Advertise on Eye on ComicsAnnotations – Justice League of America #10
Posted by Don MacPherson on June 24th, 2007
With this week’s release of Justice League of America #10, Brad Meltzer and Geoff Johns’s JLA/JSA/Legion of Super-Heroes teamup tale comes to a close. And that means I have one last installment of my “Lightning Saga” annotations to share. The two writers, with their scripts for this event, have mined some somewhat obscure veins of continuity, and these notes should help some newer readers make sense of the story. For the previous four sets of these annotations, you can click here, here, here and here. Otherwise, let’s proceed with the final set in the series…
Justice League of America #10
“The Lightning Saga, Final Chapter”
Cover art: The art for the regular-cover edition — depicting Dream Girl, Black Canary and Michael Turner’s depiction of Power Girl’s ginormous bust — was the source of considerable controversy in the comics blogosphere when it was initially released to promote this issue. Word also broke that writer Brad Meltzer was so taken aback by Turner’s emphasis of the character’s impossibly large breasts that he demanded it be altered. Power Girl has been depicted as being well-endowed pretty much since she appeared in Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis’s Justice League comics during the property’s humor era in the late 1980s.
Page 4: As will become apparent later in this issue, the various global locales where the Legionnaires can be found are places where pivotal events involving DC’s various speedster heroes have occurred. The Tokyo and Smallville locations refer to events from Infinite Crisis. Wally West was drawn into the Speed Force most recently during a climactic conflict with Superboy-Prime in Smallville in Infinite Crisis, and during that confrontation, “dead” speedsters — Barry Allen, Max Mercury and Johnny Quick — emerged from the Speed Force and dragged the deranged Superboy-Prime back in with them. Bart Allen, formerly known as Impulse and Kid Flash, was also drawn into the Speed Force during Infinite Crisis, and he emerged from it in Tokyo to warn Earth’s heroes that Superboy-Prime had broken free of the otherworldly trap.
Timber Wolf is at Barry Allen’s old police lab in Central City, where Barry and Wally West gained their speed powers after two separate accidents during which they were doused by chemicals that were struck by lightning. Also worthy of note is the fact that another noted super-hero icon is based in a fictional city called Central City. The Spirit, created by Will Eisner, fights crime in a different Central City.
Wildfire’s presence in San Francisco likely stems from the fact that Impulse, AKA Bart Allen, reinvented himself as the new Kid Flash in the Bay Area during his time with the most recent incarnation of the Teen Titans. The Gotham City site is where the Batman saw an image of a time-travelling Barry Allen as he sacrificed his life in Crisis on Infinite Earths to destroy a doomsday machine created by the Anti-Monitor.
Starman’s “wax on, wax off” comment in the final panel is a reference to a different Karate Kid. In the 1980s, Ralph Macchio (the actor, not the Marvel Comics editor) starred in The Karate Kid, a movie about a teen who forms a friendship with the elderly man who teaches him the art of karate. The teacher, played by Pat Morita, taught the boy karate moves by way of household chores (waxing his car, painting his fence, etc.). The successful movie spawned three sequels, two starring Macchio and a final one starring a young Hilary Swank.
Page 5: Keystone City is the base of operations of the Golden Age Flash and of Wally West when he took on the mantle of the Flash from his uncle Barry Allen after Crisis on Infinite Earths. There were various Speed Force events in Keystone City over the years. In the dialogue on this page, Dream Girl refers to herself as “Dreamgirl.” Her code name was always presented as two words in Legion comics. I would imagine this is a small editing oversight. Starman’s dialogue caption in the first panel refers to her as his “dreamer.” Dream Girl’s codename in post-Zero Hour continuity (Zero Hour was a cosmic crossover event published in 1994) was Dreamer.
Page 7: Superman refers to the “espionage squad.” The Legion of Super-Heroes had a special subgroup within its ranks that took on missions that required stealth rather than raw power or diplomacy. As mentioned in previous sets of these annotations, seven Legionnaires held a pseudo-scientific ritual to bring Lightning Lad back from the dead in Adventure Comics #312. The process called for one of their number to be sacrificed to resurrect Lightning Lad; in the end, Proty, Chameleon Boy’s shape-shifting pet, took Saturn Girl’s place and sacrificed himself so none of the heroes would die. The Curt Sawn art in panel four on this page is from that Silver Age story.
Rao is a sun god of the lost civilization of Krypton and was the planet’s chief deity.
Page 8: The notion that Wildfire’s containment suit is somehow composed of the same components and technology as the Red Tornado’s android body is, as far as I can tell, an idea that has been introduced in “The Lightning Saga.”
Page 11: The Legionnaires refer to their flight rings as “force rings.” They apparently have been equipped with the same forcefield technology as Brainiac 5′s belt.
Page 13: Timber Wolf looks forward to being reunited with his lover, Ayla. He’s referring to Ayla Ranzz, AKA Light Lass, Lightning Lad’s sister and a fellow Legionnaire.
Page 14: Karate Kid is in Blue Valley, a small town where Wally West grew up and operated in his heroic identity of Kid Flash for years. As for what Karate Kid says in an apparently Asian language, I have no idea. Perhaps a well-educated reader out there can fill me in on it.
Page 18: Clearly, the repeated references to “Lightning Lad” in this series weren’t to the founding member of the Legion, but to Wally West. He was something of a “lightning lad” himself; his first hero guise was as Kid Flash, complete with lightning motifs in his costumes. The timing of Wally West’s return is perfect, given that his successor as the Flash, Bart Allen, died in The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13, released the same week as this comic book.
When Wally West was drawn into the Speed Force last time, he went with his wife, Linda Park-West, and their infant, twin children. Apparently, the kids have grown. They’re dressed in the uniforms of Don and Dawn Allen, the Tornado Twins. They were Barry and Iris Allen’s children, who were raised in the 30th century and inherited their father’s speed powers. Dawn Allen grew up and had a child, Bart Allen.
Page 21: As noted in previous installments of these annotations, this isn’t the first time Karate Kid has spent an extended period of time in the present. The premise of his self-titled series in the 1970s was that he “moved” from the 30th century to the 20th for a while, a move DC probably made as a result of the popularity of martial-arts in pop culture at the time.
Page 22: Hal Jordan’s best friend was Barry Allen, so he shares something of an uncle-nephew bond with Wally West. Red Arrow, when he was Green Arrow’s sidekick Speedy, was Wally’s teammate and friend in the original incarnation of the Teen Titans (when Wally was Kid Flash).
Page 23: Apparently, Brainiac 5 was expecting a different Flash to return from the Speed Force, likely Barry Allen. The shadowy figure accompanying Karate Kid refers to “the Countdown” beginning. This is a reference to the events of Countdown, a weekly series currently being published by DC Comics leading up to the next big cosmic crossover event. Karate Kid is expected to be one of the central characters of Countdown.
Page 24: Translated, the Interlac chapter title at the bottom of the page reads: “The Villain Is the Hero in His Own Story.”
It merits note that the trio of villains who showed up earlier in this five-part story arc — Per Degaton, the Ultra-Humanite and Despero — weren’t apparently active factors in the story. Perhaps it was a setup for the next JLA/JSA teamup tale.
June 25th, 2007 at 12:29 am
[...] Secondly, Don MacPherson finishes off his excellent series of annotations for the Lightning Saga crossover at his neat-o blog here, with his annotations for Justice League of America #10. [...]
June 25th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Chiming in from the Legion Omnicom…. some corrections to your annotations.
Page 4 – it was specifically noted on page 17 that the Titans Tower location had been visited (in the SF area).
Page 7 – Sensor Girl/Princess Projectra was never known to have had two hearts before this storyline.
Page 8 – You’re right, the Red Tornado/Wildfire angle is also brand new for this story (an ongoing theme…)
Page 9 – Starman refers to “Kal-L”. Hmmm.
Page 10 – the Flash image Batman recalls is what he saw in an early issue of Crisis (#1 or 2, I think), while the image GL sees is what Barry most likely told him happened in Showcase #4.
Page 11 – the Legion flight rings are not the same design as they would have been in the original pre-Crisis timeline. These resemble the post-Zero Hour reboot Legion’s flight rings.
Page 13 – Timber Wolf saying “I’m coming, Ayla” sounds as if he’s prepared to die and thus they can be reunited in death. Ayla Ranzz never died in any Legion continuity.
Page 14 – according to a Newsarama interview with Johns and Meltzer, Karate Kid says “Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.”
Page 18 – my take on the “Lightning Lad” thing: the whole time it’s been a code word for the plan on what they were going to do – revive a Flash in the manner similar to how they revived Lightning Lad. His name was used as a post-hypnotic trigger to restore powers and memories for the other time-lost Legionnaires. It was invoked again by Karate Kid as mental shorthand for “we revived Lightning Lad this way, so let’s do the same thing and revive a Flash”. Nobody had ever referred to Wally as “Lightning Lad”, though the name does now take on an added reference in this instance, a lad who rides the lightning.
Page 21 – the in-story reason why Karate Kid went back in time is that he was proving himself to Projectra’s father, King Voxv.
Page 23 – you read it totally wrong. It’s not that they expected another Flash to return from the Speed Force, it’s that their main purpose was to capture someone within the lightning rod (Brainy says “we got who we wanted”), and they didn’t expect Wally to appear at all.
Page 24 – whoever wrote the Interlac here accidentally put in L’s instead of H’s. Thus, the “real” translation is “Tle Villain Is tle Lero in Lis Own Story”.
June 25th, 2007 at 1:36 am
Actually, the Interlac chapter title at the bottom of page 24 reads: “The villian is tLe Lero in Lis own story”. Apparently, whoever was inserting the interlac font didn’t realize that the letter “H” has its own representation and DOES NOT share a character with the letter “L”.
June 25th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Picky correction; Wally didn’t gain his powers in Barry’s police lab. Rather, in Barry’s apartment where Barry told him Flash kept a private lab which happened to have that same set of chemicals for Wally to be splattered with by a lightning bolt.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:53 am
The makers of the Karate Kid movies had to get permission from DC to use the name, as well (it’s in the credits, if I recall correctly).
June 25th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Power Girl’s breasts have been consistently depicted as quite large since her introduction, not just since Justice League Europe. Go read those 70s All-Star Comics issues sometime. You’ll see what I mean.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Anthony wrote:
Power Girl’s breasts have been consistently depicted as quite large since her introduction, not just since Justice League Europe. Go read those 70s All-Star Comics issues sometime. You’ll see what I mean.
Some artists may have depicted her (and other) female heroines as well endowed in the past, but it wasn’t until the Giffen/DeMatteis tenure on the Justice League books that it became an acknowledged character trait for Power Girl. Look at the Rick Hoberg-illustrated Power Girl limited series of the 1980s. Karen Starr is depicted as being downright slender.
June 25th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Tom wrote:
Picky correction; Wally didn’t gain his powers in Barry’s police lab. Rather, in Barry’s apartment where Barry told him Flash kept a private lab which happened to have that same set of chemicals for Wally to be splattered with by a lightning bolt.
If anyone else made the claim, I might take issue with it because I remember the Kid Flash origin differently. But when it’s coming from comics trivia master Tom Galloway, you know it’s right. Thanks for the correction, Tom!
June 25th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I read somewhere that Wally Wood used to increase the size of Power Girl’s chest each issue of All-Star Comics to see if anyone would catch it.
June 25th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Large breasts are not a character trait. They are a physical trait.
Drawing a character as large-breasted and having that occasionally come up in the character’s interaction with others is one thing.
This drawing, by contrast, is anatomically impossible and grossly breast-fetishistic. Mr. Turner is this decade’s Russ Meyer, except Mr. Meyer’s actresses did stuff.
June 25th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
“I read somewhere that Wally Wood used to increase the size of Power Girl’s chest each issue of All-Star Comics to see if anyone would catch it.”
I’ve heard that legend before, but I think that’s not the whole of the story. Apparently Wally Wood had had a history of drawing large breasted blond women. Well, not large by modern super heroine standards, but large by any other standards. The largest I’ve seen of Power Girl’s breasts in any Wally Wood drawings wouldn’t even stand out as above average in today’s comics.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Ragnell did a Wally Wood “Power Girl Brestrospective” last year. Check it out for the myth vs reality.
June 26th, 2007 at 4:53 am
how about that lame reference to Power Girl’s torpedos by Firebrand in the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters run. That was awful.
June 26th, 2007 at 10:31 am
What made Meltzer think he had enough space in this massive crossover to waste pages on Ultra-Humanite and Despero?
If they were red herrings they weren’t properly explained away. And if those scenes were set-up, they didn’t hint at enough mystery to be remembered. If they’re set-up unrelated to this story or its future sequels then what’s it doing in the middle of this story with no explanation?
June 26th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Don,
First of all, thank you so very much for making these annotations. As someone who never read a silver age comic but love both the JLA and the JSA, your work was incredibly helpful.
I found the story overall to be enjoyable, but my lack of knowledge of these Legionaires was a bit of a hurdle that these annotations helped me clear.
I’ve got nothing to add to the annotations, but with the wrap of this storyline, I wanted to express my thanks.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
It’s NOT just the breast size on PG on that particular cover — although that is a symptom of the problem — and I do find it a skoosh less obnoxious now that PG has been taken from a J cup to a G.
It’s that all the women have vapid expressions and look like PASSIVE inflate-a-dates. The most important thing about PG on *that* POS cover is that she’s got huge boobies for guys to oogle.
Contrast that with the other cover. PG’s buxom as all get out, BUT, she’s also Active. She’s. Doing. Something.
She’s not just there as wank material.
June 27th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Am i the only one who notes that Brainiac 5 says “in THIS universe”? For me, it looks like he’s acknowledged the idea the Legion visited another universe…
July 1st, 2007 at 12:55 am
So who was the shadowy figure (apparently a woman) that Karate Kid ran off with?
July 1st, 2007 at 1:05 am
Matt wrote:
So who was the shadowy figure (apparently a woman) that Karate Kid ran off with?
I’m betting the answer to that question lies in some future issue of Countdown.
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Chiming in late, but I have a question that’s been bugging me that I haven’t seen addressed here or elsewhere: Does someone die in the “resurrection” ritual? Wasn’t that the whole point – the Legionnaires volunteering for a potential suicide mission, hiding it from Superman, Batman’s reason for wanting to thwart the plan? Without it, aren’t these issues pretty pointless – meaning they could have just told the JLA & JSA why they were there and executed the plan?
I guess the cop out is that Wally wasn’t “dead”, but it would have been nice to have had that acknowledged. Still a cop out, but a “huh, we all made it” or something would have made this whole exercise feel a little less pointless.
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Sorry, forgot to mention – thanks Don! For someone who apparently only thought he had a good background in DC minutia, these were helpful and entertaining!
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Sean wrote:
Chiming in late, but I have a question that’s been bugging me that I haven’t seen addressed here or elsewhere: Does someone die in the “resurrection” ritual?
No one died this time around, but in the original Silver Age story that’s referenced in “The Lightning Saga,” Proty, Chameleon Boy’s pet, sacrifices himself (posing as Saturn Girl).
Wasn’t that the whole point – the Legionnaires volunteering for a potential suicide mission, hiding it from Superman, Batman’s reason for wanting to thwart the plan? Without it, aren’t these issues pretty pointless – meaning they could have just told the JLA & JSA why they were there and executed the plan?
Well, as I understand it, someone was meant to die — Karate Kid — but he “dodged” the lightning. How this allows the ritual to be complete isn’t clear either. I guess this ritual only resembles the original, that no one needed to die at all. Of course, you raise a good point — why not tell the JLA and JSA about the plan?
Thanks for the kind words about the annotations, Sean!