COMICS-Crappy Comics: Justice League International (Europe) #60
Evil wears pink and purple!
There's a shop I visit out in Aurora that features roughly 100 boxes of ten-cent comics, stuffed
underneath their regular comics.
Even though I'm satisfied with my collection of !mpact Comics, Steeltown Rockers
and Blood Syndicate, I'll
crouch down and flip through the 10-centers every other month. Over the years I've found
some good stuff down here. Not GREAT stuff, but stuff that's definitely worth a dime.
A few copies of "Brave and the Bold", "Teen Titans" or "Iron Man".
Of course, roughly
95% of these boxes are filled with the Great Deluge of Crappy Comics From 92-94.
92-94 were pretty much the years when comics were gutted wide open. Gold foil covers, sub-par
stories, shitty characters and terrible art were everywhere. It's debateable, but the launch
of Image Comics can be traced as the main reason for this amount of crap. New
"Extreme" characters were created at the drop of a hat. Violence was cool.
Every artist took to making their signature in a cutesy little scroll. New compaines
popped up. Cover prices
soared. Production soared. Every month, at least 30 "Collector's Editions" were
released. It was all a fad and came crashing down around 1995.
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EXTRMEMELY crappy heroes, for an EXTREMELY crappy time |
DC and Marvel were even sucked into this trend. Marvel became blinded by the success of
their X-Men cartoon and comic and made "extreme" changes to Captain America, Dardevil,
the Fantastic Four and even Spider-Man. The Avengers began
wearing matching jackets and stoped shaving, much like the X-men.
DC went the same route by shaking things up
with Batman, Superman and Green Lantern. Artists were a dime a dozen, with most
trying to emulate the Image "talent". Every sixth page featured the heroes
in a pin-up or poster shot. Even longtime artists lke Al Milgrom
altered their style to appear "MODERN".
Plus, it wasn't cool to just have your heroes
fight bad guys, anymore. They had to go through EXTREME CHANGES to sell copies.
Everything tried to be bigger and flashier. More VIOLENT. More MODERN. More
EXCITING. More NEW STUFF. It's like comics became video games. It's not too difficult
to pick on comics from this era...
With this in mind, I was sorting through those ten-cent boxes a few weeks ago and found
a copy of "Justice League International" from late 93/early 94.
At the time, Justice League International was striving to fit in and find
an audience. Originally launched in 1989 as "Justice League Europe", the book was
a spin-off from DC's enormously successful "Justice League" and its blend of
humor and action. "Justice League" became "Justice League International" and then
became "Justice League America" when "Europe" was launched.
After a few year, the writers decided to expand the scope of
"Justice League Europe" by including some international characters and
changed to book to "Justice League International", since that name was now un-used.
A tad bit confusing, but that's just the opening shots.
I can usually pick up a comic...ANY comic.. and figure out what's going on. I can
typically figure out the main conflict, characters, subplots and
supporting characters. The last time I had read
Justice League Europe/International was
probably in mid 1992. I had the first 20 issues or so, so
I figured that this should be easy to figure out.
I start reading and find that this particular issue involves a half-assed time travel plot.
Some EVIL looking pink guy has apparently gone back in time and altered
Hal Jordan's origin. As a result, it looks like Abin Sur never selected Hal and
Guy Gardner is Green Lantern. Golly! EXTREME CHANGES!
Seems reasonable. Things get clouded, however. Hal is seen with a few other oridinary characters, including
some bozo in a cowboy hat. These characters follow Hal around, but are never referred to
by name. I'm speculating that they're the civilian ID's of Flash, Metamorpho and
maybe ...shit, I dunno, is that Hal's buddy Pieface? Power Girl's there and she appears okay.
There's also some dude in a magician hat and a five o' clock shadow. I'm thinking maybe it's
Zatara or one of the other weird-ass DC magic characters. We're not told his name...
but after reading the book I pick up that it's a body-hopping freak named
Erewhon. Who? The other Leaguers seem friendly on him, but I can't deduct if he's on the team
or not.
There's also a thin reference to an "alternate timeline". Oh shit. Another element that seemed to
be all the rage in the early 90's. X-men had all sorts of fricked up alternate timeline/future
stories...and X-men SOLD, so I guess JLI had to have one, too! The Leaguers are able to teleport
around timelines and dimensions quite easily...so why are they concerned about
stopping this evil pink guy? They could just fire up another teleport jump
and fight him again.
The evil pink guy is someone named "Alaric". Shit, another early 90's trend: villains
with last names. Call me a codger, but I prefer villains with recognizable NAMES.
Like "Riddler", "Count Vertigo", or even the g'damn "Kite-Man". Strange names work for
your alien guys or monsters, like "Sinestro", "Gorilla Grodd" or "Thanos". Nope, in
the early 90's, we got villains who had been kicked off of Battlestar Galactica, with names
like "Fitzroy", "Proctor", "Cortez" or "Alaric"! I kept waiting for someone to fight the evil "Jonesy".
Alaric also has a jetpack, stolen from the halftime show of Super Bowl 2. You really can't miss him,
cuz he's PINK! We're talking Pantone Process 211.
Aside from
being PINK, he also prances around in an open purple vest. That ensemble would even get your
ass kicked at a Cher concert. He's also EXTREME...cuz it appears he has no powers-
just big ass GUNS! No mention is made of WHY he hates the League and Green Lantern in
particular.
The League is eventually able to bounce around time and
reset things to their proper order. There's a confusing "climactic" battle with
Alaric in the future. The Erewhon guy takes over Alaric's body and sets things right.
The Leaguers get to see Abin Sur select Hal and they suddenly flash back to their
modern-day headquarters. Guy Gardner flies by to say hi. Seriously.
Former Leaguer Crimson Fox is also there to greet them. Apparently,
she was believed dead. But, as we found out later, this was the deceased Fox's sister
wearing the outfit- a move
that League writers used AGAIN when they revived Icemaiden shortly after.
Mercifully, the issue ends at this point. Umm, was that supposed to make
me buy MORE of this stuff??
The roll-call's
not impressive either. We've got Doctor Light- the female version. The relcutant superhero who's
onboard to satisfy the Asian Multicultural Requirment. Then we've got
Maya- a strange female character who fulfills the Indian Multicultural Requirement.
She has some sort of energy-bow apparatus while
her skin tone alternates between gray and brown along the way. There's
Tasmanian Devil- not that there was ever a call for an Australian Multicultural Requirement, but
he's here. He's also bulked up since his Global Guardian days and looks like
a mean version of Snuggle. Power Girl is on hand, wearing
a costume that lasted three months (one with a dimaond-shaped key-hole boob shot). Flash is around, but you'd never notice it. Metamorpho, too.
Green Lantern Hal Jordan is the leader of this bunch, but that's like being
the head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals.
This issue stands as a peak example of what the 92/94 era was like.
Slim stories, fringe characters and an unwieldy color palette all display that
it's difficult to make something from nothing.
"Justice League" and its many arteries were scrapped about 18 months after this issue.
DC re-tooled and centralized the League, re-launching it in 1996 with the current
"JLA" series. The Justice League concept survived to see better days, but most of the
characters in this story have not. Flash survived in his book, Hal Jordan became
the Spectre, Power Girl joined the JSA and Broads of Prey...but the others? Metamorpho
is believed dead and I'm not sure what happened to Maya, Tasmanian Devil, Doctor Light,
Crimson Fox and Erewhon.
Drop me a line if you ever see the EXTREME pink/purple evilness of Alaric again. He's worth
a dime.
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