Justice League International #22 (1988)

The entire pitch for this comic: "Imagine Oberon as Rambo! Bwa ha ha ha ha!"

DC loves crossovers. Because crossovers force their slobbering FOMO-filled audience to buy up every single issue of their entire catalog for a few months. So it's nice to see that Giffen and DeMatteis decided to treat their crossover comic book with such seriousness. Sorry. That was sarcasm. I hear only stupid people resort to sarcasm and I don't want people thinking I'm stupid. Not that I'm not stupid! I just don't want anybody to think it.

Look. I didn't know this was the first page when I wrote that sarcasm thing.

I guess, being a Grandmaster Comic Book Reader, I just inherently understand this shit. On like a level most people can't grasp. Or wouldn't want to grasp because to understand comic books this well, you also have to have once had a guy in a junior high locker room walk up behind you while you're shirtless and grab your boy-boobs with both hands and say something crude that you can't remember due to, I suspect, being shell shocked. A friend of mine began dating that same guy in high school and I was the rudest fucking bitch to him constantly and he probably had no memory of why. I like to think Irene eventually broke up with him because she trusted me when I said he was a totally garbage asshole.

What I meant to say was, "If Oberon can be a sarcastic little shit, why can't I? And also I didn't mean 'little' as in his stature!"

After being sarcastic, Oberon chooses to be both sexist and ableist in the next two panels, although I think it's okay to be ableist when you're making fun of yourself. Anyway, I thought I'd point that out because I'm probably going to be sexist and ableist eventually as well, seeing as how I've just now decided to model myself on Oberon.

Now that Giffen and DeMatteis have established that this current alien invasion of the DC Universe is unusually serious, they can get back to writing like goofy idiots.

After Booster Gold pouts about being left on monitor duty (I guess the editors didn't think he was popular enough to be in the huge crossover), Keith and J.M. give us a scene starring a Khund, a Psion, and an Okaaran. Those are the races invading Earth. I don't know if they're important or popular races. They're probably important to the plots of dumb comic books like The Omega Men, L.E.G.I.O.N., and The Legion of Super-Heroes. Maybe not all of those comic books are dumb. Two of them starred Lobo! So I guess the other, non-Lobo one was dumb. Although the fans of The Legion of Super-Heroes would probably string me up for telling such a radical truth. Although it was probably a lot like Degrassi Junior High except with super-heroes, so it probably would have been my favorite comic book if I'd ever read it. The only version I read was the New 52 version so you can see why I'm so negative about it. I think by the time The New 52 came around, Paul Levitz was just bored with the entire concept.

Here's the opening line to one of my New 52 Legion of Super-heroes reviews: "This issue contains two stories so maybe it'll either be twice as boring as a normal issue or half as boring. I'm not sure how the physics works." Ha ha! Man, I was pretty funny ten years ago!

The aliens have taken over the Justice League Embassy in Australia (I think the only member there is Tasmanian Devil and they beat him up). They make sure to keep the teleporter operational so that they can send an attack force through it. I think we've seen the attack force on the cover! They're even smaller than Oberon!

I know thinking of Wonder Woman as just a horny uterus isn't sexist because most women think of me as just an unsatisfying penis.

Booster Gold is easily taken down by the tiny invaders because his mind was dulled from playing checkers with Oberon and also it wasn't too sharp to begin with. The tiny invaders chase Oberon into Blue Beetle's room where he finds a life-size poster of a nearly naked Fire and a small poster of a hot rod. So I guess it's canon that Blue Beetle is fourteen.

To get out of this situation, Oberon digs around in Blue Beetle's porn stash in the closet.

Oberon defeats the invaders with a centerfold of Supergirl's vagina?

That caption was for old school reader's of this blog. They're pretty much the only people I cater to.

Okay, fine. It's actually Blue Beetle's light gun which is so terrible that it should have stayed in the closet (not in a gay way! In a storage way!). Although Oberon mentions this is Beetle's "spare" light gun so, as unbelievable as it may seem, Blue Beetle actually made two guns that simply flash a bright light at super villains.

After defeating the invaders, Oberon packs them all away into Roach Motels as a humane way to imprison them. Although aren't those things full of poison? My guess is they're dead within the hour. Which is no big deal, really. They're aliens! I think even Superman is allowed to kill aliens!

Meanwhile in Fiji, the rest of the Justice League meet up with Wonder Woman to defeat some other invaders. Blue Beetle and Rocket Red can't stop vocalizing how much they want to fuck Wonder Woman. I understand Blue Beetle doing that being that he's only fourteen years old, but Rocket Red?! He's got a wife and kids! Oh, I guess he also has a penis. That must be his problem.

No wonder Wonder Woman couldn't wait until she could start beating up one guy per month who told her to smile in the 2010s. Look at the shit she had to put up with in the 1980s!

I understand the compulsion to discuss how attractive Wonder Woman is. I do it all the time with Supergirl's butt! Except I don't talk about it when I'm six inches from her ear! Have some decency and respect, Blue Beetle! Write about your infatuation on a blog like every other perverse weirdo!

The United States military gives the Justice League the plan: they're to distract the alien invasion while Wonder Woman saves her gal pal Etta Candy. The military even spent a ton of resources on a map so the Justice League could easily visualize the plan.

The teeny, tiny magnetic poetry strip labeled "JLI" represents the Justice League. The triangles represent the Khund invasion force. The island that looks nothing like Fiji represents Fiji. The skinny-ass pointer represents a general in the American military with a huge cock.

Now that the plan has been fully explained by the worst visual aid in U.S. military history prior to, I'm assuming, George Bush's visual aids for his illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's time for some comic book violence with a heaping helping of male characters pouting about how Wonder Woman probably won't put a finger in their butthole. She probably doesn't even do that for Steve Trevor or Etta Candy though. She knows it would simply be too dangerous. Although I bet she uses the lasso of truth like anal beads.

Hawkman has been having trouble fitting in with this new league. He doesn't like how they joke all the time and nobody takes anything seriously. He was right on the verge of quitting and then this alien invasion happened.

So like all conservatives, he hates fun and loves killing.

The Justice League rig one of the Khund ships with a bomb that destroys the entire fleet. J'onn laments having to kill so many sentient beings but, not being Batman or Superman, he understands when the DC editors have decided it's okay for the heroes to kill. Basically if it's an alien invading Earth, the heroes (even Superman at times! But not Batman!) are allowed to treat their combats like battles in a war. It's to save Earth! Anything less than killing would be insufficient. Unless you're Batman, for some reason. Maybe because he breaks legs and jaws in such a way that the victim wishes they were dead.

Martian Manhunter is the most human of us all! Also, it still checks out: Blue Beetle is fourteen.

The way that previous page is laid out and storyboarded, I almost thought it was an advertisement for Hostess Fruit Pies.

No letters page this month! Probably too much editorial work keeping all the Invasion crossovers straight!

Justice League International #22 Rating: B-. Maybe I'll stop rating the comics. It's not like I put any thought into the rating anyway. This final paragraph should be some kind of intelligent summation of the comic book I just read but I can't even bother to do that (being that I can't figure out how to write intelligently). I guess Batman was left out of this issue or else he'd be tied to all these Khund deaths and his reputation for never killing, even in a war against an invading alien army, would be sullied. And we can't have that! Everybody knows that if one writer decided to write a story where Batman purposefully kills one person (even an invading alien), the floodgates will have opened for every future Batman writer to come. They'll all have him killing, over and over again. The "Batman doesn't kill" rule isn't there to protect Batman from stepping over that line. It's probably because editors know how lazy writers are! If Batman kills, that'll be the major plot point of every Batman story for fifteen years! Every new writer will think, "Which Batman villains are still alive? Oh yeah! Mad Hatter! How and why would Batman kill Mad Hatter?!" Pretty soon, his entire retinue of villains will have been decimated! But Martian Manhunter, Mister Miracle, and Blue Beetle can kill a few thousand Khund because nobody is going to be interested in Blue Beetle accidentally stepping over that line and becoming kill crazy! What's he going to do? Flashlight his foes to death? Bludgeon them with stupid jokes? Oh, I know! I'd just have him land his Beetle ship on them. Just have the entire bottom of his ship constantly smeared in blood and gore!