Twelve Things That Kinda Bugged Me About Justice League of America #7

1.) The Semi-Mandatory Variant Covers: Every single issue of JLoA has featured variant covers, which seems counterintuitive to me (If Brad Meltzer is such a draw that DC thinks he’ll be bringing “civilian” readers into their universe, why set up one of the direct market’s most peculiar stumbling blocks between them and the story in the book?), but at this point, I’ve come to accept that I’ll have to put up with a Michael Turner cover each month, or, if I want to shell out $5 extra bucks my local comic shop charges for a variant, I can get a Marvel-style “iconic” image of a random Justice Leaguer posing in an image created by the likes of the incredibly talented Arthur Adams or Adam Hughes.

This issue, however, featured three variants, and, as with JLoA #1, the standard edition features one half of an image. It’s a really nice image (that's it above; you can see it better here), featuring the current League line-up drawn by regular penciller Ed Benes, with five background panels by different artists featuring characters from past line-ups. (Or for $8.25, I coulda got an image of Wonder Woman flying kicking empty space, while two dinosaurs stalked her in the background, courtesy of Michael Turner).

Sure, I could quibble about that image (J’onn and Batman should be reversed, and Plastic Man’s wearing a turtleneck for some reason), but it’s a fairly nicely composed image (particularly for Benes) which acknowledges Justice League history and some of the artists that made it great. But, like I said, each variant has half of the image, so if you want a complete cover, you have to buy two copies of the damn comic book. I like the image, but I don’t like it enough to pay and extra $2.99 to possess the other half of it. (I don’t know how many others feel this way; if a lot of people do buy two issues to get the whole cover, well, that might explain why JLoA sells over 90,000 copies a month, making it one of DC’s biggest sellers).



2.) Inconsitent “Datelines”: Okay this is a seriously small nit, but I’m going to go ahead and pick it because that is just how anal I am. It's either complain about this shit online, or disnfect all my doorknobs twice a day people.

The first page of the story opens with the words “Gotham” and “The Cave” in yellow, scroll-shaped boxes. This is to tell us where we are, apparently. (The fact that it’s a cave containing Batman and a few bats flitting about would probably clue us in that this is the Batcave, but never mind that).

But when we shift scenes to Vixen, Hawkgirl and Arsenal accepting, there’s no dateline. Why tell us where one scene is, but not these three (Additionally, while the first setting is easily recognizable to anyone who’s ever heard of Batman, where the hell is this long scene featuring Arsenal, Hal Jordan and Black Canary occurring? A house or apartment or hotel room? Whose? Does it matter? Does it matter less than what cave full of bats Batman was in?).

The scene will similarly change several times, as we check in with Vixen on a city street, Red Tornado in his house, the new JLA HQs, and with Professor Ivo and Doc Magnus and Green Arrow. About half of the setting changes have “datelines,” and half don’t.

Like I said, it’s not a terribly big deal, but I mention it for two reasons. First, JLoA has an awful lot of verbal information in boxes in its panels; much of it a touch unclear. So anywhere it can be cut back on, why not cut it back?

Secondly, one of the key components of goodness in a work of art, according to that Aristotle fellow, is consistency and uniformity within the whole toward a single purpose. This is (one minor) example of inconsistency in this book. It’s not just this one, either; 52, the other DC book I’m tremendously excited about, is very inconsistent in it’s use of datelines, and, even worse, in the point-of-view. I mention this almost every time Montoya appears, but she first-person narrates most of her scenes, while the rest of 52 is unnarrated, told from an omniscient point-of-view, as most comics with sizable casts are. In 52, it’s a huge flaw that will keep a very, very good comic from being a great one.

At the risk of getting off-topic so early in my list, comics don’t really need narration at all. It took the mainstream of the medium an awful long time to learn that lesson (Seriously, pick up any Archive, Essential or Showcase and see how often the characters explain in their thoughts to themselves what they’re doing). Obviously, they can and sometimes should have narration—it’s hard to imagine Frank Miller’s Batman without it, for example—but it’s not needed, and unless it’s adding something, it’s just a waste and a distraction.

In the comic book we're discussing at the moment, for example, you could probably tell Red Tornado is going through a kinda hard time by now in the curt way he accepts League membership and walks briskly away from his wife. Hearing Black Canary narrate that "Just because you can't fly-- --doesn't mean you're not in a cage" doesn't really make that any more clear, does it?



3.) Production Inconsistencies: And speaking of inconsistencies and unnecessary narration, the latter is a problem with Meltzer’s comics writing in general, and makes reading (and, I assume, coloring, lettering and editing) his books a bit more difficult.

For example, on page four Roy Harper has blue eyes. On page five, his mask makes his eyes appear pupil-less. On page six, he has green eyes.

Not a big deal, really. But the color-coded narration boxes, which are also sometimes color-coded dialogue boxes, when there are quotes in them (I think), can suffer similar mistakes and, thus, confuse things. The jump between page six and seven has Hal’s spoken dialogue appear in a Black Canary-colored dialogue carry-over box. When we get to the fold-out, some of Hal’s dialogue is continued from a Hal-colored box into a pure white one, and with another scene between the elipses. I’ve looked over the section of the book a few times, and I can’t tell if there were pages put in the wrong place, or if the fold-out folds out in the wrong direction, or if I just can’t figure out how to read the comic (And this is another problem from “civilians,” I think; I’m pretty much a semi-professional comic book reader, and I get totally lost reading JLoA occasionally. How difficult to read will it be if it’s one of your very first comic book?).

(Update: Below in Weekly Haul's comments section, Jason says Meltzer says some pages were out of order)



4.) Roy Harper Becomes Red Arrow: After Robin became Nightwing, the rest of the first generation of sidekicks gradually adopted new costumes and codenames, becoming not just kid versions of their mentors, but superheroes in their own right with their own codenames and powers. Donna “Wonder Girl” Troy became Troia, Garth/Aqualad became Tempest and Roy “Speedy” Harper became Arsenal, using the sharp eye he gained from years as an archer to become an expert in other projectile weapons, from firearms and crossbows to shuriken and bolos. During Devin Grayson and Rick Mays’ 1998 four-issue Arsenal miniseries, this developed into something of a superpower, in which he could make just about anything a deadly weapon, since he could throw it so accurately.

Roy, like Donna Troy, was a character that DC couldn’t seem to stop futzing with, and new directions and costumes came fast and furious over the past two decades or so. Some directions worked better than others, just as some costumes looked better than others, but Arsenal became a dependable ensemble player, from the end of Marv Wolfman’s New Titans to first Dan Jurgens’ and then Grayson’s and her successors Titans titles to Judd Winick’s The Outsiders and, less frequently, Green Arrow.


(Above: The first and worst of the Arsenal costumes. It's very...purple)

During the last seven issues of JLoA, Meltzer has done a pretty great job with Harper (he’d previously wrote a hell of Harper story in Archer’s Quest), acknowledging the “Hard-Travelling Heroes” era of Green Arrow and Green Lantern Hal Jordan’s respective careers while seemingly moving it forward.

Now, I love Roy Harper (despite having read relatively few genuinely good Harper/Arsenal stories, I find myself really liking the character), and am thrilled to see him on the JLoA, even if he seemed like the third most likely archer to join (to Meltzer’s credit however, this final chapter makes sense of why Harper would beat out former Leaguer Oliver Queen and former Leaguer Connor Hawke for a spot on the new League).

And a costume change is well past due; his Outsiders look was simply an appropriation of Ultimate Hawkeye from Marvel’s The Ultimates look, perhaps justified by the fact that Ultimate Hawkeye appropriated Harper’s “power,” but not cool nonetheless.

Even putting him in his “Red Arrow” duds would have been fine. Alex Ross first dressed him in that costume in out-of-continuity Kingdom Come, but Dan Jurgens gave Roy a similar costume during his “Then and Now” arc of Teen Titans, and he wore it right up until it was shredded in a fight during his miniseries. The Jurgens version is a nice looking costume (the Ross version featured a goatee and hat), and probably the best of all of those worn by Roy.

But why does he have to change his name to “Red Arrow” to go along with it?

Arsenal is a better name. First, it matches his “power” better (the best superheroes, Grant Morrison has said repeatedly in interviews, are those iconic ones who’s name tells you everything you need to know about them and their powers…contrast The Flash with Bishop, for example). And secondly (and more importantly), it’s not derivative of Green Arrow, allowing Harper to stand on his own better as a character and avoiding a redundancy in the DCU, which is something Dna Didio talked a lot about getting rid of around the time of Infinite Crisis (which is why the Bat-Family was whittle down and, presumably, why Kyle Rayner became Ion and Nighwing was temporarily on the theoretical chopping block…at least in Didio’s head).

But “Red Arrow” doesn’t make sense from a character standpoint, either. Roy simply says “Family business. Family name.” But why now all of a sudden? He’s the first first-generation sidekick to re-embrace his sidekick-hood in such a manner; it’s a little like Nightwing deciding to dress up in a blue Batman costume and change his name to Batwing all of a sudden.

(All of that said, it was a pretty touching scene in which Hal and Dinah offer Roy membership, and, later, when Ollie talks about trying to make up for being such a shitty mentor and father figure to Roy back in the day).




5.) “Door Slideways”: Props for trying to think of a new way for the Leaguers to get from their various homebases to their new HQ. Metlzer abandons the old transporter tubes or other forms of teleport technology for a sort of portal, which appears to be a glowing, flat energy field. Which Batman refers to with the word “door” on its first appearance. You know, like those glowing, flat energy fields that The Authority use to travel. What do they call ‘em? Oh yeah, “doors.”



6.) The “New” HQ: Seriously? The fucking Hall of Justice? Sigh. Yes, I watched Superfriends. It was my first introduction to DC superheroes, and I thought it was fucking awesome. Of course, I was in gradeschool, and that was over 25 years ago. When they re-used the design of the old Superfriends hall in the JLU cartoon I thought it was awesome, and when Joe Kelly had Manitou Raven shout “Inukchuk!” and grow giant in “The Obsidian Age,” I squealed with delight.

I’m totally down with this inside joke stuff. But let’s at least be mildly clever about it, huh? On Justice League, they at least borrowed the Hall design for a skyscraper penthouse; they didn’t just swipe it wholesale from Superfriends, name and all. (Likewise, Kelly didn’t try introducing “Apache Chief"; he just gave a Native American superhero a similar word of power).

The new League headquarters seems to have two different levels. On the ground, in Washington D.C., there’s “The Hall,” which looks almost exactly like the Hall of Justice from Superfriends . Like the news JSA headquarters over in Justice Society of America, this super-team HQ is thus based in a major U.S. city, and, also like it, this one is designed by John Stewart and will feature guided tours.

But that’s not all! By moving “slideways,” you can also access a huge satellite orbiting earth at a distance of 22,300 miles (with two smaller satellites orbiting it). This HQ looks just like the second satellite headquarters form the JLU cartoon and, of course, is a satellite, just like the one the “Satellite Era” Justice League that Meltzer is so enamored with was based in. It's even the exact number of miles "above" the earth that the old Satellite Era satellite was. This will, in the long run, create some problems with talking about the Justice League (“Satellite Era” could refer to two different eras now), and I haven’t even gotten over the loss of the words pre-Crisis and post-Crisis after the Infinite Crisis rejiggering.

From a readers’ standpoint, two things bug me about this, aside from the forced aspect of making the comic book reality conform to the memory of the writer’s first encounters with the Justice League. Firstly, the base seems a little too much like the JSA base, and secondly it’s never really explained what’s going on with this “door slideways” business. The nerd in me wants to know what kind of technology it is, what adavanced alien race it was co-opted from (Kryptoninan? Thanagarian? Martian? New Genesian?) and what super-scientist that put it together for them (Palmer’s missing and Kord’s dead; did Steel build this for them? Did Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman build it? Cause they're all scientists; even if Wonder Woman forgot how to order a cup of coffee).

From a story standpoint, however, it makes less sense than a rebuilt lunar Watchtower. Basing themselves on the moon as a first line of defense for Earth certainly reflected the last volume’s focus as a team that staves off global apocalypse, but it also put them somewhere they’d never been before and gave their enemies a target far away from civilians. Considering how often their bases get attacked, you’d think that the people of Washington D.C. wouldn’t be very eager to have the League's Hall in the same zip code, and that the Leaguers would be leery of endangering a city full of people (and the seat of the U.S. government) by being there the next time Mongul, Despero, Superboy-Prime, Kobra, the Injustice Gang, Prometheus or the Key attack them.



7.) “That’s a Dangerous Room”: Okay, so they have a training facility which Superman and Wonder Woman call “The Kitchen” because, as Wondy says, “If you can’t stand the heat…” I had not realized what an incredible lame-o Wonder Woman is until this moment, but whatever. If a holographic training facility seems to be an idea totally stolen from another best-stelling super-team book published by a rival company, the thought occurred to Meltzer as well, and he has Black Lighting say, “That’s a dangerous room.”

Get it?

But wait, there’s more! Who designed it? Why, none other than Niles Caulder, DC’s equivalent to Professor Charles Xavier (Both are wheelchair-bound eggheads who lead teams of outcast superheroes who fight to protect a society that rejects them, often from groups of villains with the words “Brotherhood,” “Evil” and “Of” in their names). It’s a clever little in-joke that acknowledges the theft and laughs it off, which is admirable. But it’s still a theft, you know? Petty theft, sure, but still.



8.) I Have No Idea What’s Up With Starro Anymore: Seriously, no idea. DC’s totally lost me. I was cool up until the Star Conquerers, but man, since then, there’s the little Starro in Son of Vulcan, the Starros in Gail Simone’s JLA: Classified arc, the little Starro’s on the spines earlier in this arc, and now a man-sized Starro, calling itself Star-Ro in this issue and, Jesus, I just can’t keep up anymore—just give me a fucking new, definitive Secret Origins and Files page on this guy, huh?



9.) The New Chairperson: Black Canary? Seriously? You’ve got master strategist, former leader of the JLI and Outsiders and all around take-charge know-it-all Batman there, and you pass him over. You’ve got born leader, tower of virtue whom everyone automatically looks to Superman there, and you pass him over. You’ve got diplomat, princess, battlefield strategist and former leader of the Justice League Wonder Woman there, and you pass her over. For whom? Black Canary?

Now, if Infinite Crisis hadn’t bumped her out as a founder of the League, she would have had that going for her, as well as the fact that she kinda sorta lead the team in JLA: Year One (also erased by Infinite Crisis…presumably; DC’s yet to answer whether Wonder Woman replaced her post-Crisis on Infinite Earths replacement or simply joined her). But if that’s out, then she’s only been a Leaguer about as long as Hal Jordan, maybe a little less, and never lead any incarnation of the team (Even Hal lead the post-Justice League Spectacular version of Justice League Europe).

But let’s think about the really shitty things that Black Canary has done while a member of the Justice League, in a story written by the same guy who’s writing this story. Let’s see, she voted to magically “clean up” Dr. Light, which resulted in his accidental magical lobotomy. Then, she allowed Zatanna and the rest of the so-called “Power Pact” to erase part of fellow Leaguer Batman’s memory. And then she kept it secret for, what, six or seven years, DCU time? Additionally, according to Geoff Johns’ stories spinning out of Identity Crisis, Black Canary also went along with her League-within-a-League’s plan to magically alter the mind of Flash villain The Top. And to magically block J’onn J’onnz’s ability to read their minds pertaining to any of the other mind-tampering.

Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman seem to have forgotten and forgiven the abuses of the “Power Pact,” and the rest of their League has been absent for much of the last year (Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Wally West, Kyle Rayner, John Stewart, Plastic Man). I would think (hope) that a basic requirement for League membership would be that the nominee has never attempted to alter the mind and/or personality of anyone before, particularly the mind and/or personality of a fellow teammate. (And, on that score, Hawkgirl, Black Lightning and Arsenal are all better suited, ethically, to lead the Justice League than Black Canary is).



10.) The Chairs: Wait a second. Look at that meeting table on page 22. You see something missing? That’s right, the chairs are just plain old chairs. Undecorated chairs, devoid of the little symbols on the backs of the chairs like in the old Happy Harbor base, or the Watchtower. (Hell, even the JSA has super-cool patriotic easy chairs). I want chairs with little symbols for each hero on the back of them, damn it! Just like my DC Direct Pocket Heroes JLA table:


I think the Chair Test is the perfect way to determine if a hero belongs on the League or not. Do they have a little symbol or icon which can be put on the back of a silver chair around a big, round meeting table? Yes? Then they’re League material (Oh, and for the newbies: a black bolt of lighting for B.L., the old Red Tornado symbol from “Reddy’s” original look for him, Hawkman’s hawk-head symbol for Hawkgirl, a red arrow for the newly-dubbed “Red Arrow,” and a vixen head/totem symbol for Vixen). Metlzer gave us those Satellite Era plaques and a fucking engraved gavel, but no chair symbols? What the hell?



11.) Sooooo... The Other Leaguers?: Meltzer wraps up the whole Looking At Glamour Shots plotline involving the Trinity by having them accept the fact that fate through this team together. That works just fine for me, personally. It’s a rather elegant solution to basically give us the team that Brad Meltzer wants to write while having the bare minimum amount of fictional universe justification. Looking down at their choices (Nighwing, Powergirl, Firehawk, Ray Palmer, The Flash, Captain Marvel, Cyborg, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Mr. Terriffic, Aquaman and Supergirl), Superman says simply “Everyone’s reachable if we need them.”

Yes. Everyone except Ray Palmer. And Wally West. And Aquaman.

One thing that’s been bugging me all along about the relaunch is how it never really dispensed with the rest of the pre-JLoA Justice Leaguers. Where are they? Why aren’t they on the team? It's really not too hard to imagine reasons why Plastic Man, Kyle Rayner and John Stewart might not want to re-up (Plas has a son thanks to the multiversal rejiggering whom he might want to spend some time with and keep off of Dr. Light’s rape list, and maybe Kyle and John want to give the newly returned from the dead Hal some time with his old teammates).

But what about J’onn J’onnz, who has no friends or family outside of the Justice League? He’s a founder, the longest-serving member and the most likely leader. Where the hell is he? He hasn’t even been mentioned in the series yet. Do the rest of the Leaguers not like him now that he’s got that Skrull chin thing going on? Is he still going through his pissy “I hate Earthlings” post-Infinite Crisis midlife crisis phase? Did he turn them down? Can we at least get a line about why he of all heroes isn't there (Even Zatanna got a line, and she’s, like, the last person they should want hanging around after Identity Crisis).

Or how about Aquaman? At no point was anyone like, “Hey, what’s Arthur up to? Has anyone heard from him since The Spectre ground his home city into the ocean floor over a year ago? No? Oh well, let’s get that team photo taken, huh?”

I can understand Meltzer not wanting to fool around with all of this paper-shuffling; certainly Morrison didn’t, and would introduce new line-ups between issues (even his original line-up only took five issues to become perfectly solidified). But DC would at least handle this elsewhere, in Secret Files and Origins specials, for example. Like when the expanded Morrison line-up (featuring Huntress, Zauriel, Steel and the New Gods) debuted, Morrison didn’t explain it within the book, and DC had Christopher Priest write a story about the newcomers in a Secret Files and Origins special. Why not do the same for this new line-up? Considering how greatly JLoA outsells pretty much everything else DC publishes, that would seem like a wise business move. Or it could also make a fine arc for JLA: Classified, which has dissolved into a place to use up old inventory stories. Why not feature a one-shot or two-parter dealing with why J’onn J’onnz isn’t on the Justice League?

The absence of this sort of business in the JLoA #0-#7 sort of bugs me simply because eight issues were devoted to building this line-up, including a metric ton of narration and verbiage, and it’s frustrating that instead of hearing something like “Is J’onn still refusing to put the team back together?” or “Once we settle on a line-up, we have to prioritize finding Aquaman,” we get lines like “But just because you can fly-- --doesn’t mean you’re not in a cage,” and panels of things we don’t really need to see at all, like this.



12) Team Picture Day: Finally, there’s the three-page pull-out section, which I was kinda thinking would maybe feature a splash page of the new base, or maybe one of those awesome Phil Jimenz-type splashes of every Justice Leaguer ever.

You know, something like this:

(Above: As much of Jimenez’s two-page splash featuring every single Justice Leaguer ever from JLA Secret Files and Origins #1, which featured every member up until the first few arcs of Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell’s launch of JLA, as would fit on my local public library's scanner)



Instead, what we got was a three-page fold-out of this:


(Above: A badly scanned, poorly cropped version of the too-big-for-the-scanner JLoA #7 fold-out, drawn by Benes and Sandra Hope)

Which filled me with a deep sense of embarrassment, accompanied by a vague feeling of déjà vu. Like I’d seen something similar somewhere before. It wasn’t just that a blood-flecked image of a similar League photo in a shattered frame was featured on the cover of an Identity Crisis reprint (and, later, a trade), a symbol of a more innocent time in Justice League history which Brad Meltzer seemed to be telling us never really existed.

No, that’s not what the image reminded me of.

Oh yeah, now I remember; it reminds me of this:


(Above: The 1995 St. John High School Varsity Track Team)