Post by rberman on Dec 23, 2018 8:04:43 GMT -5
JLA #24-26 “Ultramarine Corps” (December 1998-February 1999)
Creative Team: Grant Morrison writing. Art by Howard Porter and John Dell (#24-25) and Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong (#26)
Issue #24 “Executive Action”: The attack on Montevideo in DC One Million inspires the United States government to form its own team, the Ultramarine Corps. They free the monstrous Shaggy Man from his ocean floor prison, then incapacitate Aquaman and Green Lantern when they investigate. Then they lure the whole JLA to Phoenix, Arizona and attack them…
On New Genesis, Orion, Lightray, and Mister Miracle discuss the impending threat of Mageddon, a cosmic foe hinted during the previous “Wonderworld” issue.
Issue #25 “Scorched Earth”: The JLA in Phoenix get their butts kicked by the Ultramarines; even Steel’s hammer gets destroyed. Plastic Man, Batman, and Huntress infiltrate a military base and discover that General Eiling, commander of the Ultramarines, has transferred his mind into the body of the Shaggy Man.
Issue #26 “Our Army at War”: Superman convinces the US Army and the Ultramarines to cease their attack. They all fly to Nevada and attack the Shaggy Man, just as Batman almost had him hypnotized to sleep. But that’s OK. Batman’s back-up plan works: A one-way teleport ride to the asteroid belt.
Then come a trio of epilogues: First, the Ultramarines resign from the military and construct Superbia, a uptopian “city of tomorrow” floating above the irradiated ruins of Montevideo. Hope they have good radiation shields! Also, is it really that easy for military super-soldiers to resign? Second, Hourman comes from the 853rd century to hang out with the present-day JLA, bringing warnings of a future war. Third, a kid named J.J. (we will later learn his surname Thunder) summons a Thunderbolt with a pink fountain pen and the magic words “Say you (Cei-U) love Satan.” The Thunderbolt tells J.J. “You ain’t ever had a friend like me,“ a reference to the Genie from Disney’s 1992 Aladdin film. Yes, that was 26 years ago. Over half my lifetime. Arf.
My Two Cents: This story is Morrison’s tribute to DC’s war titles. It features both regular soldiers and a squad of super-soldiers who must grapple with morality vs obedience. “Our Army at War” was the series that birthed Sgt. Rock.
Morrison continues his tour of Silver Age JLA villains, this time stopping at the 1966 Fox/Sekowsky creation The Shaggy Man from JLA #45. General Wade Eiling, the commander of the Ultramarines, was the antagonist of Captain Atom’s 80s series by Cary Bates and Pat Broderick.
Worlds within Worlds motif in the alleged origin of the Ultramarines: “A United States mass teleport unit imploded into higher dimensional space.” But it was a fake origin story. Oh well. Still, it’s a fake of a Morrison trope, of all the possible fake supervillain origins.
One of the Ultramarine members, 4-D, can step outside of three dimensional space. (Technically, counting time as a dimension, all of us are already experiencing four-dimensional existence. But Morrison is thinking of the kind of fourth-wall breaking practiced by Animal Man and by these dimension hoppers in The Filth:
Her appearance also recalls 1977 Ditko hero Shade the Changing Man. Joss Whedon's X-Men character Armor has a similar power.
Morrison says that Aquaman will get “the bends” (decompression sickness) by ascending 20,000 feet to the surface of the ocean too rapidly. Will he, though? Deep sea divers are at risk of the bends because on the way down, they are constantly taking in more nitrogen gas from their tanks, and it gets compressed on the way down, but expands on the way back up, forming painful bubbles. But I don’t think Aquaman is taking in additional nitrogen as he descends in the ocean, so he shouldn’t have any excess of nitrogen to expel on the way back up. Is this worth mentioning? I cut Morrison slack when he’s in fantasy mode. But if he’s going to call out real science facts as part of the narrative, it’s only fair to judge his accuracy.
Batman refers to a “genetic variant” which gives people super powers. A genetic variant… is that like being a mutant? Hmmm….
General Eiling has transferred his mind from his dying body into a computer while waiting for a suitable super-host to arrive. Something similar happens to Cassandra Nova in the Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon runs on X-Men; she hops into Xavier’s body, then is forced into the computer-entity Stuff, then wants to leap from there into either Kitty Pryde or Hisako Ichiku. Similarly, Charles Xavier's mind is first stuck into Cassandra's ailing body, then absorbed into Jean Grey's mind, then distributed across the minds of all humankind before being put back into his own body. That's a lotta Morrison mind swappage.
When General Eiling’s mind possesses the Shaggy Man, the first thing he does is de-shag him, shaving all his hair except for a military burr cut. This is Morrison’s “self-transformation” motif in action. Eiling is a version of Charles Atlas, the self-made muscle man.
Plastic Man jokes that General Eiling committed suicide at being outed as a homosexual.
Eiling gets teleport to the asteroid 433 Eros. This is a real asteroid, in fact the first asteroid discovered, back in 1898. It’s ten miles in diameter in real life but much smaller in this comic book.
Superbia will house a “first-strike global peacekeeping force” answerable to no one and staffed by super-beings with no clear moral track record. This is going to end badly. In fact, it sounds a lot like Solaris’ failed Pancosmic Justice Jihad from DC One Million.
This guy is an Easter Egg in a fight scene. Is it supposed to be someone in particular?
Also, these two kids have adult faces. Are they supposed to be someone in particular? Note the Teletubbies knockoff tee shirt.
Creative Team: Grant Morrison writing. Art by Howard Porter and John Dell (#24-25) and Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong (#26)
Issue #24 “Executive Action”: The attack on Montevideo in DC One Million inspires the United States government to form its own team, the Ultramarine Corps. They free the monstrous Shaggy Man from his ocean floor prison, then incapacitate Aquaman and Green Lantern when they investigate. Then they lure the whole JLA to Phoenix, Arizona and attack them…
On New Genesis, Orion, Lightray, and Mister Miracle discuss the impending threat of Mageddon, a cosmic foe hinted during the previous “Wonderworld” issue.
Issue #25 “Scorched Earth”: The JLA in Phoenix get their butts kicked by the Ultramarines; even Steel’s hammer gets destroyed. Plastic Man, Batman, and Huntress infiltrate a military base and discover that General Eiling, commander of the Ultramarines, has transferred his mind into the body of the Shaggy Man.
Issue #26 “Our Army at War”: Superman convinces the US Army and the Ultramarines to cease their attack. They all fly to Nevada and attack the Shaggy Man, just as Batman almost had him hypnotized to sleep. But that’s OK. Batman’s back-up plan works: A one-way teleport ride to the asteroid belt.
Then come a trio of epilogues: First, the Ultramarines resign from the military and construct Superbia, a uptopian “city of tomorrow” floating above the irradiated ruins of Montevideo. Hope they have good radiation shields! Also, is it really that easy for military super-soldiers to resign? Second, Hourman comes from the 853rd century to hang out with the present-day JLA, bringing warnings of a future war. Third, a kid named J.J. (we will later learn his surname Thunder) summons a Thunderbolt with a pink fountain pen and the magic words “Say you (Cei-U) love Satan.” The Thunderbolt tells J.J. “You ain’t ever had a friend like me,“ a reference to the Genie from Disney’s 1992 Aladdin film. Yes, that was 26 years ago. Over half my lifetime. Arf.
My Two Cents: This story is Morrison’s tribute to DC’s war titles. It features both regular soldiers and a squad of super-soldiers who must grapple with morality vs obedience. “Our Army at War” was the series that birthed Sgt. Rock.
Morrison continues his tour of Silver Age JLA villains, this time stopping at the 1966 Fox/Sekowsky creation The Shaggy Man from JLA #45. General Wade Eiling, the commander of the Ultramarines, was the antagonist of Captain Atom’s 80s series by Cary Bates and Pat Broderick.
Worlds within Worlds motif in the alleged origin of the Ultramarines: “A United States mass teleport unit imploded into higher dimensional space.” But it was a fake origin story. Oh well. Still, it’s a fake of a Morrison trope, of all the possible fake supervillain origins.
One of the Ultramarine members, 4-D, can step outside of three dimensional space. (Technically, counting time as a dimension, all of us are already experiencing four-dimensional existence. But Morrison is thinking of the kind of fourth-wall breaking practiced by Animal Man and by these dimension hoppers in The Filth:
Her appearance also recalls 1977 Ditko hero Shade the Changing Man. Joss Whedon's X-Men character Armor has a similar power.
Morrison says that Aquaman will get “the bends” (decompression sickness) by ascending 20,000 feet to the surface of the ocean too rapidly. Will he, though? Deep sea divers are at risk of the bends because on the way down, they are constantly taking in more nitrogen gas from their tanks, and it gets compressed on the way down, but expands on the way back up, forming painful bubbles. But I don’t think Aquaman is taking in additional nitrogen as he descends in the ocean, so he shouldn’t have any excess of nitrogen to expel on the way back up. Is this worth mentioning? I cut Morrison slack when he’s in fantasy mode. But if he’s going to call out real science facts as part of the narrative, it’s only fair to judge his accuracy.
Batman refers to a “genetic variant” which gives people super powers. A genetic variant… is that like being a mutant? Hmmm….
General Eiling has transferred his mind from his dying body into a computer while waiting for a suitable super-host to arrive. Something similar happens to Cassandra Nova in the Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon runs on X-Men; she hops into Xavier’s body, then is forced into the computer-entity Stuff, then wants to leap from there into either Kitty Pryde or Hisako Ichiku. Similarly, Charles Xavier's mind is first stuck into Cassandra's ailing body, then absorbed into Jean Grey's mind, then distributed across the minds of all humankind before being put back into his own body. That's a lotta Morrison mind swappage.
When General Eiling’s mind possesses the Shaggy Man, the first thing he does is de-shag him, shaving all his hair except for a military burr cut. This is Morrison’s “self-transformation” motif in action. Eiling is a version of Charles Atlas, the self-made muscle man.
Plastic Man jokes that General Eiling committed suicide at being outed as a homosexual.
Eiling gets teleport to the asteroid 433 Eros. This is a real asteroid, in fact the first asteroid discovered, back in 1898. It’s ten miles in diameter in real life but much smaller in this comic book.
Superbia will house a “first-strike global peacekeeping force” answerable to no one and staffed by super-beings with no clear moral track record. This is going to end badly. In fact, it sounds a lot like Solaris’ failed Pancosmic Justice Jihad from DC One Million.
This guy is an Easter Egg in a fight scene. Is it supposed to be someone in particular?
Also, these two kids have adult faces. Are they supposed to be someone in particular? Note the Teletubbies knockoff tee shirt.
