Justice League International Vol. 1 HC (DC, 2008)

Let's hope DC collects the entire run of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League run because it was, in my opinion, the best run in League history. And my opinion matters, dammit! Keith Giffen and JM DeMatteis chose to take the humourous route for this League and while some readers didn't like it, most embraced the concept like a long lost friend. I seem to recall reading a Giffen interview in some magazine where he admitted that making Justice League funny was not his nor DeMatteis' original plan. They were merely adjusting to the situation. When DC green lit a new Justice League comic, Giffen said he naturally wanted some heavy hitters in the team. He wanted Batman. He got Batman. How about Superman? Sorry, no. Okay, no problem. Green Lantern? DC gave him a Green Lantern but not the Green Lantern. Dr. Fate for some magic kick ass-ery. Captain Marvel was being revamped so the powers that be at DC insisted he be included. And the Martian Manhunter as well since he was in the previous Justice League (the "Detroit League" which no one wants to talk about nowadays). And then DC gave him Blue Beetle, Black Canary, Doctor Light (the good one, not the retconned rapist), Mr. Miracle, Oberon and Booster Gold because he had his own solo title at the time.

And that's how Justice League International got to be funny. Not because the writers wanted it to be but because they looked at the group and thought, "Holy crap! That's a lot of second stringers we got stuck with!"

I don't know whether Giffen was being truthful in that interview or not but I don't care. His Justice League had one of the greatest moments in comics EVAH! and it also introduced the Beetle and Gold partnership that was cruelly destroyed when DC wanted to bring back the infinite Earths. Also, Batman made a funny:



But reason numero uno this Justice League is fondly remembered today? Kevin Maguire. No one draws facial expressions like Kevin Maguire.

Sam Neill is Maxwell Lord.

The hiring of an unknown penciller and giving him the task to draw the company's flagship super group either proved that DC saw this guy's talent and decided to give him a big break or that DC just couldn't be bothered with yet another League comic that was never gonna outsell Uncanny X-Men anyway so they just grabbed the nearest penciller they could find and gave him some cash in return for some artwork. In any case, both the comic and the penciller owed each other for their respective successes.

And now for the hardcover collected edition....the main gripe here is the almost newsprint quality of the paper stock used. I said "almost" because I don't think it's the same paper stock that they used on the original comic. This one is of a tad higher grade but still not glossy and for a retail price of USD$24.99 and just seven issues (192 pages), the fanboys cried foul. I for one do not agree with the fans but I can see where they were coming from. Plus, I loved the JLI so I'm biased. What's collected here are some of the most fun superhero stories ever written just a few years before mainstream comics went all gritty and dark and "mature". Go grab a copy and give Kevin Maguire some lovin'. And then wait for volume two.

In 1992, They Thought What They Did Was Cool

I wonder where these guys are today. Drach from Edinburgh, Tom Warchocki (West Seneca, NY), Brent Richter of Colorado Springs, Marc Formosa (Hockley, England)...your kids today must be very proud that dad got his picture printed in a comic book back in 1992. That's like super awesome, dude!

Y'know, kids? Those little things you get when you're intimate with a woman. Y'know...woman?

Yes, I belong to the camp that thinks cosplaying is only cool when the participants are nubile yet over the age of consent Japanese girls who dress up as their favourite manga/anime characters. Skinny white dudes in make-up? No...just no.

Still, none of them can hold a candle to this guy....




From Lobo: Infanticide #3 (DC, 1992) by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant

Lobo's Back (DC, 1992)

My scanner is kaput. I just want to get that piece of info out right away. As a blogger who irregularly posts, a scanner is most essential. Especially since this blogger blogs about comics...books with pictures, basically. So yeah, I'm a little bit p.o.'d that my 'Made in Taiwan' scanner decided to give up the ghost today...and I've only had it for about 6 months. So I hope anyone who reads this understands why there aren't any panel scans and things like that. Luckily Comics.org had a cover scan. (Edited to add: Special thanks to Maxo from Great Caesar's Post for providing the three panels scans you see below. Check out his blog, whydontcha?)

So anyway, Lobo's Back.

Previously, I wrote about Lobo: The Last Czarnian and it's re-issue in the brand new collection, Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich. Well, Lobo's Back is included in that collection as well. Joy.

This time, the Main Man is killed. Shocking but true. I didn't know he could be killed but for the purpose of this mini-series he could, so there you go. Hard up for some hard creds, Lobo takes up a seemingly easy job looking for a bounty called Loo. He finds Loo at the end of issue #1, they fight and Lobo gets bushwhacked by Loo's partner, Brother Feces.

No, seriously.



Lobo is literally cut in half by a midget who lives in a pouch (tied to Loo's belt) filled with shit. Hey, if that won't make you interested in picking up Portrait of a Bastich, I don't know what will. The remaining three issues of this mini-series deals with Lobo's attempt to go back to the fight and square things off. See, Lobo, for some strange reason, ends up in Heaven after being cut in half. Heaven can't handle him so he gets transferred to Hell...and Hell won't have him either. Seems he was having too much fun in the depths of the Inferno. So Lobo gets reincarnated back to a new body; first as a woman and then as a rabbit before finally going back to his own body and getting the upper hand on Loo and Brother Feces.

This being a Lobo comic, there are lots of mindless fighting and swearing and bodies getting ripped to pieces and stuff. A fun, fun comic perfect for the entire family. But like most or I should say, all, Lobo comics, the plot is paper thin and the action scenes are repetitive. Lobo acts like a jerk, kills people, moves on. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now imagine four issues (about 96 pages) of that. No wonder we rarely see Lobo nowadays. His shtick got old pretty quick back in the 90s. His cameo in 52 was probably what prompted DC to bring back his old books for the new generation of readers (if there are any).

The "Lobo" creative team are all here (Giffen, Grant & Bisley) with Christian Almay coming in for one issue covering for Simon Bisley. Like the The Last Czarnian, a Lobo comic is always fun to read but I'm not sure if it has any lasting appeal. Lobo is written to offend and nothing more. He's like the weird biker boyfriend your sister used to date: he seems like a cool guy at first because the grown ups don't like him but later you realise, he's nothing but a waste of space. Just like Lobo. I thought he was funny when I first read him but fourteen years later...meh. Yes, I called Lobo a meh.

Still, if you're not easily offended and are curious to read Lobo's early adventures then by all means get the Lobo:Portrait of a Bastich trade paperback that includes this mini series and The Last Czarnian. But for Heaven's sakes don't pay retail price for it. You hear me, you bastiches?!

LOBO: The Last Czarnian (DC, 1991)

Lobo: The Last Czarnian collects the first solo adventures of everyone's favourite intergalactic bounty hunter this side of Boba Fett. Since DC just released an all brand new Lobo collection (Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich (2008)) that includes the very same story, I thought I'd do my usual half assed review of it here.

Last Czarnian collects the Lobo mini-series that first came out in 1990 and it sees the psycho space biker and all round party guy going on a mission to escort a prisoner safely into the hands of Vril Dox, leader of L.E.G.I.O.N '90. Little does Lobo know that the prisoner is none other than his fourth grade teacher. So Lobo isn't the last Czarnian left in the universe after all. The rest of the 90-odd pages sees Lobo making pit stops here and there on the way to L.EG.I.O.N. HQ with his 'prisoner', annoys the locals, gets into a fight, kills a few people and moves on. After a while it gets kinda boring.

The main problem with a character like Lobo is that we know he is basically immortal so there's no danger of him getting killed ever. Even if he is killed, he comes back two panels later anyway. There's no suspense which is why all Lobo comics are presented as 'fun' comics and not to be taken seriously. On the plus side however, it helps that Simon Bisley (art), Keith Giffen and Alan Grant (plot and dialogue) are on the same wavelength and it is obvious they had fun drawing and writing the book. Bisley especially deserves extra credit for his rendition of Lobo which has been accepted as the standard look for the character.

Anyone who is unfamiliar with Lobo need not worry since the writers use a convenient plot device to keep the reader up to date with Lobo's origin. It is revealed that his fourth grade teacher wrote an unathourised biography of her least favourite pupil and excerpts from the book are used at the end of every chapter. Informative and it enhances the plot. Now, that's good writing.

Lobo: The Last Czarnian was hot way back when because it was Lobo's first solo adventure before the doom of overexposure visited him like all other popular comic book characters. Reading it again today, I found it to be just okay if albeit repetitive. New fans of Lobo or veteran fans who may have missed this book the first time around should give Last Czarnian (reissued as Lobo: Portrait of a Bastich trade) a try. Lobo's always fun to read. Just don't expect anything special.

Justice League America #34 (DC, 1990)

Why do I love the post-LEGENDS Justice League? Simply because it was fun, dammit. There were some people who didn't like the snappy dialogue and the off-beat adventures that this incarnation of the League had. Those people are dead to me, dead. Giffen and DeMatteis were the Alan Sorkin of comics at the time. It was the only comic at the time, I think, that even had Batman crack wise deadpan-like once or twice. And the Booster Gold and Blue Bettle double team? Fergedabouit. Comedy gold, they were.

In JL #34, the Gold and the Blue decide to open a holiday resort called "CLUB JLI" complete with casino on the Pacific island of Kooey Kooey Kooey. The League was actually invited to establish an embassy on the island by the tribal chief so his small island can boast a powerful deterrent force of super-heroes. Smart man. The resort and casino idea was never part of the deal. That was all Booster and Beetle. Of course that idea was unauthorised and unknown by the rest of the League especially by their boss, Max Lord. This was the 1990 pre-Countdown to Infinite Crisis Max Lord. He's still somewhat of a good guy in this series.

Club JLI quickly becomes a success and attracting all sorts of people including Z-grade villains Major Disaster and Big Sir who arrive on the island incognito to try their luck at the blackjack table. Actually, it isn't luck. Major Disaster learns that Big Sir, a somewhat simple minded lunkhead (who once destroyed Barry Allen's face back in the early '80s), has the Rain Man like ability to count cards. And just like that scene in the movie, (which was where Giffen and DeMatteis probably copied...erm, took inspiration from), Major Disaster and Big Sir are soon raking it in.



Big Sir's so good at counting cards, he broke the bank much to Beetle's displeasure:



Losing all that money was bad enough. What made it worse was that Beetle and Booster "borrowed" all the money for their capital from the Justice League's accounts. Now, not only are they bankrupt, the League is as well. Max Lord soon finds out and rushes over to Kooey Kooey Kooey with murder in his mind. Prophetic, I must say.

Meanwhile, Aquaman shows up all angry-like. He tells the newly bankrupt venture capitalists to evacuate the island because it's about to dislodge itself. Apparently, all the construction on the ground has awaken Kooey Kooey Kooey.

The damn island is actually alive! It's alive, it's awake and it's going walkabout. And it's taking the natives, tourists and shocked heroes along for the ride. The chief knows about the island being sentient. He just didn't tell anyone else. Didn't think it was a big deal. He's a card, eh?

Major Disaster and Big Sir are oblivious to all this at first seeing as how they have moved upwards financially. With the money, the Major wants to go forward with his plan to RULE THE WORLD!


I like that panel. It features cameos by three characters from Mike Barr's Maze Agency, a whodunit comic book that was very well written and beautifully drawn but hardly anyone read because it didn't feature any superheroes. I'll talk about that series one of these days. Why were they inserted in an issue of Justice League? Well, they shared the same penciller: Adam Hughes.

Anyway, back to the story...

Well, when your villain name is Major Disaster you shouldn't be surprised, really. He should have picked Tsunami Man or Agent Orange or something more bad ass. Agent Orange is not so bad ass but, c'mon, it is a bit better that frickin' Major Disaster if he knows his Wiki. So, he lost all the money and is back on skid row (no, not the band, wiseguy).

What about Blue Beetle, Booster and Aquaman? Their fates were resolved in the next issue but it's this issue that I consider a classic: the concept of a sentient island that goes swimming to another location once it's awake is just great. This is the kind of bizarre stuff I like to read in my super hero comics. Sure, punch ups between spandex clad guys and gals are nice and all but sometimes writers need to be creative and come up with silly stupid cool stuff like Kooey Kooey Kooey so that nerds like me will talk about it in their blogs in years to come.

Justice League America #34, January 1990. Good times. Gooood times.