Not even Dan Jurgens kows what the fuck is happening on this cover.
Since Dan Jurgens was only allowed to write two more issues of Justice League America after he blew whatever was left of his wad after the Death of Superman on his Doctor Destiny story, he was required to give readers the origin of Bloodwynd. Maybe not contractually obligated but I'd argue socially obligated. You want to be seen as a responsible writer? Answer the plot questions you've littered all over your stories that were meant to intrigue readers into buying more issues to satisfy their curiosity. If you want to be Scott Lobdell, have Superman encounter a floating door in the sky and never again do anything about it at all because why not?
Scott Lobdell: "While writing, my brain was all, 'What if Superman encountered a door floating in the sky?'"
Editorial: "You mean like a throwback to an old '50s or '60s Superman story where the cover might be all, 'What family secrets lie hidden behind the Door That Floats Over Smallville?!'"
Scott Lobdell: "What? You now I've never read a comic book in my life. I just thought, 'That's be weird, right?'"
Editorial: "Yeah! Cool. So what'll be behind it?!"
Scott Lobdell: "Fuck if I know. I love it when my brain surprises me!"
Editorial: "So that'll be the next story arc? The mystery sky door?"
Scott Lobdell: "The what? What door? I think I'll have Superman invent a new kind of math next month."
I don't remember how the whole Bloodwynd thing plays out but I think readers eventually learn Bloodwynd is actually a real character that isn't just J'onn putting on blackface. Editorial, after receiving an influx of letters from fans applauding DC for their inclusion of a Black magic-based character in the Justice League ranks, probably realized that having Bloodwynd just be J'onn in disguise was going to disappoint a lot of readers. Knowing what Dan Jurgens was soon to reveal to shocked readers, they probably demanded that Dan come up with a story that allowed Bloodwynd to remain an actual character and not just a Martian minstrel show.
Scott Lobdell: "While writing, my brain was all, 'What if Superman encountered a door floating in the sky?'"
Editorial: "You mean like a throwback to an old '50s or '60s Superman story where the cover might be all, 'What family secrets lie hidden behind the Door That Floats Over Smallville?!'"
Scott Lobdell: "What? You now I've never read a comic book in my life. I just thought, 'That's be weird, right?'"
Editorial: "Yeah! Cool. So what'll be behind it?!"
Scott Lobdell: "Fuck if I know. I love it when my brain surprises me!"
Editorial: "So that'll be the next story arc? The mystery sky door?"
Scott Lobdell: "The what? What door? I think I'll have Superman invent a new kind of math next month."
I don't remember how the whole Bloodwynd thing plays out but I think readers eventually learn Bloodwynd is actually a real character that isn't just J'onn putting on blackface. Editorial, after receiving an influx of letters from fans applauding DC for their inclusion of a Black magic-based character in the Justice League ranks, probably realized that having Bloodwynd just be J'onn in disguise was going to disappoint a lot of readers. Knowing what Dan Jurgens was soon to reveal to shocked readers, they probably demanded that Dan come up with a story that allowed Bloodwynd to remain an actual character and not just a Martian minstrel show.
"And why do you still have that gem stuck in your chest? And why are my pants so high-waisted?!"
J'onn explains that he has no memory of his time as Bloodwynd and Booster, disappointed, is all, "Aww." The end! Good explanation, Dan Jurgens! My guess is that J'onn attended one of those hypnotism shows and reacted poorly when he was told to act like a chicken. Maybe the Martian word for "chicken" is "mysterious Black wizard."
J'onn is every politician when an old photo of them turns up in blackface. "Um, I have no memory of the event! Why would I do such a thing?!"
Why do you think Dan Jurgens put Booster Gold in such awful pants? Do you think Dan had begun wearing pants like that and he was all, "They are too cool! I'll show everybody how cool they are! Booster Gold will wear them because he's so cool!"
Booster Gold lists every strange power Bloodwynd ever used so that Martian Manhunter can explain them all away as being powers he already possessed. Hasn't Booster Gold been paying attention? J'onn has basically every power in the DC Universe. And those he doesn't have, his other powers can simulate easily. Another person who hasn't been paying attention: Blue Beetle!
Booster Gold lists every strange power Bloodwynd ever used so that Martian Manhunter can explain them all away as being powers he already possessed. Hasn't Booster Gold been paying attention? J'onn has basically every power in the DC Universe. And those he doesn't have, his other powers can simulate easily. Another person who hasn't been paying attention: Blue Beetle!
He can't fucking remember, you asshole.
Blue Beetle, being the intense genius that readers in the letters pages continually delude themselves into believing him to be, decides that the secret to J'onn's mysterious transformation and memory loss is the jewel embedded in his chest. His evidence? "Both you and Bloodwynd wore the thing." Animal crackers! He's right! It was so obvious! How did nobody see it before?! Oh wait. I know how. Only Booster Gold has been hanging around to make that intuitive leap and he still doesn't understand why his pants look so ridiculous. No wonder Blue Beetle hangs around with Booster Gold. Anybody would seem to be a genius compared to him. Booster Gold really should reactivate Skeets permanently since that's where all of Booster Gold's knowledge resides. Skeets was Booster's iPhone before everybody in the world became braindead assholes who didn't need to know anything because the contraption embedded in their hand like the Mark of the Beast tells them whatever they need to know when they suddenly need to know it (if they even realize they need to know something they don't know).
This gonorrhea-ridden monster and his garden of fungal phalluses has been trapped insde the jewel on J'onn's chest. Weapons Master is just visiting.
Is this entire story an allegory for sexually transmitted diseases? Bloodwynd? Like something borne on the wind but in the blood. Like a virus! Sex rot! Which is fitting cause this guy's name is Rott. It must be Martian AIDS which is why all of the phallic imagery inside J'onn's chest jewel.
Rott's plan to escape his jewel-dimension prison relies on using the power of J'onn and the rest of the Justice League. Weapons Master, having accidentally discovered Rott while hopping dimensions, just wants to see the Justice League destroyed fro embarrassing him in front of his girlfriend a few issues ago. Why that plan involved J'onn rejoining the Justice League as a completely different person hasn't been revealed yet because I'm only like five pages into the comic book. But I'm sure it had something to do with Dan Jurgens figuring all of this out way after introducing Bloodwynd to the team.
Also trapped inside the extra-dimensional jewel: Bloodwynd!
Blue Beetle runs every test he can think of on the gem and learns nothing. But that doesn't stop him from making up some theories! Because that's how science works when you're the smartest guy in a room that only contains you and Booster Gold.
Rott's plan to escape his jewel-dimension prison relies on using the power of J'onn and the rest of the Justice League. Weapons Master, having accidentally discovered Rott while hopping dimensions, just wants to see the Justice League destroyed fro embarrassing him in front of his girlfriend a few issues ago. Why that plan involved J'onn rejoining the Justice League as a completely different person hasn't been revealed yet because I'm only like five pages into the comic book. But I'm sure it had something to do with Dan Jurgens figuring all of this out way after introducing Bloodwynd to the team.
Also trapped inside the extra-dimensional jewel: Bloodwynd!
Blue Beetle runs every test he can think of on the gem and learns nothing. But that doesn't stop him from making up some theories! Because that's how science works when you're the smartest guy in a room that only contains you and Booster Gold.
Hmm. I was kind of hoping Beetle's theory would be more spectacularly crazy and less mundanely obvious.
I guess having an actual genius scientist standing over your shoulder really puts a leash on how pedophile-ring-in-the-basement-of-a-pizza-restaurant unhinged the theories you're willing to vocalize are. Still, he could have come up with something insanely clever like "This gem represents Martian AIDS contracted from all the White Martian dick J'onn has been sucking!" You'd think that I wouldn't be so quick to act like AIDS is a stereotypically gay disease especially since, in this run's last year or two, I've been barraged by DC's extended run of advertisements to educated readers on the reality of AIDS!
This is one of them. See if you can spot where Past Me Photoshopped it!
I searched "AIDS" on Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea to find this advert from a Team Titans review. What I discovered was that I have pages and pages of reviews that mention "AIDS." What's wrong with me?! Do I think AIDS is a joke?! No, actually. But it's crazy how often I think a story is really just an allegory for how America handled the disease in the '80s. Especially that Benjamin Percy run on Green Arrow with the werewolves! That's the one time I think my AIDS allegory theory was actually valid.
The other half of that panel I scanned contains The Atom's response to Blue Beetle which is an actually respectable extra-dimensional scientific theory. And the only way The Atom knows to test that theory, you've probably guessed: shrink down and enter J'onn's penis! I mean his gem!
The Atom shrinks down and enters J'onn's gem while spewing the most vile innuendo I've ever read. Ray Palmer might as well have just asked J'onn to pull down his bikini briefs so he could fuck him. And as we all know, being that this is an AIDS allegory, The Atom has just contracted HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS! Playing the part of the HIV virus on the next page is Weapons Master!
The other half of that panel I scanned contains The Atom's response to Blue Beetle which is an actually respectable extra-dimensional scientific theory. And the only way The Atom knows to test that theory, you've probably guessed: shrink down and enter J'onn's penis! I mean his gem!
The Atom shrinks down and enters J'onn's gem while spewing the most vile innuendo I've ever read. Ray Palmer might as well have just asked J'onn to pull down his bikini briefs so he could fuck him. And as we all know, being that this is an AIDS allegory, The Atom has just contracted HIV, the virus which leads to AIDS! Playing the part of the HIV virus on the next page is Weapons Master!
Hee hee!
Being that Rott is trapped inside a gem, my guess is that they need The Ray's help to escape! That's also based on that time I looked at and scanned in the cover earlier. I may not be a scientist who knows anything about gems and refraction and alternate dimensions and pizza basement pedophile rings, but I am capable of remembering something I looked at within the past hour. I'm not a genius though so anywhere outside of that hour will wind up with diminishing returns on what I can remember. Unless I once Photoshopped Tim Drake telling Alfred that he's going to get some pussy. That's something I'll remember until the day I die.
Weapons Master arcs some kind of painful energy through the gem, forcing Martian Manhunter to finally attempt to remove it from his chest. After he does so, he begins to wither and die. Booster Gold puts the gem back on J'onn's chest instead of letting J'onn die and ending the story. That could have been a way to go too! Once J'onn has caught his breath and stop withering into nothing, Rott demands they send The Ray into the gem or they'll kill J'onn. Luckily The Ray isn't around to hear everybody's reaction to the thought that The Ray might be the Justice League's most powerful member. A whole lot of exclamations ending in interrobangs filled the room and probably a bit of snickering as well. "That dumb kid from Philly who's nothing more than a fancy flashlight?! Ha ha! Ridiculous!" But no! Not ridiculous! Remember how Oberon ran a battery of tests on The Ray a few issues ago and everybody said things like, "His power levels are off the charts!" and "He's going to blow the building if we keep pushing him!" and "I, Superman, am going to go get a latte and a croissant since nobody seems to fucking need me anymore now that you have this super powerful kid that you're all impressed by!" Which is true, I guess! It's not like Doomsday beat The Ray to death!
Oh wait. Superman was already dead by the time The Ray came along, wasn't he? That was sort of the point of hiring The Ray and Black Condor and Agent I've Got A Gun. Well, how was I supposed to remember that? It's not like I read that issue sometime within the last hour.
The Ray rightly hesitates about entering the gem, realizing that it's probably a trap. But J'onn and Beetle and Booster are all, "But RaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaay is in theeeeeEEEEEEeeeEEEEeeeere! You have to HELP our FRIEND!" So The Ray turns into a laser beam and enters the gem only to find himself in the clutches of Rott and the Weapons Master! Too bad they didn't send Agent Liberty. He could have, according to his view of the way the world works, used his bullets to keep this story from needing a second part.
Justice League America #76 Rating: B. I have a feeling Dan Jurgens believes this is adequate explanation for what happened to J'onn and he won't be providing too many more details. So let me surmise how this happened: J'onn quit the Justice League meaning to go on a meditative retreat across time and space. But before leaving Earth, he stopped into a small antiques dealer in Bangor, Maine, where he saw a beautiful brooch that he couldn't resist. Upon placing it on his chest, being that he's a powerful telepath, J'onn subsumed the personality of one of the people trapped inside: Bloodwynd! Lucky he didn't become Rott, I guess. Bloodwynd, realizing he now had control over J'onn's personality, decided to join the Justice League where he might meet people who could help free him from the gem. Unfortunately, before he could come up with a plan, Doctor Destiny interfered and J'onn regained control of his body. Bloodwynd, exhausted from the mental strain of controlling J'onn's body, collapsed unconscious within the gem. But his cellmate Rott had been observing everything and realized that The Ray could probably free him from the gem. Also Weapons Master wound up visiting for some reason. I guess to give the story some kind of historical continuity between the antagonists and the League.
I very much like the design of Rott and wonder why he didn't become a major Justice League villain. Probably due to all the sores erupting all of his skin. He's got the Lobo body type that probably made readers' dicks hard but all those spirochetal oozing sores is a real turn-off, man.
Weapons Master arcs some kind of painful energy through the gem, forcing Martian Manhunter to finally attempt to remove it from his chest. After he does so, he begins to wither and die. Booster Gold puts the gem back on J'onn's chest instead of letting J'onn die and ending the story. That could have been a way to go too! Once J'onn has caught his breath and stop withering into nothing, Rott demands they send The Ray into the gem or they'll kill J'onn. Luckily The Ray isn't around to hear everybody's reaction to the thought that The Ray might be the Justice League's most powerful member. A whole lot of exclamations ending in interrobangs filled the room and probably a bit of snickering as well. "That dumb kid from Philly who's nothing more than a fancy flashlight?! Ha ha! Ridiculous!" But no! Not ridiculous! Remember how Oberon ran a battery of tests on The Ray a few issues ago and everybody said things like, "His power levels are off the charts!" and "He's going to blow the building if we keep pushing him!" and "I, Superman, am going to go get a latte and a croissant since nobody seems to fucking need me anymore now that you have this super powerful kid that you're all impressed by!" Which is true, I guess! It's not like Doomsday beat The Ray to death!
Oh wait. Superman was already dead by the time The Ray came along, wasn't he? That was sort of the point of hiring The Ray and Black Condor and Agent I've Got A Gun. Well, how was I supposed to remember that? It's not like I read that issue sometime within the last hour.
The Ray rightly hesitates about entering the gem, realizing that it's probably a trap. But J'onn and Beetle and Booster are all, "But RaaaaAAAAaaaaAAAAaaay is in theeeeeEEEEEEeeeEEEEeeeere! You have to HELP our FRIEND!" So The Ray turns into a laser beam and enters the gem only to find himself in the clutches of Rott and the Weapons Master! Too bad they didn't send Agent Liberty. He could have, according to his view of the way the world works, used his bullets to keep this story from needing a second part.
Justice League America #76 Rating: B. I have a feeling Dan Jurgens believes this is adequate explanation for what happened to J'onn and he won't be providing too many more details. So let me surmise how this happened: J'onn quit the Justice League meaning to go on a meditative retreat across time and space. But before leaving Earth, he stopped into a small antiques dealer in Bangor, Maine, where he saw a beautiful brooch that he couldn't resist. Upon placing it on his chest, being that he's a powerful telepath, J'onn subsumed the personality of one of the people trapped inside: Bloodwynd! Lucky he didn't become Rott, I guess. Bloodwynd, realizing he now had control over J'onn's personality, decided to join the Justice League where he might meet people who could help free him from the gem. Unfortunately, before he could come up with a plan, Doctor Destiny interfered and J'onn regained control of his body. Bloodwynd, exhausted from the mental strain of controlling J'onn's body, collapsed unconscious within the gem. But his cellmate Rott had been observing everything and realized that The Ray could probably free him from the gem. Also Weapons Master wound up visiting for some reason. I guess to give the story some kind of historical continuity between the antagonists and the League.
I very much like the design of Rott and wonder why he didn't become a major Justice League villain. Probably due to all the sores erupting all of his skin. He's got the Lobo body type that probably made readers' dicks hard but all those spirochetal oozing sores is a real turn-off, man.
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