JLA #37 is the last part of a story that bridges the end of Dwayne McDuffie’s prematurely curtailed JLA run and the start of his successors, James Robinson (currently writing the JLA mini-series Cry For Justice) and Mark Bagley (late of the Trinity weekly). The writer of this story arc (including JLA #35 and JLA #36) is veteran JLA writer Len Wein who wrote the League’s adventures in the 1970s and the artist is Tom Derenick.
From his privately owned Mississippi steamer Professor Amos Fortune and Roulette are playing a high stakes card game. He is using his own Royal Flush Gang while Roulette is backing the Justice League to win. The results are being relayed to her international gambling TV network. Fortune sent three of the Flush gang’s suits to different high profile locations to force the Justice League to divide their resources. Fortune had equipped his cards with the probability altering technology he had stolen from the casino (JLA #35) with the hope that it would swing the odds of winning away from the JLA.
Wonder Woman and the Red Tornado stop the Heart Suit from robbing the New York Museum of Natural History and are almost defeated by their own improbable bad luck. Ditto for Plastic Man and Doctor Light versus Spade Suit at Stellar Studios, Los Angeles and Firestorm and Vixen against the Diamond Suit at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. In each case the Leaguers are almost defeated after they seem to make amateurish mistakes, but it still isn’t enough to let the Royal Flush Gangs defeat them. Vixen notices a floating camera relaying the fight to Roulette’s viewer and has the Red Tornado track the signal to Fortune’s river boat. The League storm the boat, but Fortune has held his Diamond Suit in reserve. They can’t defeat the League, but they do give Roulette and Fortune enough time to escape.
Afterwards, Roulette’s part in the affair become clearer. She reluctantly delivers a data drive containing the surveillance data on the Justice League and various other parties to the Key.
I find Roulette and the Key working for a superior an interesting proposition as neither of them is particularly given to minion status. Given the events in Cry For Justice it would be logical to assume that their unnamed overlord is Prometheus. A second epilogue shows the wife of a deceased Royal Flush Gang member apparently murdering Amos Fortune for sacrificing her husband.
This issue is a strong finale to what’s been an enjoyable three issue storyline. Len Wein manages to place this story in the context of the League’s ongoing problems and thus makes it feel connected to the ongoing narrative. (Just my opinion, but there is a potential problem with Justice League stories that don’t connect with anything else. It can work to the story’s advantage when they’ve got a strong roster (e.g the Morrison Big-7), but it can also leave the story feeling a little hollow if you don’t think there will be any sort of follow up. A League adventure should be a big deal and should have repercussions.)
Again with the multiple inkers. Each of these guys does sterling work, but please can we get back to the good old tradition of one penciller, one inker per issue.
The Verdict
RSS Subscribe
Follow @JLAblog
Contact Us
Discuss this
