Justice League Europe #1 (1989)

Sorry to be pedantic but it's not really déjà vu when you're holding the thing that's obviously the source of the thing you have an overwhelming feeling has happened before.

This team is going to be so fantastic! They've got all the super-hero stereotypes: the guy in armor, the funny guy who can change shape, the other funny guy who can change shape, the reluctant hero, the woman with the big tits, the other woman with the big tits, and the new guy who's still trying to shake the reputation of how boring the old guy was. Oh, and Captain Atom. I think he's the guy with the atomic stick up his butt. Guaranteed he will be making zero jokes.

I've also just noticed this team has two brunettes (or would that be a brunet and a brunette? Does anybody fucking care?), two blondes, two gingers, and two guys with silver heads. Also Power Girl's hair is scaring me. In a different way than her tits are scaring me.

I dare you to find an opening shot of Paris in a DC comic book that doesn't include the Eiffel Tower. I'll fucking buy that comic off you for fifty bucks if you find one.

Captain Atom has taken on the mantle of leader of the European division of the Justice League. To remind everybody that their headquarters is in Paris, Captain Atom thinks, "In Paris yet!", while looking at the Eiffel Tower through the window. I can already tell I'm going to be fucking sick of seeing the Eiffel Tower in this comic book. I know he's the leader and all (because he just told me) but I hope I don't have to look at Captain Atom too much while reading this comic book. He's so disturbing! He's just a mass of too much muscle with a small little testicular shaped bulge in front and a bare if silver ass. By the look of him, I'm fairly certain he's either naked or covered in a thin layer of plutonium. Which means he's lost his dick somewhere. I'm not saying I want to see him walking around with his cock hanging out like Doctor Manhattan but I do think it would be far less disturbing than not having one.

Captain Atom meets Catherine Cobert, the Paris Embassy Chief. That means she's the equivalent of either Max Lord or Oberon. She's French which means she's super sexy and horny. All Parisian women are constantly horny because no matter where they look, they see the giant metal erection that's a symbol of their city.

Ralph and Sue Dibny arrive and I'm sorry to see Captain Atom's disturbing crotch and muscular ass leave the page as I'm forced to watch Ralph Dibny's disgusting six foot long neck wrap about Sue like an outtake from a Hentai cartoon. Ralph is grossing me out so badly that I'm going to go read Identity Crisis right now just to make him super sad.

I'm surprised Power Girl and Wonder Woman didn't rip off more dicks back in the day.

My joke about Wonder Woman and Power Girl simply being the big tits on the team was satire attacking the way comic books often depict women as simply male fantasies so stop calling my a hypocrite! As you can see from the way The Flash is portrayed, I was spot on with my satiric critique. And while you might just want to get angry at everything you read without actually thinking about it, blaming the writer for not make their statement clear, maybe try not being such a lazy reader! Or such an angry reader! You don't have to be instantly angry at something! That's what those asshole Comicsgaters do! I know you're full of youthful passions but maybe, just maybe, you can rein those passions in a bit before flying off the handle at everybody, just in case. I know there's a lot of clout to exposing allies on the Internet! But that's why all y'all angry youths get it wrong so often. Because you've got to be the first to "deconstruct" some ally's beliefs, causing you to miss subtle and hilarious critiques of pop culture like when I said Wonder Woman was just a pair of big tits!

Anyway, my main point is leave me alone! If you think I said something terrible, just re-read it while thinking, "This isn't so terrible. It's actually the opposite of terrible!" See? Now you understand me!

Animal Man and Rocket Red get to know each other on the way to the Embassy. They're both family men with wives and kids. How come Ralph gets to bring Sue to stay in the Embassy but they don't get to bring their families? I mean, other than Dmitri's family is stuck in the USSR and Buddy's wife probably has a job back in California. Isn't she a photographer or something? Been way too long since I read my Animal Man comics.

I think I had a caption for this but my cat, Gravy, is sitting four inches from my face and staring at me and it's freaking me out a bit..

The first meeting of the Justice League Europe and notice anything weird about the group (other than Animal Man trying to stare down Power Girl's top)? That's right! None of them feel like they need to use their powers in the meeting except for that disgusting Ralph Dibny! Nobody wants to see a five foot long neck! It's fucking gross!

Am I the only one who has an issue with Ralph's neck constantly elongated? It might be the childhood trauma I suffered from this picture:

I used to slowly flip through an old hardcover copy we had of Carroll's book until the pages would flop to this page. It would freak me out and I'd close the book and drop it quickly. But sooner or later, I'd be compelled to pick it up and have another look.

Another thing I used to do as a kid that would scare the shit out of me but I felt compelled to engage in the behavior anyway: I would stand out in the family driveway after dark with a flashlight and shine the light into the starry sky. I assumed something somewhere out in space could see the light and might follow it back to its source. My arms would erupt in gooseflesh and I'd flick the flashlight off and run inside before I could be abducted. But eventually, I'd find myself out in the driveway again, shining the flashlight into the sky while nearly shitting myself.

The teleporters in the Paris Embassy aren't working and they wind up frying Animal Man's luggage. At least I hope it was his luggage and not his little girl on a surprise visit. I bet Morrison suggested that so he could have some really great drama in his Animal Man series but editorial was all, "Are you fucking crazy?! We can't kill his daughter! Maybe his wife?"

In no time, the League has a mystery: a man drops dead in their lobby while looking for their help.

Goddammit Ralph! Just fucking walk around to the other side of the body like everybody else, you fucking freak!

I need to remind myself not to eat before reading another issue of this because my stomach seriously can't take all of this long neck business.

Power Girl quickly becomes my favorite member when she speaks truth to power:

Sue Dibny deserves to die for finding this shit cute.

Look, I like Sue Dibny! But she is going to die and there's nothing I can do about that! So I'm trying to come to terms with her death by convincing myself that she deserved it! And if loving Ralph Dibny isn't a sin, then what is?!

Oh, that's right. Wally West's attitude toward women is definitely one.

Was Wally's "I'm going to try as hard as I can to get into Wonder Woman's leotard" attitude funny in 1989? I don't have any memory of it so I'm thinking it was probably just a mundane comment. Just part of the normal workplace dialogue which women had to suffer through every single day. And if a woman said, "Hey, I don't appreciate that shit, buddy?", they were labeled uptight or a snob or frigid or a bitch. Because, of course, the guy didn't think of himself as a creep so how could his comment have been creepy? It was just some light-hearted flirtatious banter, you know?! Lighten up!

One thing I have noticed is that both Wonder Woman and Power Girl seem to simply ignore his lewd come-ons. I'm sure they've learned that to speak out is to face the passive-aggressive wrath of male coworkers who, limiting the ability for self-reflection, simply label them a humorless woman.

I can't scan every panel after the one with The Flash hitting on Wonder Woman but I assure you that nobody tells The Flash he's being a fucking lech.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man in a trench coat stands outside the Embassy and pushes the button on a small device. The device is a rectangular piece of metal with one red button and an antenna. If he's not opening a garage door, he's up to something terrible.

Not long after the button is pushed, an angry French mob rushes the Embassy, screaming something about Nazi pigs. Maybe they heard The Flash's comments and, even in France, they were just too sexist.

Captain Atom's first reaction is to irradiate (or disintegrate!) the mob.

The head on the end of the thirty foot neck yells to its teammates to not hurt anybody because they're civilians. Metamorpho complains that they might hurt him instead of, you know, turning into some kind of harmless gas that would put them all to sleep. He must know how to do that, right?! He's the element man! You'd have to be an expert on elements to have that job. Unlike me who would panic and think, "I don't know! Does krypton put people to sleep?!" Then I'd probably turn into boron and bleach everybody's hair.

I just pointed out that I wouldn't know what I'm doing as The Element Man so don't bother sending me a message about how boron wouldn't do that! How the fuck would I know?!

Shit. I might have accidentally poisoned them all but at least I'd be trying to do something!

Metamorpho has the power to subdue them chemically or to change into a cage to keep them from hurting themselves or others. Instead, he just decides to take a nap on their heads. At least Ralph is subduing people even if he's making me sick with his fifty foot long neck.

I guess Wonder Woman lost her lasso because she needs to use something else she just found lying around the place.

Oh god. That's Ralph's dick, isn't it?

Some of you might be thinking, "Why would you think that's a dick?" To which I'd answer, "Never you fucking mind."

Eventually, the civilians simply top being mind-controlled and confusedly go back to wherever they came from. Probably a café or a brothel. What else is there in Paris?

Captain Atom learns that the man who died in their lobby croaking out his last word of "Braces!" was a Nazi. And the French hate Nazis! Which means they should love the Justice League because the Nazi died in their embassy! But instead, they hate the Justice League because the Nazi went to them for help? I don't know exactly how it all works but the point, I think, is that somebody is trying to make the Justice League uncomfortable in Paris! How rude!

If I knew what super-villains were known for being rude and inconvenient, I'd take a guess at who was responsible. Maybe Mr. Nobody and the Brotherhood of Dada?! No, that would make this series way too interesting.

This first issue has some letters from people who decided to respond simply to the announcement that this comic book was coming out. They are from Buddy Ingram of Trussville, Alabama; Bill Froberg of Easton, Pennsylvania; and Michael Pickens of Newark, Ohio. I'd be surprised if any of them praise the letterer since they haven't even read this first issue. Although I wished that they had. Froberg takes comic books way too seriously and is all, "If you don't listen to my suggestions, I will not read more than three of your comics." And then Pickens is all, "You will have to come to terms with the point I am making in my letter or else nobody will read your book." Christ, chill out, my dudes! You might think you have reasonable and rational arguments but just remember that the subject of those arguments are people who absolutely defy reality and are illogical arguments all in themselves!

Justice League Europe #1 Rating: B. Not a bad start although it felt a little bit like the introductory paragraph in a high school essay that always explains that the writer is about to write an essay and could easily be dropped without changing the essay in any way. This issue was lots of moving into the Embassy and members meeting for the first time and The Flash nearly taking his dick out of his pants (or maybe he did but it was just too quick for anybody to see?). Their first encounter with a villain happens to be exactly the thing I hate about superhero comic books: the villain is targeting the heroes themselves. Which means the heroes, so far, aren't needed! If the villains are targeting the heroes then the heroes don't exist to save the world. They simply exist to save themselves. That bothers me way more than Ralph Dibny's elongated neck (which fucking bothers me to hell and back).

Justice League International #25 (1989)

Kevin Maguire nails the "I just shit myself" facial expression.

Twenty-five issues in and I just noticed that the "J" and the "U" in the title stand alone as the JLI abbreviation. Pretty sneaky, sis.

Ty Templeton pencils only fours pages of this issue and I think I know why.

He spent most of the month perfecting Ice's ass.

I'm only now just realizing that I read comic books for the butts.

Apparently Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are still working for that vehicle repossessing company because a call comes in for a big job. You would think Batman would put up some money to pay the Justice League a livable wage so that they can be ready to act when a crisis hits Earth. Didn't the recent alien invasion teach Batman anything? The world was almost conquered because Booster and Beetle were busy repossessing some drunk's minivan and Fire was at a modelling audition and Ice was filming a commercial and Mister Miracle was performing at a ten year old's birthday party and John Jones was investigating the possible infidelity of a wayward husband. Pretty sure superheroes shouldn't be moonlighting.

Beetle decides to fly the Bug to the job which seems like a weird choice if he's bankrupt. The fuel to fly that thing has got to cost more than they're going to make on this job.

These speech bubbles are coming out of the wrong mouths.

Is their a bigger sin in comic books than when the letterer places speech bubbles on the incorrect characters? I mean other than the sin of letting Scott Lobdell write the comic or Rob Liefeld draw it or Howard Mackie on punctuation.

This must have been the story arc where Batman went into therapy. Ha ha! Just kidding! He probably wound up having to fight a class action lawsuit in court for assault on half of Gotham's underworld.

Booster and Beetle have been hired to repossess a vampire. That must mean somebody owns the vampire. Which means Booster and Beetle are working for a slaver. Is this what Comicsgate means when they want to return to old fashioned comics? "I've had it up to here with inclusivity! Make mine comic books where heroes are involved in human (and vampire) trafficking!"

Booster doubts that vampires actually exist which simply makes the entire situation worse. Because that means they're simply kidnapping a regular old human and bringing them back into captivity! And here I thought Booster Gold and Blue Beetle were just a couple of fun loving dimwits. I had no idea they were also inhuman monsters.

Keep telling yourself whatever lies you need to to keep from actually caring, Beetle.

It might look like Booster Gold is having an attack of conscious in that last panel but I think he's just calling Beetle disgusting because he's planning on buying a bunch of Bob Dylan CDs.

The man who hired Booster and Beetle directs them to an abandoned sewage plant where the vampire has apparently taken up residence. The two of them treat it as a huge joke right up until they wander into a chamber full of human bones. I'm sure there's a rational explanation that doesn't have anything to do with an escaped hostage eating a bunch of other people.

Examining the bones more closely, Beetle realizes they're not human because they all have large fangs. Which totally means that no crime has been committed here. Pretty sure anything that isn't actually human can be killed and the law can't do anything about it. At least in the DC Universe.

The duo are subsequently attacked by the vampire they were sent to hunt although he seems less intent on eating them and more focused on getting them to just leave him alone. Which was kind of my point from the beginning. Why would these idiots take a repo job from some corporate CEO to hunt down a sentient being?! They're not bounty hunters hunting down somebody who skipped out on their bail! They're supposed to be out nabbing cars from people who have missed a few payments (which, look, I'm not totally on board with either, actually!).

He asks some fair questions.

This vampire sounds like me that time Jimmy Arthur chased me into a 7-Eleven and punched me in the face. My guess is this vampire is just about to smash Blue Arthur and Jimmy Gold over the head with his skateboard, causing him to bleed so badly that the cops who come by to investigate the fight will tell him, "You really fucked those guys up."

The vampire's name is Caitiff and he lets Booster and Beetle know it every time he makes a statement about himself. During his fearful rant, he admits that "This one can kill!" Yes, he speaks like a Khajiit. Anyway, that statement is all Booster and Beetle need to justify beating the shit out of him, kidnapping him, and taking him back to his captor. If I wanted to defend their actions, I suppose I could believe that they're too terrified by the idea of a vampire on the loose to reflect on their situation. Although shouldn't heroes be better than regular people who never, ever reflect on their situations and simply follow their instinctual drives based on selfish desires and irrational fears? Maybe this is why this Justice League never seemed very heroic. They were all just regular people doing stupid shit for selfish reasons.

Uh oh. This is beginning to sound like some kind of historical analogy. My Social Justice Warrior sense is tingling!

I was on the vampire's side until he got all judgmental about eating animals and then tried to defend his diet by saying he eats to survive. Welcome to the club, dickweed. Sure, humans don't have to eat meat to survive. But what else are cows going to do?! Survive in the wild on their own?! Good luck, dumb-dumbs!

Based on the whole "we eat meat to survive" defense, and based on the evidence that humans pen animals to slaughter them, do Booster and Beetle have to let the vampire go if they discover a bunch of people locked up in cages down in the sewer? They wouldn't want to be hypocrites, would they?

The main reason Booster and Beetle stop punching the vampire in the face is that he exclaims that they killed his wife and kids. So Beetle is all, "Whoa! This vampire fucks?! Who would have thought! He's hideous!" And Booster is all, "Yeah, but you never saw his wife, right? Probably a real vampire dog!" Although when is the last time a female vampire was ugly?! They're always super hot.

You cutting into a medium-rare steak versus Caitiff with his teeth stuck into the neck of a limp baby. Who looks worse?!

This is intolerable! I don't mind when super-heroes stop bank robberies and punch madmen in the face! But calling out eating meat?! Outrageous! I wish I was still a vegetarian so I could also look down on meat eaters right now! "Take that, you artery-clogged scumbags!" is probably what I would say while bathing in my feelings of superiority and righteousness! God, I miss those heady days! Totally worth not eating meat!

In the end, because the ethics of the situation just got way too complicated for Booster and Beetle to deal with, Caitiff falls in a pit while running from them and is pierced through the heart by a stalagmite. That's probably good enough to kill a vampire, right? Stake? Stalagmite? Practically the same thing.

Booster Gold believes Caitiff killed himself but Blue Beetle is all, "I don't want that on my conscious so I'm going to argue it was an accident!" Either way, they feel pretty shitty for causing this guy grief after all the grief he's already suffered at the hands of white Europeans. I mean men in general, probably.

Letters this issue were from Commander Anthony Gallagher of Melbourne, Australia; Charlie Harris of Tucson, Arizona; Sylvain Mallette of Spring Harbor, Michigan; Charles J. Sperling of Flushing, New York; Kip Talbot of Dayton, Virginia; Chris Gladis of Farmington, Connecticut; Tom Longfellow of Elkridge, Maryland; Jody Hamby of Robbins, Tennessee; and DJ of Clairton, Pennsylvania. Not a single one of them praised the Letterer. Not even a polite "and the letters were really clear and easy to read" after extolling lavish praise on the inker and penciller and writer and colorist. How sad must Bob Lappan have been for his whole career?

Just kidding! We have a first this issue! Charlie Harris doesn't praise any of the other people on the book and simply ends his letter with "By the way, Bob Lappan is a GREAT letterer in my opinion and I just wanted to say so." Who let that letter through?! Was Bob Lappan in charge of the letter column this month?! Seems pretty suspicious that somebody would just praise the letterer out of nowhere. Is Charlie Harris actually Bob's mom?!

Hey! I like all of those too! Why didn't I write this guy?! Probably because he didn't mention Halo.

Justice League International #25 Rating: B+. My favorite part of this issue was how Giffen and DeMatteis present an ethical quandary but decide it's too hard to come to some sort of conclusion so they just kill the guy who is making everybody start to feel bad about themselves. And afterward, Beetle and Booster just go off to have a beer to forget about the poor dead vampire guy. He was just the last of his kind and all, the rest having been genocided by humans. No need to worry about it anymore though! And it's not like Booster and Beetle ever dissected a vampire! Why should they feel bad that they just harangued the last of the vampire race into committing suicide?! That was his choice! They were just trying to help by punching him in the face a lot and then threatening to take him to STAR Labs where they totally wouldn't have exploited him and experimented on him cruelly! They're, like, good guys and shit!

Bonus Book! #13 (Justice League International #24) (1989)

Simon Bisley got in trouble for drawing a penis in Lobo's arm musculature but this Haspiel guy can just draw a penis right on Maxwell Lord's penis?

I'm judging this Bonus Book by the cover and this is my judgment. You know how you have that friend that's always talking shit and causing trouble? And you know how sometimes somebody reacts violently toward your friend being an unbearable prick to strangers? You know how you just shrug instead of having their back and thinking, "Yeah, well, what did they think was going to happen?" That's what I think just happened to Maxwell Lord. He's a fucking prick and the Justice League are probably kicking back at headquarters shrugging and saying, "What did Max think was going to happen?!"

See?! They're just watching dumb old sci-fi movies which Giffen and DeMatteis probably stole plots and quotes from.

Actually, this takes place before Max Lord is kidnapped. He's in the panel to the right, just after the spot where I cut off the scan. You can just make out his briefcase because I did a sloppy job!

I'm really not the person to complain about this but every single sentence of dialogue in this story ends in an exclamation point! At first I was all, "Why is this story about Booster and Beetle talking about television shows and movies so exciting?!" And then I was all, "Hey...I recognize this trick!" Half of my novels use an exclamation point at the end of every sentence to trick movie studios into optioning the rights!

This is the part where I might sometimes critique the art but fuck if I complain about any artist that worked with Harvey Pekar. He may have passed on but he still scares the shit out of me. Also I think Max Lord's nose is another penis.

The only sentences that don't end in an exclamation point end in ellipsis or a question. That means these characters are either shouting, questioning somebody, or questioning themselves. Fuck. I think I just described the way I talk.

I almost questioned how this robot, in 1989, could sound this animated with all the exclamation points. But then I remembered the Wizard of Wor arcade cabinet constantly laughing at me.

Max Lord was just kidnapped by that robot pretending to be a chauffeur. I'm less curious about who kidnapped him and why then I am about this robot's personal life. Is he only programmed to imitate chauffeurs? I'd like to imagine he has a rich and vibrant life on his off hours where he's married to a toaster oven that pretends to be a lawyer and has three electric pencil sharpener children.

While in the back of the limousine, Maxwell Lord thinks his first calm sentence: "Might as well get comfortable." Man, that's the only one I would have exclamated!

It was the time of the Romans!

Never mind that last caption. It was for me and like two other people.

I've matured so much over the last ten years that I'm not going to write an entire paragraph on this woman's ass. But I haven't matured enough not to be proud of my maturity.

Imagine being so wealthy that you didn't immediately have this thought when a fucking robot driving a limo kidnapped you.

"Oh, I'm being kidnapped by a robot! Must be run of the mill blue collar super villains! How embarrassing!"

The kidnappers, being so well-funded, have kidnapped Max Lord to become, um, even betterly well funded! They want half a billion dollars for his return. Who's going to pay it? I don't know. Superman? Does he have that kind of money? I bet he makes diamonds up his butthole while he works out on Dr. Shay Veritas's bench press she invented that lets Superman press the equivalent of five Earths so that he can drip one single drop of sweat and then refuse to towel off the machine.

As an aside that has nothing to do with this comic but does sort of involve Superman and one of my least favorite writers on his book, Scott Lobdell, I've now seen enough examples online where Scott Lobdell comments on a person's review of one of his books (usually when they're complementary (which is something that actually happens? I know, I was floored too!)) to be convinced he's read my reviews. So, because I'm maturing, I'm sorry for being such a huge hilarious jerk to you, Mr. Lobdell!

The kidnappers cannot convince anybody to pay them 500 million dollars so the people who hired them (and paid for the headquarters and the robot driver) fire them for not being able to get the money. Sure, I guess. But how is it the fault of the mercenaries if the amount you wanted for Max Lord is just too high? They didn't come up with the figures! And when the ransom isn't going to make a profit, they fire the mercenaries and probably stiff them too! Who works like that?!

Because the originator of the kidnapping pulls all funding, the mercenaries accept paying jobs from Maxwell Lord and he frees himself. So let me get this straight. A criminal organization spent a shit-ton of money to kidnap Max Lord in the hopes that they could make an even bigger shit-ton of money. But when nobody can get enough money together in 24 hours, they get cold feet and bail on the people they hired to kidnap Max. It's a good thing the story never reveals who the criminal mastermind of this plan was because their reputation would have been in tatters. They'd never get another gig as an antagonist in the DC Universe!

Here's a quote from the writer of this story:

I hope you finally got a chance to write your new story because this one where the hostage winds up being too much trouble for the kidnappers so they eventually pay to get rid of him was old when I first read this in 1989!

This was the final Bonus Book in DC's Bonus Book project. I'm sad that I don't have the Bonus Book with art by Rob Liefeld. But then that one was in Warlord and I never read that series.

Justice League International #24 (1989)

Seriously surprised Editorial allowed the X-men reference. Maybe they just didn't notice it?

How fucking disgusting is Ralph Dibny? You don't see Fire taking a group photo with her face on fire. You don't see Metamorpho turning his eyeballs into potassium cyanide. Martian Manhunter, who could also do that nasty neck thing, chooses to remain dignified. But fucking Ralph Dibny?! You gotta question how many unsolicited dick pics this guy sends when he can't just take a normal fucking group photo without making his neck four feet long. Ugh. Gross.

Why do they all look so fucking unhappy? Did Batman fart? Only Ice seems to be having a pleasant time. I bet Dmitri isn't even in the armor. And you can't even see Power Girl's boob window. Plus Animal Man seems like a weird choice but then this is still a couple of years before Grant Morrison gets his hands on him. So he's still a vaguely normal super hero here.

This issue begins with Maxwell Lord contemplating how he has the Metal-Gene. Excuse me! Meta-gene! We haven't gotten to the point where Snyder rocks the fucking shit out of the meta-gene idea. I'd forgotten that the whole meta-bomb/meta-gene thing was part of Invasion. Does that mean Bloodlines is right around the corner?! When we'll get such great characters as Gunfire who can make a gun out of anything and Loose Cannon who's an ex-cop (big surprise) whose power is to get angry when he's disrespected. I might have embellished that one a bit. But not by much. Anyway, Max Lord will eventually find out he can manipulate people with his mind. But then his nose bleeds because that's the only way for the audience to know mind control is happening. I believe Scanners was the first movie to use this visual clue but it wasn't officially a trope until Firestarter decided to use it as well. For most of my life, I thought Firestarter invented it. But that's because I wasn't allowed to watch people's heads blow up when Scanners was being shown for the first time on Showtime.

Oh! Maybe Editorial thought the X-men reference was just a meta-gene reference now that DC Comics suddenly has mutants as well!

Hmm. I guess I just forgot that DC was mostly just references to Marvel in the 80s.

The alien invasion has left Max Lord dealing with some unresolved existential terrors, mostly related to the computer that tried to control his mind and then murder him and the rest of the Justice League. Now he's worried and having stupid thoughts like, "Can a computer really die?" I mean, when you put it like that Max, no. A computer isn't alive so, sure, it can't "really" die. But I think what he's getting at, in 1989, is this: what if information in a computer could be uploaded into some nebulous floating storage, extant outside of the parameters of the original system, before the computer is smashed to bits? What a paranoid idea, Max!

Max decides to go searching for the computer where it first took control of him: in some cave high up in a mountain. You know, the usual places you find abandoned technology like TRS-80s and Commodore Vic-20s. Max had planned to kill his boss in a spelunking accident. You know, the second main reason anybody goes spelunking. The first is complete and utter boredom. But Max's boss, like a huge idiot, falls and dies before Max can kill him. And Max apparently just left the body there and nobody questioned Max about this guy's death? No, they probably did but the entire investigation into Max's boss's disappearance was probably too boring to base an issue of a comic book around.

Max finds the computer, obliterated in a cave-in, and questions what he's doing. But he's been questioning what he's doing the entire time, probably because the Giffen and DeMatteis know the audience is questioning what he's doing. Fairly certain therapy doesn't exist in the DC Universe. The whole "Max is questioning his actions" bit probably means Max is still possessed by the computer. It did basically bring him back to life after the Manhunters killed him so it probably installed some cheeky software during Max's downtime.

The computer comes back online long enough to throw some pop culture references at Max before admitting it knew about Max's meta-gene and then pulling one of those radioactive wombat bites on a nuclear testing range bits in order to activate Max's meta-gene. Is that irony?

"Yeah, no harm done. I was just once again manipulated by an artificial intelligence which knew about my meta-gene and now just nearly killed me in exactly the kind of accident that activates that meta-gene. This all worked out perfectly. Gonna go home now and forget all about the robot again for a year or two."

We soon learn that Max's meta-gene was activated when he thinks about Blue Beetle's ugly face and then yells for help. This sends a psychic message to Blue Beetle, revealing to Beetle where Max is and what's happened to him. When I first read this, I probably thought, "Wow! What a coincidence that Blue Beetle would have a small stroke causing him to hallucinate Max Lord's current situation!" But then I didn't know Max Lord would become psychic and also I was just a dumb teenager. Not that I'm not dumb now. But now I'm a dumb middle-aged man.

Ice and Beetle head down to Metron's cave to help Max while Oberon stays back at headquarters to leer disgustingly at Fire.

Oh hold on. Even in 1989, I knew about psychic nosebleeds. I didn't spend all those years reading The Fortean Times and not learn a little something about psychic nosebleeds.

In 1989, I probably had yet to read an issue of The Fortean Times because I'm an American. But I had read a lot of the sadly-not-really-equivalent-but-the-best-we-had Weekly World News!

Some of you may have noticed that I keep stealing that Dungeons and Dragons quote from The X-Files episode, "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." That's because 50% of my brain's processing power constantly thinks about every Darin Morgan episode of the show. I didn't spend all those Friday nights watching The X-Files alone in a dark room and not learn a little something about The X-Files.

Max has reached the point where a person knows they're going to die so they begin having imaginary conversations with an imaginary genie who will offer them one final wish that isn't "I wish not to die."

"Co-ed" is code for "I want to fuck as young a person as the law will allow me to get away with." Playboy invented that code.

Blue Beetle saves Max Lord's life and how does he repay him?

Max Lord, 2005. Still being manipulated by machines.

That's basically the end of the first story other than Oberon sneaking peeks at Fire in her nightie as he serves her some tea in bed. Although her nightie actually covers up more of her body than her superhero outfit. I guess it's just sexier to see a woman in her nightgown! I don't know why though. Apparently it's a huge secret. And you can't find out the secret because the clerks at the store will call mall security on you when you try to find out by touching all of the underwear and giggling like Beavis and Muttley had a horrible fuck baby.

The second story involves the Justice League throwing a party. You can see some of the people who were invited on the cover! Some of those you can't see because they refused to be on an ancillary Justice League in another country are Hal Jordan, The Atom, Starman, and Firestorm. At least I think none of those guys join.

Who's in charge of the JLI Human Resources Department? Because I'm sick of Wonder Woman not giving Blue Beetle a chance.

The party is another recruitment drive. It's been two years and the League still isn't confident in the members they have. Unless this is the recruitment drive for heroes who are willing to work in other countries. That's probably the main point because Justice League Europe starts up pretty soon and I think Power Girl and Wonder Woman wind up on that team, probably to get as far away from Blue Beetle's harassment as possible.

That's timely! Unless you're reading this at a point in the future that isn't the week immediately following the 94th Academy Awards.

I have only one take on Will Smith smacking Chris Rock. America fucking sucks. Everybody in America had to view the entire thing uncensored via Japan or Australian television. We're treated like fucking children in this country and yet we have all these gigantic assholes who won't shut up about how awesome and free this country is. This country is bullshit in so many fucking ways but if you point it out in any public forum, you'll get shouted down by a bunch of people choosing to ignore the country's faults by screaming about freedom not being free or some other stupid crap. I would like to be free to hear the word "fuck" on television. And that's just the icing on the iceberg! We're fucking coddled in this country. Nobody thinks anybody can handle fucking anything. So many asshole citizens trying to force everybody to live a life as if there's a four year old in every room. And you know why this is, right?! Because religious people think we all need to follow their stupid fucking immature bullshit rules. And yet those same religious people freak the fuck out when somebody points out how some other country might be forcing their religious beliefs on other people through the nation's laws. Fucking get out of here, you hypocritical babies. I'm so sick of hearing about Jesus and God and all your other imaginary friends. Grow the fuck up.

The worst part about living in America and seeing all of its flaws and all of the advantages of living in various other countries is that people will scream at you to leave if you don't love it and, well, I fucking wish I could afford to! But guess what else America sucks at?! Living wages!

Although, hmm, I mean, I guess I should probably be mad at myself for that one since I own my own business. The problem with suffering from Imposter Syndrome when you run the business is that you don't know your own self-worth and don't increase the costs to clients enough. I mean, no price increases in eleven years is probably not enough, right?!

Man that take really got away from me. What I meant to say is Chris Rock and Will Smith are both grown-ass adults. They dealt with the situation and if either one is unsatisfied with the results, they'll just live with the regrets, I guess. That's fucking life!

I suppose, one other small take, is that this physical assault happened on the Academy Awards' watch. So they could have done something other than just hand out a huge award to the guy who committed assault just previously on the same stage. I mean, they could have, if they gave a shit.

Hawkman nearly has a stroke deriding the new Justice League but nobody seems to take him seriously. They all know he's got a stick the size of a Thanagarian mace up his butthole.

Fire is missing out on the party because she's sick from meta-gene overload. She needs some time to recuperate so she can start turning into a human-shaped ball of green fire. Is that more effective than just shooting green flames? Is blasting fire all over the place even a good power for a super-hero? It seems really dangerous and destructive and costly. I guess that's why she's teamed with Ice so that Ice can just put an ice dome over every fire Bea starts.

Oberon goes about the party asking interview questions of all the guests.

Is this where Gail Simone got the idea to make Firestorm gay in The New 52?

Some people might now be thinking, "Wait. Firestorm was gay in The New 52?" And, well, yes. At least all of the clues were there for Grandmaster Comic Book Readers to find. If you're interested, I lay it all out in my early reviews of the series when The New 52 began (just search "Firestorm" in the blogger search bar). But what I didn't realize at the time was that Ethan Van Sciver, working on the book with Gail Simone, would flip the fuck out and go full Comicsgate on everybody. Am I saying Gail Simone writing a gay Firestorm set him off? Well, yes, I think I am! But that's why it's never revealed that he's gay! Because things fell apart and Gail left the book after Issue #6. My bet is Gail was all, "Wait. You didn't realize we were writing a gay Firestorm?" And Ethan was all, "What the fuck?! Get that Social Justice crap away from me, you girl!" And Gail was all, "Hey, um, DC? Can I not work with this dude?" And Ethan was all, "Where will it stop?! A disabled Batgirl?! A feminist Wonder Woman?! A Batman who goes to therapy?! A bisexual Superman?!"

Let me explain some of the jokes there because comic book fans only know one debate tactic: to say "Actually" after any bit of facetiousness or whimsy. See, there was already a disabled Batgirl and almost always a feminist Wonder Woman (except when she was wearing bicycle shorts. I don't know what she was going through during those years). But Comicsgate people don't remember anything from the past that might be Social Justice-y (which, let's face it, is pretty much fucking everything. They're fucking superheroes, assholes). So that's that joke. Then the other joke is that, well, DC didn't stop until Superman (well, the son of!) was revealed to be bisexual. And then the last joke was the really funny one: can you imagine Batman in therapy?! Ever?! Ha ha!

Hawkman tries to explain to Blue Beetle that he's being a disgusting chauvinistic jerk and, well, for once I'm on Hawkman's side! What a weird time 1989 was! This was when a whole bunch of people still believed that "conservative" and "Republican" meant decent and chivalrous and mature. But what it really meant was virtue signaling all of those things. It's why they've finally settled on the idea that people who actually care about shit are simply "virtue signaling." Because it's how they convinced all of their neighbors they weren't actually philandering xenophobic bigots!

The Khundian invaders Oberon stuffed into Roach Motels finally revert back to normal size and—wouldn't you know it?!—they didn't die from poison at all! They suspect their people have taken over Earth so they storm out of the kitchen to get some pillaging in when they run into about forty super-heroes. Hell, they couldn't even defeat Oberon so I guess they're just dead now?

Oh, wait, wait! Forget all that stuff about being chauvinistic and sexist and stuff because I have something I want to say outside of the space and time where judging happens!

Oh yeah. Power Girl is definitely on the team.

During the chase scene where the entire room full of party-goers chase the Khunds toward the JLI teleporters, Hawkman decides to quit. Good riddance! I wonder if Hawkman was ever a good character? I have to admit this series was probably my real introduction to him and he's not really painted out to be a great guy. Also, my Hawkman Super Powers figure lost his wings in a Batmobile off the back porch accident so that probably soured me toward him too.

The Khunds escape through the teleporters but since the teleporters are currently attuned to the Australian Embassy teleporters and the Australian Embassy teleporters no longer exist, Mister Miracle points out that the Khund have just killed themselves. Aren't there any safety settings on these death traps?! I'm already pretty sure teleportation machines, like the transporter used in Star Trek, are inherently suicide machines. They kill the person who steps in and then reforms a clone of them on the other side. And I believed that well before seeing the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Second Chances," where they basically just prove my theory. If the transporter transports an individual through, I don't know, some kind of magic miracle, then it would only ever create that individual at the destination. But if the transporter disintegrates a person and creates a clone on the other side then it could easily make more than one clone. Which is how we got Thomas Riker in that episode. I fucking knew it. And Barkley knew it too! And so did Doctor Pulaski! It pisses me off that people eventually convinced both Barkley and Pulaski to finally kill themselves.

By the end of the party, Max Lord has his new Justice League Europe: Power Girl, The Flash, Animal Man, Elongated Man, Wonder Woman (part-time!), Metamorpho, Rocket Red, and Captain Atom. It actually kind of sounds like a better version of Justice League International! Although I was hoping The Creeper would make the cut.

Letters this month were from Chris Connelly of Dearborn, Michigan; Paul Decker of Burbank, California; Stephen Reischman of Langley, British Columbia; Greg Hoffman of North Brunswick, New Jersey; Lawrence of Batu Pahat, Malaysia; Tom French of Syracuse, New York; Irwin Lowe or Avondale Heights, Australia; Tom Pechtel of Country Club Hills, Illinois; and Gerard Morvan of Coignieres, France. Wow! What an international letters column! And not a single one praises the poor letterer, old what's-his-name!

Justice League International #24 Rating: A. I still look on this comic book fondly even if it seems far cheesier and immature looking back on it thirty years later. But by 1989, I had only really been reading comic books for four years (not counting Elfquest which I discovered in 1982 in 5th grade), really picking them up regularly during Crisis on Infinite Earths. So most of my "DC History" is post-Crisis. And I think this book (and Ostrander's Suicide Squad) is the shining example of what DC was about after Crisis. I believe, after killing off Supergirl and Barry Allen, they began talking about making comics fun again. As if they weren't the ones to make it not fun in the first place! The fucking jerks.

Justice League International #23 (1989)

Is this Comicsgate?

I'm not here to talk about or debate Comicsgate. They know who they are no matter what they try to say to convince people otherwise. We know what they are no matter what they say to try to convince people otherwise. I've seen these sort of people in the comic fandom for decades. As soon as the villain of the story goes from robbing banks to committing some kind of social evil (like say, um, Apartheid), they're quick to complain, rising up to complain in some vague way which ultimately comes down to a defense of "Western Civilization" (a code that's as subtle as a pothead with 420 in their name). A great example is the letters pages in Teen Titans Spotlight on Jericho (I think?) where Mike Gold had to deal with letters from fans angry about Teen Titans Spotlight on Starfire because all the white people in it were the villains. Well, yeah! She was in South Africa dealing with Apartheid! How fucking dumb and/or racist do you have to be to send in a letter complaining about Starfire dealing with Apartheid because it makes white people look bad? Had they never fucking heard of Apartheid?! Oh wait. Yes, of course they had. It's just they probably saw people who thought and acted just like they would have thought and acted and realized, "Wait. They're saying those people are the bad guys? How dare they!" It's easy to not see yourself in the bad guy when they're robbing a bank or building weather control satellites because you're probably never going to do that. But when the bad guy is just an ignorant bigot? That fucking stings.

More to the point, fuck Comicsgate.

The Justice League are still in the South Pacific cleaning up after Invasion which I didn't re-read because I failed to sort my comic books by how I would wind up re-reading them forty years later.

If I were still spending the majority of my time with this blog, this would have become the new header.

Oh fuck it. You probably noticed. I made it the new header.

Ten characters nobody recognizes and/or cares about!

Look, I fucking loved the 80s Suicide Squad by John Ostrander. I'm just saying this advertisement is fucking shit. At least it was when the series began! After the series was well underway, Ostrander made most of these characters reasons to buy a book! I mean, I'm pretty sure I only read Peter Milligan's Shade the Changing Man because Shade was in this version of Suicide Squad. Not that he was the same version! But it still got me to read it! Also, why isn't Deadshot in this picture?! To me, Deadshot is synonymous with this version of the Squad! Was he less popular than Count Vertigo or Doctor Light at this time?!

Also on the island: the Injustice League! While the Justice League are busy clearing the island of battlefield debris, the Injustice League are trying to steal a busted Thanagarian warship. In the first scene, the members of the Injustice League make sure to call each other by name a few times so that readers can learn (or remember) who they all are: Major Disaster, Clock King, Multi-Man, Big Sir, and Clue Master. You can tell their second or third string villains because their names are terrible. What does a Clue Master even do?! "I'm master of clues! See how easy I make it for Batman to find me and break my jaw?!" And how shitty must it have been to be Clock King with a costume comprised of a wallpaper pattern of analog clocks when digital clocks suddenly became de rigueur? Was his super power being able to read an analog clock to the exact second, making him obsolete as soon as digital came around? Maybe he's just really good at knowing the exact number of seconds to cook anything on a microwave. I can't even take a guess at what Big Sir's power is other than being dumb and strong. Hmm, that's probably it, seeing as how these characters are so terrible.

It concerns me when a person becomes a super-villain without a compelling reason or any future plans.

If I had a super-power and decided to use it for my own selfish purposes, no way would I dress up and make myself stand out. I would not take a name that advertises the extent of my powers. I would lay low and make small amounts of money in innocuous ways. My guess is that people become super-villains for the power and not so much for the wealth. That's where I'd get it all wrong. I don't want power! I don't want responsibility! I want to lie on my couch without having to worry about rent!

Major Disaster decides to have a nice little soliloquy about how fate had always planned to make him a great man.

Yeah but Mayor Disaster just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Major Disaster's ultimate goal is to rule the world which, again, I simply don't understand. You don't become a criminal so that you can wind up doing more work, do you?! Oh wait. I forgot idiots like Putin and Trump exist. Sad pathetic little unloved men who can't simply be content with a cup of coffee and a cat on their lap. Assholes, really.

Major Disaster realizes he'll probably have to knock over some gas stations first. Which seems a little underwhelming considering his evil super group has just stolen themselves a futuristic space ship.

Guy Gardner hears Major Disaster's evil soliloquy over the smashed ship he's cleaning up with Mister Miracle and flies off to beat up this Injustice League he's just heard about. See?! This is what I'm talking about! Why name yourself something that immediately gives a super hero probable cause to punch you in the throat? Dress like a normal person! Keep your regular name! Don't speak all of your terrible thoughts aloud to nobody!

Guy Gardner makes himself known to the Injustice League and they panic, sending the ship screaming into low orbit.

No, he's implying it.

Look, I didn't read Cerebus a half dozen times and not learn a little something about implying versus inferring.

Anyway, Guy Gardner smashes their ship and before they crash, Martian Manhunter catches them. The army then hauls away the Injustice League. They never even use any of their powers (unless Clock King expressing exactly how much time Green Lantern takes to crash through the ship counts). I suppose Keith and J.M. couldn't figure out how to write a real story in an issue where the Justice League were busy fighting the Invasion crossover. This issue ends with them heading off to finish the crossover.

Letters this month were from Jacob Gilbert of Troy, New York; James Bachmann of Huntsville, Texas; Bill Thiessen of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia; Sam Quang, The Record Man, of Toronto, Ontario; and Asa Jay Ambrister of Nashville, Tennessee. Not one of them praises the letterer. Ungrateful jerks.

Justice League International #23 Rating: 2.5 Stars. If you're going to throw a group of C-list villains into a Justice League title, I'd at least like to see their powers in action. I'm assuming Multi-Man can replicate himself. My guess is Clock King always knows what time it is for those times you're hanging out with him and don't want to look over your shoulder at the clock. Major Disaster probably causes tidal waves and earthquakes. Big Sir is big and polite. And Clue Master with all the little pills on his chest? Who the fuck knows!? Later, he'll have a child named Spoiler and fuck around with Batman for 52 weeks. But in 1989?! He was just a feathered-haired idiot with little capsules on his front. I guess that's where he keeps his clues? But what are the clues for?!

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!