Where Highwaymen Rode
JSA #86
Cover Date: August 2006
Released: 7th June 2006
- Writers: Paul Levitz
- Pencilers: Jerry Ordway / Luke Ross
- Inker: Jerry Ordway / Dave Meikis
- Colourists: Tanya Horie / Richard Horie / Rob Schwager
- Letterer: Rob Leigh
- Editors: Stephen Wacker / Harvey Richards
Continued from JSA #85.
Apparently we’re out of our One Year later, despite things more or less picking up from the previous issue. Unless it took them a really long time to figure out what Ghost Batman was trying to tell them!
As is the tradition the team break into two groups, Flash, Stargirl and Mister Miracle to stay behind to protect families while the Wildcat, Jakeen and our Pee Gee travel to England to shut everything down. Alan Scott, Green Lantern, turns up to offer everyone a lift. We then get two whole page of Jimmy flashback, him finally looking like should, except with an actual face being still alive.
With our stay at home JSA members (yes I’m aware of the irony of me making such a statement) rush out on an alarm the Gentleman Ghost pops in to talk to Joan Garrick, to politely remind us readers that he plans to trade the JSAer’s lives to get back his own. Then the best hero of them all, Ma Hunkel distracts him until Stargirl gets back to (again) gets him to discorporate. We then get the final flashback for the living Jimmy as he’s captured and hung for his crimes.
Meanwhile our other team term up in London, because of cause it’s always London, and in a nice touch a relatively multicultural crowd seem pleased to see the JSA arrive. I must dock the scene points though for Power Girl apparently not having been in London before, which seem both unlikely in a general sense and specifically as she was here as part of the Justice League Europe! This point is where apparently where Jimmy was hung, though they can’t dwell on this as they’re attacked by the ghosts of highwaymen past. Again Pee Gee tears into them, apparently taking a fair few of them down, before Alan channels the power of ghost Jade to banish them all back to the other side.
We then see Jimmy become the Gentleman Ghost and fight Hawkman, before we got back to team UK going to, again of cause, the Tower of London! Apparently it seems that the Gentleman Ghost is going to steal the Crown Jewels, though as our Pee Gee points out why is he going to steal the jewels after all this time? The obvious answer is because it’s shiny, and reminds them that if they die then he get’s to live again, as the issue comes to a close.
Next issue is the final one of this story, and that feels around right with the escalating threat, though personally Gentleman Ghost still doesn’t feel like a solid threat but thats because his nature as one of those gloating villains that tells the god guys his plans. But again a niggle in a story thats been building nicely!