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All the cool kids write up their reactions after reading. I thought I'd give it a try, but, um. I don't think I quite managed. I wasn't really sure what my opinion on JSA 77 was, so I did it by bits instead.
*claims exhaustion*
All Star Batman and Robin - I don't have any comments on this one, because I took one look at the cover and ran away, frightened.
Now it might have been that I just kept running and never came back to the comic store at all, except that my escape route led me by the cover of JSA 77, from which Alan Scott is glaring out like somebody else’s disturbingly hot, colour-blind grandfather. Seriously, yay. If anyone ever manages to convince Alex Ross to redraw this panel for me, I will have everything I’ll ever need out of my fannish career.
There are two confusing things about the cover. The first is that Ross choose to replace the purple cape with a black one. Sure, I admit that it does take a certain man to pull off the cracked out Christmas ornament ensemble, but Alan Scott has long proven himself to be that man.
The second is that the cover tells us that it’s a Day of Vengeance tie-in in big bold letters, but if you actually manage to stop drooling over the cover and read the book, you’ll notice it’s really not.
Anyway. The issue starts with some guy in an unfortunate costume totally losing his shit. Apparently he’s picking up on every single cell phone call in the entire universe, and believe me, if you had to deal with that much banality, you’d lose it too.
Arrghh!!! says our soon to be identified man.
“Would you be interested in changing your cellular service?” say fifty million telemarketers all at once.
No, dammit! NOOOOOOOO!!!!
He passes out at JSA headquarters, where luckily Dr. Midnight is hanging around to provide some exposition. It turns out that our guy is Harold Jordan... no, no, a different one, aka. Airwave, and his powers actually *are* the ability to listen to every cell phone call in the universe and not, for instance, anything implied by his costume choice.
Alan still looks very worried, however.
“I knew his father,” he says ominously to Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific takes this news stoically, standing straight and still and giving no sign that he heard or that he is, in fact, alive. “I better call his cousin,” says Alan. Mr. Terrific stares blankly at the wall.
I turn the page, half expecting after this week’s JSA that his cousin will turn out to be Power Girl, but I don’t get to find out because there was a script error or something. I’ve got a couple pages of the Green Lantern series instead. Hal Jordan defeats a monster by pitting it against a rabid green Santa Claus! Definitely the construct of a healthy mind, that. Then he pals around with some army folk.
The nameless commander says, “So you’re General Stone’s new Bitch, huh?” And Hal’s all, “Hey, it’s not like that. Well, I mean it is, but it’s not like that, you know?” And then someone off-panel says the word ‘Gorgeous’ and Hal spins around. “Did someone just say my name?”
Sadly, the drama is interrupted at this point by Alan, calling on his ‘ring’ phone (*gives it a moment*). This is bad, bad timing. I think Hal was about to make it with a couple lesbians in the next panel. It turns out in a wacky twist that Hal is Harold Jordan’s relative.
Hal double-times it to the JSA building, cursing well-meaning old geezers under his breath the whole way.
Now, for the next few pages, the part of Alan Scott will be played by a mannequin. I’m a bit put out that they couldn’t muck with it a bit, make it look a little older than seventeen. I mean, come on, you’re not even trying here.
... Well, okay. You’re trying a little bit. I’m impressed by the amount of detail that went into depicting Hal’s abs, in a page which is otherwise fairly simple. I’m a little worried, perhaps, but not unmoved. (Unlike Mr. Terrific.)
You know, I think I’ve got it figured out. There are only enough lines in the JSA for one person at a time, and now that Hal’s here he gets them all! Dr. Midnight, of course, is exempt, as he’s present in our tale solely as his alter ego, Exposition Man.
Dr. Midnight expositions. Airwave has been storing all those cell phone conversations as energy in his brain, poor guy. Hal tries to make small talk with the Alan mannequin, with predictable results, and finally stumbles onto the question which has been foremost in *my* mind.
Hal waves a hand in front of Alan’s face, and then shrugs. “What am I *doing* here, anyway,” he says.
“The writer *wants* your hot bod A hope that it’ll bump sales, I suppose,” exposits Dr. Midnight.
“Hmm,” says Hal, to show that he’s thinking. “Then how come I’m not on the cover? Um.” He glances at Alan, but the other Green Lantern doesn’t seem to have reacted. It’s starting to get a little bit odd.
Hal punches Alan in the arm, but in a friendly, masculine way to show that he’s joking. Alan topples over, colliding with Mr. Terrific on his way down, and they both crash to the floor.
“Uh, sorry about that,” says Hal, as he picks them up and brushes them off.
Then Airwave wakes up and starts yelling and being otherwise destructive. “What’s wrong!” shouts Hal, who obviously wasn’t paying attention to any of the exposition at all. The mannequins kind of flop around for a bit as Airwave eavesdrops on the communications from the Rann/Thanagar War miniseries. “OMIGOD!” he says. “THERE'S NO INTELLIGENT LIFE *ANYWHERE*!” He takes off through the building. And then he flies through some other buildings. Hal follows.
He drags the Alan-quin with him, which turns out to actually be a good idea because once they get far enough away from whatever was going on at the JSA, Alan manages to get find some lines. And some motor control, yay! He still looks seventeen, though. Maybe he’s just in the mood.
Before they can catch him, Airwave turns all that energy he’s been collecting into an explosion that blacks out most of the city. However, given that he’s been getting annoyed at L.E.G.I.O.N communications for the last few pages, and that space people tend live, well, *not* in Earth cities? This strikes me as not the most effective plan.
Airwave seems to figure this out, and heads off for space instead. He leads the Green Lanterns to what looks like the most stupidly built moon colony ever. “New Cronus,” announces Airwave in bolded, ‘this is important, dumbass’ font. I’m kinda thinking that I’ve missed a class of DCU history. Mostly, however, I’m thinking, Why would anyone hollow out half a moon and put buildings in? It doesn’t look very structurally stable. It looks like the most stupid space city I’ve ever heard of, and I’m a sci-fi fan.
“I hear them scratching against my brain,” shouts Airwave, with his hands over his ears. “They’re screaming for help. Millions of them.”
Hal, concerned for his cousin, decides to attack the colony. “That’ll teach you to spread migraines after nine WHEN ALL THE DRUGSTORES ARE CLOSED AND HE CAN’T FIND ANY ASPRIN, you bastards!”
But then he’s stopped by Donna Troy, who was hanging about in the area. She looks about ready to kick the crap out of him.
But then she’s stopped by Alan.Sigh.
Alan: He’s not evil!
Donna: But he just…
Alan: Um. Misunderstanding.
Donna: But wasn’t he going around murdering people back when-
Hal: Wow. You must be the only person in the universe who missed Rebirth.
Alan: I thought *you* were dead.
Donna: Haven’t you guys been reading my miniseries either?
Airwave listens to this for a bit, and then announces that he’s getting as far away from humanity as possible, an understandable decision in the circumstances. Maybe he’ll go to the centre of the universe with Donna instead, where there’s a war. Maybe he'll get killed and not have to put up with this crap anymore. Alan announces that he’ll keep him company.
...Maybe there’s more to the costume than I suspected.
Before the three of them take off, Alan pulls Hal aside and offers to be his daddy. Er. In a totally non-creepy way.
Well, look. I’m sure it *would* be a totally non-creepy way if Alan looked to be out of his teens. Dude, you better fix that before your *wife* sees. She gets *odd* about you randomly losing decades.
And then there’s a completely unrelated page with Dr. Fate sitting on a mountain. So maybe it is a Day of Vengeance tie-in after all.
The End.
PS. If it turns out that this issue is, as it appears, leading in to an Alan Scott/Donna Troy/Vril Dox teamup, my brain will break. Just the *first* two names in that lead me to wonder if DC is pulling out names from a hat at this point.
”So this month we’ve got Supergirl teamed with... Darkseid. Um. Should I draw again?”
“Nah. We’ll just pass it off to Loeb.”
“’Kay. And then it’s Huntress teamed with... Power Girl.........”
“Dude. You okay?”
“*cough* Yeah, sorry. I just went to my happy place for a bit there.”
PPS. I was curious.
....Using a pair of specially designed, detachable skates, Air Wave could ride airborne electrical wires, such as telephone lines, trolley car cables and those used by elevated trains. Doing this, he could also recharge miniature batteries and activate a small but powerful generator that was contained in the helmet. The batteries also powered a very powerful receiver and, with proper atmospheric conditions, could receive radio signals throughout the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. After his retirement, Air Wave modified the helmet to allow his son to transmute his physical body into electrical energies, and later any form of electromagnetic radiation.
Air Wave was aided by a large green Maccaw parrot named Static. Specially trained to mimic Jordan's voice, the bird proved useful in helping maintain his dual identity.
.....Jordan later took to wearing a false moustache, removing it when he became Air Wave.
Next time, JSA: Classified, Birds of Prey and Runaways! Or not.
Probably not, I think.
*claims exhaustion*
All Star Batman and Robin - I don't have any comments on this one, because I took one look at the cover and ran away, frightened.
Now it might have been that I just kept running and never came back to the comic store at all, except that my escape route led me by the cover of JSA 77, from which Alan Scott is glaring out like somebody else’s disturbingly hot, colour-blind grandfather. Seriously, yay. If anyone ever manages to convince Alex Ross to redraw this panel for me, I will have everything I’ll ever need out of my fannish career.
There are two confusing things about the cover. The first is that Ross choose to replace the purple cape with a black one. Sure, I admit that it does take a certain man to pull off the cracked out Christmas ornament ensemble, but Alan Scott has long proven himself to be that man.
The second is that the cover tells us that it’s a Day of Vengeance tie-in in big bold letters, but if you actually manage to stop drooling over the cover and read the book, you’ll notice it’s really not.
Anyway. The issue starts with some guy in an unfortunate costume totally losing his shit. Apparently he’s picking up on every single cell phone call in the entire universe, and believe me, if you had to deal with that much banality, you’d lose it too.
Arrghh!!! says our soon to be identified man.
“Would you be interested in changing your cellular service?” say fifty million telemarketers all at once.
No, dammit! NOOOOOOOO!!!!
He passes out at JSA headquarters, where luckily Dr. Midnight is hanging around to provide some exposition. It turns out that our guy is Harold Jordan... no, no, a different one, aka. Airwave, and his powers actually *are* the ability to listen to every cell phone call in the universe and not, for instance, anything implied by his costume choice.
Alan still looks very worried, however.
“I knew his father,” he says ominously to Mr. Terrific. Mr. Terrific takes this news stoically, standing straight and still and giving no sign that he heard or that he is, in fact, alive. “I better call his cousin,” says Alan. Mr. Terrific stares blankly at the wall.
I turn the page, half expecting after this week’s JSA that his cousin will turn out to be Power Girl, but I don’t get to find out because there was a script error or something. I’ve got a couple pages of the Green Lantern series instead. Hal Jordan defeats a monster by pitting it against a rabid green Santa Claus! Definitely the construct of a healthy mind, that. Then he pals around with some army folk.
The nameless commander says, “So you’re General Stone’s new Bitch, huh?” And Hal’s all, “Hey, it’s not like that. Well, I mean it is, but it’s not like that, you know?” And then someone off-panel says the word ‘Gorgeous’ and Hal spins around. “Did someone just say my name?”
Sadly, the drama is interrupted at this point by Alan, calling on his ‘ring’ phone (*gives it a moment*). This is bad, bad timing. I think Hal was about to make it with a couple lesbians in the next panel. It turns out in a wacky twist that Hal is Harold Jordan’s relative.
Hal double-times it to the JSA building, cursing well-meaning old geezers under his breath the whole way.
Now, for the next few pages, the part of Alan Scott will be played by a mannequin. I’m a bit put out that they couldn’t muck with it a bit, make it look a little older than seventeen. I mean, come on, you’re not even trying here.
... Well, okay. You’re trying a little bit. I’m impressed by the amount of detail that went into depicting Hal’s abs, in a page which is otherwise fairly simple. I’m a little worried, perhaps, but not unmoved. (Unlike Mr. Terrific.)
You know, I think I’ve got it figured out. There are only enough lines in the JSA for one person at a time, and now that Hal’s here he gets them all! Dr. Midnight, of course, is exempt, as he’s present in our tale solely as his alter ego, Exposition Man.
Dr. Midnight expositions. Airwave has been storing all those cell phone conversations as energy in his brain, poor guy. Hal tries to make small talk with the Alan mannequin, with predictable results, and finally stumbles onto the question which has been foremost in *my* mind.
Hal waves a hand in front of Alan’s face, and then shrugs. “What am I *doing* here, anyway,” he says.
“
“Hmm,” says Hal, to show that he’s thinking. “Then how come I’m not on the cover? Um.” He glances at Alan, but the other Green Lantern doesn’t seem to have reacted. It’s starting to get a little bit odd.
Hal punches Alan in the arm, but in a friendly, masculine way to show that he’s joking. Alan topples over, colliding with Mr. Terrific on his way down, and they both crash to the floor.
“Uh, sorry about that,” says Hal, as he picks them up and brushes them off.
Then Airwave wakes up and starts yelling and being otherwise destructive. “What’s wrong!” shouts Hal, who obviously wasn’t paying attention to any of the exposition at all. The mannequins kind of flop around for a bit as Airwave eavesdrops on the communications from the Rann/Thanagar War miniseries. “OMIGOD!” he says. “THERE'S NO INTELLIGENT LIFE *ANYWHERE*!” He takes off through the building. And then he flies through some other buildings. Hal follows.
He drags the Alan-quin with him, which turns out to actually be a good idea because once they get far enough away from whatever was going on at the JSA, Alan manages to get find some lines. And some motor control, yay! He still looks seventeen, though. Maybe he’s just in the mood.
Before they can catch him, Airwave turns all that energy he’s been collecting into an explosion that blacks out most of the city. However, given that he’s been getting annoyed at L.E.G.I.O.N communications for the last few pages, and that space people tend live, well, *not* in Earth cities? This strikes me as not the most effective plan.
Airwave seems to figure this out, and heads off for space instead. He leads the Green Lanterns to what looks like the most stupidly built moon colony ever. “New Cronus,” announces Airwave in bolded, ‘this is important, dumbass’ font. I’m kinda thinking that I’ve missed a class of DCU history. Mostly, however, I’m thinking, Why would anyone hollow out half a moon and put buildings in? It doesn’t look very structurally stable. It looks like the most stupid space city I’ve ever heard of, and I’m a sci-fi fan.
“I hear them scratching against my brain,” shouts Airwave, with his hands over his ears. “They’re screaming for help. Millions of them.”
Hal, concerned for his cousin, decides to attack the colony. “That’ll teach you to spread migraines after nine WHEN ALL THE DRUGSTORES ARE CLOSED AND HE CAN’T FIND ANY ASPRIN, you bastards!”
But then he’s stopped by Donna Troy, who was hanging about in the area. She looks about ready to kick the crap out of him.
But then she’s stopped by Alan.
Alan: He’s not evil!
Donna: But he just…
Alan: Um. Misunderstanding.
Donna: But wasn’t he going around murdering people back when-
Hal: Wow. You must be the only person in the universe who missed Rebirth.
Alan: I thought *you* were dead.
Donna: Haven’t you guys been reading my miniseries either?
Airwave listens to this for a bit, and then announces that he’s getting as far away from humanity as possible, an understandable decision in the circumstances. Maybe he’ll go to the centre of the universe with Donna instead, where there’s a war. Maybe he'll get killed and not have to put up with this crap anymore. Alan announces that he’ll keep him company.
...Maybe there’s more to the costume than I suspected.
Before the three of them take off, Alan pulls Hal aside and offers to be his daddy. Er. In a totally non-creepy way.
Well, look. I’m sure it *would* be a totally non-creepy way if Alan looked to be out of his teens. Dude, you better fix that before your *wife* sees. She gets *odd* about you randomly losing decades.
And then there’s a completely unrelated page with Dr. Fate sitting on a mountain. So maybe it is a Day of Vengeance tie-in after all.
The End.
PS. If it turns out that this issue is, as it appears, leading in to an Alan Scott/Donna Troy/Vril Dox teamup, my brain will break. Just the *first* two names in that lead me to wonder if DC is pulling out names from a hat at this point.
”So this month we’ve got Supergirl teamed with... Darkseid. Um. Should I draw again?”
“Nah. We’ll just pass it off to Loeb.”
“’Kay. And then it’s Huntress teamed with... Power Girl.........”
“Dude. You okay?”
“*cough* Yeah, sorry. I just went to my happy place for a bit there.”
PPS. I was curious.
....Using a pair of specially designed, detachable skates, Air Wave could ride airborne electrical wires, such as telephone lines, trolley car cables and those used by elevated trains. Doing this, he could also recharge miniature batteries and activate a small but powerful generator that was contained in the helmet. The batteries also powered a very powerful receiver and, with proper atmospheric conditions, could receive radio signals throughout the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. After his retirement, Air Wave modified the helmet to allow his son to transmute his physical body into electrical energies, and later any form of electromagnetic radiation.
Air Wave was aided by a large green Maccaw parrot named Static. Specially trained to mimic Jordan's voice, the bird proved useful in helping maintain his dual identity.
.....Jordan later took to wearing a false moustache, removing it when he became Air Wave.
Next time, JSA: Classified, Birds of Prey and Runaways! Or not.
Probably not, I think.
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