I was going to critique this cover but I looked up Marshall Rogers, discovered he died in 2007, and now I'm not in the mood. So, um, this is the greatest cover ever!
I should say to myself, "Marshall Rogers did the art in the last issue and I liked it much better than Bart Sears so even if I point out the failings in this cover, it doesn't mean I'm shitting all over Marshall Rogers' art entirely! I complimented him in the last issue for the way he remained true to Bart Sears' versions of the Justice League but he didn't make them look like they were shooting up five kinds of steroids." What's really weird is that I looked up Marshall Rogers to see if he were still alive because I didn't want to hurt his feelings when I shit all over this cover and then I found out he was dead and I couldn't bring myself to shit all over his cover! So now I don't know what my brain expects me to do! How about a personal anecdote?!
Marshall Rogers lived in Fremont, California. That's where my Aunt Lol and Uncle John lived. Their house was the first place I remember going for huge family Christmases. When you walked into their house, just to the right was a conversation pit which was a truly magnificent room that Americans have forgotten about but which still remains the greatest room of any house which has one. By the end of the night, with so many family members opening presents (my great grandmother on my grandmother's side had nine children and all of them and their kids and their kids' kids were at these Christmas Eve celebrations), the house looked exactly like the cover of this comic book (minus the weird guy with the long neck). Also, our Christmases looked about five thousand times better than this.
Last issue ended with the Justice League's French Embassy imploding from one of Kilowog's dangerous contraptions. This resulted in this issue beginning with the news that the Justice League has been transferred to London. That could never happen today because there are these gigantic idiots called Brexiteers who decided to fuck their country in the face based entirely on their xenophobia. Sure, the United Kingdom is still technically part of Europe but they've made the bold stand to strengthen their borders and make it a huge aggravation for their citizens to do any sort of work abroad as well. Why can't old people just die in piece and let young people control the world that's going to be theirs for so much longer? And I'm saying that as a 51-year-old man! Why would I want to limit the freedoms of young people? I don't! I wish people older than fifty couldn't vote or participate in jury selection! Mostly because I'm too lazy and want an excuse to stop doing those things. I mean, I don't do jury duty but I would love to do it, especially if I could help convict a cop! But I'm the only employee of my own service business who works nights and jury duty would absolutely fuck my life and kill my business. But I still dream about helping to put a cop in jail! Oh if only I could have been a resident on that island where they built the Wicker Man every spring!
After getting to page two and seeing Catherine's hair which is way too much like Bart Sears' version of her hair and not at all like last issue Catherine's hair, I notice that the inker of this issue is different than the inker of last issue. Mostly, I ignore how inkers make or break a penciller's work. But I have come to the conclusion, based on this issue's cover and Catherine's hair, that Bob Smith inks Marshall Rogers way better than Joe Rubenstein does. I don't know how it all works or who is improving or hurting whose art. I just know Rogers and Smith is greater than Rogers and Rubenstein.
Inker and Penciller math was always my worst subject in comic book review school.
Marshall Rogers lived in Fremont, California. That's where my Aunt Lol and Uncle John lived. Their house was the first place I remember going for huge family Christmases. When you walked into their house, just to the right was a conversation pit which was a truly magnificent room that Americans have forgotten about but which still remains the greatest room of any house which has one. By the end of the night, with so many family members opening presents (my great grandmother on my grandmother's side had nine children and all of them and their kids and their kids' kids were at these Christmas Eve celebrations), the house looked exactly like the cover of this comic book (minus the weird guy with the long neck). Also, our Christmases looked about five thousand times better than this.
Last issue ended with the Justice League's French Embassy imploding from one of Kilowog's dangerous contraptions. This resulted in this issue beginning with the news that the Justice League has been transferred to London. That could never happen today because there are these gigantic idiots called Brexiteers who decided to fuck their country in the face based entirely on their xenophobia. Sure, the United Kingdom is still technically part of Europe but they've made the bold stand to strengthen their borders and make it a huge aggravation for their citizens to do any sort of work abroad as well. Why can't old people just die in piece and let young people control the world that's going to be theirs for so much longer? And I'm saying that as a 51-year-old man! Why would I want to limit the freedoms of young people? I don't! I wish people older than fifty couldn't vote or participate in jury selection! Mostly because I'm too lazy and want an excuse to stop doing those things. I mean, I don't do jury duty but I would love to do it, especially if I could help convict a cop! But I'm the only employee of my own service business who works nights and jury duty would absolutely fuck my life and kill my business. But I still dream about helping to put a cop in jail! Oh if only I could have been a resident on that island where they built the Wicker Man every spring!
After getting to page two and seeing Catherine's hair which is way too much like Bart Sears' version of her hair and not at all like last issue Catherine's hair, I notice that the inker of this issue is different than the inker of last issue. Mostly, I ignore how inkers make or break a penciller's work. But I have come to the conclusion, based on this issue's cover and Catherine's hair, that Bob Smith inks Marshall Rogers way better than Joe Rubenstein does. I don't know how it all works or who is improving or hurting whose art. I just know Rogers and Smith is greater than Rogers and Rubenstein.
Inker and Penciller math was always my worst subject in comic book review school.
I don't fucking get it. This isn't anything like the art from last issue. Do pencillers have any control at all?! Should I have been praising inkers all of this time?!
What is this ache in the center of my chest? What are these strange electric impulses firing through my brain? Do I . . . Do I miss Bart Sears' art?! It may have been terrible but at least it felt like a professional doing terrible work. This feels like a 7th grade art student doing their best work (which isn't very good)! How vague are Rogers' pencils if they can be interpreted so differently by two different inkers?! What the fuck is going on?!
I really don't know why I still read comic books.
Max Lord relieves Captain Atom of leadership over Embassy matters and promotes Catherine to the position and putting her job in line with what all the readers assumed was her job already anyway. Captain Atom just leads the team in matters of beating the pulp out of bad guys, a job he's much more suited to. The rest of the team go shopping for new everythings seeing that everything they owned was destroyed in the implosion of the Paris Embassy. And Max Lord is paying the bill!
Kara's bikini having been mentioned last issue, Rogers and Rubenstein decide they needed to draw what that would have looked like.
I really don't know why I still read comic books.
Max Lord relieves Captain Atom of leadership over Embassy matters and promotes Catherine to the position and putting her job in line with what all the readers assumed was her job already anyway. Captain Atom just leads the team in matters of beating the pulp out of bad guys, a job he's much more suited to. The rest of the team go shopping for new everythings seeing that everything they owned was destroyed in the implosion of the Paris Embassy. And Max Lord is paying the bill!
Kara's bikini having been mentioned last issue, Rogers and Rubenstein decide they needed to draw what that would have looked like.
I've stopped reading the letter pages so I won't have to read comic book fans verbally jerking off to this panel in a month or two.
Is it weird that I'm glad I don't have to read comic book fans verbally jerking off to cheesecake superhero shots when it's practically all I do in my commentaries?! I don't think it's weird because that's the joke! That I'm one of those inappropriately horny comic book nerds who just want as much tits and ass as possible in their comic books. Another joke is when I'm passionately angry about something trivial! Another joke is that I've never had sex! It's all stage magic, man! You know when I write that I want to fuck Lobo? Spoiler alert: I don't really want to fuck Lobo! It's a bit I'm doing! An extremely online character! I'm always amazed when people can't parse the idea that most of what I write is facetious and hyperbolic. But then again, when people treat what I've written as gospel, I don't get upset about it because what was I expecting?! Not to be taken at my word?! That might also be why I have such a tiny audience. Most people are looking for earnest, easily parsed mediocrity. They don't want to read things that make them instantly feel one way and then have to recalibrate their feelings when they discover whatever dumb thing I truly meant! It's also why so many people online get so angry when they've misinterpreted something. Usually they stick to their guns and decide that you're being disingenuous when you point out how they're read something incorrectly. It's why I don't argue on the Internet! I limit my responses to one time clarifications and if the person still wants to argue after that, it's just not worth it. They obviously don't want to communicate at that point; they simply don't want to have been wrong.
I once had somebody on Tumblr ask me if I was okay with sexual assault or domestic violence or something. I responded with, "I am not. If you thought that was what I was saying, read it again but with the realization that I didn't say that. That should fix it." They then responded with the exact thing I wrote which was obviously a critique of Meredith Finch's writing style. So just remember: if I say something you find egregious, I didn't. The problem is all on your end!
French people cuddle baguettes when they sleep.
This issue revolves around all the heroes getting settled in London. Wally goes out to buy a bunch of new clothes using the Justice League expense card for The Flash which means he has to reveal his secret identity to all the haberdashers in London. Blue Jay hangs out with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. And the Justice League's cat kills some guy's dog.
I once had somebody on Tumblr ask me if I was okay with sexual assault or domestic violence or something. I responded with, "I am not. If you thought that was what I was saying, read it again but with the realization that I didn't say that. That should fix it." They then responded with the exact thing I wrote which was obviously a critique of Meredith Finch's writing style. So just remember: if I say something you find egregious, I didn't. The problem is all on your end!
French people cuddle baguettes when they sleep.
This issue revolves around all the heroes getting settled in London. Wally goes out to buy a bunch of new clothes using the Justice League expense card for The Flash which means he has to reveal his secret identity to all the haberdashers in London. Blue Jay hangs out with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. And the Justice League's cat kills some guy's dog.
Good kitty.
In the mid-90s, my cat Smaug beat the shit out of woman's Chihuahua as she walked it past my house. Animal control was called and they were going to take Smaug away to quarantine for a week but, luckily, I was able to vouch for my cat and quarantine him in my room in the basement. He fucking loved it. I'm surprised he didn't attack more dogs more often after realizing he would get 24/7 access to drooling all over me as I tried to sleep. I didn't blame Smaug for attacking a Chihuahua since everybody agrees they look like rats. He was just doing what he was born to do!
If a cat and a dog get into a fight and the cat is killed, it's a tragedy. If the dog is killed, it's a comedy. That's just facts.
If a cat and a dog get into a fight and the cat is killed, it's a tragedy. If the dog is killed, it's a comedy. That's just facts.
See? Captain Atom gets it. So proud of his little kitty!
Silver Sorceress spends her time flirting with Kilowog but he's not interested in her because he doesn't know where to stick his spanner. Blue Jay arrives and begins to flirt with Kilowog as well and now I wish this had developed into a full blown throuple. Throuples existed in the 70s but then Reagan banned them in the 80s, probably because Nancy kept asking to get more dicks into their bedroom and Reagan felt threatened. But then in the 90s, indie rock and Janeane Garofalo movies almost brought throuples back but they were still finding their way so they mostly turned into "one person gets their heart completely broken when the other two people fall in love only with each other but imagine if they'd been open to throupling!"
I feel like the majority of throuples are composed of one person who loves another person so much that they don't complain that the person they love wants to fuck some other hotter person as well. I imagine there's quite a bit of three-way action happening where one person is thinking, "At least I get to fuck the person I love!" while the other two are just passionately going at it like crazy and treating the third person as a large sex toy. I mean, I'm all for people loving and being intimate with more than one other person! Monogamy just seems like such a waste and definitely a kind of prison cell for those who don't think that way. Why are we allowed to passionately hate as many people as we want but we're only supposed to truly love one single person at any one time? I can see monogamy being great for introverts like me because I really don't want to interact with that many other people, especially if it means intimate touching! I don't even want to hug more than one person in my lifetime! But I still think it's rare to find three people who all really do find more positives in being in a throuple than a throuple where one of the members is just barely hanging on for dear life because they so desperately love one of the other members!
I feel like the majority of throuples are composed of one person who loves another person so much that they don't complain that the person they love wants to fuck some other hotter person as well. I imagine there's quite a bit of three-way action happening where one person is thinking, "At least I get to fuck the person I love!" while the other two are just passionately going at it like crazy and treating the third person as a large sex toy. I mean, I'm all for people loving and being intimate with more than one other person! Monogamy just seems like such a waste and definitely a kind of prison cell for those who don't think that way. Why are we allowed to passionately hate as many people as we want but we're only supposed to truly love one single person at any one time? I can see monogamy being great for introverts like me because I really don't want to interact with that many other people, especially if it means intimate touching! I don't even want to hug more than one person in my lifetime! But I still think it's rare to find three people who all really do find more positives in being in a throuple than a throuple where one of the members is just barely hanging on for dear life because they so desperately love one of the other members!
Who the fuck is Mitch?!
Oh yeah! Uncle Mitch from Angor! I completely forgot about that asshole! I just assumed he died from his influenza. Uncle Mitch has decided to visit Disney World. He's acting pretty weird about it too.
What does that mean? Is he planning on sticking as much of it as he can up his ass?
What is wrong with that ticket person? Who buys a one-way trip to Orlando to go to Disney World?!
Ever since Captain Atom was relieved of the stress of managing the League, he's simply ignored all of the fires Catherine has had to put out. Kara convinces him to apologize and she buys a gift for him to give to Catherine. The gift turns out to be a négligée. You can practically hear Catherine's underwear getting ruined when she opens it. She kisses Captain Atom on the cheek and expresses how glad she is to see Captain Atom making an advance on her. So of course when she leaves the room, Captain Atom curses Kara and swears revenge for this mean-spirited prank! You know, before this scene, I didn't realize Captain Atom was gay.
The mysterious group who tried to get the Justice League notes from Wally Tortolini a couple of issues back in Justice League America close out this issue by realizing they have to move their operation to London now. Some guy named Mr. Bigger has been plotting some evil scheme against the League in Paris but now they've got to go back to the drawing board and stake out the London Embassy. I guess that means we'll finally be getting another Justice League story that actually involves some bad guys? After The Extremists, Justice League Europe has spent two issues on down time! The only member who has done any fighting is Kara's cat!
Justice League Europe #21 Rating: B. One of my favorite comic books of all-time is Box Office Poison which was many, many issues of pretty much nothing happening except mundane daily life. Oh, sure, there was a lot of emotional stuff going on as a bookstore clerk who thought of himself as a writer becomes bitter and jealous as he watches his friend become successful as an artist. He also ruins his intimate relationship over being an angry jerk as well. Anyway, what that admission is meant to convey is that I can handle reading loads of issues where basically nothing happens. Another great story arc in a comic where pretty much nothing happens: "Guys" from Cerebus. I loved Strangers in Paradise too but Terry Moore obviously thought his audience wanted more than just Francine and Katchoo hanging out which is why he introduced the whole Parker Girls stuff. But seriously, I didn't need all of that action and violence! I was happy reading about Francine and Katchoo hanging out on the couch! Oh, that was another 90s throuple: David, Francie, and Katchoo! Maybe that's where I got the whole idea that one member really would rather not have to share! David was such a miserable, pouty, lovesick puppy for Katchoo! Um, oh yeah, this was an okay issue! Maybe great because a cat killed a dog in it! Ha ha! That video would easily have won $10,000 on that ABC video show!
Ever since Captain Atom was relieved of the stress of managing the League, he's simply ignored all of the fires Catherine has had to put out. Kara convinces him to apologize and she buys a gift for him to give to Catherine. The gift turns out to be a négligée. You can practically hear Catherine's underwear getting ruined when she opens it. She kisses Captain Atom on the cheek and expresses how glad she is to see Captain Atom making an advance on her. So of course when she leaves the room, Captain Atom curses Kara and swears revenge for this mean-spirited prank! You know, before this scene, I didn't realize Captain Atom was gay.
The mysterious group who tried to get the Justice League notes from Wally Tortolini a couple of issues back in Justice League America close out this issue by realizing they have to move their operation to London now. Some guy named Mr. Bigger has been plotting some evil scheme against the League in Paris but now they've got to go back to the drawing board and stake out the London Embassy. I guess that means we'll finally be getting another Justice League story that actually involves some bad guys? After The Extremists, Justice League Europe has spent two issues on down time! The only member who has done any fighting is Kara's cat!
Justice League Europe #21 Rating: B. One of my favorite comic books of all-time is Box Office Poison which was many, many issues of pretty much nothing happening except mundane daily life. Oh, sure, there was a lot of emotional stuff going on as a bookstore clerk who thought of himself as a writer becomes bitter and jealous as he watches his friend become successful as an artist. He also ruins his intimate relationship over being an angry jerk as well. Anyway, what that admission is meant to convey is that I can handle reading loads of issues where basically nothing happens. Another great story arc in a comic where pretty much nothing happens: "Guys" from Cerebus. I loved Strangers in Paradise too but Terry Moore obviously thought his audience wanted more than just Francine and Katchoo hanging out which is why he introduced the whole Parker Girls stuff. But seriously, I didn't need all of that action and violence! I was happy reading about Francine and Katchoo hanging out on the couch! Oh, that was another 90s throuple: David, Francie, and Katchoo! Maybe that's where I got the whole idea that one member really would rather not have to share! David was such a miserable, pouty, lovesick puppy for Katchoo! Um, oh yeah, this was an okay issue! Maybe great because a cat killed a dog in it! Ha ha! That video would easily have won $10,000 on that ABC video show!
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