Review: Justice League Vol. 2: The Villain's Journey hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

In examining the emotional dilemmas of a young Justice League, Geoff Johns succeeds with Justice League: A Villain's Journey. Unfortunately, this rich characterization struggles to come to the forefront beside a mostly generic Justice League story, and it's for this reason that the book, like the first volume, may still be dismissed as action movie fluff. Neither does it help Justice League be taken seriously that the story mostly turns on the romantic meanderings of the team's sole female member, Wonder Woman.

[Review contains spoilers]

Among the interesting tweaks that Geoff Johns made to the creation of the Justice League in Justice League: Origins is to establish that the Leaguers are reluctant allies more so than friends, and that their partnership is mainly so that each will be treated with less suspicion individually. Five years later, Johns takes this to its inevitable conclusion -- the Leaguers don't all necessarily like or trust one another, but they have pretended to do so in order to protect their collective reputations.

This is a rich and unique conflict; it’s meant that over the five years, the League has had to pretend to a united front, exhaustingly wary of any public hint of discord, else life become difficult for all of them. To that end, the League has largely set itself apart from humanity, refused to take any new members, and lets Steve Trevor's government ARGUS division speak for them, lest their secret be found out. In essence, the Justice League becomes an additional "secret identity" for each of the heroes -- it keeps the world, necessarily but tragically, from learning that the League is actually made of people who have good days and bad days and don't always get it right the first time.

For anyone who's had to hide their foibles, opinions, or "real selves" from family or peers so as to be accepted, the difficulty Johns sets forth here is infinitely relatable, and underscores the importance of bringing back the "secret identity" concept, in total, to the DC New 52.

This is set, however, against the League's conflict with David Graves, a one-time League biographer who believes the League responsible for the death of his family, and so takes an ill-defined vengeance on them with the help of mystically-granted powers. Graves's seemingly limitless powers take whatever form Johns's story needs -- though Graves mainly appears to control a band of fear-inducing wraiths, he can conveniently teleport from scene to scene with ease, and he also manages to take control of every television, cell phone, and computer in the world. All of this before the League learns that Graves was somehow misled about his powers' origins, though Johns doesn't even hint at what the larger scenario might be.

Graves's "broadcast" powers come in to play when he shows the world a fight between Wonder Woman and Green Lantern, destroying the League's clean image. But Graves has not "pushed" the heroes into fighting, as it initially seems; rather he simply seems to take advantage of their fight and displays it. Graves's motivations are as shifting as his powers -- he attacks the League, he wants to break them up, he wants Wonder Woman to undergo some tragedy specifically, he wants the League to help resurrect his family -- and finally, the League handily defeats him without much epilogue.

The upshot of this is a story not terribly different from former League battles against foes like the Key (who even appears here), Dr. Destiny, or the like. Graves is unremarkable himself (though his Jim Lee-created costume is cool in a Frank Langella's Skeletor kind of way), and for a story called "The Villain's Journey," Graves's journey is really beside the point -- this is the League's story, though the narrative only seems to acknowledge this around the edges. Justice League wants very much to be Justice Society, where in stories like Black Reign or Thy Kingdom Come, the plot- and character-conflicts were one and the same; Justice League hasn't captured that smooth duality quite yet.

It's also generally problematic that Villain's Journey turns, essentially, on the problems with having a woman on an all-male team. Trevor has protected the League and buffered them from inquisition largely because of his unrequited affection for Wonder Woman. The other Leaguers understand this, but take advantage of Trevor's services because he's convenient to have around. Ultimately it's Diana's conflicted feelings about Trevor that cause the public falling out with Green Lantern; then, the book's cliffhanger conclusion is a kiss (with no earlier build-up or romantic tension) between Wonder Woman and Superman.

One can extrapolate that if Steve Trevor didn't have feelings for Wonder Woman, and if Wonder Woman hadn't spurned him, Graves wouldn't have been able to use Trevor against the League. The players could as easily have been Green Lantern and UN representative Catherine Cobert or Batman and the Suicide Squad's Amanda Waller (a pairing that should totally happen), but instead the team falls apart because it's their only female member who's wishy-washy about her suitor. In combination with the Superman kiss, Diana emerges as Justice League's go-to romance character, as if the book isn't sure what else to do but punt her between relationships.

Certainly Justice League is good escapist entertainment and the Jim Lee-penned sections are pretty to look at, but it's this general creakiness of the storytelling that makes it hard for me to recommend Justice League unequivocally.

Villain's Journey starts off with a "day in the life" focus on Trevor, and then also a one-shot team-up with Green Arrow. In this chapter, and really throughout the book, Johns offers shout-outs to events in other titles (Batman, Justice League Dark, Justice League International, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, among others), which nicely demonstrates how Justice League functions as the "spine" of the DC New 52. Johns also teases untold battles between the League and villains like Amazon and Weapons Master, a boon to long-time fans because it offers some indication that the classic League stories may still be in play. Best of all, Johns shows that the Martian Manhunter did indeed join the League at some point (even if he later fought them), preserving J'onn's "classic" role in this title.

Often Justice League titles have either told grand stories with the Big Seven or detailed stories with second-tier heroes, but rarely both. Justice League: The Villain's Journey succeeds in giving the Big Seven personality, but loses the grandness in the shuffle. I'll keep rooting for it, though; a Justice League story of the likes of Geoff Johns's JSA: Stealing Thunder would be something to see, indeed.

[Includes original and variant covers/

Tomorrow, the start of a special Collected Editions series, reading Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing collections. See you then!

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Review: Smax by Alan Moore hardcover/paperback (Wildstorm/America's Best Comics)

[Review by Doug Glassman.]

I reviewed Top 10 a long time ago, so here’s a refresher. It’s a police procedural made of up an original series and a subsequent mini-series, set in a world where every sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book trope is quite real and everyone has superpowers. Like many of Alan Moore’s books, it’s filled with shout-outs to other works. Smax was the giant, blue, terse partner of Robyn “Toybox” Slinger, and is most famous for taking out one of the original series’s big bads; essentially, he’s the series’s Wolverine, and while he’s not my favorite character (that honor belongs to walking Japanese robot homage Joe Pi), I can understand why he received his own mini-series, the five-issue Smax.

We didn’t learn a lot about Jeff Smax in the original series, and it turns out that it’s by design. His real name Jaafs Macksun, and we meet him here shortly after the events of the original series (Robyn’s leg is still broken from the ending of Top 10), as he heads home for his Uncle Mack’s funeral. Smax is from a world of fantasy tropes, and he’s very ashamed of it, considering the residents of his homeworld to be the rednecks of a universe based in science (and comics). His father was an ogre who raped his Red Sonja-esque mother, and one of the strongest scenes in the book is the retelling of how he and his twin sister, Rexa, killed their father. It reminds me of the scene in the Odyssey of the blinding of Polyphemus; knowing Moore’s love of literature, I’m guessing this was intentional.

For a long time, Smax was a dragon-slayer, which on his world requires dwarf quotas and permits from Death itself. He received a white mark on his chest from a young girl he was unable to save from a powerful creature called Morningbright. When signs force him to take on a quest, he relents in his attempts to leave. Meanwhile, Robyn has taken on the role of a wizard, and when she finds that her weaponized toys don’t work in a non-electric world, she decides to bring some science into this fantasy. One advantage Alan Moore has over some writers, like Grant Morrison, is that he writes excellent endings, and the trick that Robyn pulls off in the end is one of my favorites.

While the plot is simple, the meat of the story lies in the details. We learn an important fact about Smax: he isn’t that smart. He’s intelligent enough to lead his own life, but his terse nature comes from not knowing what to say in tough situations. This helped him during his time as a dragon-slayer, when life was easy, but living in Neopolis has changed his way of thinking. He has a tough time relating to his sister, Rexa, with whom he has a sexual relationship. On Parallel Earth 137, this is nothing major, but it drives the “redneck” analogy that both Smax and Moore use. It’s a world so backwards that it’s not reachable by spacecraft -- only by a vomit-inducing spell.

Robyn and Smax are accompanied by his adopted dwarf brother and two of his friends, who sort of hang in the back and make jokes about The Hobbit. They were essential for exactly one joke, and I think Moore could have used them for much more humor. A better character is Aldric the elf, who sweet-talks Robyn into loving him while trying to get his green card to go to Neopolis.

Morningbright is a classic "unknowable" eldritch horror character; he wouldn’t be out of place in a Lovecraft story. Zander Cannon’s design is immediately memorable: a cat-like, flat face with six eyes and curved horns. Morningbright is essentially omnipotent and omniscient and he feeds on the souls of virgin children. I’m not entirely sure how highly he ranks on my Crazy Awesome Index; he’s certainly powerful and cruel enough to be there, but I don’t think he can top Carnage, Mac Gargan, or General Spears. He is, however, amazingly creepy, communicating the future in acrostic form and constantly changing size around our heroes. Another creepy character is Dennis, the reaper responsible for some truly epic deaths. The Death seen earlier during the quest paperwork is a minor one who constantly loses at badminton, similar to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey or Discworld.

Zander Cannon was one of Top 10’s original artists, so there’s no jarring transitions from the original book. The only weird detail is Smax’s beard, which grows rapidly and gets miscolored as blue instead of white at various points. His beard length, along with the limited use of the dwarfs, makes me wonder if an issue was cut; a five-issue mini-series is strange, and an extra issue would have given Moore and Cannon room to flesh things out. Cannon puts tons of details into the backgrounds, with shout-outs to obvious and non-obvious sources.

To catch all of the hidden details, check out the Smax annotations by Jess Nevins and Foo Sek Han. Make sure to e-mail them if you’ve caught something that they haven’t. One of the most blatant, yet funniest, jokes is a Dumbledore analogue dragging along a shell-shocked “Trotter” through the wreckage of one of Morningbright’s rampages. This is actually a better origin for Harry Potter than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2009 was. There’s also some background number-to-letter codes for hidden messages.

If you enjoyed Top 10, then Smax is an enjoyable revisiting of the setting. If you haven’t read Top 10, then this won’t make a lot of sense and will fall flat. It doesn’t cover as much ground as its predecessor, but it goes into a far different world with its own jokes and potential. It’s also quite expensive on Amazon, so hopefully your LCS has a copy on-hand.

Thanks, Doug! For more Moore, see our review of Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones from earlier this week (comparing Snyder's book to the Alan Moore run), and tune in Friday for the first of a new Collected Editions series, reading Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing. Tomorrow, it's the Collected Editions review of Justice League Vol. 2: The Villain's Journey. Don't miss it!

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Number 1307: Undercover Girl meets Deep Throat!

Undercover Girl, who was featured for a time in the late forties in Manhunt comics from ME, was actually U.S. Government agent Starr Flagg.

Starr is a glamorous agent. She wears her spike heels and sexy lingerie while lounging about at home, and she has sexy fights with other women, including this evil babe, Lala the sword swallower. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a lot more interested in that art since I read a judge’s decision from the early seventies about the movie, Deep Throat. The judge compared star Linda Lovelace to a sword swallower. Watching Lala in action in this tale is no disappointment.

Undercover Girl is mighty sexy. Check out another of her girlfights in Pappy's #1117, where she tussles with a chick with a whip and her pet gorilla...it's a lot for six pages.

Drawn by Ogden Whitney, written by Gardner Fox, “The Riddle of the Radio-Death” is from Manhunt #7 (1948):

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Review: Swamp Thing Vol. 1: Raise Them Bones trade paperback (DC Comics)

It's definitely good to have a new Swamp Thing title on the newsstands. Irrespective of whether one would prefer the Swamp Thing title under the auspices of DC Comics or Vertigo, it remains that Swamp Thing is back for a new audience in the New 52, with writer Scott Snyder and artist Yanick Paquette. But Snyder's Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones is a devoutly New 52 series, focusing to a surprising extent on the man within the monster. This will certainly be a point of controversy -- depending on what version of Swamp Thing a reader subscribes to, Snyder's incarnation may amount to heresy.

[Review contains spoilers]

When Alan Moore took over the Saga of the Swamp Thing title in the 1980s, beginning the best-known run for the character, one of his first changes was to reveal that scientist Alec Holland was not the hulking Swamp Thing. Rather, Swamp Thing was a plant elemental created at the moment of Holland's fiery death, as other swamp things had been created before him, who mistakenly believed for a time that he was Holland. This freed the Swamp Thing character for more self-actualized stories; gone was the pathos of a man trapped in a monster's body, but at the same time Moore could now tell stories about Swamp Thing proper, not Alec-Holland-trapped-in-Swamp-Thing's-body.

Snyder's Swamp Thing is both entirely faithful to Moore's version, and radically different. Snyder's focus character is one Alec Holland, mysteriously resurrected from the dead and having never been Swamp Thing, though sharing all of Swamp Thing's memories. In this way, Moore's Swamp Thing existed, many of his adventures happened, and it's all preserved within Holland. And yet, Snyder retroactively reveals that Holland had been meant by the ruling Parliament of Trees to be Swamp Thing all along, and only with Holland's untimely death had Moore's "substitute" Swamp Thing been created as Holland's replacement. Moore's Swamp Thing existed, but he's been relegated to an experiment or placeholder; his adventures took place, but they don't necessarily "count."

If this dismays some Swamp Thing fans, the fault is not necessarily Snyder's; the idea of Alec Holland as the true Swamp Thing bore mention in Geoff Johns's Brightest Day finale, too. Undoubtedly some will see this as another strike by DC against Moore; with these changes, DC's Swamp Thing acknowledges Moore's work but simultaneously unshackles itself from it.

For better or worse, all of this adheres well to the tenets of the New 52 -- younger characters, more realistic and believable. Snyder makes the interesting creative choice -- in a book called Swamp Thing with an image of the "classic" Swamp Thing on the cover -- never to have the monster appear in the book until the end, and then mostly off-panel. The New 52 Swamp Thing's first volume is entirely Alec Holland's. The audience is therefore reminded for however long the Swamp Thing series lasts that there is a living, breathing man inside the monster, because that man gets seven issues of his own in the spotlight before he becomes the swampy beast. It's the equivalent of Grant Morrison writing about the T-shirted Superman before he gets his costume; Raise Them Bones is Swamp Thing's pre-origin.

The book itself is entertaining enough, though it pales in unfair comparison both to Moore's seminal Swamp Thing work and to Snyder's Batman: The Black Mirror -- Raise Them Bones is adequately scary, but it's not James Gordon Jr. scary. Snyder's Holland wants nothing to do with Swamp Thing or the Parliament of Trees until he's stalked by agents of the dark Rot, broken-necked zombies with a penchant for sharp objects. The action scenes with these demons are good, as are Holland's interactions with old friends and enemies, but Snyder gives over too many pages to repetitive exposition from the Parliament, especially later in the book. For seven issues, there isn't especially much that happens from the beginning to the end of Raise Them Bones.

Fans of Moore's Swamp Thing won't recognize the motorcycle-riding, shotgun-toting Abigail Arcane in Snyder's story, either (there's an apocalyptic Walking Dead vibe to the book that's too heavy in comparison to Moore's lighter, episodic Swamp Thing horror). Snyder does, however, finally offer a plausible explanation for Moore's sudden, inexplicable romance between Abby and Swamp Thing -- that, like Romeo and Juliet, they are representatives of two warring sides, the Green and the Rot, who can only find peace with one another. Abby exits the book at the end, just as Holland becomes Swamp Thing, and one hopes Snyder does not permanently keep her out of the book, nor make her (like Mary, Queen of Blood in I, Vampire) Swamp Thing's permanent nemesis and opposite number.

The amalgamation of old and new Swamp Thing legend here can't help but remind the audience of DC's recent steps with the Legion of Super-Heroes, cutting off their history after Great Darkness Saga and Crisis on Infinite Earths and grafting it to the present, leaving the "Five Years Later" and other eras in limbo. The same thing happens here -- Snyder's Abby makes no mention of she and Swamp Thing's daughter Tefe, for instance, suggesting that Swamp Thing's history has been snipped roundabouts the end of Moore's run and brought forward to the New 52 (this is beneficial, and perhaps not accidental, in that Moore's Swamp Thing trades are the ones most available to interested readers). But Snyder's Parliament also suggests that the "original" Swamp Thing has died, a story untold in previous comics, so one might hope Snyder will tell a flashback tale at some point and indeed spotlight the classic monster for an issue.

Artist Yanick Paquette brings forth both the Green and the Rot well, often using creative panel bordering to highlight each. His twisted-headed zombies and various undead farm animals are appropriately gory, and will undoubtedly become more so as the Swamp Thing title nears the upcoming "Rotworld" crossover with Jeff Lemire's Animal Man. As a boon to collection and digital readers, Paquette's pages often seem like two-page spreads, but they're instead single, thematically similar pages, making single-page reading easier. Guest artist Marco Rudy emulates Paquette's style well at first, but when he inks himself in issue #6 the art becomes too dark and scattered; though it features a climactic fight, this is the poorest of the issues.

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing is a literary highlight in DC Comics's library, a run that was frightening and cosmic, socially aware and romantic, funny and faithful to the overarching DC mythology around it. In contrast, Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing: Raise Them Bones is Swamp Thing-light, a story where Alec Holland runs around for a while before the book's inevitable conclusion. Whereas Jeff Lemire's Animal Man felt as though it stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Grant Morrison's ground-breaking run, Snyder's Swamp Thing still has a ways to go. That the DC Universe has a Swamp Thing again is auspicious, however, and hopefully things only get better from here.

[Includes original covers, sketchbook and cover designs by Yanick Paquette]

Later this week, the Collected Editions review of Justice League Vol. 2: The Villain's Journey. Don't miss it!

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Number 1306: Lorraine the Brain and her “Atomic Amour”

My heart swelled when I read this touching story of a girl who achieved greatness in her field — nuclear physics — only to find failure in love. Tsk, tsk. The only guy who really loved her was a boorish carny barker who embarrassed her endlessly. She fell for the sinister Frenchman who lead her astray, all the way to a cabin in the woods where we assume he wanted his way with her, only to find out he wanted to pick her nuclear brain!

This entertaining love story is from ACG’s Search For Love #2 (1950). In the comments section for this post comic art historian Alberto Becattini has named the artist as John Celardo. Thanks to Alberto for helping with that identification.

Search For Love was very short-lived, only two issues. I don't know why unless sales were bad. Yet ACG’s other love comics, Lovelorn and Romantic Adventures continued for years. It may have been cancelled because of the expanding ACG line taking resources that would have gone into Search For Love. That's a way of saying I don’t know why, trying to sound smarter than I am (no nuclear scientist, I) and now I’m kinda sorry I brought it up...

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Number 1305: “The Plague of Plastic People!”

Two months ago in Pappy's #1268 I showed a Plastic Man story that in my comments I said reminded me of my childhood, when I saw the character as belonging in the same league as Mad comic books. So, okay, then, “Plague of Plastic People!” belongs right alongside that earlier story. I'd call this incredible, joke-in-every-panel story zaniacal...a cross between zany and maniacal. This one pulls out all the stops, the best of what Plastic Man could deliver, and that's saying something.

Also, if you read through the story you'll actually get to see Plastic Man in one panel without his goggles covering his eyes. I don't know if that happened any other time.

From Plastic Man #22 (1950):

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Number 1304: Headlights on full beam

With the 1948 cover of Phantom Lady #17, artist Matt Baker helped give us comic book fans a code word we've used now for decades: “headlights”. It happened when Dr. Fredric Wertham, M.D., published his book, Seduction of the Innocent, which pointed out how murder, crime and sexual perversion were all part of the comic books kids loved. Wertham used the cover to point out that children called big breasts on comic book women “headlights”. (This page has been razored out of some of copies of SOTI I've seen. By headlights fans, no doubt.)

I've pointed out before that Wertham’s book is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It was used at the time to condemn comic books, but is used now to identify comics that belong on a special list of desirable collectibles. Interior art on this story is also by Matt Baker, and the whole issue was prepared by the Jerry Iger comic book shop, where Baker was a star. The publisher was Victor Fox, and the blobby printing was by some fast and dirty web press printing company of the 1940s, which didn't care that they were printing one of the most iconic covers and collectible comic books of all time.

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