Thursday, August 3, 2023

Justice League America #53 (August 1991)


"I'm sorry"? I guess he saved Max's life.

I can't imagine every member of the Justice League being this sad that Max Lord has died so I'm assuming Liberty the Wonder Dog didn't survive passing Guy Gardner through his bowels. I'm also not sure how everybody regained their normal sizes. Did Kilowog invent a taffy-pulling machine? Oh wait. I'm acting like Justice League Quarterly has any place within normal continuity. I don't even know when it was supposedly out on the shelves!

After Crisis on Infinite Earths (which dragged me into super hero comics (I have to specify "super hero comics" because I definitely owned some Masters of the Universe comic books before that)), "Breakdowns" remains the most memorable event from my early years of reading comics. Early years? I was 19 when this came out! While that meant I'd only been reading comics for about 5 or 6 years, that was over 1/4 of my life at that point. It seemed like I'd been reading them for ages! At 53 issues, this was definitely the longest running comic I'd ever read (I was reading Ostrander's Suicide Squad at the same time which, I believe, would have been around issue #53 as well (both having stemmed from Legends)). My friends and I probably discussed "Breakdowns" more than any other comic we'd read at the time. Possibly because it was the main point of overlap in our comic book reading. But also it broke our brains because the silly funny book suddenly became super serious. Look how sad everybody is on the cover! Oh no!

You know what? Never mind that thing about comic book discussions. All we were talking about by 1991 was which Vertigo title showed the most tits.


Proving that I wasn't overstating the case at all: even the U.N. calls this the first DC crisis since "Crisis on Infinite Earths."

That was a pretty boring panel to scan but it's one of the most exciting panels in the first few pages of this issue. George Lucas must have popped five boners reading the first few pages of this comic book in '91 and thought, "This is what the prequels should be! Long boring scenes of politicians from various countries arguing about mundane bullshit!" Yeah, so what if I believe George Lucas was inspired by Justice League America #53?! It's my fucking reality and I refuse to remove my claws from it, leave it behind, climb down off this ledge, and live a boring life of not believing stupid bullshit.

Max Lord has been an authoritarian asshole driven by his own selfish motives who has shown little regard for the team members past what they could do for his ambition. And yet everybody cares about whether he lives or dies. Is this what makes them super heroes? Or is this what makes them tools of the system? You can't care about the lives of people who Max Lord manipulates, uses, and throws away for his own personal gain while also caring about Max Lord. The "every life is sacred" crowd are just facile centrists refusing to see the truth of reality. And that truth is that some people cause so much harm to other people that their deaths should be celebrated because it is a lifting of the pain and suffering of the people harmed by the now deceased person. Death can and should be celebrated in certain cases. Perhaps the members of the Justice League aren't as privy to the depths of Max Lord's depravity as the readers. They might still think he's well-meaning if a bit brusque and pushy, perhaps seeing his methods as necessary to put the Justice League in a position to help the world. To them, maybe Max is a hero, so I should see their concern in that light. Forgive me for letting my knowledge of the Max who raped The Huntress's mind to force her to join the League and will one day murder Blue Beetle and team up with Brother Eye to try and destroy every super hero cloud my judgment of the current situation! By all means, the team should hope for this bastard to recover, I guess.

Meanwhile Lord Manga Khan prepares a "one man army" for sale. Does Brother Eye's history with Maxwell Lord begin in "Breakdowns"? Or is Manga Khan just speaking, as he does often, poetically? Maybe the "one many army" is Lobo! Lobo has to make an appearance in "Breakdowns," right? This is proof that my friends and I were discussing Vertigo's nudity more than "Breakdowns" because I really don't remember shit that happens in this thing.

Some other dumb shit goes down with the Injustice League but it all gets cleared up before I can gather the fortitude it would take to care about any of it. While that nonsense is happening, the Justice League save some people in a sewer and declare themselves heroes.


I'll argue day and night that the Justice League hasn't done a lot of saving the world. But I also don't think J'onn is being fair to paint them as massive foul-ups.

J'onn kicked Guy Gardner off the team last issue but that doesn't stop J'onn from letting Guy do all of the heavy lifting of saving the people in the tunnels below New York. Even J'onn realizes that without Guy, there really isn't much of a team to speak of. I guess Ice could have made an ice stairway to get everybody out of the sinkhole instead of relying on Guy's power ring. Or Fire could have made, um, a fire stairway? Is that a thing?

I just watched a few minutes of Eurotrip on Pluto TV and I have to say I'm completely and utterly disturbed by Nona Mecklenberg being portrayed as sexy. Where is my little girl with the arm in the cast?! Where's my adorable little Harriet the Spy?! Where the fuck have I been since Eurotrip came out in 2004?! At least in Buffy everybody still treated her like the little kid I remember her being from The Adventures of Pete and Pete!


I will not be posting any pictures of this sweet baby from Eurotrip!

I just remembered something that gives lie to my previous reaction and subsequently makes me question every thought I've ever had: I own the issue of Maxim with Michelle Trachtenberg on the cover. But I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm a perv! I just loved Nona and wanted to read what she'd been up to! Also, I think I have only ever owned two issues of Maxim and both were purchased in an airport before a plane trip. One of those issues had small insert called "Maxim's Guide to the Web" which featured a couple dozen odd websites (you know, when the Internet was a wild frontier of varied and unique web pages). One of the sites features was HowFreshisThisGuy.com.


I owe so many apologies to the "mullet-helmeted dude" in the lower left corner.

That guy I can never apologize to enough is some mystery guy whose picture I stole from a Santa Cruz University based personal website of the guy (whose name may have been Cyril?). I used his image as the Dwarf-loving roller player Chris Davenport in my online comic strip DwarfLover. The web comic was popular enough around the turn of the millennium for somebody to have picked up his picture and submit it to HowFreshIsThisGuy.com. The Internet was a wild place back then.

Although, this was really small potatoes, right?! It's not like he turned into some kind of an ERMAHGERD GERSBERMS meme!

If you're curious about DwarfLover or simply curious about finding fodder to scold me for, you can find the comic still hosted at the site where all my comic book images are hosted. Do the work yourself.

Meanwhile in London, Power Girl now has to defend herself against Ralph Dibny's sexual harassment. Why didn't they just give the line about how tight her outfit is to Wally and keep things the way they're supposed to be? Now not only does Power Girl want to kill Ralph, Sue does too! Sue is definitely going to fuck Captain Atom at this point.


I think this is Catherine although I'm so used to Bart Sears' enormous hair version that I can't be sure. Seems more like Sue.

As you can see from the above panel, Justice League Europe is about to cause an international incident based on an unsubstantiated hunch.

Not for nothing but this version of Catherine is really sparking the part of my brain that makes me want to fuck cartoon characters like Erin Esurance and Shego.

Maybe that was for nothing. I don't know what the phrase "not for nothing" means or how to use it correctly.

The issue ends with some crazy-haired old fucker taken Max's place as the person in charge of the Justice League. His first order of business is to get a better Justice League. My guess is he'll simply get a "different" Justice League who won't be any better at all, full of jerks like Hawkjerk, Useless Arrow, and Aqualoser.

Justice League America #53 Rating: B. All it took was the death of Max Lord (well, he's not dead yet (and won't be any time soon because Wonder Woman has disappeared from Justice League comics in this era)) for the entire Justice League to break down and fall apart? J'onn has no power at all in the formation and day-to-day handling of the team? Their lives depend on the whims of whatever Celebrity Apprentice asshole winds up in charge?! It seems like a shit way to run a superhero team. No wonder Batman didn't want the fucking role of leader. It's a powerless position! I bet everybody but Guy loses their jobs and then Guy is all, "Oh yeah! Fuck you assholes! I'm the best! You're the worst! Suck my huge green light dick!"

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