in some ways the most surprising, is the Titans. Donna Troy is appearing for Wonder Woman and Dick Grayson is there as he’s currently Batman. I suspect there is a major event building for Wonder Woman in Blackest Night – she’s in the final wave of BN DC Direct figures, but nobody knows why. We knew Dick and Donna already, but they’re now joined by Starfire and Cyborg.  She had recently refused Doctor Light’s offer of League membership. Where this leaves the currently meandering Titans title is unknown, but we had been warned the two teams would be coming closer together.

When Brad Meltzer relaunched this title he included Arsenal as the Titan who steps up to take his mentor’s place as Red Arrow. Former Titan Wally West eventually rejoined the group as the Flash, but he’s been a JLA member since his time with Justice League Europe. And while I’m on this divergence – notice that there is no Flash in the image, neither Barry Allen or Wally West appear, but that stop  any Flash Rebirth spoilers.

It’s an interesting roster and at eleven members one of the larger we’ve seen recently. I wouldn’t be too surprised if that image changed slightly when the issue actually ships (its something they did with the last comparable image). I certainly expect that Mon-El, Dick, and maybe Donna will make way for the real Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman once their individual plot-lines are tied up. That wouldn’t make the line-up look so radical – you’d then have six original members and only two former Titans.

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.