Justice League #22

Trinity War! It's about Godfuckingdamned time! So what's the next big story that we're all supposed to wet our underwear over?

Before I get started actually talking about the beginning of The Trinity War, something just occurred to me. When I was reading Jim Shooter's bitter review of Catwoman #1, one of the things he was bitching about was Catwoman's cat carrier! He says of March's work, "He should also get ref on a cat carrier, or at least decide if the one he’s drawing opens on top or at the ends." Hey, Jim Shooter, you fucking garbage bag! MANY CAT CARRIERS OPEN FROM THE TOP AND THE END! DO YOUR FUCKING RESEARCH, YOU STUPID FUCKING CUNT!

Thank you for indulging me. That felt good! I think I can hear Scott Lobdell snickering in the distance. That Trouble Shooter must have been one real peach to work for! Not that it sounds like many head editors at Marvel or DC had an easy time keeping the lousy writers and lazy artists in line! I suppose I don't envy Shooter trying to do that job about as much as I don't envy anybody working under him. At least he was probably a better boss than Mort Weisinger!

Now that I've probably made yet another enemy in the comic book business through my absurd use of hyperbolic anger, let's find out what this Trinity War is all about!

The first thing I notice is how smooth the comic book feels. It's the same material they used for the covers of the Before Watchmen comic books. It slides nicely over my naked body and it smells like a real magazine! It also looks like Katana has her Soultaker blade back! Well fuck! Now Katana #6 is spoiled!

The issue begins with a blonde woman paying a visit to Madame Xanadu. No! Stop it, you dumb woman! She's going to look into your future and see the end of the world! Then she's going to make you pay a shitload of money to change that future. She'll hire a bunch of super heroes and tell them what they need to do to save the world. Then the heroes will run around like monkeys with their dicks cut off until Madame Xanadu says, "We did it! We changed the future!" And everyone will blink and go, "What the fuck did we do?" And Xanadu will wink and nod and say, "Yes." And everyone will look quizzically at each other and go home until the next time Madame Xanadu decides to lie about knowing how to see the future.

Madame Xanadu, you have a mental disorder.

Madame Xanadu continues to ignore the woman's problems while she tries to figure out how this Trinity War comes about. She's merely using this woman as a vehicle to see the future since the woman will also be in that future somewhere. But Xanadu doesn't give a fuck about helping the woman combat her sleep suicide problem she's having. Xanadu decides to do some Tarot to find out who causes the Trinity War. The cards read, "The Boy," and show a picture of Shazam. That's quite the Tarot Deck!

Currently that boy is wondering what to do with Black Adam's ashes. I'm simply impressed that he had the presence of mind to sweep Black Adam into an urn before he could blow away or turn into caked nastiness from rain. He's decided to fly over Khandaq and dump the ashes there. That might be a bad idea seeing as how Khandaq is full of mistrustful leaders who are looking for any excuse to blow the shit out of any other nation.

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman and Superman are on a date touring Belle Reve having a philosophical discussion about capital punishment. Superman says, "I'm not for it but I'm completely up for some corporal punishment!" And Wonder Woman says, "Tee hee!" as she grabs her fanny and runs down the halls of the prison.

Sure, you say it's a Lasso of Truth. But how do we know it's not really a Lasso of False Confessions? And how do we know it's not racist? And does it make a person tell the actual truth whether they know it or not or just what they perceive to be the truth? I don't think your little lasso is as infallible as you'd like to believe, Madam.

Madame Xanadu next turns over the Pandora card. This causes Pandora to approach Superman and Wonder Woman, asking Superman to please open her box because he has the biggest heart. Or maybe Pandora approaching Superman causes Xanadu to turn over the Pandora card. Or maybe it's purely synchronicity and one event has no causal relation to the other!

In another scene over in Washington, DC, Amanda Waller uses the word "literally" and I have to drink. See, it's this ongoing game I have. Whenever somebody says "literally," I drink. It's why I can't watch reality television shows or speak with my friend Jerry before going to work. I guess I just have to figuratively drink this morning though because I drank all of my sake while playing Call of Duty on Thursday night.

Anyway, Amanda wants to recruit Doctor Light onto the Justice League of America even though he only recently received super powers and yet he already has a costume. The costume must have just appeared when his powers did. Maybe Arthur Light just hangs around naked and uses his light powers to create his costume. Except his Light Powers in The New 52 seem to be anti-light powers! He's not a Doctor of Light at all! He's a Cancer to Light! Actually, he probably just doesn't know how to use his powers yet.

This is called "Dramatic Irony."

Madame Xanadu continues turning over cards from the strangest Tarot deck I've ever seen. The Detective?! I wonder if she has a card for every single character of the DCnU in this deck? It's probably mystically big while seeming like it only has 78 cards in it. The reason I know how many cards are in a Tarot Deck has nothing to do with the fact that I used to own the Tarot Deck with art by Dave Mckean. The reason I know the number is because it was a riddle I could never answer in the third Wizardry game, Legacy of Llylgamyn that began, "I am one of the deck of seventy eight." This was back when the internet didn't exist and we were all really stupid and pornless.

While The Atom plays around on an old chess set shaped like the Justice League when Martian Manhunter was a member, Pandora shoves her box into Superman's hands and he flips the fuck out. Apparently his heart isn't as pure as an Irish spring. Pandora takes back the box and beats the hell out of town. Superman failed the audition. Next?!

But before next which will probably be in Trinity War Part Two, the Justice League needs to stop Shazam from starting an international incident by raining human remains down upon the people of Khandaq. And the Justice League of America is heading in to Khandaq to start the international incident that the Justice League is going to stop by stopping the Justice League from starting an international incident.

Ha ha ha! Aquaman sucks!

Over in Khandaq, Superman and Shazam begin pummeling each other while Madame Xanadu, speaking to herself (or maybe John Constantine!), mentions how they all have secrets. Oh, I guess she's not speaking to Constantine then because he already knows that. He is, after all, the master of the House of Secrets. And he may end up in Khandaq with the other Justice League of the Dark members since Batman called up Zatanna before heading to Khandaq. He wanted some tips on how to fight magic people. And Constantine has probably been monitoring Zatanna's phone line since she ditched the team. So they're all probably going to meet in the middle of the Khandaqi desert to discuss what to do about the end of the world.

Well, at least the two main Justice Leagues get to meet. Although it's a pretty sketchy reason to be confronting each other. Just about everybody on the Justice League of America know this whole confrontation is bullshit and yet they're all still participating. Whatever the JLA is paying, it must be some pretty good dough. Or perhaps Martian Manhunter has psychically lowered their resistance to following stupid orders.

The Question makes his first appearance in The Trinity War. He's put up a poster of Superman and then tacked a bunch of yarn to it to help him answer the question "Who is the evil behind the evil?" I think the other questions he's asking are "Why do all of these articles I cut out only say NONONONONONONONONONONONO?" and "How did I get this photo of Superman and Wonder Woman kissing?"

And then Superman blasts Doctor Light in the face with his heat vision, killing him. At least that's what it seems! Madame Xanadu sees it and believes it was someone other than Superman. The Question believes it was The Imputer. Superman thinks it was Superman. So is he innocent or not? Hey, how about tying Supes up with the Lasso of Truth! That'll show everybody whether he's innocent or guilty! Oh wait. He thinks he's guilty! Which means he'll say he killed Doctor Light, right? Yeah, that lasso is just as reliable as a crappy ass lie detector, Wonder Jerk.

Even Plastique and the Secret Society have been fooled into believing Madame Xanadu can actually tell the future.

The next page is a really good one because Madame Xanadu blows up! Some seer she was!

Then all hell breaks loose in Khandaq because the Justice League apparently stands by Superman's decision to kill Doctor Light. Instead of Batman going, "Holy fuck, maybe we shouldn't be killing other heroes?", he decides to punch Catwoman in the throat. And instead of Superman falling to his knees and allowing himself to be taken away for killing Doctor Light, he decides he should brawl with Martian Manhunter. The only sensible one is The Atom, probably because she's worked on both teams and gotten to know everybody in the fight. Or it could be that none of them noticed her because she's super tiny! And she might not really care about stopping the fight or she would, you know, grow bigger and say, "Knock it off, you assholes!"

Wait. She can grow bigger, right? She just wears a magic belt that makes her small. Right?

And because the media are really, really good at their jobs in comics and they actually have people out in the field reporting on actual events and digging up stories instead of just sitting in air conditioned rooms waiting for a press release, they're already airing reports about the death of Doctor Light at the hands of Superman! Holy shit, comic book reporters are fucking brilliant! Lois Lane must be a master if she's competing against this kind of speed and accuracy! Unless, you know, the reports in the comic book are from Lois Lane. That probably makes the most sense.

The man behind it all! He's better at planning convoluted and intricate plots than Harvest ever was!

Did the Purple People Leader program Doctor Light's head to explode when he got near Superman? Did he use the light coin on Doctor Light? And did he use Pandora's Box to program a red light to shoot out of Superman's forehead when Doctor Light's Light Ray went off? Because the Purple People Leader does worship, in some way, Pandora's box. I'm not sure how he manipulated Amanda Waller to get Doctor Light on the team but that was probably the easiest part of the plan. Oh! Also, the Superman Chess Piece was missing so that probably means something too. Like maybe this Superman isn't really Superman but a Superman Simulacrum which is why his heart wasn't pure enough to open Pandora's box! No, no. That's getting too convoluted even for a comic book!

Justice League #22 Rating: No change. Poor fucking Doctor Light. He gets one lousy issue! One lousy issue! I suppose even though this is a whole new universe and the Reboot changed everything, he still couldn't get the taint of diddling little children out of his costume. And he just hadn't been punished enough! Also, Madame Xanadu probably isn't dead. I'm going to say there is a 35% chance that she's not dead at all and a 64% chance that she's mostly not dead and a 1% chance that she can actually see the future.