The End of JLA Pt. 3: "Elitism"

While it is of course impossible to know for sure what was going on behind the scenes of JLA in 2004,  this 100th issue by Joe Kelly, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen, returning to the title after a nine-issue absence, definitely reads as if it was especially created to launch their upcoming Justice League Elite maxi-series, rather than to be their final issue of JLA.

Actually, maybe it's not so impossible, as Kelly himself discussed it in his introduction to the 2005 paperback collection Justice League Elite Vol. 1. He writes that Dan Raspler, who had replaced Mike Carlin as editor for the title, had wanted a story idea for the upcoming JLA #100 (Ah! Is this whole weird period of the title with no regular creative team all Raspler's fault, then...?!), suggesting that by incorporating his team The Elite, he could finally get to do the "dark team" he had been talking about for a while.

The story  that ultimately ran in the oversized, 38-page JLA #100 was entitled "Elitism", and it functions as a perfectly satisfactory JLA story, one in which something big and crazy happens—here, Gaea herself finds humanity wanting and is on the brink of exterminating them—and the League must do something seemingly impossible to save the day—here, rally the entirety of planet Earth to a single cause.

The thing is, for this particular plan to work, our heroes need villains to scapegoat, as humanity just can't be herded that quickly, nor can they be readily convinced to do the right thing simply for the sake of it being the right thing. (If that were the case, I wouldn't be nearly so worried about catastrophic climate change!)

"There's no time for diplomacy here," Batman tells his fellow Leaguers. 

No time for the world to debate and confer and verify our discovery.

People rally in the face of crisis, but it has to be a crisis they understand...

With victims they can relate to.

And so, with the world facing increasingly apocalyptic natural disasters, and with Gaea/Mother Earth herself articulating the problem and how she intends to solve it, using Major Disaster as a mouthpiece, the League comes up with a plan...Well, in actuality, they accede to Sister Superior's plan.

Who is Sister Superior? She's Vera Lynn Black, a powerful cyborg whose mechanical arms can transform into veritable trees of branching weaponry...and she's also the sister of Manchester Black, a character who would have been fairly familiar to Superman readers in the first years of the new century.

Manchester Black was the cynical, cigarette-smoking, Union Jack t-shirt wearing, psychic leader of The Elite, an Authority analogue team that Kelly, Mahnke and Nguyen introduced in 2002's Action Comics #775, the instant-classic "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice and The American Way?"

In that earlier anniversary issue, Kelly used Black and The Elite to articulate the arguments espoused by the then still-popular Authority of writer Warren Ellis and artists Brian Hitch and Paul Neary, regarding pro-active, aggressive, ruthless, efficient and unsentimental superheroics being employed to make the world a better place, whether the world liked it or not. 

Thes nature of such might-makes-right superheroics were, in Kelly's issue, contrasted with the more traditional superheroics as represented by the old-fashioned Superman. 

Naturally enough, Superman won the fight against The Elite in his comic book, and, seemingly, the argument of ideas (In a way, "What's So Funny..." read a bit like Kingdom Come, albeit hyper-condensed into less than 40 pages, and more focused on the Ellis/Mark Millar-style "realistic" superheroes of the time than the grimmer and grittier trends of the '90s). 

Kelly actually addresses this in that JLE trade intro too. He doesn't name any particular writers or titles of course, and said it wasn't meant to be anti-dark comics or anti-"angry, kick-ass heroes.":

As I've said on many occasions, I like dark stories. I prefer dark stories, in fact. What ticks me off is stories that beat down their predecessors under the guise of "post-modern reexamination." A one-sided butt-whupping of comics' good old days, where imagination, pulp, and innocence sold a story. Because, as everyone knows, "In the real world, superheroes would act like this, and you're an idiot for thinking otherwise..."

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Manchester Black went on to become a superman villain of sorts, featured most prominently in the Superman event story "Ending Battle," at the end of which he seemingly died. Kelly said he used Black again solely to kill him off, so no one else would end up using him. 

"He was a one-note villain," Kelly wrote. "Maybe two at best."

Anyway, in "Elitism", Kelly plays with the timeline of recent events, only gradually revealing that despite the conflict between a new, reconstituted Elite lead by Sister Superior and Superman's Justice League, the two teams were actually working together all along, the League helping prop up The Elite as villains that the entire world could rally against and, thus united, could convince Gaea not to destroy the world.

And so after a series of brief portentous scenes—a mysterious appearance by the late Manchester Black, Superman waking from a dream, the Trinity seeing a series of coordinated attacks, Major Disaster being unable to control his emotions—The Elite tear the roof of the Capitol Building, Sister Superior announcing that, because they have done such a shitty job so far, "the governments of the world are hereby disbanded" and that "In twelve hours, you will prepare for new management-- --and hand the keys to the Earth to the people who can do it right."

It's the kind of audacious declaration a supervillain might make, delivered with the sarcasm typical of Ellis or Millar characters...although it's not an argument entirely without merit. 

I mean, if Darkseid or Lex Luthor made it? Sure, but they're bad guys. The Elite aren't villains, but anti-heroes and well, the world is kind of screwed up, isn't it?  Throughout the issue, Vera and others will drop bits of dialogues suggesting the various ways in which it is. Maybe if there was someone powerful enough to take over the world and straighten it all out for the better, that wouldn't be the worst thing ever, would it...?

Naturally, Superman and the Justice League appear to fight The Elite in Washington D.C. and, despite the League's superior numbers—The Elite are here just Sister Superior, The Hat, Coldcast and a new, second Menagerie—our heroes are defeated, with The Flash and Manitou Raven seemingly killed during the battle (An early tell, of course, that there's more than meets the eye going on).

Standing over the prone and unconscious Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, Vera sneers, "Back to the funny papers, you lot."

"Reality rules," she says. "Dreams are dead." This is a reference to her brother's argument with Superman in Action Comics a few years earlier, in which Manchester Black told Superman that he's "living in a bloody dream world," and Superman made a short, punchy speech about the power of his dream, and how he will never stop fighting to make it a reality.

As becomes increasingly clear throughout the issue, though, the Elite vs. JLA fight was all a ruse, a way to show the world that the League can't save them this time, and that the governments of the world will all need to fight together this time, joining forces to take down The Elite.

This all leads to a scene in which The Elite are teleported to a battlefield, where they are surrounded by a handful of Leaguers...and every single army in the world. 

The Elite loses that fight, of course, but mid-battle Gaea appears, saying, "I have seen enough, my children... And I am sorry that I doubted you." Convinced in humanity's ability to work together, she calls off the natural disasters, and the end of the world. 

It's a very satisfyingly told story, maybe the best of Kelly's JLA comics (it certainly helps that, due to its relative brevity, it can be quite tightly constructed), and one that demonstrates the many virtues of various Justice Leaguers and their ability to successfully work their peculiar beat, the routine saving of the world.

It's also another great showcase for the Mahnke/Nguyen art team, allowing them to draw not only their League, but also revisit the Elite characters, and sell some pretty big moments.

For these first 36 pages, it's a perfectly solid Justice League story, and a nice introduction to a new character in the form of Sister Superior and, perhaps, a new direction for The Elite, as darker heroes who can play villains when necessary, foils or scapegoats for the Justice League, whose goals they ultimately support, even if they have arguments with the specifics of their methods.

But then there's the last two pages. 

In the course of 11 panels, Vera argues with Superman, Batman and Martian Manhunter about the prospect of continuing to work with the League...sort of. 

"There are threats that the JLA could confront using...unconventional means," Vera says, "But shouldn't, because of what you guys represent."

While Batman sees some value in the League being "more...subversive," he says he doesn't know Vera well enough to approve any such operation with her at its head, while Superman is opposed to the whole project.

"It's dangerous and naive," he says. "How long do you think you can wallow in the filth without getting dirty?"

Major Disaster seems swayed ("...have talked about bein' more pro-active--" he says under his breath), as does, somewhat surprisingly, The Flash, the only one on the League who seems to be actively taking Vera's side. 

As Superman dismisses Vera and she walks away, The Flash follows her, saying over his shoulder, "She's earned the right to be heard, Superman...she's earned it."

"That's it then..." Superman says, rather melodramatically. "The end of the JLA as we know it."

And he was sort of right, although that probably had more to do with DC simply not hiring a new, ongoing creative team for the book's last two years, instead having four different writers and and art teams produce four more arcs, two of which seemed to be evergreen fill-ins that could just as easily have been slotted into the upcoming JLA Classified  series ("Pain of the Gods", "Syndicate Rules") and two of which tie-in to crossover events storylines ("Crisis of Consciences", "World Without a Justice League"). 

Meanwhile, Kelly, Mahnke and Nguyen would follow Vera Lynn Black and The Elite, and follow-up on those last two pages of JLA #100, in the 12-part Justice League Elite series. In that series, the JLA's Manitou Raven, Major Disaster and The Flash would join Vera, Coldcast, Menagerie and Green Arrow Oliver Queen and "new" character Kasumi to form a new undercover, black-ops team (The Flash would remain on both The League and The Elite and, in JLA Secret Files & Origins 2004 #1, actually work the same case for both teams simultaneously, which is, of course, only possible for a speedster; interestingly, DC had "The Tenth Circle" pencil artist John Byrne draw the JLA half of that particular story). 

JLE is a pretty great series, and well worth seeking out if you haven't read it already.

"Elitism" was collected in 2005's Justice League Elite Vol. 1 and 2016's JLA Vol. 8.

Next: Chuck Austen and Ron Garney's "Pain of the Gods" from 2004's JLA # 101-106