Some lazy editor forgot to inform Ron Randall that Nelson was missing his right arm.
Maybe I shouldn't immediately blame the artist or the editors for such a grave mistake, especially when they're American. Americans might think they're the greatest society on Earth but everybody else knows they're absolutely a bunch of ignorant hill folk with no curiosity for anything outside of their own underpants. Why should an American know how many body parts Admiral Nelson was missing or even that this statue is the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square? I'm not bragging about knowing this shit! For all you know (and quite rightly suspect (although you'd be wrong in this instance)), I merely looked it up online and then pretended that I knew it all along. I just expect higher than average accuracy about historical statues from a comic book that I had to pay one full dollar to own! I suppose the fault is on me seeing as how this mistake was right on the cover and I could have refused to purchase the magazine based on this error. But what did I know about British statues at 20 years old?! Especially the fully clothed ones?
That paragraph got away from me. What I was going to say was I shouldn't rush to blame the creators when it could be part of the plot that Nelson's statue suddenly has a right arm. Maybe that idiot Deconstructo made the mistake when bringing the statue to life? Or maybe he thought Nelson would murder heroes better if he had a complete set of arms and eyes and also a pretty healthy moose knuckle. Deconstructo does seem to be one of those artists who's too lazy to understand any art history and believes that anything they create should be of equal weight to any other art on the scene, no matter how lazy his work comes across.
Other mistakes on the cover: Doctor Light's skin tone; Aquaman's whole deal; calling this Justice League "the world's greatest heroes"; Batman with a look of worry on his face. Seriously. Who was editing this thing?
That paragraph got away from me. What I was going to say was I shouldn't rush to blame the creators when it could be part of the plot that Nelson's statue suddenly has a right arm. Maybe that idiot Deconstructo made the mistake when bringing the statue to life? Or maybe he thought Nelson would murder heroes better if he had a complete set of arms and eyes and also a pretty healthy moose knuckle. Deconstructo does seem to be one of those artists who's too lazy to understand any art history and believes that anything they create should be of equal weight to any other art on the scene, no matter how lazy his work comes across.
Other mistakes on the cover: Doctor Light's skin tone; Aquaman's whole deal; calling this Justice League "the world's greatest heroes"; Batman with a look of worry on his face. Seriously. Who was editing this thing?
Sue last issue: "That's the leader we need!" Batman this issue: "We do nothing."
I don't want to point out that The Flash has a point and Power Girl has huge tits but what else am I supposed to write about? Batman's clear-headed methodology which doesn't take into account that dozens of people are currently being turned into Dadaist sculptures with possibly no way of returning them to normal? That waiting to see how this guy works might work to ultimately stop him but at what human cost? How Batman, by not immediately trying to stop this man, can, philosophically, be blamed for any deaths caused by Deconstructo but, by the same tool (philosophy!), Batman can deny that his hesitation was at fault, laying the blame for the rising death tally on the villain? Maybe Batman is so good at philosophy that he's constantly running the trolley problem in his head, every fucking second of every day, and so understands every action that will result in the least amount of deaths? And by understanding this, Batman is not getting anybody killed because, by his philosophical calculations, there is already a minimum death toll and Batman's job is to keep the death toll at that minimum by whatever actions he can. Meaning Batman only ever saves lives and never causes any deaths. The man is a fucking genius and Power Girl's tits are fucking huge.
Is this a musical episode?
Well there you have it. Batman is right again. If a PhD says it, it must be true. Also, if Doctor Light has a PhD, shouldn't she be referred to as Doctor Doctor Light?
Sue rushes out to inform everybody that Batman is their new leader, not giving a shit whether Batman wants the job or not. Batman, apparently not wanting the job, does that thing where he disappears without a trace. He actually did that in the panel I scanned above. That's him taking off. But nobody noticed because they were all arguing about how Flash might have a better argument in this instance than Batman. Flash, Power Girl, and The Elongated Man run off to defeat Deconstructo without learning anything about him or his powerful wand. Sue yells, "RALPH!", in a way that suggests Ralph is never getting anal again. But Doctor Light, being a rational doctor of, um, light, declares that maybe it's a good thing the impulsive ones rushed off. It give them time to do research. It also gives Crimson Fox time to fuck herself silly thinking about Batman.
Sue rushes out to inform everybody that Batman is their new leader, not giving a shit whether Batman wants the job or not. Batman, apparently not wanting the job, does that thing where he disappears without a trace. He actually did that in the panel I scanned above. That's him taking off. But nobody noticed because they were all arguing about how Flash might have a better argument in this instance than Batman. Flash, Power Girl, and The Elongated Man run off to defeat Deconstructo without learning anything about him or his powerful wand. Sue yells, "RALPH!", in a way that suggests Ralph is never getting anal again. But Doctor Light, being a rational doctor of, um, light, declares that maybe it's a good thing the impulsive ones rushed off. It give them time to do research. It also gives Crimson Fox time to fuck herself silly thinking about Batman.
I've mmmmed like this before and I know that what comes next is dirty and vile and takes place behind a locked door (although Crimson Fox is French so she probably does it in front of a window with the shutters thrown wide open).
Power Girl confronts Desctructo to discover that what he really wanted was to be in a Doom Patrol comic book. He doesn't express it so plainly but it does say a lot of meaningless things that almost seem to mean something due to being tangentially placed next to the other things. It's mostly dumb wordplay that ends with "Words are constructions and constructions can be demolished. I mean deconstructed! Take that!" Then a building (which is a "constructed" thing but also a word "constructed" to describe that thing) falls on top of Power Girl. Batman watches from afar and smiles.
Deconstructo sounding a bit like C.S. Lewis trying to prove the existence of God.
"All lines are a circle." No they aren't. That might sound like a childish argument but some statements don't deserve a well-thought-out rebuttal. You can prove this one yourself! Get a pencil. Draw a line. Is it a circle? No, it isn't, you daft motherfucker. Sorry, the "daft motherfucker" was for the people who answered "yes" to my question. The rest of you score an A+.
"All logic spirals back to its source." This probably deserves a bit more than "No it doesn't!" because it's a bit unclear. Does he mean all logic is dependent on the person communicating that logic, and thus all logic is full of agenda rather than a rational accounting of the issue? Or does he mean all logical statements about a source spiral back to simply a tautological statement of that initial source? I'm not totally sure what he's getting at here other than trying to claim all logic is circular because he needs to tie everything into the appearance of the Circle Line and why it obviously exists everywhere, whether or not people expected it to exist at this stop.
"All creation loops back to its creator." This seems like an odd statement for Deconstructo to profess. Shouldn't he be pointing out how the creator is not the center of the creation? Or how the creator's intent can't and shouldn't affect what the creation communicates to any individual experiencing it? Once again, this sounds like Deconstructo's main point is that all art has an agenda. He has decided you can't separate the creation from the creator, or the logic of the creation from its source (i.e. the creator). I'm not spending a lot of time rebutting these points because I don't think they're meant to make a whole lot of sense; they're just meant to seem like they make a whole lot of sense. "Look! The circle line! All lines are circles! Logic is circular! Creation and creator are entwined in a horny loop of existential symbiosis!"
"And if you try to break the circle? All the walls fall! Civilization shatters in a wall of plaster." Hmm. You know what? Maybe he's got a point! I was thinking of Deconstructo's argument in an artistic sense. But here he points out civilization will fall if the circle is broken so I think he's using "art" as a metaphor for the entire shebang. If Deconstructo has been talking about civilization as a whole from the start (which he may be and he may have explicitly stated it last issue but it's been a month or more since I read that issue), then I might start buying into some of this. If we take civilization as a building up of traditions which allowed mankind to grow in myriad ways, from agriculture and leisure and electronics and travel and science), we can see this as a line. A time line. The foundation of this time line remains the same (probably Greek and Roman and Christian beginnings), even to this day, especially when considering things from a "Western Civilization" point of view (which Deconstructo is, being of British descent. Obviously this argument of civilization would remain mostly the same from other cultural viewpoints except with a widely different foundation way back in time). There's no universal law that says our society has to be organized the way it currently is. But it all circles back to the beginning of the time line and the ethics, mores, and beliefs that were the early bricks of Western Civilization (oh, I bring up "Western Civilization" not just because Deconstructo is part of it but because he brings it up himself in a line or two. Maybe I should continue on after stating those lines?). If you try to separate our modern society from those beliefs and traditions, it will crumble like an ill-constructed wall of plaster. Fuck. I might be getting this guy's whole thing.
"The canon of Western Culture shoots itself." Wait what? He might have lost me again but let's pick it apart a bit. Say we break the line (which is a circle back to the beginning, remember. I totally get that now!) leading back to Christian beliefs, or Greek Mythology, or the Roman Empire. It would destroy most of the canon of Western Culture. Religious people sometimes wonder why I, an atheist, know The Bible so well. It's because you can't have a literature degree in the West without having to know a fuck-ton of shit about The Bible or Greek and Roman history. It's all in there as allusions and stolen phrases. You'll miss 80% of references without knowing the art and myth and belief of the people which we might consider the foundation of "Western Civilization." The canon would shoot itself. Because it no longer has any identity and has become depressed? Or does he just mean it will become nonsense to a society that has cut itself off from the history and art of the past?
"And history comes to an end!" Well, not exactly. Thing change, dude. I suppose this is a threat from a guy who thinks he's a nihilist but is just raving against the status quo which doesn't like his artwork. But saying "history comes to an end" if we stop putting so much importance on the foundations of the Western Cultural canon comes across a bit like a white supremacist argument. It sounds like every white guy I knew in college who ranted and raved about the importance of the Western Canon and how it was being diluted by adding things like Toni Morrison's Beloved or older texts from all across the globe. Anything that wasn't usually just a British or American white guy with a bunch of old Roman, Greek, and Nordic texts thrown in always felt like some kind of literary affirmative action to them. They might say things like this "History comes to an end!" statement when they should be realizing that history was being broadened with voices usually not heard.
At this point, it feels like Deconstructo is using this argument as a threat to disrupt the status quo. But does he see what he's saying as a good thing? Things fall apart, buddy. And in ways that aren't actual physical infrastructure, that's generally a good thing. Because the established ways, built on old foundations, have been built with a limited amount of people in mind. And society has a really hard time breaking things down all the way to rooting up the foundation. They just build upon broken old crumbling foundations and try to cram new additions and expansions onto a foundation that wasn't meant to hold it. I, for one, am all for tearing it all up and rebuilding from an entirely modern perspective. We can't go on just jury rigging our world to fix one problem at a time. Sometimes you just have to scrap the entire thing and try to rebuild.
Anyway, maybe that's not what he was saying. I just interpreted it all with my own biases and agendas. *shrug*
"All logic spirals back to its source." This probably deserves a bit more than "No it doesn't!" because it's a bit unclear. Does he mean all logic is dependent on the person communicating that logic, and thus all logic is full of agenda rather than a rational accounting of the issue? Or does he mean all logical statements about a source spiral back to simply a tautological statement of that initial source? I'm not totally sure what he's getting at here other than trying to claim all logic is circular because he needs to tie everything into the appearance of the Circle Line and why it obviously exists everywhere, whether or not people expected it to exist at this stop.
"All creation loops back to its creator." This seems like an odd statement for Deconstructo to profess. Shouldn't he be pointing out how the creator is not the center of the creation? Or how the creator's intent can't and shouldn't affect what the creation communicates to any individual experiencing it? Once again, this sounds like Deconstructo's main point is that all art has an agenda. He has decided you can't separate the creation from the creator, or the logic of the creation from its source (i.e. the creator). I'm not spending a lot of time rebutting these points because I don't think they're meant to make a whole lot of sense; they're just meant to seem like they make a whole lot of sense. "Look! The circle line! All lines are circles! Logic is circular! Creation and creator are entwined in a horny loop of existential symbiosis!"
"And if you try to break the circle? All the walls fall! Civilization shatters in a wall of plaster." Hmm. You know what? Maybe he's got a point! I was thinking of Deconstructo's argument in an artistic sense. But here he points out civilization will fall if the circle is broken so I think he's using "art" as a metaphor for the entire shebang. If Deconstructo has been talking about civilization as a whole from the start (which he may be and he may have explicitly stated it last issue but it's been a month or more since I read that issue), then I might start buying into some of this. If we take civilization as a building up of traditions which allowed mankind to grow in myriad ways, from agriculture and leisure and electronics and travel and science), we can see this as a line. A time line. The foundation of this time line remains the same (probably Greek and Roman and Christian beginnings), even to this day, especially when considering things from a "Western Civilization" point of view (which Deconstructo is, being of British descent. Obviously this argument of civilization would remain mostly the same from other cultural viewpoints except with a widely different foundation way back in time). There's no universal law that says our society has to be organized the way it currently is. But it all circles back to the beginning of the time line and the ethics, mores, and beliefs that were the early bricks of Western Civilization (oh, I bring up "Western Civilization" not just because Deconstructo is part of it but because he brings it up himself in a line or two. Maybe I should continue on after stating those lines?). If you try to separate our modern society from those beliefs and traditions, it will crumble like an ill-constructed wall of plaster. Fuck. I might be getting this guy's whole thing.
"The canon of Western Culture shoots itself." Wait what? He might have lost me again but let's pick it apart a bit. Say we break the line (which is a circle back to the beginning, remember. I totally get that now!) leading back to Christian beliefs, or Greek Mythology, or the Roman Empire. It would destroy most of the canon of Western Culture. Religious people sometimes wonder why I, an atheist, know The Bible so well. It's because you can't have a literature degree in the West without having to know a fuck-ton of shit about The Bible or Greek and Roman history. It's all in there as allusions and stolen phrases. You'll miss 80% of references without knowing the art and myth and belief of the people which we might consider the foundation of "Western Civilization." The canon would shoot itself. Because it no longer has any identity and has become depressed? Or does he just mean it will become nonsense to a society that has cut itself off from the history and art of the past?
"And history comes to an end!" Well, not exactly. Thing change, dude. I suppose this is a threat from a guy who thinks he's a nihilist but is just raving against the status quo which doesn't like his artwork. But saying "history comes to an end" if we stop putting so much importance on the foundations of the Western Cultural canon comes across a bit like a white supremacist argument. It sounds like every white guy I knew in college who ranted and raved about the importance of the Western Canon and how it was being diluted by adding things like Toni Morrison's Beloved or older texts from all across the globe. Anything that wasn't usually just a British or American white guy with a bunch of old Roman, Greek, and Nordic texts thrown in always felt like some kind of literary affirmative action to them. They might say things like this "History comes to an end!" statement when they should be realizing that history was being broadened with voices usually not heard.
At this point, it feels like Deconstructo is using this argument as a threat to disrupt the status quo. But does he see what he's saying as a good thing? Things fall apart, buddy. And in ways that aren't actual physical infrastructure, that's generally a good thing. Because the established ways, built on old foundations, have been built with a limited amount of people in mind. And society has a really hard time breaking things down all the way to rooting up the foundation. They just build upon broken old crumbling foundations and try to cram new additions and expansions onto a foundation that wasn't meant to hold it. I, for one, am all for tearing it all up and rebuilding from an entirely modern perspective. We can't go on just jury rigging our world to fix one problem at a time. Sometimes you just have to scrap the entire thing and try to rebuild.
Anyway, maybe that's not what he was saying. I just interpreted it all with my own biases and agendas. *shrug*
Oh shit. I see now. His entire problem is growing up working class British and having to rely on crappy British superheroes to escape.
I can't believe I thought there was more to this guy's anger! He's just upset over his childhood and wants everybody else to suffer. And he especially wants the American super heroes to suffer because he didn't get to read their exploits every week. Instead he was probably stuck reading Marvelman or Herbie or Bananaman. Although, let's face it, I think maybe Gerard Jones might be as ignorant about Britain as Ron Randall. Because if this guy hated his working class life and lost himself in comic books, wouldn't he be less artsy and more "I am the law!"?
Seriously though, this bit trying to explain Deconstructo's origin ruins it for me. I don't need to know the particulars of what created this pretentious gas bag who can't reconcile with his failure as an artist. Just let him keep spouting Ann Nocenti nonsense! I'm used to "deconstruction" being equated with Dadaism and nihilism and all the sins of the modern world. Plus I know Batman is probably going to knock his fucking block off soon and I'd rather not feel any sympathy for him because he had a rough childhood. Although this one memory he shares doesn't really change the guy being a jerk who can't deal with his flaws and shortcomings. It does just make him look like an even bigger jerk who didn't appreciate what his family did for him! So am I turned around on that bit? No, I still didn't want to know anything about him.
Seriously though, this bit trying to explain Deconstructo's origin ruins it for me. I don't need to know the particulars of what created this pretentious gas bag who can't reconcile with his failure as an artist. Just let him keep spouting Ann Nocenti nonsense! I'm used to "deconstruction" being equated with Dadaism and nihilism and all the sins of the modern world. Plus I know Batman is probably going to knock his fucking block off soon and I'd rather not feel any sympathy for him because he had a rough childhood. Although this one memory he shares doesn't really change the guy being a jerk who can't deal with his flaws and shortcomings. It does just make him look like an even bigger jerk who didn't appreciate what his family did for him! So am I turned around on that bit? No, I still didn't want to know anything about him.
Oh shit. Wait a second. I think I'm beginning to like this jerk.
Man, if this guy would actually do something with his new power to make the world a better place rather than crying about not getting his art in some charity exhibit, maybe Batman wouldn't have to punch him in the jaw later. Sure, forcing the world to change to a world that you view as better by using your magic space wand is a bit of a dick fascist move that takes away the free will of billions of individuals. But maybe he could do something else. Like rain down pamphlets with good natured messages all over the world! Or, I don't know, make the Care Bears real. Put psilocybin in the aquifers? I'm not an idea man! I don't know how to magically make things better except to not, individually, make things worse.
Batman has noticed that the guy hasn't actually hurt anybody. He just seems to be doing gigantic art projects in the hope that he'll be noticed. He's simply looking for clout. But just like YouTube pranksters bothering people at the mall, he's got to be stopped by somebody. Deconstructo invites the Justice League to a huge battle in Trafalgar Square to finally determine if sense is greater than nonsense. Dammit. Now I want him to defeat the Justice League. I can't root for sense to win.
The fight on the cover takes place for a few pages as Kara ditches the team to go battle Deconstructo on her own. But this fight is more realistic because the statue is missing the right arm. And pretty soon it's missing the left arm too as Kara breaks it off. But then moments later, it has two new arms: Kara's! And Kara has two new half-arms! But she loses her head!
Batman has noticed that the guy hasn't actually hurt anybody. He just seems to be doing gigantic art projects in the hope that he'll be noticed. He's simply looking for clout. But just like YouTube pranksters bothering people at the mall, he's got to be stopped by somebody. Deconstructo invites the Justice League to a huge battle in Trafalgar Square to finally determine if sense is greater than nonsense. Dammit. Now I want him to defeat the Justice League. I can't root for sense to win.
The fight on the cover takes place for a few pages as Kara ditches the team to go battle Deconstructo on her own. But this fight is more realistic because the statue is missing the right arm. And pretty soon it's missing the left arm too as Kara breaks it off. But then moments later, it has two new arms: Kara's! And Kara has two new half-arms! But she loses her head!
If Deconstructo's wand can remove somebody's head while keeping them alive, why did he ever even leave his bedroom?
Justice League Europe #38 Rating: B+. Deconstructo isn't the worst villain the Justice League has ever battled but he suffers from a lack of any real message. His main argument seems to be that words are made-up constructs and he thinks the rest of the world needs to be informed of this. And while he's right, it seems a little shallow to be all, "People made up words and the meaning of words and because of that, nothing is real!" But that's language, dude. He's like a toddler who finally understands what language is and then throws the biggest tantrum because it doesn't, I don't know, make him famous? If we didn't create words to describe things which cannot currently be seen by the person we're communicating with, we'd have created gestures (which, you know, we have done as well!). Or drawn symbols in the dirt. And none of those things would be the real things! And, yes, much of our words hold some form of inherent bias and can only truly be understood within the context of the words not used. Deconstructing language can be useful to ferret out bias and agenda within the speaker. Or to maybe get a sense of something being expressed that even the speaker doesn't consciously realize they're expressing. But do we tear down all communication because it's inherently flawed? Because we can never truly understand any other person, perhaps because our own ideas about the words being used by the other differ in some dramatic and personal way that the speaker can't begin to understand? Why am I even trying to understand Deconstructo's actual agenda? He's just pissed that his parents didn't give him everything he ever wanted and the charity event didn't want to use his super mind-blowing work of art. He really is just throwing a gigantic tantrum. But at least he wasn't targeting the Justice League specifically! So they're not to blame for his rampage! Except he did steal the wand from them. So, um, never mind. Just another story where the Justice League needs to save the world from a danger they created.
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