The End of JLA

In 1997, it seemed like a pretty radical premise for a Justice League comic book, despite how obvious it was: What if the Justice League line-up consisted of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter? 

That was, of course, the original line-up when the team debuted in 1960, the team consisting of all of the DC Comics characters with their own features at the time (give or take Green Arrow, who would join shortly thereafter). And, with lots of additions and only occasional subtractions, that was the core of the Justice League for almost 25 years. 

But by 1997, it had been a long time since all of those characters, which included the most popular as well as the most iconic of the publisher's heroes, were on the League together. The so-called "Satellite Era" came to a close in 1984, at which point the Justice League reformed into what would become known as "the Detroit League", veterans Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Elongated Man and Zatanna teaming with new heroes Gypsy, Vibe, Vixen and Steel.

That era then gave way to what we now think of as the "JLI Era," beginning with Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire's 1987 Justice League #1. The Giffen/DeMatteis run would include several different teams and several different books, lasting some five years, after which DC would continue publishing multiple Justice League books, and their creators would mostly stick to the pool of characters that Giffen/DeMatteis used, with a few additions. 

While Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and various Green Lanterns would sometimes join Justice League mainstay Martian Manhunter as members of these various teams, they never all served together, instead usually anchoring a line-up of lesser known characters. 

So by the time Grant Morrison must have been pitching the book that became JLA, it had been some 13 years or so since the team even resembled its original all-star line-up, an eternity in comics (which at least used to be geared toward young readers, where the turnover could sometimes be a matter of years, although this was obviously changing by the 1980s, as adult readers gradually began to become the norm, and little kids the exception).

Some of the characters might now look quite different than in the old Super Friends or Super Powers cartoons (like the long-haired, hook-handed Aquaman) and some of them had different secret identities behind their masks (The Flash was by then Wally West, of course, and Kyle Rayner had just become the new Green Lantern a few years previously), but, when Morison's JLA launched, the line-up was once again made up of DC's biggest characters, all of whom anchored their own books at that point, save for Martian Manhunter (although, thanks in large part to the popularity of JLA, he would get his first ongoing series in 1998).

Morrison was paired with pencil artist Howard Porter, who had previously drawn most of DC's characters in 1995's Underworld Unleashed, and whose style was timely without necessarily given to the excesses one might associate with the most popular superhero comics artists of the 1990s. 

It worked. Morrison swiftly transitioned from the Justice League as it stood before theey took over to their new conception, within the first issues. Morrison's new villains knocked the previous team's satellite out of the sky and forced them to make an impossible escape, which seemingly killed off Metamorpho (temporarily, of course, as Morrison would acknowledge during the character's funeral scene in an upcoming issue). Superman and the other characters quickly assembled to save the world from these villains...and then they decided to keep saving the world together.

I assume sales data was available at the time, but I didn't pay attention to it back then. I was just 20, a college student who hoped to one day write comics and hadn't yet considered writing about them instead (aside from the many, now embarrassing letters I used to send into the letter columns of the DC comics I read at the time, of course). 

The sales must have been quite healthy, though, based on how much JLA product DC would publish. There were, of course, the sorts of associated titles most popular DC Comics got at the time, annuals, Secret Files & Origins specials, 80-Page Giants and even a "gallery," a collection of pin-ups. 

But there were also a bunch of JLA-branded one-shot specials and mini-series, a pair of spin-off maxi-series (JLA: Year One and Justice League Elite) and a few original graphic novels (JLA: Earth 2, JLA: Heaven's Ladder, JLA: A League of One). 

The team also engaged in a fair amout of inter-company crossovers, seemingly commensurate with those of Superman and Batman: JLA/WildCATS, JLA Versus Predator, JLA/Witchblade, JLA/Cyberforce and, of course, the big one, JLA/Avengers. 

Members of the team got their own books, not only the aforementioned Martian Manhunter series, but original character Zauriel starred in a three-issue miniseries, and Plastic Man got a special and an 80-Page Giant before eventually earning his own ongoing series, his first since the 1970s. A new, android version of Hourman, introduced in the pages of Morrison's JLA, also got his own ongoing series. 

And eventually, DC added a second JLA monthly, a Legends of the Dark Knight-style anthology series featuring different creative teams on each arc, JLA: Classified. 

Not all of these comics were, good, of course, and while I'd like nothing more than to go through them all and give you my opinions on them sometime, my point here is just that there was a lot of JLA comics for a few years there, apparently reflecting the popularity of Morrison's "Big Seven" plus other heroes approach to the team.

I certainly loved it. 

Morrison was quite adept at coming up with challenges big enough to threaten such a big, powerful and experienced team, mixing old foes from their then nearly 40-year history with new and original villains. The writer's characterization could be limited to sketching out the relationships between the characters, but then, they all had their own books (or in Superman and Batman's case, whole lines of books) to explore their psychology and personal lives, and, as ever, he left a lot of the story implied and off the page, so that readers could fill-in any blanks with their own imaginations.

Morrison's run managed the neat trick of Silver Age-esque conflicts—lots of big, crazy ideas—filtered into the more realistic (or, this being super-comics, "realistic") aesthetic of comics at the turn of the century, constantly escalating threats (and, remember, the very first story involved saving the world), all while managing to be about something. 

Morrison's run, all with artists Porter and Dell and the occasional fill-in artist, lasted through 2000's #41, with eight fill-in issues from other writers (five penned by Mark Waid, a sixth by Waid and Devin Grayson, one by up-and-comer Mark Millar and another by J.M. DeMatteis).

Morrison was followed by Waid, who, in addition to his fill-ins on the title, had also written a sort of prequel miniseries, JLA: Midsummer's Nightmare, and the maxi-series JLA: Year One. After his first story arc, pencilled by Porter, Waid was technically paired with artist Brian Hitch, although outside of their over-sized graphic novel Heaven's Ladder, Hitch was never able to complete a single story arc, needing assists from fill-in artists to keep the book on schedule. 

Waid reduced Morrison's League, the ranks of which had swelled to a dozen heroes, to just eight, the founding seven plus Plastic Man. If I recall interviews from the time correctly, this was because Waid wasn't entirely sure which characters would survive Morrison's final arc, "World War III."

His run on the series, which began with 2000's #43 and concluded with 2002's #60 (and had only a single fill-in, a Joker: Last Laugh tie-in by writers Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty), was more tightly focused on the characters on characterization, particularly the relationships between the characters, with one throughline being the team's decision to finally reveal their secret identities to one another in order to instill a greater degree of trust. Perhaps surprisingly, given Waid's apparent affection for DC Comics past, his run featured as many new threats (the Queen of Fables, the Cathexis and Id) as older ones (Ra's al Ghul, The White Martians).

Waid was then followed by writer Joe Kelly, coming off work on the Superman franchise, who was paired with pencil artist Doug Mahnke. Kelly's (consecutive) run ran from 2002's JLA #61 to 2004's #90 (with only a single fill-in, a Rick Veitch-written one in JLA #77). Kelly's run started with the Big Seven plus Plastic Man team, minus Aquaman, who had been temporarily killed off in the 2001 Superman event "Our Worlds At War". 

During the "Obsidian Age" arc, in which the team goes back in time, a substitute League is created, featuring Nightwing, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, Jason Blood, Hawkgirl, The Atom, Firestorm, Major Disaster and new, original character Faith and, in the wake of the story, the team would reconfigure a bit, having J'onn J'onnz, Plastic Man and the resurrected Aquaman all take leaves of absence, adding some of those characters from the substitute League plus the ancient shaman Manitou Raven to the line-up, and, finally, substituting Green Lantern John Stewart for Kyle Rayner (At the time, this last change seemed to have been made mainly to make the team resemble that of the cartoon Justice League series, although it did finally add a person of color back to the team line-up; it had been all white people since Steel disappeared somewhere between the Morrison and Waid runs.) 

The Big Seven that launched the team was now the Big Five, then, but the book was still oriented around DC's more powerful and popular characters. 

In addition to adding new characters to the mix, Kelly managed to continue the book's focus on world-ending threats like Morrison and Waid, but seemed to focus on the characters and their relationships even more than Waid had, like giving Plastic Man a son (a move I detested at the time, as it presented one of my favorite characters as a deadbeat dad, although Plastic Man does eventually decide to dedicate himself to his son during Kelly's run), having J'onn try to overcome his weakness to fire and start a relationship with new-ish Superman villain Scorch and teasing a romantic relationship between Batman and Wonder Woman that they ultimately decide not to pursue (thanks to time spent in a Martian device that shows them possible futures). 

Though Kelly's last consecutive issue was #90, he didn't exactly leave the title then. After nine issues of  what seemed like fill-ins (a three-issue arc written by Denny O'Neil, a six-part arc written by John Byrne and Chris Claremont), he returned for his final issue, #100...which lead directly to the spin-off series Justice League Elite, which featured Leaguers The Flash, Major Disaster, Manitou Raven and a returning Green Arrow joining a new version of The Elite, an Authority-analogue team that Kelly had written in his well-liked "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?" story in 2001's Action Comics #775 (This new JLE would again feature art by Kelly's JLA teammate Doug Mahnke).

JLA would continue publishing for another 25 issues but coupled with the nine issues of fill-ins by O'Neil and Byrne and Claremont, it was an extremely weird title, having become an anthology series in the mode of Legends of the Dark Knight...or JLA: Classified or JSA: Classified, both of which launched in 2005.

After some seven years and 90 issues of fairly tight issue-to-issue and run-to-run continuity, it was a strange, even perplexing swerve, and while the quality of these arcs varied greatly, they all seemed disconnected from one another, and, in some cases, from the goings-on of the DC Universe at that time in general. 

I would love to know what was going on behind the scenes. Some of these stories may have been specifically commissioned for the title—the Byrne/Claremont pairing, for example, was likely seen as a big deal by someone at DC, and maybe the equivalent of a Grant Morrison or Mark Waid among readers of a certain age (and fans of a certain book from a certain other publisher many years previous)—while some of them seemed like they might have been inventory stories, or proposed miniseries or one-shots that were instead folded into the main title. 

There's little to distinguish, say, the Chuck Austen/Ron Garney "Pain of the Gods" or Kurt Busiek/Garney "Syndicate Rules" from the pages of JLA from, say, the Gail Simone/Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez "The Hypothetical Woman" or the Dan Slott/Dan Jurgens "The Fourth Parallel" from JLA: Classified. 

After a handful of arcs that felt unmoored, JLA finally returned to DCU continuity, its final arcs being tie-ins to other goings on. Geoff Johns and Allan Heinberg wrote the five-part story arc "Crisis of Conscience," in which the modern League contends with the actions of the "Satellite Era" team (some 25 years earlier, our time) that were revealed in Brian Meltzer's ridiculous Identity Crisis miniseries. Dealing with the morality of magically (and/or psychically) altering people's brains to change behavior or keep secrets, it featured various old Leaguers and some of the modern JLA, at least those that the writers thought were around at the time (Firestorm died during Identity Crisis, and The Atom dramatically shrunk himself out of view; one could imagine that maybe Major Disaster and Manitou Dawn decided to stick with some off-page version of The Elite; and Plastic Man...? Well, they seem to have just forgotten about him entirely).

The book ended with Martian Manhunter and John Stewart as the only heroes left on the League...and then the Watchtower being destroyed and J'onn seemingly killed in a cliffhanger ending. (When it was picked up on in the pages of event series Infinite Crisis, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman gathered to bicker in the ruins of the Watchtower; it would ultimately be revealed that it was Superboy-Prime that had destroyed the base.)

And the final arc, "World Without a Justice League", was a six-issue arc written by Bob Harras, following Green Arrow Oliver Queen as he and a few allies (Manitou Dawn, Aquaman) travel the DC Universe, meet various characters and deal with aspects of the Infinite Crisis plot, while engaging classic Justice League villain The Key.

And that was that, the end of the series.

And the end of the team...at last until 2006, when Brad Meltzer and company would launch Justice League of America, a troubled title with an incredible amount of creative team turnover that nevertheless manage to stick around for 60 issues, when it was cancelled along with the rest of the DC line to make room for The New 52. 

I've been thinking a lot about the weird final few years of JLA lately, having fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to answer what I assumed was a simple question recently—When, exactly, was Plastic Man on the Justice League. 

While I had read the Morrison, Waid and Kelly issues of JLA (and many of their tie-ins) over and over again in the course of the last few decades (especially the Morrison ones), I had only read issues #91-120 the once...if that (I bailed on the Byrne/Claremont arc after an issue or two; having not read Marvel comics in the 1980s, their names weren't much of a draw to me personally, and I didn't care for their Justice League vs. vampires story that served as a stealth launch of a new soft-rebooted Doom Patrol). 

So I thought I might revisit these comics and, of course, write about them here. I wanted to do so in order to maybe more fairly evaluate them, now that I am so far removed from my initial disappointment in their lack of connectivity to the title that they were appearing in, and I'm curious to see how they might hold up some 20-ish years later (If I remember them correctly, some seemed designed to be more-or-less evergreen, while "Crisis of Conscience" and "World Without a Justice League" were obviously closely tied to the events of other old comic books, and thus might not make much sense if encountered for the first time in 2025).

That, then, is going to be the next series on EDILW, seven posts that each examine one of the stories published in JLA after #90, the last consecutive issue of Kelly's run.  I plan to post one each Monday, with posts on other comics on Thursdays, in the hopes that none of you get too sick of me talking about 20-year-old JLA comics.

Next: Denny O'Neil and Tan Eng Huat's "Extinction", from the pages of 2004's JLA #91-93

On the new Superman movie: Politics, performances and nitpicks

This post will obviously have spoilers for Superman. And, less obviously, for the 2006-2012 comic series The Boys...and maybe the 2003-2007 volume of The Outsiders too...

•Overall? I thought it was quite good. It's definitely the best Superman movie I've ever seen in a theater, and maybe the best Superman movie ever (I should note that I didn't actually sit down and watch the Christopher Reeve movies start to finish until I was an adult, and thus have no real nostalgia for those films, although, yeah, Reeve is a fantastic Superman and Clark Kent). 

I thought this was the first of all the Superman films that felt like it starred the comic book version of the character, rather than some new or different or original movie version of the character, and it is the first movie I've seen that seemed to be set in some recognizable version of a DC Universe. 

I think that bodes well for the future, given that this is the launch of a new (and hopefully improved) DC answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

•The change in approach. I think the most immediately telling difference between James Gunn's Superman and the previous iteration from Zack Snyder's 2013 The Man of Steel and the handful of "DC Extended Universe" films he appeared in is that the Snyder version seemed somewhat insecure and defensive in its very conception. 

That is, when Snyder and his studio bosses set out to make a new film version of Superman, a character universally known by his iconic costume, they seemed somewhat embarrassed by that costume's bright colors and the red trunks being worn over blue tights...or, if not embarrassed, than at least worried that such a character might not be taken seriously enough.

Gunn's Superman, on the other hand, not only has a costume featuring his traditionally bright primary colors, and that not only features the trunks, but he's also accompanied by his flying, super-strong dog with a matching cape.

It reminded me of something from a social media post that's stayed with me over the years. I wish I could remember who said it so I could properly credit them [Update: Kevin Hines informs me that it was Brett White, and he shares a screenshot of the original tweet.] It was in reaction to the fact that DC and/or Warner Bros or whoever were once again publicly hemming and hawing about the difficulty in making a Wonder Woman movie, while Marvel Studios was in the midst of advertising the then-upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy (so this would have been circa 2013 or 2014, I guess). 

The statement was along the lines of, "DC's like 'We're not sure people will get Wonder Woman', while Marvel's like, 'Here's a raccoon with a machine gun.'"

The raccoon with a machine gun film was, of course, directed by James Gunn. 

•The politics I've seen a fair amount of discussion about the politics of the new Superman film reflected on my Bluesky feed, probably a result of the fact that everything I tend to pay attention to online has to do with either comic books or politics. (And I'm not just referring to the silly statement from a particular actor who used to play a TV Superman saying, before he had even seen the movie, that it was somehow wrong or bad that Superman was being depicted as an immigrant...you know, just as he has been for 87 years now.)

Honestly, I think this headline from the Vulture review of the film by Alison Willmore, which I saw here, best captures the political agenda of the film: "Superman Isn't Trying to Be Political. We Just Have Real-Life Supervillains Now."

A relative of mine liked the new Superman film a lot, and, in texting me afterwards, she mentioned two points related to the real world.

First, she said that she got something of an Elon Musk vibe from Lex Luthor. Now, if Luthor reminds you of Musk, or Donald Trump, or any other rich, powerful person making your life worse, well, that's somewhat intentional....at least on the part of DC Comics, if not necessarily James Gunn.

That's because when John Byrne reconceived the entire Superman franchise for DC's emergent post-Crisis continuity in 1986, he purposefully turned Superman's perennial archenemy from a typical supervillain into a rich, powerful businessman/corporate CEO type—a then more relevant, visceral vision of evil than that of a mad scientist or crook in tights. Byrne's new Luthor was the sort of bad guy that hides in plain sight, being more-or-less accepted by society at large while engaged in nefarious acts in secret.

That's just who Luthor is, and has been for some 40 years now.

In the film he is, as expected, also duplicitous and manipulative, driven not only by greed, but also by his envy of Superman and, perhaps, a personal animus against aliens to commit his various bad actions. Again, that's just Lex Luthor being Lex Luthor. 

This particular version is also a pretty bad boss (I liked the bit where he yelled at his employees to clean up a mess he made, and then purposefully knocked over a mug holding pencils like a cat as they did so). And a rather shitty boyfriend. 

Oh, and he also engages the comic book supervillain equivalent version of using bots to help shape public opinion on social media. 

And, as we will learn near the climax, he wants to be a literal king.

If any of that reminds you of the current president, or Elon Musk, or any other real world figure, well, that probably reflects more on that figure's behavior than on any creative decisions Gunn made in his depiction of the Lex Luthor character (I will note a distinction that the above-cited critic, Alison Willmore made between Luthor and our real-world supervillains: Lex Luthor is really smart, while Trump and Musk are famously...not. I would also add that Luthor is, at least in this particular portrayal, also fairly young and rather handsome, and thus makes a poor filmic stand in for the likes of Trump or Musk).

Now, there are two specific points of the film that seem to more directly address real-world events. One I think was probably intentional on Gunn's part, the other is almost certainly a coincidence, and the fact that it's in the film at all is more a matter of unhappy circumstance in the real world than some attempt by Gunn to comment on it. That is, it is, again, more about the us having real supervillains than Gunn trying to make any particular political points.

One major plot point in the film is the invasion of one fictional country by its neighbor, another fictional country. The former, the victim nation, is Jarhanpur, while the latter, the aggressor, is Boravia.

While they both sounded vaguely familiar, I didn't recognize either when I first heard them mentioned, nor did I connect them to any particular DC comics past while I was sitting there in the theater. Looking them up when I got home, I saw that Jarhanpur appeared during Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's JLA run, being introduced in the "The Golden Perfect" story arc (fom 2002's #62-#64). 

There it was presented as an exotic, fantastical country, but it was, visually, coded to resemble a Middle Eastern, maybe Muslim majority coded country. The people all had brown skin, the buildings had minarets and Plastic Man made joking reference to belly dancers and Ramadan.

As for Boravia, it apparently appeared in a couple of stories in 1939's Superman #2 and 1958's Blackhawk #126. I don't think I've ever read either—I might have read and forgotten the Superman story, while I know I've neve read any Blackhawk comics—but it seems to be, as it sounds, a European country. 

Unlikely neighbors, then. 

Sometime before the film begins, Superman apparently intervened in Boravia's invasion of Jarhanpur, destroying some of Boravia's military hardware and then flying that country's leader into the dessert to essentially threaten him not to try it again.

I immediately took this to be an intentional parallel to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, thanks, I think, to the geography in play (In the movie, Boravia is immediately east of Jarhanpur, with which it shares a border). That and the rationale the president of the aggressor nation gave for the invasion in a press conference, something about liberating its people from their own fascist government.

A few days after I had seen the film, that relative I mentioned above asked if I thought this aspect might have been a nod to the Israel's war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza strip, launched in 2023 in retaliation to the October 7 terror attack by Hamas. She was not the only one to note this possible reading; I've seen social media posts reading the movie that way, with one noting that the film made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu one of its villains.

Honestly, this reading didn't occur to me at all as I was in the theater, but, after hearing it, I could certainly see it: The apparent desert climate of the two countries, the fact that Jarhanpur's people seemed to be composed mainly of poor brown-skinned people, the fact that Boravia had a professional military with uniforms and tanks and jets and, at the climax, they line up to attack what looks essentially like a bunch of civilians. 

And now that I've picked up some old copies of JLA and see what Jarhanpur looked like in the comics, it certainly seems more like the Middle East than Eastern Europe. (Also, there's the fact that Luthor apparently did a deal with Boravia in which he would get a portion of the conquered land as his own, not unlike Trump expressing his desire for the United States to "own" the Gaza strip once Israel and/or the U.S. managed to quite illegally displace all of the people who live there.)

Was Gunn referencing either—or both—of these conflicts? 

Maybe. 

Given when these particular crises started, he would have certainly had the lead time to work them into his screenplay. 

On the other hand, it could be as simple a matter as Gunn making the rather broad, anodyne and hard to argue with statement that the unprovoked military invasion of a neighboring country is wrong, or, even more broadly, that the strong should not victimize the weak. 

I think, a few years ago, all Americans could agree on that, but, when presented with real world examples like the conflicts mentioned above, Americans have various opinions. One imagines that just like so many Republicans in congress and right-wing influencers are either pro-Russia or, at least, ambivalent to the fate of Ukraine, they would similarly be unmoved by the plight of Jarhanpur if they were serving in the DCU's congress or doing their podcasts there.

The other plot point that is echoing real life? Well, it's not exactly subtle. 

The alien Superman, who illegally "immigrated" to Earth and lived his whole life as an upstanding American citizen and productive member of society, is, at one point, roughed up by a man in a mask working on the behalf of the U.S. government and then whisked from American soil to a "foreign" forever prison without the benefit of any due process, literally being told that, as an "alien", he has no rights. 

That's some evil supervillain shit, obviously, but, given the lead time needed to make a movie of this size and expense, Gunn and his fellow filmmakers had almost certainly written, filmed and had maybe even produced the special effects for those scenes well before masked goons kidnapping immigrants from our streets and putting them in detention facilities or shipping them to foreign countries without any due process was yet a common occurrence in America. (Trump didn't invoke the Alien Enemies Act until March 14 of this year, for example.)

Personally, I think Gunn was just using his imagination to come up with something wicked and un-American to show just how evil Lex Luthor is. He probably wasn't imagining that the Trump administration would be regularly doing that very thing by the time his big, summer film started playing in theaters. 

Finally, one of the two most evil things Luthor does, or threatens to do in this film, includes threatening to "euthanize" the perfectly healthy (if often misbehaving) dog Krypto, making a point of telling a helpless Superman that doing so will probably be quite painful for the dog. Meanwhile, here in the real world, the current secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and thus a person quite high up on the organizational chart when it comes to implementing the policy of snatching up immigrants to send to prisons abroad, is Kristi Noem, a woman who rather famously shot her perfectly healthy dog Cricket to death due to its behavior problems. 

Again, Gunn likely wasn't calling Noem out. He was probably just demonstrating that Luthor is evil. So is Noem.

•David Corenswet I thought David Corenswet did a phenomenal job with what turned out to be a fairly complex job. Rather than a simple dual role, in which he had to play Clark Kent and Superman as two entirely different characters, his Superman was conceived in such a way that there were various layers to the character, and to what degree he was being himself in any particular scene.

I found it interesting that, in this particular outing, both Clark Kent and Superman are sorts of public performances that the real character playing them both, who I guess we can call Kal-El for clarity's sake (even though I don't remember that name being used in the film at all), takes on at different points. 

We only see that real character behind them both, Kal-El, in a few instances. When starting dinner in Lois' apartment, for example, or when he's recovering from his pocket universe ordeal at his parents' farmhouse in Kansas...and, I suppose, occasionally bleeding into his Superman persona, when he's alone with Lois in front of the "interdimensional imp" battle, or gets angry or frustrated while wearing the suit.

I think this is probably most evident during the interview scene, when he says "Miss Lane," and essentially turns his Superman persona on as if he was flipping a switch. Throughout, as he gets frustrated at some of her questioning, we can see his real, Kal-El self keeps intruding on his Superman performance, too.

It's a rather nuanced performance, far more than the just looking handsome and strong and inspirational and nice that one might expect of a Superman actor.

I do sort of regret that we didn't get to see more of Corenswet's Clark Kent performance in the film, but, I suppose, that needed to be sacrificed in order to give us a version of Superman that has already revealed his secret identity to Lois. Still, with such a big and interesting cast in the Daily Planet scenes, it would have been nice to see more of Clark; maybe in a sequel...?

Corenswet, Gunn and company did a good enough job of making Clak and Superman seem like two entiely different people that it was easy to believe that no one made the connection between the two (I know Guy Gardner references the hypno-glasses, a bit of forgotten Superman lore that I've never actually encountered in a comic book, but then do you want to take Guy Gardner's word for anything...?

•Nicholas Hoult Nicholas Hoult's Lex Luthor was similarly great. It was certainly the best live-action performance of the character that I've ever seen, although I've never seen any of the TV Luthors that weren't animated (I know a lot of folks really like Michael Rosenbaum's Smallville Luthor).

Hoult's Luthor is handsome, quick-witted and charming, and it's easy to see how this Luthor could prove to be charismatic enough to be the leader of a company or sell the U.S. government on his metahuman Planet Watch force (or whatever it was called) or be a popular media figure.

Part of this Luthor's enmity towards Superman seems to be that the hero pulls the world's focus away from Luthor himself, who thinks he should be the center of the world's attention, and Hoult's Luthor is one that we could imagine being that center of attention.

He also, more than any of the previous actors, looks and acts like the Luthor I recognize from the comic books of the last 25 years or so. 

•Luthor is so bald And speaking of Luthor, I don't know exactly how they did it, but man, this Luthor is so bald. Like, there is no hair anywhere on his head at all. There are close-up scenes where, on the big screen, you can see Hoult's head filling that gigantic space, and you can see the little roots of hairs left on his clean-shaven face, but his scalp...? Nothing. I don't know if they used a bald cap or, like, digitally removed any and all hairs on his shaven head in post, but Superman's Lex Luthor is, like, the baldest anyone has ever been in a movie. 

•It needed more purple and greenThere's a brief shot of a flag at the decommissioned army base by "the river" where Luthor keeps one of his pocket universe portals, the place with all the tents (I am 99% sure that those scenes were filmed at a beach in Mentor, Ohio, where I used to live and still work, and that the river in the back ground is actually Lake Erie). That flag is yellow and green, rather than purple and green. For the life of me, I can't imagine why they didn't go with purple and green in that shot.

Similarly, I wish that Luthor's "Raptors" wore purple and green armor, rather than the kind of generic black/metallic coloring they have. Given the deepness of the cuts in the film—the hypno-glasses, Boravia—I have to imagine the filmmakers at last had a conversation about coloring the Raptors purple and green and must have had some reason not to do so. 

•Rachel Brosnahan Rachel Brosnahan is also a particularly strong Lois Lane. She definitely looks the part, and I think she captured the character pretty well. I think because of the fact that we're already past the learning of the secret identity point of the relationship, it frees her up to do more, and be a more active partner in Superman's life, while, at the same time, their relationship is new enough that there is still some drama in it; that is, they haven't yet reached some sort of happily ever after point with one another, where they tend to be in the comics these days, just yet.

I like that we got to see her doing some journalism and we got to see her doing some mild adventuring and we got to see her doing some journalism while doing some adventuring, in that scene at the climax where she's dictating a story while piloting a UFO. That's some quality DCU journalism right there. 

•The origins of Krpto I heard an interview with Gunn on NPR last week where he talked about how this particular portrayal of Krypto was inspired by his own experience with a terribly behaved dog. 

Still, after seeing the film, I wondered if Gunn had ever read Mark Russell's The Superman Stories. Russell, who admitted that he hadn't really paid any attention to actual Superman comics before writing his prose stories, presents a very different vision of a Superdog, but the gag with Russell's is just how terrifying and what a public menace a dog with all of the powers of Superman would actually be. I thought of Russell's Superdog in the scene where we see that Krypto has broken through the glass storefront of a pet store and helped himself to some dog food, which reminded me of Russell's dog's depredations. 

•Mister Terrific I thought the film made great use of the Mister Terrific character, a really rather minor character in DC Comics history, being a legacy version of an even more minor, footnote of a Golden Age character. He's not a character one might expect to see turn up in a Superman movie, or even a movie dealing with any iteration of a Justice League as opposed to a Justice Society (His appearance in Justice League Unlimited cartoon notwithstanding).

I especially appreciate that they used him instead of Blue Beetle Ted Kord who, given the presence of Guy Gardner and Maxwell Lord, would have been the most obvious candidate for "the smart one" in a "Justice Gang"...especially since Ted came with his own flying vehicle, something so necessary for the film that they had to invent one for Mister Terrific (On the other hand, the old, bad DC Extended Universe produced a Blue Beetle film just two years ago, and, having never seen it, I'm not sure whether or not it had a Ted Kord character in it at all. Anyway, maybe it would have been weird to use another Blue Beetle in this film).

Edi Gathegi's performance as Mister Terrific was, well, terrific. I liked his deadpan delivery, and his ongoing frustrations with his colleague Guy Gardner, Lois and even Superman. His coolness and confidence seemed to be borne of the original conception of the character, as he appeared in that one issue of The Spectre that introduced him, more so than in his later, more popular appearances in various JSA titles. 

Gathegi looked a little smaller and less imposing than I would have imagined Michael Holt to be in real life (same with Hawkgirl, actually), but his costume couldn't have looked any better, seemingly pulled directly out of the comics with only the little Max Lord/"Justice Gang" symbol thingee on the chest added. Even that weird mask seemed to work in live-action.

•Most importantly So the line "I'm goddam Mister Terrific"...inspired by All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder, or nah...? 

•Metamorpho In contrast, I didn't really care for the visual depiction of Metamorpho in the film and, the longer I think about it, I can't help but wonder if he's just a character that doesn't really work in live-action...or, at least, not as well as he does in comics, or the more comic-like medium of animation.

I think actor Anthony Carrigan did a decent enough job in the role, particularly as far as expressing the "freak" nature of the character and Rex Mason's resignation to that nature. He also did a fine job of expressing the rather tough ethical/moral dilemma the film put Rex in, forcing him to decide to inflict violence on a stranger or strangers so that no violence is inflicted upon his own son.

Still, Carrigan is a lot smaller than any of the Metamorphos I've read about, be it Ramona Fradon's original version from the '60s, or Bart Sears' version in Justice League Europe or  and those that followed in various Justice League books or crossovers or anthologies. 

Additionally, the film's version seems to have elaborate scoring or scarring on his face, suggesting the Metamorpho of the 2003-launched The Outsiders (who actually turned out to only be an aspect of Metamorpho, and took the name "Shift", I guess; retroactive spoiler alert!).

Finally, he looked weird wearing what looked like baggy shorts to, I suppose, protect his modesty. If they didn't want to go with the form-fitting briefs with an "M" on the belt buckle, they could have at least got him some better fitting trunks, akin to those Corenswet's Superman rocked.

Some of the demonstrations of his powers looked kind of cool (growing Kryptonite out of his hand, forming that big hammer in the climax), but others just looked...weird and indecipherable as when he was flying in a half-gaseous state, or when he had tentacles. Again, I think he mainly just isn't a comic book character that translates all that well to live action. 

•Green Lantern Speaking of, do Green Lanterns just not work in live action? Nathan Fillion is pretty great as Guy, and as glad as I was that they chose to use that particular Lantern (certainly the best one to choose when it comes to contrasting against Superman's personality or brand of heroics) his powers looked a bit weird and fake to me whenever he used them. His constructs looked more like cheap plastic than hard light. (I thought his powers looked far better when seen from a great distance, as when he and the J.G. are fighting the "imp" in the background, and all we see of Green Lantern are some green flashes, beams and giant baseball bat).

Also, Guy seemed to be able to fly without any sort of aura around him, which isn't how I thought their rings worked, but whatever, I suppose that varies from artists to artist. 

Anyway, after this and 2011's Green Lantern, which I don't recall really selling Green Lantern constructs terribly effectively either, I'm left wondering if, like Metamorpho, those characters' powers are ill-suited to being depicted in live action.

•Maybe Neil DeGrasse Tyson will weigh in You know the bit where Superman, Krypto, Joey and Metamorpho are all being dragged toward the black hole in the pocket universe, and Superman uses his super-breath to push them away from it? Would that really work?

I'm asking, as I have no idea. 

It felt a little dubious, though, and I woulda preferred if Metamorpho turning into a rocket would have been all that was necessary to free them, as that seems a bit more cut and dry and, well, um "believable" (You know, in a scene involving a flying dog in a cape and a guy who can turn himself into a rocket).

•Another deep cut? I like that they included a scene involving what was essentially the old Daily Planet flying newsroom, when Perry orders the staff onto Mister Terrific's ship, where they can finish up the Luthor expose while flying through the air, as the city is imperiled by the dimensional breach.

•But enough about DC Comics I wonder if the Ultraman reveal has any impact on The Boys, either the show, which has yet to wrap up, or the comic book which, while years old at this point, is probably going to still keep being new for some readers...many of whom, in the future, will likely have seen Superman before reading. 

I thought the reveal of what Ultraman looked like under his mask was spectacularly obvious, based on his costume alone (so I've been expecting it for months now) and, wow, they sure telegraphed it by the scene relatively early in the film where the Fortress opened up to allow Luthor, Ultraman and The Engineer entrance. 

Anyway, that Ultraman costume looked a fair bit like Black Noir's comic book costume and, if you've already read The Boys, then you know the way in which Ultraman's relationship to Superman is similar to Black Noir's relationship to Homelander, The Boys' version of Superman. 

I've never watched the TV show, but, from what I've heard, the showrunners were planning on going in a different direction at the end than Garth Ennis and company did in the comic (it sounds awfully different in general, really), and thus I imagine that one particular reveal will play out different. 

For the folks making the show and the audience enjoying it, I hope that's the case at this point; it would be too bad if the new Superman movie inadvertently spoiled the ends of The Boys TV show.

•The fates of the non-Luthor villains Finally, while I'm not entirely sure how it could have been done differently, I was a bit disappointed that both Ultraman and the Boravian leader seemingly died at the end of the film.

This is, of course, in large part because of how sour the ending of the Man of Steel was, in which Superman took the life of his opponent, perhaps the most un-Supermanly thing he could have done in a film. 

Gunn certainly seemed to telegraph early and often that that's not his Superman, as he not only spent a lot of time saving people and even checking on them to make sure they were alright, but he also took pains to save a random barking dog and a squirrel, and expressed frustration with the Justice Gang for killing a giant monster threatening the city, rather than finding a non-lethal solution to the problem. And, of course, the motivation for some of Superman's actions in the movie are his concerns for a dog, Krypto.

The point was hard to miss: Superman not only cares about human life, he cares about all life. 

So while the killing off of Ultraman is somewhat ambiguous, with Superman kinda sorta knocking him into a black hole and not saving him, it still seemed somewhat out-of-character for this Superman. I kind of wish either Superman managed to save him and turn him into a friend off-screen, and we got a shot of a happy Ultraman in the Fortress at the end, or, even more simply, they had given Lex a line or two in which he states that Ultraman technically isn't even alive, but is some sort of biological automaton or something. 

That said, if a future movie has Ultraman come out of a blackhole with chalk-white skin, wearing a homemade Superman costume and talking backwards, well then, I'm totally fine with it.

As for the Boravian leader, Hawkgirl seemingly drops him to his death, a moment meant to draw another sharp contrast between Superman and the Justice Gang's brand of justice. It seems awfully harsh—especially if we're meant to see him as a stand-in for Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu—and given what a big deal Superman's intervention in Boravia's invasion plan was in the world of the movie, well, the assassination of its leader seems like a much, much bigger deal, no? 

Given that Gunn thinks it's important to explain why Krypto is such a poorly behaved dog during that surprise cameo at the end—surely Superman could properly train a dog—his lack of explanation regarding the deaths of Ultraman and, maybe, that of the Boravian leader felt a bit jarring. 

Credit where credit is due: Who created who in Superman

•Superman and Lois Lane were created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938's Action Comics #1.

•Lex Luthor was created by Siegel and Shuster in 1940's Action Comics #23...althgough this earliest iteration, a typical criminal scientist type, went only by "Luthor" and had a full head of hair. His signature baldness seems to have originated from an artistic mistake in the Superman daily comic strip, and in 1960 Siegel added the loss of his hair into Luthor's backstory in Adventure Comics #271 with artist Al Plastino. It was in that same year that Luthor finally got the first name Lex, 20 years after his introduction. The businessman/corporate CEO version of the character was an innovation of John Byrne's post-Crisis 1986 reboot of the franchise, which began in The Man of Steel. Following Byrne, the character is usually depicted as a synthesis of mad scientist, supervillain and businessman. 

•Krypto was created by Otto Binder, Curt Swan and Sy Barry in 1955's Adventure Comis #210.

•The original Green Lantern was created by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger in 1940's All-American Comics #16, although the name and concept was refigured by John Broome, Gil Kane and Julius Schwartz and applied to new character Hal Jordan in 1959's Showcase #22. The Guy Gardner character was introduced by Broome and Kane in 1968's Green Lantern #59...although it's Steve Englehart and Joe Staton's 1985 version of the character from the pages of Green Lantern, further popularized by his appearances in various Justice League-related titles, that has become the dominant one...and informed the Superman film. (Staton seems to have originated the signature hairstyle, although artist Kevin Maguire exaggerated and perfected it.)

•The original Hawkgirl was created by Gardner Fox, Dennis Neville and Sheldon Moldoff in 1941's All Star Comics #5, in which supporting character Shiera Sanders first donned her own version of Hawkman's costume. While the film never gives its Hawkgirl's real name, the latest Hawkgirl is the Kendra Saunders version of the character, which was apparently created by writers James Robinson and David Goyer and first drawn by artists Scott Benefiel and Mark Popst in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. 

•The original Mister Terrific was created by Charles Reizenstein and Hal Sharp in 1942's Sensation Comics #1. The second version of the character, Michael Holt, was created by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake in 1997's Spectre #54 (And you can read more about that issue in my previous post). I can't figure out who designed his costume and T-Spheres, though, both of which made their first published appearance in 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1, drawn by an artist credited only as "Grey."

•"Rex" is, of course, Rex Mason, better known as Metamorpho, The Element Man. He was created by Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon in 1965's The Brave and The Bold #57. His girlfriend Sapphire Stagg makes an unnamed cameo in the film, and there's a sign for her father Simon Stagg's business briefly visible at one point.

•The Engineer was created by disgraced writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch in 1999's The Authority.

•The creation of Perry White is a bit complicated, given that he was not original to the Superman comics but was instead created for the Adventures of Superman radio serial in 1940. The character's creation is credited to George Ludlam (the radio folks contributed a lot to the Superman mythos that was then integrated into the comics) and he was played by Julian Noa, who probably deserves some credit, too. Siegel and artist Wayne Boring then introduced White into the comics, in 1940's Superman #7. 

•Jimmy Olsen has a similarly convoluted creation story. He too was introduced in the Adventures of Superman radio show, and producer Bob Maxwell gets credit for his creation, although surely the show's writer or writers and voice actor deserve some credit too, right? He was introduced into the comics by Siegel and Shuster in 1941's Superman #13, although the character wouldn't really seem to become himself until actor Jack Larson's portrayal of him on the 1952 Adventures of Superman TV show popularized him. He then got his own title Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in 1954, and editor Mort Weisinger refocused the character in outlandish, comedic stories, often involving unlikely transformations.

•Eve Tessmacher and Otis were both created by director Richard Donner and writer Mario Puzo for the 1978 film Superman, and they were played by Valerie Perrine and Ned Beatty, respectively. 

•Steve Lombard was created by Carey Bates and Curt Swan in 1973's Superman #264.

•Cat Grant was created by Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway in 1987's The Adventures of Superman #424.

•"Troupe" is Ron Troupe, and he was created by Jerry Ordway and Tom Grummet in 1991's The Adventures of Superman #480.

•Superman's biological parents Jor-El and Lara were introduced by Siegel and Shuster in the Superman newspaper comic strip in 1939.

•The Kents had another slow-rolling creation, evolving over the years and across media. Superman's first appearance mentioned only that he was found as a baby by "a passing motorist." Siegel and Shuster introduced his adoptive parents in 1939's Superman #1, naming only Mrs. Kent as "Mary." Their names and the specifics of their finding and adopting the baby Superman changed a lot in the Golden Age, depending on the medium, and their part in the Superman story remains fairly fluid, with different comic takes and different mass media adaptations differing in the specifics of Superman being found...and whether one or both of the Kents are still alive or if they have passed away.

•Maxwell Lord was created by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire in 1987's Justice League #1.

Finally, this one gets a mild spoiler warning, although I am assuming anyone who sees the film will figure it out almost as soon as he appears on screen, if not before, as I had...

•"Ultraman" is the name of Superman's evil opposite doppelganger from Earth-3 and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky in 1964's Justice League of America #29. The version who appears in the new film is an imperfect clone of Superman made by Lex Luthor, and this backstory somewhat resembles that of John Byrne's 1986, post-Crisis origins of long-time Superman enemy Bizarro from the pages of 1986's The Man of Steel #5. (The original Bizarro, for what it's worth, was created by Otto Binder and George Papp for 1958's Superboy #68.)

The origins of Mister Terrific Michael Holt

There's no indication on the cover of 1997's The Spectre #54, which was produced by the great Richard Corben, but this issue in writer John Ostrander and artist Tom Mandrake's series would feature the introduction of a new, legacy version of minor Golden Age character Mister Terrific, as well as featuring appearances from various Justice League and Justice Society characters, making it a particularly superhero-heavy issue. The covers of the series, which are typically great, don't always comment directly on the contents within, and this is a pretty good example...although there is a zombie in the issue. 

The story opens with a man standing on a bridge above a train track, sadly regarding a framed headshot of a smiling woman, signed "Love Always, Paula." He lets it drop onto a train below, and is then interrupted by a couple of little kids, one of them holding a gun that looks comically huge in his little hands. 

"Okay, fool-- Give us all your monies if you wanta live!" the boy says, and the man responds. "But what if I don't care if I live?"

Enter Jim Corrigan, from out of nowhere, with harsh words for the kid. The frightened child fires several shots into Corrigan's chest, to no effect (He is, of course, already dead, and has been so for decades). Corrigan's voice changes to a spookier one, rendered by letterer Todd Klein in a jagged dialogue balloon tinted green at the edges, and the font of the lettering gets similarly rough and jagged. Corrigan then transforms into The Spectre, and the children flee in panic.

Once they're alone, The Spectre tells Michael Holt, for of course that's who this man is, that he was drawn there by his thoughts: "Self murder is still murder. And murder is the province of The Spectre."

Holt explains his thoughts, revealing a bit about his background, vague though it is at this point: 

My wife is dead. Car accident tore her out of my life with no warning. All the things I've done with my life--the money I've made, the achievements in sports and science-- --They're nothing without her. I don't know why I should live.

The Spectre shifts back to his Corrigan form and begins to tell Holt of his old friend Terry Sloane, a man who similarly had money and brains, but found himself bored...and was once a victim to kids who tried to rob him, seeking to imitate the heroes of their day, the gangsters of the 1940s.

Sloane's response was to demonstrate to kids that gangsters aren't anyone to look up to or imitate, and he did so by making himself into something far cooler: A superhero, who regularly took down gangsters and revealed them to be the losers they were.

Here artist Mandrake devotes a half a page to the Golden Age Mister Terrific, smiling broadly as he beats up a trio of armed gangster types, a couple of kids in the background cheering him on. 

The Spectre then goes on to tell the story of Mister Terrific's last adventure, somewhat based on 1979's Justice League of America #171-172, by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, although one need not have any familiarity with those comics to follow this, which obviously needed to be altered to fit into the post-Crisis continuity, anyway (Here, for example, the characters share a single Earth rather than hailing from two parallel ones, and a problematic character like The Huntress is absent, though Power Girl is still there).

During The Spectre's story, Mister Terrific is murdered aboard the JLA satellite, apparently by The Flash Jay Garrick...who was actually possessed by a villain named The Spirit King. In the aftermath, as the JSA pursued the villain to Earth, Garrick went looking for The Spectre, and the two heroes catch up with the villain in Doctor Fate's tower in Salem, where  The Spirit King has now taken control of Fate and defeated and captured the other heroes (Green Lantern Alan Scott, Hawkman and Power Girl, if you're interested).

When The Spectre and Flash arrive, they find themselves in a trap set by The Spirit King, who, being a ghost, is untouchable by either The Flash or Spectre ("You have no power over me, Spectre!" the villain gloats. "Your authority ends at the grave! And I have stepped beyond it!").

It gets worse. The Spirit King has apparently made a deal with the demon Shaitan, acting as a portal for the evil entity to cross over onto Earth. And then the corpse of Mister Terrific joins the battle, shambling towards The Flash. So there's the zombie that Corben's cover seems to promise. (It's unclear to me just how it is that Sloane's corpse became quite so skeletal and desiccated in the short time since he had apparently died, but whatever, Mandrake draws a great zombie).

Ultimately the day is saved when the ghost of Mister Terrific appears, and, being a ghost, is able to lay his hands—and, more importantly, his fists—on his fellow ghost The Spirit King. He punches him into the portal Shaitan was attempting to come through, which The Spectre seals, saving the JSA and, perhaps, the whole world. 

After a few words with his teammates, the ghost of Mister Terrific fades away, leaving the glowing words of his slogan, "Fair Play" hanging in the air.

The story told, Holt wonders why exactly The Spectre told it to him.

The Spectre answers, with a bit of a speech that would prove transformative for Michael Holt and, indirectly, the future JSA and the DC Universe as a whole. He switches back to Corrigan mid-way through, which is why the language shifts accordingly: 

A void exists and needs to be filled.

No one can ever be replaced. Not your wife, not Terry Sloane, but their passing leaves a void that needs to be filled.

You feel the void your wife has left...

Mr. Terrific filled a purpose and that purpose isn't filled by Superman or Batman or even The Spectre.

He worked at the street level. He reached kids that might have otherwise gone bad. Replaced "gangsta" role models with one that stressed "Fair Play."

There is a need to for that kinda hero today, get me? Maybe, if you fill a void that's out there, you can ease the one that's inside you.

You game? 

Indeed, Holt is. 

The scene shifts to a basketball court, where the kids who tried to rob Holt in the opening scene are reporting back to some obviously older (and far taller) young men, who are belittling their failure to bring back any money, and threatening them with a beating.

And then Holt shows up, now wearing a big pair of sunglasses and a leather jacket with the words "Fair Play" emblazoned on the back, the logo mirroring the one that the original Mister Terrific wore on his torso. He sure threw that costume together pretty quickly!

He confidently introduces himself with a seemingly new too-cool-for-school personality: "You can just call me Mr. Terrific--cause that's what I am." He's also carrying a basketball. After he easily beats up the two armed bad guys ("I'm not afraid to die, so I'm not afraid of you!" he says to one, who points a gun at the back of his head), he shoots the basketball from afar, and of course he makes the shot, complete with a "SWISH!" sound effect. 

Then The Spectre arrives, sweeping up the older kids in his cloak and promising to punish them now for murders they may commit in the future, at which point Holt gets in his face, saying he'll take responsibility for them, and citing "Fair Play" to the Spectre. 

The Spectre concedes the point and flies away, thinking to himself about how the confrontation was a ruse, that the kids "needed to see their hero seemingly strong enough to face down even The Spectre...it will build your reputation and burnish a legend."

It's a pretty great comic, as are most issues of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre series, and, if you can find it in a back issue bin or if you read it online from Kindle, it's a pretty good starting point for getting into the book (Like too much of that volume of The Spectre, it's never been collected). 

Leaning towards horror and constantly dabbling with moral quandaries, this series was one of handful from the '90s that seemed to straddle the DC Universe and the sort of content from the Vertigo imprint, although this issue felt a little special in just how full of superheroes it was, the colorful, muscular figures rendered in Mandrake's spooky, sketchy style.

Now, of course, the issue is best known for introducing the new Mister Terrific, who would, a few years later, join the new JSA team and become a DCU mainstay, even headlining his own short-lived solo title in 2011 as part of DC's "New 52" initiative. 

As you can see in the images above, the character bears relatively little resemblance to the more familiar version from the 1999-2006 JSA series, though. Obviously, that's visual, as he would adopt the distinctive black T-shaped mask, the black, white and red costume and the hovering robot "T-Spheres" later, as his background in science and athletics would be fleshed out to the point where we learn he was an Olympic athlete and genius-level intellect (one of the smartest people in the world, actually). Oh and, perhaps oddly given that he was introduced in an issue of The Spectre where the embodiment of the Wrath of God told him a story about ghosts, zombies and demons, we would eventually learn that he is an atheist. 

He also seems to have drifted pretty far from the initial point of inspiration, that of being a street-level hero focused on being a role model for young people and steering them away from the potential appeal of a life of crime. Of course, that was likely a side-effect of being on the JSA, a team book in which the threats were naturally bigger, more global and less grounded than street crime, as they had to be significant enough to require the attention of a large team of very powerful characters including the android Hourman from the 853rd Century and a Dr. Fate. 

After his introduction in The Spectre #54, the new Mister Terrific next appeared in 1998's The Spectre #62, the last issue of the series. In this issue, Corrigan/The Spectre buries Corrigan's bones and holds a funeral for himself, one attended by characters from throughout the series, and throughout the DC Universe (and, in a few cases, just beyond, like Swamp Thing). At the end, the green cloak of The Spectre floats up into the sky, leaving the naked Corrigan on Earth...at least until a bright light from the sky envelopes him and he disappears.

Mister Terrific's role is quite small. He arrives wearing the same simple costume Mandrake gave his in his first appearance, although at this point he seems to have added gloves with a yellow "T" on them.

"Who are you? Black Lighting?" one attendee asks him when he walks up. 

Later, when Corrigan's surviving JSA allies—Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Ted Knight and Ted Grant—arrive, Wildcat puts his hands on his hips and asks Holt, "So--yer the new Mr. Terrific, eh?"

"You got a problem with that?" Hold replies. 

Wildcat punches him on the arm: "Nope. Glad to see it. Just do th' name justice, okay? Terry was a friend o' mine."

This new Mister Terrific would, obviously, end up spending a lot of time with Wildcat, Garrick and Scott in the future.

His next appearance was in the pages of 1999's JSA Secret Files & Origins #1. He doesn't appear in any of the special issue's comics stories—he wasn't initially a member of the team, which was being written at the outset by James Robinson and David Goyer, and pencilled by Steven Sadowski. Instead, he appears in one of the profile pages, which, in these specials, would feature an illustration of the character and a few paragraphs of text about the character in question, functioning a little like the old Who's Who pages.

Here, he's drawn by an artist credited as "Grey" and inked by Vince Russel. This is the first published appearance of what would become his standard and best-known costume, the one he'd wear throughout the pages of JSA and the series that followed it, Justice Society of America (And the one that appears in the new Superman movie). The image also shows the first appearance of the "T-Spheres."

Though Grey is the first person to draw it, I'm not sure if they get credit for the design or not; in fact, I'm not sure who designed it (Do let me know if you know). 

The profile on this page, written by Holt's co-creator John Ostrander, fleshes out his past accomplishments, noting that he was "an Olympic decathlon gold medal winner" and that he "created his own cyberwear company which he ultimately sold to the Waynetech Corporation."

It also notes that he "fights in the inner-city for the minds and hearts of the kids there." "The modern Mr. Terrific fights the new 'gangstas' with skill, intelligence, and by just being so damn cool," Ostrander writes. (Interestingly, Ostrander refers to Holt's late wife as "Angela," although we saw the name "Paula" written on her picture in his first appearance).

As for the JSA title proper, Mister Terrific first appears in the fifth issue, written by Robinson and Goyer and penciled by guest artist Derec Aucoin, where he meets Sandy Hawkins and the android Hourman at Tylerco. It's revealed there that he acts as a consultant for Tylerco, and in return they fund a youth center Holt had started. He is, by this point, wearing the costume from Secret Files & Origins.

He then shows up in issue #11, at which point Geoff Johns has replaced Robinson and Goyer's co-writer, and this issue features breakdowns and inks by Michael Bair and pencils and inks by someone credited simply as "Buzz." 

Here Mister Terrific has his T-Spheres for the first time in a story and he talks about his ability to be completely "invisible" to security technology, which made it easy enough for him to break into the Kobra base that the JSA was in the process of infiltrating when they met him.

"We'll have time for intros and initiation parties later," Hawkins tells him and, from this point on, Mister Terrific will be a member of the JSA. 

In his initial appearance in the pages of Ostrander and Mandrakes Spectre, both The Spirit King and the original Mister Terrific talk about coming into their own only once they had died, something that Corrigan seems to meditate on a bit, wondering if he too only really started to make a positive impact on the world once he had died.

Although Jay Garrick assures Terry Sloane's ghost that he was always a valuable member of the team when he was alive, it would seem that Sloane really did have the biggest impact on the DC Universe and the DC comics line after he died: As the inspiration for his far more prominent namesake.