Saturday, December 10, 2016

Justice League of America #10


Everybody is all, "DIE MOTHER FUCKERS!" And Aquaman is all, "I have a fork!"

So, this comic book is still a thing. It's got to end this month, right? Can there be anybody left at DC who isn't completely sick of Bryan Hitch at this point? I can understand hiring a writer like Warren Ellis even though you know you're going to get some deadline problems from him because his stuff is crazy worth reading. But Bryan Hitch is one of those artists who wanted to write their own stories and then decided to stop drawing as well even though he never quite got the hang of writing stories. It's one of the most common scams in comic books! An artist comes to the people in charge and says, "Hey! I want to write some of the stories I'm drawing!" And the people in charge are all, "Cool! We'll save some money on that deal!" And then after the artist does this for a few months, the people in charge realize that the artist-writer now has too much work and can't manage the deadlines. So the people in charge bring in some artists to do the art while the artist simply does the writing. Now the company is stuck with a sub-par writer who they hired for their art but now they aren't drawing anything! What jerks!

[[MORE]] For those who can't remember what was happening in this comic book because the last issue came out in the late 70s, Earth was being threatened by a mad alien pretending to be the Kryptonian god Rao (or really was but, then, I'd like to believe that the person Superman worships isn't a total dick-muffin (and is also, probably, imaginary)). He'd summoned the ancient planet of Krypton to an orbit near the Earth so that he could invade with thousands of his own Supermen. So the world is fucked unless Batman is wearing a shirt with extra long sleeves to pull something tremendous out of.

According to the credits page, Bryan Hitch's only involvement in this issue is coming up with the plot. So basically, forget not drawing it; this fucker was too busy to even write it. I've got a feeling he didn't even add much to the plot of this issue. He probably summarized the plot of eight of the first nine issues to Tony Bedard (minus the Martian Manhunter issue, of course!) and said, "Then, like, in this issue, I was going to have the Justice League of America win. You got that?" At least I can look forward to decent comic book dialogue by Bedard. Although I really wanted to be petty and churlish, so I'm also disappointed that I won't be reading the bullshit that Hitch came up with.

Hal Jordan groups up with the Justice League to let them know that 250,000 Supermen are about to attack Earth as soon as they breach his shield. Put your dicks away! That wasn't a euphemism.


Batman installed the white lenses on his mask that cover his eyes so nobody would see them roll every time Superman says something cheesy like this.

While Batman rolls his eyes and The Flash makes jerk-off motions faster than anybody can see, Wonder Woman actually decides to say something. She's all, "'I trust we'll win!' says the guy who was dead ten minutes ago." Superman assures everybody that they'll win because if they don't win, they won't win. So, you know, they have to win! I'm not so sure they will win though because this is obviously an alternate universe (even if it was mentioned in other comic books. I'm just going to ignore those bits). Also, they're relying on Silas Stone for some kind of countermeasure to the Kryptonians. That's just asking for trouble! The last time he helped, he turned his son into a robot who doesn't know if his brain is real or Memorex.

Oh man. How many people have no idea what Memorex is?! Hmm, I guess they're still a thing!

With 250,000 Kryptonians descending on Metropolis, how the hell is the Justice League supposed to win? I think that's what Bryan Hitch was thinking and that's why this comic book took so long to come out. He probably finally got a brainstorm for how to solve this dilemma after reading DK III #6. We'll know for sure if Metropolis suddenly has a Kryptonite rain storm!


Oh. I guess this is the big secret weapon. I wonder why Silas didn't send one for Aquaman?

Besides the mechanized armor, Silas also sent a bunch of robotic drones. Does the government know STAR Labs has been working on a private army of killer robots? I guess they don't because these robots were just built in the last 24 hours or so. Unless the robot army was extant and Silas just fashioned anti-Kryptonian weapons for them. I have other questions as well which probably won't be answered so I shouldn't even ask them, like where did STAR Labs get the labor to build these robots? Or the money? Or the technology? Oh, they probably already had the tech since the word is right there in their name.

The Justice League get the upper hand and then they lose the upper hand and then they gain the upper hand and then they begin to lose it for good. But Batman has a plan! Leave Aquaman to fight the Kryptonians while he and Cyborg head to Krypton to talk it over with the Doomsday Stones. Batman's plan is to get the Doomsday Stones to age the sun until it becomes a Red Giant. The Kryptonians lose their powers and young Rao beheads his future self. Everybody lives happily ever after. Except Superman. He's still going to die and be replaced by Preboot Superman.

The Review!
I'm just glad this thing is finally over. As you might be able to tell by my lack of details, I grew bored with the entire thing right about when the Kryptonians invaded. You just can't sustain a reader's enthusiasm for a story when it takes nearly two years to put out ten issues. Especially when the same guy who can't finish this fucking story gets hired to write the new biweekly Justice League comic book! How did DC ever think he was going to finish this story? I guess the fact that Tony Bedard scripted this issue answers my question: they never expected him to finish. They finally just got somebody else to wrap it up so they would have a complete story to stick in a Trade Paperback later. I wonder if they call Tony Bedard "The Finisher" around the DC offices?

No comments:

Post a Comment