Oracle's Tenure with the JLA, Part 5: War

[glprime]

It's the end of the world and Oracle ain't happy 'bout that.




So, the League has been warned about the coming of Mageddon, an Old Gods weapon that basically makes everyone go insane with paranoid rage and then obliterates things on a cosmic scale. (Hey, wait a minute...)



Oh yeah, while Barda and Diana go looking for help with Metron, Prometheus somehow went and snatched his helmet back. What's happening there?



A whole bunch of things seem to be going wrong for the League at once, on top of universal destruction.



"Boo."



Yeah, so Luthor tries forming another Injustice Gang. This one is notably more badass (getting back the General from deep space and recruiting the Queen Bee and her whole armada), but they are of course just cogs in a giant Morrison clockworks.



With that twisted art, you can almost see her considering it. But no. Barbara's played headgames with Joker; this guy is weaksauce.



While probably a pithy one-liner, one wonders what Prometheus might have been hinting at there...?

Ah, well, Oracle's bat-like reflexes save her from falling to her death, but her systems get trashed. The other heroes divide and conquer to deal with the Injustice Gang including Batman giving Prometheus Motor Neuron Disease, Orion setting his dog on the General (into the Phantom Zone, no less) and Plastic Man of all people outsmarting the Queen Bee.

But with the League's Watchtower ambushed by the Injustice Gang and taken out of commission, the heroes need a Machine from the Gods. WAI HALO THAR MUTHERBOXX.





Yep, Oracle 2.0, now with digital telep- wait, what? Oh, right, Morrison Crack(TM).



While Oracle tries to get all the reserves organized and help Animal Man's plan to "counter" the Haterade signal being broadcast by Mageddon, the world leaders are about to "FIRE ZE MISSILES!" when Zauriel comes in after recruiting most of Heaven to get up off their ethereal asses and help, y'know, save humanity from itself.



Flash zooms in with a visitor from Wonderworld, the destroyed home of the guardians against stuff like Mageddon. The Glimmer can apparently "run perpendicular to time" and generate mass amounts of energy. Sorry, "energy-plus," as Flash states.

So using his godly powers, the Glimmer juices up every single person on Earth with Superman (Post-Crisis) level powers.



Evolution doesn't work that way... Yep, EVERYONE.



So, while Superman is trapped inside the "Anti-Sun," the Armies of Man make a last ditch attack on Mageddon's satellite drones, while J'onn and Bruce try and psychically impress upon Clark the need to stop being an emo bitch and do some Superman shit.

Clark reaches out and "absorbs pure anti-sunlight" from the heart of the Annihilator (the back cover of the trade actually features this page). The weapon is disarmed and, well... they never really explain just where they dumped that gigantic thing. Huh.



While only a toss away line, this would actually be one of the last times we'd see Oracle working with the Justice League. She probably realized, "I just recruited the whole damn Earth for war, kicked an alien doomsday weapon's ass, and now they want me to route crazy villain hotline calls? Screw this, me and the girls are headin' to Vegas for the week."

Tune in tomorrow for the last of my posts featuring Oracle in JLA.



15 pages; 4 from JLA #36, 3 from JLA #37, 1 from JLA #38, 1 from JLA #39, 1 from JLA #40, 5 from JLA #41.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

tags: char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, creator: grant morrison, creator: howard porter, publisher: dc comics, title: jla

Comments

[jarodrussell]

Here are two of my favorites:

[shadowpsykie]

yeah these are good character moments.