Monday, June 19, 2023

Justice League Europe #24 (March 1991)


Justice League Europe found the clitoris!

It's been quite a few months since the Justice League has done anything to save the world (not since The Extremists, I guess. At least in that story arc, they really did save the entire world for once!) so I was getting ready to applaud their efforts to save it once more. But then I remembered that this gigantic worm is simply destroying global corporations that haven't opted into the cult made up of different global organizations. The only people threatened by this monstrous worm are billionaires whose factories are being destroyed by it. I suppose the janitors and overnight security of those factories are also threatened but I don't blame the worm for their deaths. I blame the unions who didn't get a good enough contract to keep the night staff safe from this kind of thing. They live in a comic book universe; they should be prepared for anything! I'm assuming the late staff of Stagg's factory have been killed. Maybe they did have a great union that installed alarms in case of a Tremors-style emergency! It's probable all the laborers escaped unharmed and only Stagg's pocket book was hurt by this attack. If that's the case, I rescind the near applause I almost gave the Justice League! What's really happening is they're being manipulated into helping Stagg Industries not lose money. I say let the Corporate Cult of the Worm do their thing!

I'll admit it's possible that allowing a corporate cult to continue to control a sand worm that destroys anything in its path might not be the best thing for the world. But sometimes it's just fun watching people you can't stand destroy each other! But then that's what makes me a bitter asshole and the Justice League heroes, I guess.


Correction: that's what makes me and Metamorpho bitter assholes and the rest of the Justice League heroes.

The worm disappears back into its hole and the Justice League dive in to, um, beat it up, I guess? One thing revealed in these first few pages is that half the Justice League are terrified by worms. Probably something Freudian in that (in both a penis and a fatherly way (being that the penis is an extension of the father figure)).

Back at the spooky cult ritual, Vivian D'Aramis (1 of the 2 Crimson Foxes) awakens from being drugged to find herself in the clutches of the man who killed her mother and her guardian. It's also the man whose business she now runs (better than he did, I should add. I mean, she never had to summon giant worms to destroy the competition). He's all, "I wish I could have killed your sister too but she died in some other mysterious way that I won't think too much about!" Ha ha! That's dramatic irony because the readers know her sister still lives and is The Crimson Fox and will be beating his ass in just a few pages!

Oh? Have I mentioned that the giant phallic worm cult only allows men into their little club? That might be important later! Or maybe it was important earlier and would have made everybody seeing the humongous worm being used as a weapon to defeat rivals think, "Oh, yeah. I get it. It's a huge power slash rape fantasy thing, isn't it?"


This is probably Freudian too.

One of the cult members objects to the leader killing Vivian as she's carted off to be sacrificed. But the leader says, "It's too late to be concerned about killing, you idiot! Do you think those factories destroyed by the worms were deserted?! You fool!" Oh no! I'm sorry that, once again, my early assumptions were right on the money and the late night staff did not have the best union representation! Hopefully they call on a strike to demand less deaths by giant worms during overnight hours.

The Justice League realize the worm they're chasing wasn't big enough to have destroyed Stagg's factory on its own just about when they wind up in massive tunnels and are attacked by an even larger worm. The entire situation causes them a brief existential crisis, allowing them a moment of racist philosophy.


What the fuck does he mean by "especially in the West"?!

Is that Rocket Red making that comment? I guess that's less racist philosophy and more "dealing with the propaganda he grew up with." Dmitri is all, "I can believe there being Gigantic Worms living throughout Russia and Asia because our infrastructure is so terrible and our propaganda so overwhelming that anything destroyed by these monstrous creatures would be reported as anything else by the state media! And any eyewitnesses would wind up in a Siberian gaol or laughed at as some superstitious old country buffoon! But in the West?! The most civilized place in the known world which gave us all Levis and The Beatles?! How could such abominations have gone unnoticed?!" So maybe it's not a racist statement but more of state-caused cultural ignorance that would cause Dmitri to say this. He sees the West with Communist rose tinted glasses! He has yet to realize that "the West" is just as fucked up as every place else on Earth, just in different ways. In the West, gigantic factory destroying worms are kept secret by billion-dollar corporations rather than by the government!

The entire Justice League cannot defeat a worm because even though worms have the thinnest and most easily punctured skin, apparently when they grow to a million times their original size, their hide gets super duper tough. But then Rex, remembering how all giants are defeated by being eaten by them and exploding out of them, decides to be eaten by it. Except he gets shat out so quickly that he doesn't have time to explode out from the inside.


Metamorpho must have become antimony.

Captain Atom, realizing what Rex should have done, flies inside the worm and explodes out of it. You'd think giant creatures would learn not to swallow tiny creatures whole. It should be the first thing you learn as a giant. Posters should be hung in every giant cafeteria. "Beware eating live food. Your only weakness is your tum-tum."

While the Corporate Cult prepares to sacrifice Vivian and the Justice League play inside the guts of a giant worm, Catherine gets a mysterious visitor while she's hanging out at the London Embassy wearing an ill-fitting leotard.


Ill-fitting or just another comic book artist that can't actually draw clothes so leaves it to the colorist to paint them on?

The person at the door is looking for Kilowog. But Gerard Jones, being one of those writers who believes not revealing secrets is more enticing than revealing a secret so that the reader wonders what will come of that revelation, doesn't reveal who it is. I'm not surprised because most mediocre comic book writers believe telling less is more exciting. But they're stupid because that's not true at all. I didn't buy Justice League Europe #25 just to find out who came to the door during this scene. I probably promptly forgot about it. But if Jones had revealed who it was, I probably would have thought about it at least a few times before picking up Issue #25, wondering why that specific person had come to see Kilowog. Anyway, it's probably Doctor Magnus.

After exploding the worm from the inside, Captain Atom makes a "Diet of Worms" joke and I'm baffled how that made it past editorial. Not because there's anything controversial about it but because how many kids reading this would even have understood it?! Okay, okay! Fine! I can psychically hear all of you smarties jumping down my throat like Metamorpho did to that worm! "I knew what that was at twelve!" "I've always fucking known what that was!" "You'd have to be an idiot to not have heard about the Diet of Worms!" "What kind of a moron are you?" "I fucking hate you!" "You're an idiot who doesn't know shit about comic books!" "Deathstroke isn't a pedophile, you leftist dumbass!" "I wish I'd never given birth to you!"

Enough! I get it! I suck!

The Cult hangs Vivian to the front of her factory and gets ready to summon another giant worm with their massive tuning fork. The Justice League, who have just wandered into the nest of dozens of the giant worms, have just enough time to ask Silver Sorceress if she can finally get around to maybe casting a spell that will shrink the worms or teleport them into space or, you know, any-fucking-thing being that she knows MAGIC before the massive worms are awoken by the tuning fork. The worms dig up through the earth and the Justice League follow them to Vivian's factory. They could barely kill one worm and now they have to take care of dozens of them before the worms kill Vivian? And is nobody concerned about what all of these huge tunnels are going to do to the landscape of the United Kingdom?! It's going to be villages and shires disappearing into sinkholes on a weekly basis for the next fifty years!

Justice League Europe #24 Rating: C. They're fighting worms. Massive worms. The only intelligent moment in this entire comic book was when Rocket Red asked how this has gone unnoticed (except for the "especially in the West" part which, even though I worked it through, still rubs me the wrong way). I guess nobody noticed because the worms have been dormant for untold eons. Who has the power to understand the life cycle of a gigantic worm?! But this cult seems to have existed for quite awhile and nobody noticed their destruction until they destroyed one of Simon Stagg's factories? Seems unlikely! My guess is that usually the worms poop out a mist that makes people forget what happened and everybody just assumes the factories were destroyed in fires. But the worm that destroyed Stagg's factory was constipated which allowed everybody to finally see what was going on!

Oh man! Now I'm doing it! I'm writing excuses to support badly written comic book stories! I might as well be a regular letter writer! I fucking hate when fans have to resort to their imaginative speculation to plaster over the plot holes of lazy monthly writers! And now I'm doing it! Ugh. All those voices I heard earlier were right. I do suck.

No comments:

Post a Comment