Reader quiz for Showcase Presents the Justice League of America, v. 1

After reading Showcase Presents Justice League of America, v. 1, I decided to to something different. Here is a quick quiz about the early days of the JLA. If you aren’t familiar with the stories, don’t worry; it isn’t necessary to guess, if you have any familiarity with the Silver Age.

1) The Justice League has been called into action! But where is Superman?

a) The Bottle City of Kandor.

b) Journeying through time.

c) He’s too popular to be seen with the doofuses who make up the JLA.

d) The villain doesn’t have Kryptonite, so the writer has no idea how to make the plot challenging for Superman.

2) Hey! Batman isn’t here either! Why?

a) Stuck in Gotham traffic

b) The Dark Knight refuses day missions.

c) Batman’s much too popular too. He’s hanging out with Superman.

d) The villain has superpowers, so the writer has no idea how to make Batman effective.

3) The villain has set three plots into motions simultaneously. What should the JLA do?

a) Split into teams that complement each other in power level, temperament, and intelligence.

b) Split into teams randomly because, hey, what’s the worst that can happen?

c) Well, if Superman had showed up, the rest of the team could let him take care of all three plots and knock off early for the day.

d) Screw this, I’m tired of doing triple the work for no pay. Let the Avengers handle it.

4) Martian Manhunter: What’s the first power you use?

a) Martian supervision.

b) Super blow.

c) Super suck.

d) Someone flicked their Bic two counties over, and fire robs me of my powers!

5) Aquaman! Summon your:

a) “Finny friends”

b) “Brothers of the sea”

c) “Filthy fetishes”

d) “Aquatic slave labor force”

6) Flash: use your powers to the fullest by:

a) Vibrating your legs to fly.

b) Vibrating your body to match the dimensional vibration of … something something something. Has to do with molecules, I think.

c) Vibrate your arms to blow something away, because the pilot light in a house two miles away has robbed Martian Manhunter of his super blow powers.

d) Vibrate your body to use your amazing plot-convenience powers.

7) Green Lantern! Why aren’t you attacking?

a) The villain is dressed in yellow.

b) The villain is attacking with a yellow beam.

c) The villain is curious (yellow).

d) Hal just ate yellow snow.

8) What will Wonder Woman do?

a) (HINT: It doesn’t matter.)

9) Why was Green Arrow appointed as the first new recruit?

a) Meritorious service as a solo hero.

b) Substitute Batman, so the team would have a useless member when Batman decided he was too popular to show up.

c) Neat accessories, such as the Arrow Plane, Arrow Car, and Arrow Collar.

d) Bows to peer pressure very easily and is also rich.

10) Oh no! It’s Doctor Light! What will he do?

a) Blind you with a flashlight.

b) Make you “taste the rainbow,” if you know what I mean.

c) Knock you silly with hard light, even though “hard light” is impossible.

d) Rape Steve Trevor and kill Carol Ferris.

11) Superman showed up, but he’s been captured! How?

a) Magic.

b) Also magic.

c) Kryptonite.

d) Magic Kryptonite.

e) Yo momma.

12) The villain has captured the JLA! What will happen to them?

a) They’ll be turned to vapor and displayed in bottles.

b) They’ll be sold at an auction, dressed in all-too-revealing French maid costumes. (NOTE: this will require Wonder Woman to wear more clothing.)

c) They’ll be executed gangland style (except Superman, who will be forced to swallow a Kryptonite pill).

d) They’ll be forced to sing in a public venue and be openly mocked by Simon Cowell.

13) Why is “Snapper” Carr always snapping his fingers?

a) It’s how he expresses approval.

b) It’s how he dissipates his immense sexual mojo.

c) It’s an advanced form of echolocation; exposure to radioactive Kryptonite meant for Superman has left him blind.

d) A better question is why Batman hasn’t ripped off his fingers yet.

14) Why is Snapper allowed to hang out with the JLA, anyway?

a) That damn woman libber Wonder Woman refuses to vacuum more than once a week, so someone has to do the housework.

b) Let’s just say he has … interesting pictures of Superman and Martian Manhunter in the JLA locker room.

c) Government quotas — they were forced to take in at least one talentless dork.

d) Batman wanted a new punching bag, and Snapper’s cheaper than Everlast.

Answers will be revealed, in the Latin tradition, on the Greek calends. Until then, you can score your answers yourselves!

Justice League of America, v. 3: The Injustice League

Collects: Justice League of America (v. 2) #13-6, Justice League of America Wedding Special #1 (2007-8)

Released: June 2008 (DC)

Format: 144 pages / color / $19.99 / ISBN: 9781401218027

What is this?: The Justice League comic crossed with the Superfriends and Justice League Unlimited cartoons — no Wonder Twins, though

The culprits: Writer Dwayne McDuffie and pencils by Ed Benes, Joe Benitez, and Mike McKone

I stay away from the mainstream DC universe because experience and other reviews have told me that they are so mired in continuity that they border on incomprehensible. But I have a soft spot for writer Dwayne McDuffie, and Justice League of America, v. 3: The Injustice League looked isolated enough, so I decided to take a chance.

The good news is that Injustice League requires almost no knowledge of DC history to enjoy, except perhaps that Green Arrow and Black Canary are getting married, but you can figure that out for yourself. The bad news is that Injustice League breaks no new ground, re-treading plots seen before while making the heroes seem not too terribly bright.

I will admit there are some fun parts. McDuffie is a good writer, and his script (if not plot) often shows it. The Wedding Special, with its infuriatingly superior Batman, is a nice touch, and the banter between Black Lightning (who McDuffie does well) and Jon Stewart is fun as well. McDuffie, who was also a writer for the animated Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, does a good job with a large cast, something that can be very difficult.

But Injustice League seems a little backwards looking to me. (And not just because of Benes’s art; zing!) It’s a simple, old-school plot: villains team up to take on heroes, capture the heroes, then screw up by not killing them. There are the rivalries between villains and between heroes and villains. Worst of all, Injustice League seems to take great pride in copying their animated television library. The Hall of Doom, looking exactly like it did in the Superfriends cartoon, gets a double-page spread at one point: Nothing else on the page, just a drawing of building that looks vaguely like Darth Vader’s helmet sitting in a swamp, for no other reasons than to help fanboys who don’t have access to Viagra. The composition of the League is more like the Secret Society of Justice League Unlimited, a large consortium of supervillains joining up to have a chance against the heroes. And then there’s Amanda Waller, also prominently from JLU, showing up to unnerve the heroes and take the captured villains off for some nefarious purpose.

I like the scene at the beginning, with Joker, Lex Luthor, and Cheetah (Cheetah? Really? Needed a Wonder Woman villain, I suppose) selecting the new Injustice League, but even that’s relying on the past, as it mimics the Justice League’s big three selecting the new Justice League at the beginning of v. 2. The difference is, of course, that judging from the size of the new Injustice League, they really weren’t that picky. I also don’t care for the little epigrams at the beginning of each issue; I don’t need my morals spoonfed to me in little yellow text boxes. (Like metal spoons and caviar, it affects the taste.)

Four issues in the main story, three different artists, three different flavors of cheesecake. Normally, I like variety, but not in this case. Look, these are competent artists, but they do have differing styles, and I’d at least like to get used to how females are exploited without having it shifted so quickly. Ed Benes likes him some female buttock — there’s a double page spread where he gets to draw nearly full-page versions of Vixen and Black Canary with their posteriors toward the reader, with a bonus of Wonder Woman spread eagled facing the reader. When he needs to, he contorts the bodies painfully to get a backside view. Joe Benitez seems to like his females standing on their tiptoes, plus he gets to draw a lot of Black Canary in her fishnets. Mike McKone didn’t really have that option. He has to settle for plot-mandated shots of Cheetah’s chest, plot-mandated strippers, and … all right, I’m unfairly lumping McKone in with the other two. Still, he only gets the Special, while Benitez gets #13 and Benes #14-5.

The two backups from JLA #16 strike me as inconsequential. One abandons a cop to an alternate universe and introduces an alternate universe Flash, leaving her lying on the page, without any resolution, characterization, or reason to care; Benitez doesn’t get any women on their tiptoes (plenty of Black Canary, though), but he does get to draw an extremely vacuous, naïve-looking female Flash. In the other, Red Arrow makes a former felon’s Christmas by remembering the old man used to try to kill him. It takes all sorts, I suppose.

This is not bad by any means. If you’re reading Justice League, this is just another volume, and it’s not one that is awful or disappointing. The problem lies with the potential; a huge group of villains against a smaller group of heroes could be pyrotechnic or at least exciting. But McDuffie doesn’t do anything spectacular with the concept, and he doesn’t do much new. I realize he might be setting up future stories, but honestly, even setup should be entertaining in its own way.

Rating: (2 of 5)

Showcase Presents Justice League of America, v. 1

Collects: The Brave and the Bold #28-30, Justice League of America #1-16, and Mystery in Space #75 (1960-2)

Released: December 2005 (DC)

Hey, look! A DC book! Now my life is complete.

Well, not really. But that won’t stop me from plowing through DC Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, v. 1.

JLA v. 1 is most interesting as a 500+-page black-and-white historical artifact. The Silver Age of superhero comics started with the first comic in this volume, The Brave and the Bold #28, in which the JLA fights a giant starfish from space. If you were part of the premiere superteam in the DC Universe, you’d probably choose a less laughable beginning, but this is what we’re given. Not an auspicious beginning, to be sure, but every great trend starts somewhere, and this is where the Silver Age began.

Whatever you can about the differences between DC and Marvel today, this book starkly highlights what was so different about those early Marvel comics. In the JLA, there is no bickering between characters, and there’s very little in the way of interesting interaction between the heroes at all. When they have to split up to fight a menace, they do so randomly or on the basis of working with someone they haven’t worked with before. The characters have no personal lives, and the stories are completely about the plot.

And the plots? Silver Age absurdity. Nitwits like Amos Fortune manipulating the heroes’ (and his own) good and bad luck glands. An alien delon (“equivalent to an Earth dictator”) imprisoning the JLA aboard a space galley, complete with oars. Three wizards conquering Camelot in big-finned Cadillacs. The Getaway Mastermind engineering a prison break with a balloon and matchbox he found … plus a shrinking ray he cobbled together in the prison machine shop. (I especially love the breathless scientific asides: “Scientific experiments by Dr. Burr at Yale University have proven that all living things are surrounded by an electrodynamic field of their own making!”)

I’m being a little harsh. There’s a lot of goofy, nonsensical stuff in early Marvel too. But Marvel doesn’t seem to have villains exploiting the heroes’ weakness in every adventure (kryptonite for Superman, the color yellow for Green Lantern, fire for Martian Manhunter), nor did they have their most popular characters, like Batman and Superman, show up for duty only occasionally. (With the New Avengers, I think Wolverine shows up when he wants to. Want to make something of it, bub?)

For the sake of full disclosure, I received this volume free from the DC booth at the annual American Library Association conference in New Orleans. Thanks, DC!

Overall, JLA v. 1 is dull and lacks the spark of Silver Age Marvel.

Rating: (2 of 5)