The Living Must Answer!
JSA #85
One Year Later
Cover Date: July 2006
Released: 3rd May 2006
- Writers: Paul Levitz
- Pencilers: Rags Morales / Luke Ross
- Inker: Dave Meikis
- Colourists: John Kalisz / Rob Schwager
- Letterer: Rob Leigh
- Editors: Stephen Wacker / Harvey Richards
Continued from JSA #84.
We start with a fake out as Courtney, Stargirl, is in best comedy fashion failing, at a driving lesson! Weirdly her mom looks quite like Pee Gee, she even has *ahem* a Karen haircut. The Gentleman Ghost turns up, though he’s not responsible for the crash, and Stargirl punches her way out to save her mother (I wonder how this will look on her claims forms?). Anyway we have an early appearance of Pee Gee who returns to her habit of ghost punching, though true to form he discorporates after the beat down.
Then a quick flashback where hearing tales of Highwayman he decides to become one himself. Then back to the Flash, who’s worrying about things and Mister Terrific who’s trying to work out if there’s anything special about the Gentleman Ghost’s clothes. Green Lantern is okay, but as pointed out neither him or Jay are getting any younger. Then another flashback where somewhere on the Great North Road, which runs the length of Britain and into Scotland, only around 640 km (500 miles) but it’s the longest we’ve got! Anyway here Jimmy meets the ghostly highwaymen of old, including Dick Turpin (who famous road the Great North Road in a night), suggesting that Jimmy is chosen for great things.
Not getting anywhere Jakeem ask to be taken into the spirit realms, despite the warnings of Thunderbolt, quickly running into Gentleman Ghost who attacks the two, worrying trying to hang Jakeem an unfortunately association that even I can understand and wince at. After this he rile up the ghost around them, only for the ghosts of JSA past to turning up and defend the living Jakeem. For the record we have Golden Age Atom, Batman, Mister Terrific and Sandman, and Jade who was dead at the time (for her at least it wouldn’t stick).
We then get a fairly extensive fight scene as the five deceased heroes fight off a ghostly hoard, it’s mostly textless and pretty well done but as mentioned many times fight scenes are really difficult to describe just trust me that it’s well executed. Jade seems to be struggling with the idea that she’s here even though she remembers not being here, though she’s still fighting, until she see’s the unconscious form of Alan (her father). The fight one Batman, being Batman, tell Jakeem that Gentleman Ghost will only be defeated by someone who’s of Noble Blood!
After a quick cutaway of Jimmy, just getting accepted by the ghost riders, we then get the JSA member interacting. Wildcat is trying to help Courtney with her driving, though she just want to eat her food in peace. They’re worried about the Green Lantern, and it seems rightly so as his condition has deteriorated, however at this point we have out deux ex machina as ghostly Jade wills him to recover resulting in him waking up as our issue ends…
There is an art to a holding issue, one where little happens but things still move forward, and I think this one just manages to just ride that line. Knowing that this volume is coming to an end, we only have two more issues, it’s obvious that the idea is to finish with this story, but personally I can fault it for taking it’s time to get to this point. The only criticism I have is that I don’t care about the background story of the Gentleman ghost, though it doesn’t do anything to dampen my enjoyment of the comic as a whole.