JLA #120

Archive

Reviewer: Iain Burnside
Story Title: Requiem for a League

Written by: Bob Harras
Penciled by: Tom Derenick
Inked by: Dan Green
Colored by: David Baron
Lettered by: Jared Fletcher
Editor: Mike Carlin
Publisher: DC

This title has had a real turbulent time of it over the past year or so. First came Kurt Busiek’s eight-part opus, “Crime Syndicate of Amerika” that spun out of none other than JLA/Avengers and saw a lot of very confusing fight scenes on two different Earths with two different Justice Leagues and even wound up getting the Justice League Elite in on the action too. It was all quite bewildering, but the solicitations assure me that it meant something quite big. Then, before getting a chance to pause for breath, Geoff Johns and Allan Heinberg came along with “Crisis of Conscience”, spinning out of that little book called IDENTITY CRISIS. Now all of a sudden Batman’s in a huff, the Secret Society of Super Villains again fail to live up to the ‘Secret’ part of their name, and the whole League winds up bitching one another out and more-or-less disbanding for various reasons that would take too long to explain. Well, everyone except for Martian Manhunter, naturally. Except some unknown assailant in a red cape blew up the Watchtower while he was on it. It has been a crazy, turbulent time for the team and after all the in-fighting, all the moral pondering, and all the epic fights both on Earth and elsewhere, the League has wound up with several broken working relationships and no home.

Oh, and Lex Luthor (or some version thereof) has made their enemies more unified than ever before. Oh, and Power Girl is going crazy. Oh, and Donna Troy found some temporal anomaly that threatens the future of everything. Oh, and there are hundreds of thousands of O.M.A.C.s awakened by Brother Eye who attacked metahumans the world over. Oh, and Checkmate has been corrupted and weakened by the late Maxwell Lord. Oh, and the whole world knows that Wonder Woman killed him, but she doesn’t care. Actually she cares a great deal, if my issue of Wonder Woman #221 is accurate and not a Hypertime/Bizarro issue. -Editor K. Oh, and Rann and Thanagar are still at war and the Green Lantern Corps has been sent to stop them, but they’ve all been distracted by a strange Swirly Thing in space that has moved the entire universe off axis. Oh, and The Spectre is still on a rampage against magic after killing the Wizard Shazam and destroying the Rock of Eternity. Oh, and there is still several hundred pounds worth of multi-colored Kryptonite in the hands of some nefarious Gotham villains. Oh, and several other things that I can’t think of off the top of my head at present but have nonetheless thrown several handfuls of fecal matter at a fan near you under the banner of INFINITE CRISIS.

So we have a tired and fragmented Justice League being torn apart by external pressures and internal squabbling, set against the backdrop of a universe that is doing the very same thing. In such a situation, readers may very well expect that the heroes of the DC Universe put aside their differences to organize and co-ordinate an effective retaliation against these vast problems. A series of daring feats and bold exploits that show great courage and strength of character that enables them to rise up and defeat these deadly threats in a way that us mere laymen would be unable to achieve. You know – something that truly sets an example to inspire the rest of us into living better lives and being better people as our escapist superhero fantasies are supposedly meant to do. Well, if that’s what you are expecting to see in this issue then you are going to be sorely disappointed. It might well happen at some point down the road before this Crisis is over – and heaven help the internet if it doesn’t happen – but not just yet.

You see, the big plan for this issue is apparently for Aquaman to lead a select group of former/future League members in a memorial service for the League itself. This apparently means muttering some vague and hollow elemental sentiments whilst picking up some sand and letting the wind blow it away. Flash calls it “the whole dust-in-the-wind routine” and reminds me of that scene with Socrates in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (“Dust! Wind! Dude!”). Green Arrow thinks “I’m sort of afraid we’re all going to break into a chorus of Kumbaya”, which just makes me picture Batman strumming away on a banjo in Owen Wilson’s apartment in Zoolander. Neither of these things is a good sign for a supposedly emotional and meaningful ceremony. For the first time in years, Batman’s moody and anti-social behaviour is completely justified. If there is a reason for these heroes to be standing around bemoaning the way that things have turned out instead of at least trying to come up with a way to change them for the better then it is not contained within the pages of this book. Really, this is navel-gazing taken to such extraordinary lengths that they must have bellybutton fluff in their eyes.

There are three slightly more substantial plot points here, however. Firstly, Green Arrow finally snaps at Batman and yells the following at him – “You wanna know what I think!? You’ve been so angry with us – so determined to kill the League, so focused on stopping this so-called concentration of power – maybe, just maybe, you took it to the next step – and destroyed the Watchtower!” It’s enough to place another seed of doubt about Batman’s character in the other present heroes, although by this point Batman could not possibly have any complaints about their suspicions following the Tower of Babel files and the Brother I satellite. It makes for a good little moment between Batman and Green Arrow, but it doesn’t really accomplish anything except to raise expectations for an out-and-out brawl between the two that will probably never come to pass.

The second major point is the fate of the Martian Manhunter. As previously mentioned, he was stuck on the Watchtower when it was blown up by Red Cape. We all know that these people never really die, and thankfully they haven’t wasted any time in acknowledging that fact because he is back in the very next issue. Apparently, he escaped to the astral plane just before the explosion and has been hiding out there since. He calls Manitou Dawn to the plane to explain this to her and to warn her that his removal from the physical plane means that there is a “being of vast power,” who he had been keeping in check by telepathically monitoring him, that is now free to unleash his full powers, even though he will not be able to control them. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give Dawn a name before she winds up being inadvertently pulled back to the physical plane by Green Arrow. Quite why J’onn doesn’t call her back to give her more details, or why Dawn herself doesn’t try to go back, isn’t explained. In fact, she just very quickly dismisses this rather stern warning from a supposedly dead colleague to take part in the dust-and-wind thing, and doesn’t mention it to anybody except for John Stewart – and even then only in passing. It’s also not explained why J’onn doesn’t come back from the astral plane to control this strange being himself. In his own words – “I will reveal myself in time, Dawn. When I may be of assistance… just not yet,” which could probably be translated as “Nah, f*ck ’em, I can’t be arsed.”

Lastly, and quite possibly connected to the supposed menace that J’onn spoke of, The Key is released from Arkham Asylum, supposedly cured. He’s the guy with the extrasensory perception, psychotropic brain patterns, and chemically-enhanced and unveiled areas of the human mind that nobody else has yet reached. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his most memorable recent appearance was written by Grant Morrison as part of the “American Dreams” arc. Anyway, he goes and hides in the sewers to try and escape the uninvited telepathic voices of every living person nearby but snaps and attacks an unfortunate maintenance worker that dares to think within The Key’s range. He is then taken away by a welcomed and unseen figure at the end of the issue, blaming the JLA for what has become of him and presumably planning an assault for the next issue.

Of course, there is no real ‘League’ for him to attack anymore. It seems likely that he will begin attacking the former members one at a time until either Dawn twigs what’s going on or J’onn decides to get off his lazy green ass and get to work, at which point a few heroes will gather together, defeat this particular evil, remember what good can be done by the heroes pooling their resources, and then we’ll have another incarnation of the JLA to gear up for some of the larger threats that the universe is facing at present. That’s all very well and good, but their current behavior is yet another editorially mandated mistake that just doesn’t ring true, and suffers from the unavoidable plot hole J’onn and Dawn are digging for themselves. It’s good to see The Key is getting used at long last. Hopefully a more conventional writer will be able to live up to what Morrison did with him all those many years ago, because at the moment this entire arc rests on how effective they can make him.