#jsa: ragnarok

[supergirltastic]

thinking about paula and artemis in this book and going insane.

jsa: ragnarok - paul kupperberg

[why-i-love-comics]

JSA #1 - "Ragnarok" (2024)

written by Jeff Lemire art by Diego Olortegui & Luis Guerrero

[dccomicsnews]

"Ragnarok"-Part 2 Writer: Jeff LemireArtists: Diego OlorteguiColor Artist: Luis GuerreroLetterer: Steve Wands Review by Kendra Smart JSA #2 is out and with it, the continuation of our story. When last we left our heroes, they were awash in the sea of different emotions. Adrift in more ways than one as we readers came to find out. With Jade leading in her Dad's absence. She has been at odds not only with members of her team in decision making, but also with her brother Obsidian. But there is serious danger and plots at play and while we were left with many questions with JSA #1, many of those answers are awaiting us in the pages of JSA #2. Pausing for one moment to discuss the cover. I need to state that literally everything about the main cover screams legendary Justice Society of America vibes. I know I am looking at a modern cover for the modern team. But I would swear to you that it belongs among the ranks of comic cover gold from the Golden Age. Major props to Cully Hamner for giving readers such an astounding cover featuring Jade and Obsidian as they lament over the lost and divided in their team.  What Do We Do When We Fall Down? We are greeted with the events leading up to the division of the team and how half of them are trapped inside the Tower of Fate as JSA #2 opens. Fallen victim to a diversion on Kobra's part, the Justice Society of America finds themselves on the bad end of a siege by the Injustice Society of America. Betrayals are made known as Alan sees Ruby Sokov has chosen her side in the world. But the Injustice Society seems to  have an aim on Khalid's helmet and with that knowledge, Doctor Fate tried to make the member with him safe. Back in the present the team is facing really hard odds, the beasts and monsters are now in overwhelming numbers surrounding the tower.  The Injustice Society are not merciful in their chase for the helmet. Time is running out for the team to find a way out of this realm that leads them back to the Brownstone.  But, what are they returning to, if they return at all? [gallery columns="5" size="large" type="single-slider" ids="192929,192930,192931,192932,192928"] Hidden In The Shadows JSA #2 delivers the same high mark of work as the first issue did. On more levels. As this second part to the Ragnarok saga has sprouted more knowledge into just what happened to the team. While many questions are answered, such as the Injustice Society showing their hand, just as many new questions spring forth. JSA #2 really focuses on the events leading up to the rift in the team, and to the team members "trapped" in the Tower OF Fate.  Jeff Lemire, Diego Olortegui, Luis Guerrero, and Steve Wands really do exposition scenes and emotional scenes exquisitely. Some of my favorite moments from this part of the story are when we see Alan and Ruby face off for the first time after the reveal and Obsidian and Ted Grant's moment. Obsidian and Ted are discussing possible options to react to the Kobra problem, and Ted really holds his ground. "That's NOT how we do things." had me holding my breath. Conclusion To say for certain, JSA #2 was devoured quickly. The flow of the story just has your eyes hungry on the page, craving the new twist and turn. A breath-taker of a cliffhanger leaves us waiting patiently, until next time friends! Images Provided Courtesy of DC Entertainment. 

[trucywright]

What made Salem's character so appealing to you? Do you have a Salem reading list to recommend? And last questions, do you have a JSA reading list/ comic to recommend for a beginner reader?

I really loved her design which is like the first requirement for me to get interested in a character. But then her backstory blurb had soooo much potential. A kid who's cursed so anyone close to her gets hurt? Who has only one person that is safe? And that one person forgot her and now is dead and she's surrounded by people she can't really befriend? That's wild. And horrific. She's a kid. I've decided she's an asshole character who deep down isn't an asshole and doesn't want to be but it's the only way to try protecting people from the curse. I've got this whole conception of her in my head now.

Salem's only appearances are Stargirl and the Lost Children, and the most recent JSA run. Other fun JSA things are the 90s run and the 2007 run, which also spins out into JSA All-Stars. I like the old JSA vs United States comic, and Ragnarok, but they're pre-Crisis stuff so not in continuity. They do stand pretty well on their own if you have basic understanding that Crisis combined worlds. Infinity Inc isn't technically JSA but given a lot of them end up on the team later, I'll throw it in too.

[ufonaut]

Might be a weird ask, but after that convo about the JSAer's ages, what about their partners and kids (especially the kids)? Because of the sliding time scale, characters like Jennifer-Lynn, Todd, Rick, Jesse and Jack Knight are presumed to have been born sometime in the late 80s or 90s (as of 2023)? So that leaves a situation in which most JSAers kind of avoided having kids until they were in their 60-70s? That or maybe DC will one day say that these kids also are time-displaced.

see my best friend katie (@slaapkat) and i have spent ages trying to figure this one out, and i know the folks over on the cbr forums (which is basically the last bastion of old time fandom, not that that's necessarily a good thing) have been recently discussing this exact thing post-lost children finale... and, well, there's no easy answer!

there's cases like rex tyler, where even by wendi's first appearance in showcase 1956 #56 it's pretty obvious she's significantly younger than rex (she's introduced as a 'girl' and rex already has grey temples by that cover date of '65) and that's made even more clear in hourman 1999 #24 when their age difference actually leads to some arguments about rex not getting the hip music wendi listens to but. that's just one case of many and it's one that'd have to be updated with the timeline, too.

i think the solution is either time displacement or what i'm personally leaning towards is having the jsa's time in ragnarok come sooner and last longer, have them come back at a decent age (having effectively been frozen during their time there) and then settle down and have families. with that particular avenue, i think we'd reach around the same ages roy thomas had in mind during infinity inc. i've gotta say this is one of the main reasons i love judy garrick's introduction so much, having her born in 1949 is absolutely a stroke of genius and jay & joan having the first of the jsa kids is perfect considering they're the only ones of the 'default' couples to have ever discussed marriage & kids in their actual golden age comics (as per flash comics 1940 #35 and #45)!

that being said, even keeping canon as it is, i don't think it's actually as big of a concern as it seems at first glance! out of the original team mcnider, kent, al, wes, corrigan, johnny t and terry never had kids -- with the caveat that grant emerson isn't really al's son and the closest thing wes has to a kid, sandy, is kept ageless in sand monster form for as long as necessary. similarly, johnny t's peachy pet can keep her original timeline as she doesn't inherit any legacy, and the hawks can have hector at any point because it's his return from the dead as fate that needs to be in line with the current timeline instead of his actual birth. as stated above, rick also requires no real update because rex could've simply met wendi much later and dating a twenty-something year old actress as a status symbol doesn't make him more of a creep than he already was if it happened in the 60s or in the 90s.

and here's where it gets problematic. david & jack knight... well, let's say ted's in the same boat as rex, he's not a family man type to begin with. jennie & todd? i can see alan holding onto his confirmed bachelor status for as long as he's able until societal pressure wears him down, and mr gbc ceo getting with young secretary alyx rose thorn makes him a believable straight cliche that would raise no suspicions (and it would also account for the blind anger of the 90s sentinel era, he hates what he's had to do... plus, you know, other real world events of the 90s that might influence for the worse the way alan feels about being gay)*. the one that's really giving me trouble is jesse quick but i suppose we can either move up johnny and libby's wedding and allow johnny the normal course of his original canon (he was still a bachelor living with tubby watts by adventure comics #174 in '52) or jesse's older than she looks and the speed force lets her age real slow.

as for their partners, in the case of those who aren't simply with significantly younger women, it's canon that they were all bathed in that weird ian karkull shadowland radiation that makes the jsaers themselves eternally sorta young as per all-star squadron annual #3.

WHEW THIS GOT LONG, I'M SORRY!! what do you think?

*as a side-note to the alan situation -- considering his marriage with alyx rose thorn lasted precisely a day and a night, molly's timeline doesn't need to be moved up for longer than a couple years when alan eventually gives in to that too and we can have their divorce somewhere around 2011 as a fun reference to the life-changing events of new 52.

[usedgingertwinkhole]

Why are the JSA doing Ragnarok again?

Are they doing Ragnarok I thought the old men had just gotten kidnapped?

[dc-earth53]

Hey! I stumbled upon this project a few weeks ago, but I am asking only now: How did you do the Justice Society of America in version 1.0? Were the OG members still World War II veterans and how did their legacy tie into the modern day?

The JSA's transition from WWII to the modern day is something that grows more difficult with every year that passes, as it really strains credulity that characters like Al Pratt, Charles McNider, and Wesley Dodds could even live until the Crisis. I don't remember exactly what I did, but if I recall, I moved the Ragnarok story from "Last Days of the Justice Society" to happen earlier in the timeline.

Instead of it happening after the Crisis, it happens in the 1950s - the Spectre bringing the JSA out of retirement for one last mission to save the world - from which they only emerge, unchanged, a few years before Superman arrives on the scene.

That solution isn't perfect, though, and still causes problems with Infinity Inc. and various Injustice Society members that I never solved. But as far as the JSA legacies go, all of the newer JSA members from pre-Flashpoint were around and more or less unchanged. (With the exception of surgically removing the Stargirl/Atom Smasher stuff because seriously, Geoff, why did you think repeating Kitty/Colossus with a character based on your late sister was a good idea?)

[titans-thoughts]

The thing is, the basics of Crisis on Infinite Earths (simplify the timeline, get rid of the multiverse) would still leave the Hawks simple enough (There were multiple Green Lanterns, two Flashes, and two Atoms without confusing anyone.), but writers were given a large degree of freedom in writing their own corner of the new DCU.

Now, knowing that, I should mention Golden Eagle, a very obscure character in the Hawkman mythos. (So obscure that until the 2000s he never appeared in a single Hawkman book. Yeah, Golden Eagle has a couple pre-Crisis appearances in JLA, a few appearances in Teen Titans.) Golden Eagle is basically a Hawkman fanboy from Earth-1 who was given wings by a wizard and then became part of the Titans West.

Cut to the Crisis. So, one thing was, the JSA would be fighting Ragnarok for all eternity (or until DC figured out what to do with them). This left the Thanagarian Hawkman. So far, no problem. Golden Eagle is still here, and does appear in New Teen Titans all of once, where Marv Wolfman explains Gnarrk's death. (Have I mentioned Marv Wolfman Did Not Like the 70s Titans?) Wolfman would kill Golden Eagle in Titans Hunt. More on that later.

But then we get to Hawkworld. It's a great book, and you should read it. It's also a galaxy-class canon clusterfuck. Not its own fault: Had it been set five years prior as the writers intended, it would be harmless. So, what's in Hawkworld? Katar Hol has spent his life in a Thanagarian prison for his father's crimes. He escapes and ultimately finds his way to Earth. But Editorial insisted it be set in present-day. (Fixing this was a major reason for Zero Hour, but Editorial did not in fact allow it to be fixed.) The basic retcon is that a spy named Fel Andar was posing as the son of the original Carter Hall, but that never worked well for sticklers.

So our next point is Rann-Thanagar War. So, Golden Eagle is back, and the War tries to connect these two Hawkman mythoi together. For instance, Carter Hall's nth metal wings are now of Thanagarian origin, which Golden Eagle sees as an abomination, a non-Thanagarian using Thanagarian tech. In addition, a Thanagarian ritual on Thanagar resurrects Carter Hall. It doesn't always make sense, but it is a fun ride.

And all of this is before we get to Dark Nights: Metal.

Sorry to bother you, but what the fuck is going on with the hawks?

My grandpa from ST Roch used to tell me about them and how they were egyptian hawk people thing.

But then they appear and they are aliens???

Does this mean that the egyptian gods are aliens?

I'm genuinely confused and every time i search for more info i get more confusing stuff that say angels, the dark multiverse and some hawkgod are all involved?

But also Hawkgirl and Hawkwoman are different people????

I'm so very lost so i decided to ask the profesional.

I'm gonna get variations on this question a lot aren't I? Ok, let's rock.

The confusion comes from there being two sets of Hawks who are very similar in their general costume design and aura. They're probably the hardest to tell apart at a glance if you don't know what you're looking for.

(Fanart of the Golden Age Hawkman by TytortheBarbarian on Deviantart. Note the full face mask, lack of chest emblem and that his wings are attached to the straps of his harness)

(Photograph of the Modern Hawkman. Note the exposed lower half of the face, the black chest emblem and that his wings grow naturally from his upper back)

The original Hawkman and Hawkgirl of the Golden Age were archeologist Carter Hall and his partner Shiera Hall (Nee Sanders) who discovered upon the unearthing of a long forgotten tomb in the Valley of the Kings that they were the reincarnations of Pharaoh Khufu and his consort Chay-ara of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.

Finding relics formed of a strange alien metal within the tomb, the duo used these artifacts and the inspiration of the Egyptian god Horus to become Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Carter was a founding member of the Justice Society and both Hawks served with distinction in the wartime All Star Squadron.

Carter was present at the infamous HUAC trial that disbanded the JSA and the duo vanished for decades.

It was in those following decades that two more heroes would appear and step into the Hawks' boots.

Lawmen lost and many light years from their native Thanagar the two would take up the mantles of the Hawks, raptorial imagery considered sacred symbols of honor and duty on their native world. It just so happened that their alien technology and the motifs of the Golden Age Hawks were near identical which, after the two pairs met helped to uncover the shocking secret in their shared past.

The artifacts that had empowered the original Hawks, assumed to be magical were in fact also technology scavenged from a crashed Thanagarian ship by the ancient Egyptians. (No they didn't use it to built the pyramids. The already working technology and reforging the craft's Nth metal hull were the extend of the technology's use which allowed for the vast expansion and prosperity under Khufu's reign)

The second Hawkgirl changed her name, eventually stating she "did not like the implications of the word "girl" on this planet" and has ever since gone by Hawkwoman.

The original Hawkgirl lost her life during the Zero Hour crisis and has since been embodied in the new Hawkgirl, assumed to be a resident of St. Roch, Louisiana because it is around her appearance that the Hawks began to split their time between St. Roch and their traditional roost in Midway City.

So, in total, as of this moment. There are two Hawkmen, golden and modern ages. Hawkgirl is the younger partner of the original Hawkman and Hawkwoman is the partner of the second. The second pair of Hawks also have a sidekick named Golden Eagle. There is also a new Thanagarian on the scene calling himself Changeling who seems to be related to the second pair of Hawks somehow but no one yet knows exactly how.

As far as superhero families go they are nowhere near as expansive as the Flash or Batman's general cadre but they just look so similar that its very easy to be confused. To the point that they are all consistently misrepresented as one another whenever they show up in the media and it drives me UP A WALL.

[supergirltastic]

she’s so fucking unhinged I love her so much

jsa: ragnarok by paul kupperberg

[why-i-love-comics]

JSA #1 - "Ragnarok" (2024)

written by Jeff Lemire art by Diego Olortegui & Luis Guerrero

[jcogginsa]

I think for a while the explanation for how Magneto was still kicking was that the time he got de-aged into a baby resulted in him not getting fully re-aged. (This babification also helped him when he first turned hero and got put on trialk for his various crimes)2

IIRC, when the JSA were first folded into regular continuity the explanation given was that they'd gone into a pocket dimension to fight Ragnarok at some point in the 50s, and then re-emerged in the then-present, older but not as old as they should be. After a few years of that Status Quo the Zero Hour event happened, and it's villain artificially aged them up to where they should be. I've not really followed the JSA but IIRC the pocket dimension thing is still part of their story

i only learned recently from a friend's who much more comic literate than I that magneto's backstory as an Auschwitz survivor wasnt planned from the start, which surprised me since it seemed to me a really integral part of his character. anyway, twofold question: how common is it to see capes with backstories tied to very specific historical events, and, as time inevitably passes and real world survivors of those events pass, how do they justify having their characters still alive and kicking? (stay safe on your mountaintop friend)

Depending on how wide you cast the net, this is a pretty big list! There are a lot of comics who's characters cutting-edge ripped-from-the-headlines origin later became a very specific historical event, or at least Of A Specific Moment, in a way the writers had no reason to anticipate the franchise would run long enough to have happen. But to shed pedantry and hone in on some specific ones;

The big one, of course, is Captain America. Superficially Cap's contemporary origin comes with a baked-in means of him making it to the present day- he gets stuck in the ice and then gets unthawed. The fly in the ointment, though, is when he unthaws. When they first brought him back into rotation in 1964, his stint in the ice was only around 20 years; long enough for there to be a significant culture shock, but not long enough that his entire social circle was dead or even culturally sidelined. Nick Fury is still around and kicking ass as a zeitgeist-appropriate 60s superspy. But the further the sliding timeline hauls forward his implicit date of release, the more it changes the tone and tenor of the resulting story. Losing twenty years is different from losing fifty years (as was the case in The Ultimates, where he very explicitly comes back during the Bush years as part of the book's commentary on The War On Terror) and those will both be way different from when we inevitably hit the point where he's lost 100 years and he's the cultural equivalent of a Civil War Vet or something. There's strength to all of those stories but they're undeniably different.

Iron Man's origin was originally explicitly tied to the Vietnam war; he was captured by a detachment of "Red Guerillas" while consulting for the US military and the South Vietnamese government. Unfortunately U.S. foreign policy to this day has prevented this from ever becoming an unresolvable storytelling issue.

The Fantastic Four are a case where their origin was intimately tied to the space race; their untested, cutcorner spaceflight was expressly an attempt to show up the Russians. The extremely specific political context of their test flight is something that sort of gets brushed off; the Ultimate incarnation (written by Warren Ellis) threaded this needle deftly by having the accident be a dimensional expedition instead, circa the early 2000s. I'm not actually sure how the urgency of their test flight is currently contextualized in 616 continuity. Anyone got their finger on that pulse?

The Punisher was also originally a Vietnam vet- but through the jaded cynical lens of the 1980s rather than the straightforwardly peppy and jingoistic lens that defined Iron Man's debut in the 60s. Current continuities I believe have mostly bitten the bullet and updated his origin to the invasion of Afghanistan. However, an interesting decision in the Garth Ennis-spearheaded Punisher MAX continuity of the early 2000s- where Punisher is literally the only costumed vigilante- is that they bit the bullet and posited a version of Frank Castle who really has been killing criminals nonstop since shortly after his return from Vietnam in the 70s, a man well into his 60s who's survivability and efficacy at killing are edging up against the boundaries of magical realism.

Hulk I feel sort of deserves a mention here- he's in a sort of twilight zone on this issue, as there was, uh, a pretty goddamn specific political context in which the Army was having him make them a new kind of bomb, but you can haul that forward in the timeline without complete destruction of suspension of disbelief. Pretty soon it'll be downright topical again.

To circle back around to The X-Men, Claremont introduced a lot of historical specificity with the ANAD lineup. Off the top of my head, Colossus was explicitly a USSR partisan (updated to a gangster forced into crime to survive in the mismanaged chaos of the USSR's collapse in the Ultimate Universe) and Storm was orphaned by a French bombing during the Suez War. More to the point, the timing was such that Magneto, in his upper-middle age, had a pretty strongly defined timeline vis a vis his ideological development vs Xavier; child during the holocaust, Nazi hunter who eventually rifts with Xavier during the mid-to-late 60s, and then the two of them spend their years marshalling their respective resources before coming to blows during the quote-unquote "Age of Heroes," whatever the timeline looked like for that in the 80s. And it was a timeline that held together pretty damn well in the 80s, but it's gotten increasingly awkward as time's gone on. The Fox films completely gave up on having it make sense, near as I can tell. In the comics they've had all sorts of de-aging chicanery occur that very pointedly ignores what an odd timeline that implies for everyone else in the X-books besides Magneto. The Cullen Bunn Magneto standalone from 2014-15 I remember actually leaned into playing up the idea that he's just old as shit and dependent on so many superscience treatments to remain functional that he's basically pickled, which was a take I liked; the comic ended when he died of exertion trying to stop two planets from crashing into each other, right before a brand-wide universal reset. When the MCU was at it's peak and people were wargaming how to integrate the X-Men (lol) you occasionally saw people float "fixes" for the issue, such as making Magneto a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide, or making him black and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide; I remember that this consistently drew a lot of ire from people who (reasonably) thought that his Judaism and connection to the holocaust were deeply important to his character, continuity be damned. But yeah, he's a character dogged by specificity in a way only Cap even slightly approaches. If this is a tractable problem I'm not going to be the one to tract it.

Interestingly, I'm genuinely having a lot of trouble coming up with stuff that's analogous to this at DC comics- almost universally the core roster updates into any given time period much more smoothly. Furthermore, DC stuff has always been much more willing to eschew Marvel's World-Outside-Your-Window philosophy in favor of deliberately obfuscating the time period via the Dark-Deco aesthetic of BTAS's Gotham or the retrofuturism of STAS's Metropolis.

The closest you get to this kind of friction is The Justice Society, who, pre-crisis, were siloed off in a universe where superheroes had existed since the 40s and there was no comic book time, so they were all in their upper-middle-age to old age now, with their kids and grandkids as legacy capes. Post crisis they were (and are) kind of an awkward fit in DC continuity; in the scant few JSA comics from the 90s and early oughts that I read, surviving members of the WW2-era lineup like Alan Scott and Jay Garrick were absolutely written as dependent on their metahuman physiques to have endured up to the present day. I think they're still doing stuff with those guys. I don't know how. I do understand the impulse, though. I also never throw anything out.

[theperfessor]

Hey! Look what I received today (after it made a side trip from 2 towns over to #FL, courtesy of the $USPS) my comp copies of JSA: RAGNAROK (that I did the prepress on for Paul Kupperberg). How cool is this a way to start the new year, eh? (at Norwalk, Connecticut) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJjhOu0BOA8/?igshid=irnqrnvgsgv

[trucywright]

Picture this: what if JSA can’t be in Ragnarok anymore with new timeline. So all the erased Golden Age characters, including the Lost Kids, are actually stuck in Ragnarok to fulfill that role and the JSA have to free them.

[ufonaut]

thoughts on jsa ragnarok?

the paul kupperberg novel? oh, i adore it. some of the best jsa characterisation we've had in more than a decade, just all around vividly well written. i also enjoy the fact that he keeps alan's orphan origin/whole story with jimmy from green lantern: sleepers book two. i mean, jesus, the sheer amount of characterisation you can get from these two paragraphs alone:

the story itself is great though. a definite favorite.

[windex-for-blood]

I like the version that plays as an even more coked-up version of the Captain America story where the JSA, absolutely none of whom have any kind of Nordic background to speak of, spend several decades fighting the battle of Ragnarok outside of time.

Marvel is trying to make siancong into a “floating conflict” to accompany their “floating timeline” to keep their various marvel characters young

This leaves me to wonder

What if they did the same for the JSA by giving them a “floating conflict” that keeps them reasonably aged

What if instead of them being stuck in WWII with immortality derived from various sources, what if they defended Earth from an invasion of Darkseid at some point in the past, unifying the world against this common enemy in a war for human civilization itself

Similar to Earth 2 but with better writing

This solves the biggest issue with the JSA in preserving their golden age heroic image while allowing us to finally move on from WWII

One of the hardest problems with “modernizing” the JSA is that there really isn’t a war that america has participated in that can be deemed as “heroic” as the Second World War…their anti-fascist politics being more integral to their values than pretty much every other superhero group in the superhero genre

Having them participate in Vietnam simply changes them on a foundational level, ditto to the conflicts of the Middle East

Darkseid is already a symbol of fascism created by a Jewish comic book writer

Why not take this to its logical conclusion by having his “first invasion of earth” be the SianCong for the DC universe

A war where a common enemy forces humanity to temporarily set aside their differences for a noble goal of defeating fascism

Thoughts?

I absolutely get what you have in mind here, and on the surface this isn't a problem in the same way as creating a fake Vietnam, but boy I don't think overtly scrubbing away the Nazi-punching from the early history of the genre - at any time but most especially now - would be a great idea.

[tessatechaitea]

Justice Society of America #3

In this issue: old guys versus monkey monsters! I don't know how this issue didn't win a Harvey.

This comic book might have won a Harvey. What am I? Wikipedia? An adult capable of doing research? No, I'm a lazy, cynical, piece of shit who purports to be a comic book critic but who really just uses the medium as a confessional. And most of my confessions are lies to make me sound cooler than I really am! Which is still pretty cool, actually. This issue begins with an old guy stowing away on an Ultragen train car while suffering from sever cramps or possibly even a heart attack.

Is this a super hero comic book or an Alfred Hitchcock movie?

Now that I'm an older man (not old! Just older!), I don't fetishize old men like I did when I was five. But I'm guessing, at 21, I still had a bit of that zest for old man content. What else could drive me to purchase ten issues of this comic book about old men whose glory days are long past but they keep trying to relive them as their wives sit at home rolling their eyes? The stranger stumbles into Doctor Mid-Nite's offices. I guess he's named that because his medical practice stays open all night? The man has something wrong with his stomach. Judging by the strange colored splotches all over his clothing, I'd say he ate too much chili. Or he's bleeding out from a gut shot. Both are probably pretty painful but I can only speak for one. You'd be surprised which one. No you wouldn't. I was just trying to sound cool again. The mystery man from the end of the last issue was Johnny Quick and, judging by how much I'm now yawning and how my head keeps nodding forward, I'd like to apologize for claiming that revealing his identity would have been more exciting and sold more of the third issue. Len was right to conceal his identity. While the Justice Society were keeping Ragnarok from happening, Johnny Quick got a gig endorsing nutritional supplements on late night television infomercials. He was laughed at by scientists when he tried to figure out why his nonsense formula made him so fast. They were all, "You know that's idiotic, right? We can do actual science tests to find out why you're fast. It's probably the Meta(l)gene, you know?" But Johnny didn't want to hear their scientific mumbo-jumbo (which might make him an ignorant jerk in our world but he lives in the comic book world where science can't explain everything and I sometimes why it even bothers to try to explain anything. I mean, X-ray vision? The power of flight? Helmets that grant magic powers by possessing the wearer with an ancient Great Old One of Order? Batman visiting heaven and Constantine visiting Hell? It's like an Anti-Vaxxer's dream reality come true). Instead, Johnny decided to visit a bunch of religious kooks who deal in utter nonsense every day. Unlike the scientists who needed proof and evidence of how his power worked, they were happy to say things like, "Oh, yeah! Your formula is a magic mantra that focuses your chi!" and "It's a message from God to grant you magic speed powers for being such a morally upstanding human being!" and "What exactly do you want to hear and how much will you pay me to hear it?" So after realizing that his super power came from believing in himself, Johnny Quick decided to tell everybody else to believe in themselves too! Did he invent The Secret? Because, as a narcissist, I understand why The Secret is so compelling! Doesn't everybody want to believe that they themselves are the reason all the best things happen to them and also want to believe that everybody who is poor or sick or devastated by random tragedy did it to themselves like big dumb suckers who just weren't strong enough to believe in themselves?! Obviously the only reason I didn't fall out of a tree and die when I was twelve years old was because I believed so strongly in myself and not because I was just another lucky asshole who somehow survived childhood. That's enough about Johnny Quick for the entire ten issues of this comic book that I own. I'm never fucking mentioning that jerk again. I don't care if he becomes super important to the plot! I'm erasing him from history right now! Although I'll probably still discuss Jesse Quick when she turns back up because she's hot. Oh what the hell. One last parting shot at Johnny!

Maybe if you spent less time trying to find the secret to your nonsense formula and more time trying to find Libby's clitoris, you'd still be together! By the look on Ted's face, I bet he could have helped!

Doctor Mid-Nite arrives to let everybody know that their favorite jazz musician died in his arms last night because he was too blind to save him. Probably. But what he discovered was that the man, Reggie, had signed up to become a test subject for Ultragen! He was locked away with a bunch of half-man, half-animal creatures as Ultragen searched for a drug that could make people youthful again. Apparently what the writer is saying is that corporations are the new Nazis. Maybe that's why I bought ten issues of this comic book! Because I was all, "Yeah! This analogy is so apt! Fucking corporations think they can get away with whatever they want! Where's my current girlfriend so I can mansplain this shit to her?!" I don't want to get too cynical here but what else am I supposed to do when a comic book asks me to just buy into this whole Doctor Mid-nite thing. So he goes blind when a grenade goes off in his face. But he discovers he can still see in the dark because, you know, fuck you and comic books and all that shit. We've already established that science doesn't live here. But I don't have a problem with that! Okay, great! So he can see in the dark but not in the light. His reaction to this is, "I should use this new power to fight crime! I just have to wait until a bank robbery happens in the middle of the night with a new moon perpetrated by a bunch of robbers who forgot their flashlights and whiz bang! I'll have the advantage!" I know, I know! He invents dark glasses so he can see while pretending to be blind. I guess that helps him catch muggers who prey on blind people. And then he created smoke bombs which are conceivably his best idea, creating pockets of dark where he would have the advantage against the criminals. But it's not like his eye-sight based super powers gave him the ability to fight well or gave him invulnerability in case of a lucky shot in the dark or allowed him to protect other people at the scene of the crime from stray bullets fired wildly out of the area of effect of his smoke bomb! Doctor Mid-Nite's whole deal is so implausible that it breaks even my capacity for disbelief while reading super hero comic books. It simply makes me think, "This guy sounds like a bad idea from a desperate writer looking for another big super hero hit." Which is what it was! Which is why it breaks the entire comic book! I'd be okay if it simply made me think, "This guy's an idiot with a dumb idea! It's going to get him killed! Ha ha! That'll probably be funny!" While Doctor Mid-Nite is conferring with the Justice Society about what to do with Ultragen, Ultragen is raiding the his free clinic. Luckily Johnny Thunder just happened to be stopping by, probably to get a check-up on his genie. He gets shot and his genie appears to help when a young girl comes up and is all, "Oh hey! I recognize that genie! It's a Badnesian Hex Bolt!" And the genie is all, "Yes, I am! Do you want me to inhabit you for awhile so I can get rid of this old guy (who isn't that old for some reason? Probably a reason that has to do with me living inside of him?)" I just feel like, with Jesse Quick appearing earlier, this series is headed toward creating a younger JSA so the older members can simply fall into the role of mentors. The Atom, Wildcat, and Doctor Mid-nite head off to investigate Ultragen's experimental laboratory and they make a discovery that causes me to literally kill myself because I was too stupid to call it.

This is Grunion Guy's assistant Pickle Boy. I think I'm supposed to make a naughty joke caption here? Like, um, "What is that guy's pee-pee doing inside that kangaroo?!"

Justice Society of America #3 Rating: Does anybody know how to get blood out of shag carpeting? Also, if a person's will is found written on used tissues (hopefully for his nose), is it legally binding because I don't want to inherit this blog and all of its debt.