The Lightning Saga, part III
Justice League of America (volume 2) #9
Cover Date: July 2007
Released: 16th May 2007
- Writers: Brad Meltzer
- Pencilers: Ed Benes
- Inker: Ed Benes
- Colourists: Alex Sinclair
- Letterer: Rob Leigh
- Editors: Adam Schlagman / Eddie Berganza
Fine let’s talk about the plot them! Members of the Legion of Super-Heroes have been scattered through time and the JLA and JSA have to track them down and save them from potential danger. The first issue involves them finding Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl, the second set in Gotham’s Arkham (of course) and involves them rescuing Dream Girl, descendent from Dreamer (it’s tenuous but it fit the theme of the month).
We start with the four rescued Legionnaires being examined by the Batman and Sandman, Bruce being Bruce suspects something is going on, because he’s Batman, but doesn’t have the full picture for now.
Meanwhile Vixen, Wildcat, Garrick FLash and Hal Lantern have gone to Gorilla City, which to be fair to the comic actually names a location, the Congo, rather the rather vague term of the entire continent of Africa! A quick mention that Vixen doesn’t borrow powers from animals, unlike the namechecked Buddy (Animal Man). It also has one of the male heroes, either Garrick or Wildcat, my money is on Wildcat even if this is the more Beast like Tom rather than Ted, mansplaining Vixen’s powers. After the casual sexism it probably should be pointed out that Vixen is very pale here, really looking slightly more tanned than the other heroes. Now Vixen has always been lighter skinned since her very inception, and it’s not my place to talk about how the entertainment industry tends to use lighter skinned black woman in all media, but she’s pale enough that even my general terrible eye for detail can’t help but notice!
The Gorilla’s, oh yeah they’re in Gorilla City, are pretty cool about the whole thing and welcome the heroes in giving us a few pages of the Gorillas being chill. Until we have a bunch of frigging Gorilla’s riding dinosaurs coming towards our heroes! Apes on Raptors, how can it get any cooler? Oh and among them is Timber Wolf another Legionnaire and Wolverine knockoff, to the point that at one point Wolverine stole his look as payback! We don’t alas have a cool heroes vs dinosaurs scene as they use a simple phrase in interlac, fancy future speak, to unlock the memory of just who he is and that’s more or less it for Gorilla City.
We then get Power Girl, remember her? On a Javelin having arrived with her team on Thanagar. Time has passed as Timber Wolf is among the team sent to the planet, along with both the Hawks, obviously, and Roy Harper who apparently is flirting with Hawkgirl (Kendra). Kara tries to give him some advice on handling the situation gently, literally saying he’s thinking with his balls. We also get mention that Pee Gee and Hawkman were once an item, something that I’m sure we’ll deal with at another time!
Talking of time we get an intercut of Per Degaton, Ultra-Humanite and Despero looking at the debrained corpse of who I assume is Dolores, which seems somehow dramatic appropriate!
Back to Thanagar and we have the team meeting up with who they’re her for, the winged Legionnaire Dawnstar. Or at least we’re meant to thing so for instead it another who has her flight ring, and might be her lover it’s that ’10s vagueness on such matters. Not that matters because apparently she just went to Earth to join up with the other Legionnaire, not that it’s suspicious or anything!
Normally I’m a fan of all the characters interactions, but somehow they just don’t seem to work for me here. Maybe it’s just that I’ve not spent time with these versions of the characters, a downside of skipping around the timeline, or that the Legion is a team I’ve never really had much to do with.
The weirdness thing about this comic is how it uses panels to tell the story, most comics I’ve read us a new page to show that we’ve changed locations but here things just change in the middle of the page, it’s disconcerting ruins the flow of the story. This obviously might be a me thing, but it disconcerting enough that it took me about half the issue to twig that it was happening.
The worse sin of this comic though is that even though we have a massive bunch of heroes things are just happening, there are no stakes the heroes just turn up, banter (badly) and then the Legionaries just join up and the plot moves on. It’s not a terrible story, though it probably doesn’t help that I have no real connection with the Legion, but it just feel a little bland and souless.
But hey we’re half way through the story, thing must pick up story wise right?