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Post by rberman on Dec 26, 2018 12:19:32 GMT -5
With bruiser opponents like Grundy or Hulk or Shaggy Man, getting them floating in space is an obvious endgame since there's nothing for them to leverage their mighty limbs against. Also not much else you can do with something like the Shaggy Man in particular, since it is both unstoppable and indestructible. True on at least a physical level. You could imagine other ways to defeat a bruiser: mental attacks, magic, etc. |
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Post by badwolf on Dec 26, 2018 12:38:11 GMT -5
Also not much else you can do with something like the Shaggy Man in particular, since it is both unstoppable and indestructible. True on at least a physical level. You could imagine other ways to defeat a bruiser: mental attacks, magic, etc. I was thinking more long-term I guess. |
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2018 8:52:11 GMT -5
JLA #36-41 “World War III” (December 1999-April 2000)
Creative Team: Morrison, Porter and Dell (until Drew Geraci takes over inks on the last two issues) Issue #36: Metron takes Barda and Wonder Woman across dimensions to find the Wonderworld (from issue #12) in ruins as a result of the battle against Mageddon the Anti-Sun, a weapon left over from the universe which preceded the one in which the JLA live. Luthor and Prometheus team up, gathering allies including Shaggy Man and Zazzala the Queen Bee. Prometheus has discovered that his “Ghost Zone” (which Zazzala says is actually the Phantom Zone) contains a Martian spaceship which houses a portal directly into an unused area of the JLA Watchtower; this ingress becomes the bad guys’ beachhead as they start picking off JLAers. Luthor’s attack comes just as the JLA are gearing up for their defense against Mageddon. Has Luthor inadvertently doomed them all?  Issue #37: Basically just a giant slugfest. Oracle turns down Prometheus’ offer to fix her paralysis, so he throws her out of the Gotham City clock tower, which apparently houses her computer lair. Shaggy Man smashes both stuff and heroes. Queen Bee hypnotizes JLAers with various degrees of success. Luthor plots. Issue #38: Lots more fighting. Batman defeats Prometheus by messing with his helmet. Mageddon has taken over Lex Luthor; his head is now a giant malevolent eyeball. J’onn helps Luthor get control of himself. Will he help the heroes face Mageddon now? Batman, Superman, and J’onn enter the portal to the Ghost Zone.  Issue #39: Shaggy Man is finally sent sailing off into the Ghost Zone’s emptiness without anything to leverage his enormous strength against. J’onn telepathically gives Batman the knowledge to fly the Martian Spaceship. Batman prevents Huntress from killing Prometheus and says she’s fired from the JLA for thinking about doing such a thing. More fighting; Steel wasn’t as hypnotized by Queen Bee as he seems to be. GL leads a huge team of JLA reservists into the atmosphere, where they see the Anti-Sun materializing, a pair of giant eyes dwarfing the Earth.  Issue #40: Mageddon continues causing everyone on earth to fight; India hits Pakistan with a nuclear missile, and other nations are not far behind in readying their arsenals. A Boom Tube sends Queen Bee back to her own planet, ending the insect invasion. Animal Man shows up with helpful intel that we don’t get to hear. Superman takes a Boom Tube into Mageddon’s innards but just gets assimilated by it. Flash arrives with some trans-dimensional trip, bringing reinforcements: A giant silver humanoid.  Issue #41: Zauriel allowed himself to be killed so that he would return to Heaven, where he recruits some of the Heavenly Host of the Pax Dei (Latin for “peace of God”) to help save the current universe rather than just making preparations for a new universe to follow. Aztek blows himself up to free Superman from Mageddon’s innards. Aquaman’s invasion fleet and Zauriel’s heavenly hosts quell the warring nations. Flash’s big buddy is Glimmer, a survivor of the fall of Wonderworld. He powers a machine to turn everyone on Earth into a temporary superman, and everybody attacks the Anti-Sun. Superman himself flies into its core and absorbs its power before it detonates to destroy half of the galaxy.  My Two Cents: I’m sorry to say I found this arc underwhelming. Lots of characters, lots of fighting, but most of it filler. One of the problems is that Mageddon, like Solaris before him, is basically just a Dalek, a one-note hate machine that wants to kill kill kill and lacks the interest of Joker's insanity or Luthor's jealousy. A really good story presents the hero with a moral choice, but "stop the giant computer from killing the world" is kind of a no-brainer even for the vilains. Speaking of which... I waited for Luthor to do something cool to save his own skin and the world (and in doing so maybe become a threat that had to be dealt with), but he just kinda disappeared from the story. The important plot point of Flash looking for help across dimensions was not mentioned at all until right before he returned, so there was no anticipation/payoff. I thought that maybe Animal Man was going to add a layer of meta to the story, but no, just a nugget of intel about lizard brains. The most interesting moment was seeing Glimmer bring to reality the Morrison motif that superheroes are a glimpse at the future of regular humanity.  The defeat of the Shaggy Man was kind of obvious: He’s strictly a melee bruiser, so getting him floating in zero-gravity is automatic win. Fighting a sun-sized, sun-themed computer was less interesting this time around than it was a year prior when a zillion heroes flew into space to face Solaris in DC One Million. This story felt a lot like Morrison was coasting on old ideas while working on the JLA: Earth 2 graphic novel and ramping up to take the reins of New X-Men beginning in July 2001. Zazzala the Queen Bee is another early Fox/Sekowsky JLA foe, having first appeared in issue #22 (1963). Her defeat-by-Boom-Tube is very similar to the way that Adam Strange used Zeta Rays to banish the alien fleet back in issues #20-21.  Mister Miracle reports that “one of these weapons was hurled across the shining bridge to obliterate Joyous Home, the star-city of the Old Gods.” This sounds like Asgard (with its rainbow bridge) but could be some other mythological reference; does it have a long-standing implication in DC Comics? The phrase “joyous home” comes from Alexander Pope’s 1725 translation of Homer’s Odyssey Book XIX, describing a prophecy about Ulysses: Aztek gets premonitions describing the end of the world in terms of various religions including Christianity, Meso-American, and Norse.  Morrison has Luthor and Prometheus talk about his own over-intellectual, under-socialized childhood as if it were their own:  Orion’s giant attack dog Sturm gets his name from the German word for “storm.” Plastic Man mentions his previous interactions with Red Bee, a member of the WW2 All Star Squadron during Roy Thomas’ run on that title in the 1980s. His power was “trained bees!” But he died two months after his first appearance. So sad. Kyle Rayner finally shows some spine, organizing lesser heroes who mock him. Even Wally notices Kyle’s newfound maturity.   Shaggy Man calls Orion “Mr. ‘Was God An Astronaut.’” This refers to the “ancient astronauts” conceit which Jack Kirby dramatized in creations like the Celestials, the Eternals, the New Gods, etc. Huntress’ murderous spirit came up kind of out of the blue. Was this building off of something happening in another book? More likely, it was just Morrison clearing the deck for the next writer, disposing of characters that weren’t going part of the new vision. Barda and Orion depart as well, and Aztek dies.  Hey, look! This lion-angel is reading a scroll that looks similar to Interlac, but as best I can tell it’s not really. Also, he’s quoting the same William Cowper poem/hymn that Takion quoted several issues ago. Is Morrison deliberately repeating this theme, or did he just forget what literary allusions he already used?  Easter Egg: “Dell’s Den” homages inker John Dell, who isn’t on the book at this point; The other signs may mean something too; dunno. 
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2018 9:58:25 GMT -5
I was unhappy to see Zauriel died in issue #41 and this series of issues was a letdown for me and at the end of issue 41; I was on my way to my LCS to dump all the issues that I had at that time because this series of issues was ... too many characters and I had a hard time focusing on it.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 27, 2018 10:28:28 GMT -5
I loved this arc, so epic. The only thing I never liked was the conversion of everyone on Earth into a superhero. While it might be true that "everyone can be a hero" I don't think that everyone has it in them to be a superhero. I know this was probably just a brute force thing against Maggeddon, but I dunno, it doesn't sit right with me. I also never liked when a long-time civilian character would get turned into a super-being, even for a short while.
I also feel it causes the DCU world to diverge too greatly from our own. So everyone was a super-being for a brief while; how can we relate to it any more? (I felt the same way in Doctor Who when the existence of aliens became incontrovertibly proven, common knowledge.)
Finally, what's the effect of that experience going to have on everyone? We never find out.
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2018 11:53:46 GMT -5
I loved this arc, so epic. The only thing I never liked was the conversion of everyone on Earth into a superhero. While it might be true that "everyone can be a hero" I don't think that everyone has it in them to be a superhero. I know this was probably just a brute force thing against Maggeddon, but I dunno, it doesn't sit right with me. I also never liked when a long-time civilian character would get turned into a super-being, even for a short while. I also feel it causes the DCU world to diverge too greatly from our own. So everyone was a super-being for a brief while; how can we relate to it any more? (I felt the same way in Doctor Who when the existence of aliens became incontrovertibly proven, common knowledge.) Finally, what's the effect of that experience going to have on everyone? We never find out. "We never find out" is pretty much a Morrison trademark. He throws out big ideas and then moves on immediately. However, he does tend to circle back around to them in other works, albeit not necessarily within the same continuity. The other thing about "everybody is super" is that a huge percentage of the population, sadly, would ignore the alleged Elder God threat in outer space and just use their super-ness to do what they wanted to on Earth, which would be pretty destructive. But that doesn't at all fit the heroic theme for which Morrison is going here. And 'brute force wins' is not a very interesting climax to a story. |
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Post by badwolf on Dec 27, 2018 13:30:36 GMT -5
I loved this arc, so epic. The only thing I never liked was the conversion of everyone on Earth into a superhero. While it might be true that "everyone can be a hero" I don't think that everyone has it in them to be a superhero. I know this was probably just a brute force thing against Maggeddon, but I dunno, it doesn't sit right with me. I also never liked when a long-time civilian character would get turned into a super-being, even for a short while. I also feel it causes the DCU world to diverge too greatly from our own. So everyone was a super-being for a brief while; how can we relate to it any more? (I felt the same way in Doctor Who when the existence of aliens became incontrovertibly proven, common knowledge.) Finally, what's the effect of that experience going to have on everyone? We never find out. "We never find out" is pretty much a Morrison trademark. He throws out big ideas and then moves on immediately. However, he does tend to circle back around to them in other works, albeit not necessarily within the same continuity. The other thing about "everybody is super" is that a huge percentage of the population, sadly, would ignore the alleged Elder God threat in outer space and just use their super-ness to do what they wanted to on Earth, which would be pretty destructive. But that doesn't at all fit the heroic theme for which Morrison is going here. And 'brute force wins' is not a very interesting climax to a story. That too.
I don't mind stuff being left open for other writers to follow up on--in fact, that's kind of what I like about ongoing comics--but this was just so big it had to. Or preferably not be done at all. It's a lazy, hand-wavy solution to an otherwise great story.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2018 14:00:18 GMT -5
I loved this arc, so epic. The only thing I never liked was the conversion of everyone on Earth into a superhero. While it might be true that "everyone can be a hero" I don't think that everyone has it in them to be a superhero. I know this was probably just a brute force thing against Maggeddon, but I dunno, it doesn't sit right with me. I also never liked when a long-time civilian character would get turned into a super-being, even for a short while. I also feel it causes the DCU world to diverge too greatly from our own. So everyone was a super-being for a brief while; how can we relate to it any more? (I felt the same way in Doctor Who when the existence of aliens became incontrovertibly proven, common knowledge.) Finally, what's the effect of that experience going to have on everyone? We never find out. "We never find out" is pretty much a Morrison trademark. He throws out big ideas and then moves on immediately. However, he does tend to circle back around to them in other works, albeit not necessarily within the same continuity. When you wrote this short paragraph ... and both Badwolf and you supported it ... I finally understand the scope of why Badwolf liked this series so much and what you said albeit not necessarily with the same continuity is also valid too. I just wanted to point that out ... learned something new today. |
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Post by rberman on Dec 27, 2018 17:22:58 GMT -5
Whoopsie. I skipped over issues #28-31. I'll rewind to them tomorrow. Just pretend it's a Grant Morrison time travel story that will blow your mind.
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Post by rberman on Dec 28, 2018 4:57:47 GMT -5
JLA #28-29 “Crisis Times Five” (April-May 1999) Parts One and Two
Creative Team: Morrison is back with Porter and Dell.  Issue #28 “Part One”: This issue is a morass of vignettes as the JSA members enter the picture and chat with the modern heroes. In the Middle East, Captain Marvel investigates rampant djinn and a mysterious bowler hat. In North America, inhabitants of Mxyzptlk’s “fifth dimension” are making physics go all funhouse wonky. J.J. Thunder (the kid who summoned Yz, the pink Thunderbolt from two issues back) breaks into a bank vault, then hangs out there playing on his Nintendo Jr. video game. Visiting his home domain of Heaven, Zauriel learns that the Spectre has been imprisoned by an extra-dimensional force. Thunderbolt is just such a force, being one of the inhabitants of the fifth dimension. The heroes assemble and just sort of mill about chatting for a while until a nearby bank building (“Infantino Bank and Trust.” Everybody knows Carmine Infantino, right?) comes to life.  Former JLA-er Triumph is down on his luck, trying to sell super-weapons he pilfered from the JLA trophy room. When the deal goes bad, he’s forced to summon the blue Thunderbolt named Lkz, who restores him to his superhero glory.  Issue #29 “Part Two: World Turned Upside Down”: Most of the JLA struggle against Lkz ineffectually on Earth while Superman, Hourman, and Captain Marvel chat on the moon; then Captain Marvel decks Superman to venture into the Fifth Dimension alone. Triumph hypnotizes JLA Z-listers The Ray and Gypsy, taking over the JLA Watchtower with their aid while most of the heroes are planetside dealing with the Crisis. J.J. Thunder spends most of the issue cowering but finally at the end says “Cei-U” to bring out Yz the pink Thunderbolt to challenge Lkz the blue Thunderbolt. My Two Cents: “Crisis Times Five” refers to the Fifth Dimension which is pivotal in this story. So it's really "Crisis to the fifth power" (Crisis^5) not "Crisis x5." Morrison is tying the origins of Johnny Thunder and Mr. Mxyzptlk together. Is this a Silver Age thing or something new? My knowledge of both of those characters is spotty. We are to recognize the bowler had as a token of Mr. Mxyzptlk. Am I the only one who incorrectly learned his name as "Mitzlplik" by watching Super-Friends?  I also was unfamiliar with Triumph, but apparently in this continuity he’s the founder of the JLA, having first appeared in Dan Vado’s JLA #91 (1994). He sacrificed himself and was erased from continuity, making his presence here a conundrum which befuddles Hourman.  Worlds within Worlds motif: Five eternal beings gaze down upon Earth from the vantage point of a higher dimension.  Worlds within Worlds motif: The Spectre has been embedded as the landscape of a new world.  Signs of weirdness in the Thunderbolt-wracked city include an actual “Roach Motel” with bugs bursting from its windows, and a mailbox with “Go Postal” as an advertising slogan. Citizens are depicted variously as turning to fire or ice or puddles of water or scarecrows.  Plastic Man quotes Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” to draw the attention of the Thunderbolt. He also calls himself a champion of surrealism, the art movement which was one of the major themes of Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol.  The two Flashes can perceive the fifth dimension as a single being with a mass of arms and faces. This is very much like the depiction of Cassandra Nova, who had similar reality-warping powers, in Morrison’s New X-Men. I had always wondered what that vision of Cassandra was supposed to mean; now we know!   Hourman talks very much like Alan Moore’s Watchmen character Dr. Manhattan, perceiving all of time at once and discussing things that he or others are going to do in the near future. However, he’s not confused about it like Oracle in New X-Men; he knows exactly when he is.   Triumph, The Ray, and Gypsy drink Motley Brü, a reference to rock band “Mötley Crüe.” That’s probably a joke from Porter rather than Morrison. Porter draws Gypsy to look just like Jubilee from the X-Men. Triumph is angry that the cool heroes are ruling the roost of the JLA under Morrison's tenure.  
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Post by badwolf on Dec 28, 2018 11:26:05 GMT -5
I think Crisis Times Five was the first arc that I didn't really enjoy that much in Morrison's run. I was familiar with the original Johnny Thunder, but I felt lost with a lot of the other stuff he was bringing in. And I hated the Triumph thing.
Mxyzptlk's name confused me for a long time when I saw it in the comics. In the cartoon it was pronounced "Mixelplik" and I couldn't reconcile that with the comic spelling. Of course they were just simplifying it for kids/TV but I didn't get that at the time.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 28, 2018 22:29:31 GMT -5
Just in case you're wondering.. Triumph was mostly created by Priest.. he can be found in the pages of Justice League Task Force. The story was he was a founding member that sacrificed himself to be forgotten, but then he comes back, but is still the same age as when he disappeared. Gypsy and Ray (along with the L-Ron version of Despero and Martian Manhunter as the leader) were the team. Not sure why he's so old looking here.. something else may have happened after the JLTF team ended.
Gypsy looking like Jubilee is weird... I don't remember that at all!
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Post by Chris on Dec 28, 2018 23:37:53 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure that's a reference to Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (yes, that's his name). The basic theme runs like this: Flatland is set in a flat land: the two-dimensional plane inhabited by straight lines, polygons and circles... No-one in Flatland has any notion of a third dimension; everything is limited to one big, flat plane.
In this well-ordered world lives the narrator, A Square, a professional gentleman and proud father of four pentagonal sons (for male children have a good chance of being born with one more side than their fathers). One day, the Square meets an alien: a being claiming to be a three-dimensional sphere from Spaceland!
It's a trippy book. And given its age, pretty cheap. Got my brand new copy in a bookstore for a dollar. The two Flashes can perceive the fifth dimension as a single being with a mass of arms and faces. This is very much like the depiction of Cassandra Nova, who had similar reality-warping powers, in Morrison’s New X-Men. I had always wondered what that vision of Cassandra was supposed to mean; now we know! I don't think the Flashes are perceiving the entire 5th dimension as a multifaced being. I believe they are seeing in 5D instead of 3D, and seeing Lkz in his full 5D aspect. Which, if I understand people like Rudy Rucker correctly, would look kinda something like that. I'm not sure if the preceding sentence will make sense to anyone who is not as off-center as I am, but there it is. Fun Fact: While Rucker's book The Fourth Dimension is a science book, not fiction, he does include a few fictional sections that act as a mini-sequel to Abbott's Flatland. As for the actual story, I thought it was very well done. Whether Morrison should have tied together Mxyzptlk, Johnny Thunder, and Quisp or not is debatable, but at least he did a good job of it. And I thought Kyle's solution to the "war between the royal courts of color" (a snazzy idea in its own right) was inspired, not to mention making use of the character's art background. |
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Post by Chris on Dec 28, 2018 23:47:18 GMT -5
Just in case you're wondering.. Triumph was mostly created by Priest.. he can be found in the pages of Justice League Task Force. The story was he was a founding member that sacrificed himself to be forgotten, but then he comes back, but is still the same age as when he disappeared. Gypsy and Ray (along with the L-Ron version of Despero and Martian Manhunter as the leader) were the team. Not sure why he's so old looking here.. something else may have happened after the JLTF team ended. Gypsy looking like Jubilee is weird... I don't remember that at all! Triumph was not created by Christopher Priest. He says so on his site. I think most everyone associated with Triumph (who was created by DC Comics Group Editor Brian Augustyn, Mark Waid and Howard Porter) was taken a bit by surprise by the near-instant backlash the character received from the fans.Priest also notes -
DC staffers simply loathed Triumph and actively plotted his death (they got rid of him in some Persian Bazaar manner after Brian left the company). I'm assuming this refers to the JLA story reviewed here. Triumph got screwed over hard in the final issue of JLTF. You have to know the basics of the then-recent Underworld Unleashed to really understand it, and it can be argued that Triumph really, really deserved what he got, but it's still hard. As for Gypsy looking like Jubilee... well, that was the style that the Justice League Task Force dressed in back in those days. Just look at some of the covers, especially starting around issue #22. Take a look at the cover for #32 - does that look like Jubilee? I don't know enough about the X-characters to say. |
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Post by chadwilliam on Dec 29, 2018 0:30:37 GMT -5
JLA #28-29 “Crisis Times Five” (April-May 1999) Parts One and Two
Former JLA-er Triumph is down on his luck, trying to sell super-weapons he pilfered from the JLA trophy room. When the deal goes bad, he’s forced to summon the blue Thunderbolt named Lkz, who restores him to his superhero glory. Hourman talks very much like Alan Moore’s Watchmen character Dr. Manhattan, perceiving all of time at once and discussing things that he or others are going to do in the near future. However, he’s not confused about it like Oracle in New X-Men; he knows exactly when he is. Morrison blatantly swiped another of Moore's works for the opening bit with Triumph. JLA 28. William MacIntyre is a downtrodden mental and physical wreck as he's berated by the guy he's trying to sell weapons to. He hears a voice in his head. "Hear that Billy Mac? They're laughing at you. A two-bit hustler like your old man. I told you: You can let me out anytime you say the words I taught you. You can change all this. You're not mad, Billy Mac. I'm not just a voice in your head". Tension builds as his buyer gets aggressive. The voice speaks again to MacIntyre. "Change that look in his eye to fear, Billy Mac. You would have wiped the floor with scum like these once. Last chance, Billy Mac. Say my name backwards or die." We get some insight into how hard MacIntyre's been fighting the temptation to give in to this awesome power as he mutters to himself. "...oh god... I tried, I really tired... you stupid... stupid dead morons... all I wanted was my rent." Cue transformation. Cue his tormentors deaths. Miracleman 2. Once Kid Miracleman, junior sidekick to the adult Miracleman, comatose Johnny Bates is now a nervous, downtrodden wreak in a mental hospital. He too, communicates with a voice in his head - the voice of Kid Miracleman. Bates: "I want to go home. I shouldn't be here. I didn't do anything." Kid Miracleman: "I'm sick of hearing your 'I didn't do it'. You're me! You understand that don't you, you're me!... Once Johnny Bates finds the magic word that puts him beyond punishment, why, he doesn't mind killing at all. He just better hope I never get out of here, that's all".
Miracleman 12. Johnny Bates is being beaten by a gang of kids in the hospital. Kid Miracleman: "tch. Not another beating? Try not to wet yourself this time, eh? Look at them laughing, retarded little maggots. They wouldn't laugh if I got my hands on them. You need only say the word..." Miracleman 14. Johnny Bates is being raped by same kids. Bates: "I can't take this! You don't understand! I... I'm sorry...I'm so sorry. Miracleman." Cue transformation. Cue tormentors deaths. |
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