Justice League: Generation Lost #2

[sailorlibra]

Four scans from the second issue of Generation Lost, as things get worse for our heroes.



In the last issue, Max managed to wipe any information about himself from the brains of everyone. (And it seems like we're talking everyone everywhere, not just on earth.) This issue reveals that his mind control also extends to images when the group shows Superman a picture of Diana snapping Max's neck that he sees as her holding a sword.

Undeterred, they find more superheroes to try to convince.





Say it with me guys/girls: "oh my fuuuuck."



The "Ice-attacking-Guy" thing isn't just a rumor. Guy really believes that she tried to kill him and, as an extention, so does the whole Green Lantern corps. The reason why? Well, you probably guessed it.



They theorize that the reason he hasn't done anything to Booster's reputation is because it already sucks. They set out to investigate some more and end up running into an old friend (sorta).

recommended tags - char: booster gold/michael jon carter, char: ice/tora olafsdotter, char: batman/dick grayson, char: fire/beatriz da costa, char: captain atom/nathaniel adam, title: justice league: generation lost, publisher: dc comics, creator: judd winick, creator: keith giffen, creator: joe bennet

Comments

[aegof]

So, uh, has Wonder Woman been accounted for, yet?
Normally, I'd not bring it up, since easy answers aren't always narratively appropriate, but there's that big ol' page of Our Heroes looking through the supercommunity for help. Diana doesn't strike me as the kind of resource someone would forget when trying to convince people that your group knows something is true.

That Max is a pretty important character in Diana's recentish history makes it even stranger.

Also, unless the capes are programmed to respond like this, I think it's pretty strange that they would. Mind control is common in their business, after all.

[sailorlibra]

Yeah, she has. Not only does she not remember a thing about Max Lord, she has false memories of Bea being dismissed by Checkmate.

I do think that Max is controlling their behavior to a certain extent. After Superman dismisses him, the group ponders that his behavior seems unusual. Captain Atom says "...He seems, I don't know--off. When is Superman that impatient?" I'm thinking maybe he programmed the main superheroes to not spend much time around the group.

Also, when Wonder Woman talks to Bea, she seems really concerned at first and then she just leaves. Which would also seem to fit with mind control.

[aegof]

Cool. Nitpicks satisfied.

[bluefall]

Eh, there's still the question of why Bea, standing right in front of Diana, didn't reach out, grab the lariat, wrap it around her wrist, and say, "I'm not lying."

[aegof]

Eh, I'm willing to accept a simple "no, this obvious answer isn't going to work because that's not the story I want to tell" from the author without worrying about details. Not a sign of a good writer or plot, of course.

[jlbarnett]

well, the current issue of Wonder Woman has it revealed that if you remember things wrong that can satisfy the lasso.

So a conflict like that could just come down to something wrong with Bea.

[cmdr_zoom]

There are stories that can be told in settings where the presence of an infallible lie detector has been established. This is not one of them, and should not have been.

[thokstar]

Yeah. I'm under the general impression that Max dropped a Fnord along with his mental commands, so anybody who hears somebody talking about Maxwell Lord will
a. think they are crazy
b. try to change the subject relatively quickly

If Diana put in effort, she could break this, but the mental commands specifically discourage her from putting in effort.

(Incidentally, I wonder if there are any Maxwell Lord's out there other than the supervillain, and if Max had the courtesy to get them to think they had a new name.)

[bluefall]

Yeah, I found that scene... pretty unconvincing. Diana of Themyscira does not look a woman in the eyes and hear the truth as a lie, I don't care how powerful Max is supposed to be. If the effect he pulled of was an instantaneous rewrite (as suggested by the fact that it was a single event that he had to take precautions to survive), Diana would break it the very first time she touched the lariat, and a rewrite shouldn't impact her ability to see the truth in the least anyway. If it's an ongoing effort that Max is currently sustaining on everyone even now, then we're talking about Darkseid-with-the-ALE level power, and if they want me to take "Max is more powerful than most of the DCU's actual gods" seriously, they... um, aren't going to pull that off.

Plus, if Max actually set up these elaborate cover stories with Lex/Bruce/whoever in Max's place, rather than just putting up an SEP field around anything to do with Max, then he's seriously got like three days tops before one of the Bats pulls the thread. You cannot get me to believe that Dick or Babs could ever be so stupid that any amount of "don't respect Booster's opinion" or "these are not the Max Lords you're looking for" mind control could make them overlook "Lex Luthor knowing every single cape's identity, powers and favorite flavor of toothpaste and not acting on that knowledge does not make sense." Even if they couldn't remember Max and physically weren't able to trust Booster, their recollections of these impossible, irreconcilable alternate histories would make them suspicious and get them investigating.

Also this use of Diana and Sacrifice generally strikes me as not unlike if Busiek had done TRINITY with Kara and Perry White hopping around dimensions after Clark, while Lois seamlessly just started dating Clara Kendall in a couple of offhand background cameos. I realize I'm just a tiny bit biased on the Wonder Woman front, but after using the whole Sacrifice clusterfuck as a bludgeon to lambast the character and abuse her entire mythos for three years, acting like she's just that irrelevant to the Max story and that Max is just that irrelevant to her strikes me as kind of... disrespectful.

[bluefall]

(I mean okay obviously they could have more planned for Diana, but the lack of any consideration for the problems her powers present here and the way the erasure of the neck snap has been portrayed thus far, plus, like, everything else about everything ever, do not make me optimistic on that front.

Also also I am skeptical that it would be that easy to get Guy to turn on Tora, but since Guy is a core Superbuddy I'm less worried that that won't get a sensible reasonably-well-thought-out resolution that I have no trouble believing.)

[sailorlibra]

Also also I am skeptical that it would be that easy to get Guy to turn on Tora, but since Guy is a core Superbuddy I'm less worried that that won't get a sensible reasonably-well-thought-out resolution that I have no trouble believing.)

Well, like I said, they've been hinting that Max is controlling the superheroes to avoid/not believe the protagonists. So that would explain why Guy didn't immediately jump to the concept of brainwashing when Tora attacked him. Especially considering that she had attacked him like a week before because of brainwashing (the Black Lantern thing).

The Wonder Woman angle is utter crap, though. There just isn't really a way they can have her remember and not have her take out Max in like two seconds. So I'm just trying to sort of ignore that angle. Sometimes it's really hard.

[thokstar]

Lex Luthor knowing every single cape's identity, powers and favorite flavor of toothpaste and not acting on that knowledge does not make sense.

I assumed that when Dick said "Lex Luthor", he really meant "That alternate universe Lex Luthor who attacked everybody during Infinite Crisis but was killed by Joker and the real Lex Luthor, but that's too long to say and too confusing so we'll jsut call his Lex Luthor."

[bluefall]

He'd be Alex, wouldn't he? IDK I do my best to not think about ICk.

Regardless, Dick and Babs would know that Bruce was taking down the Penguin or whatever the night Max put the JLI together, that Bruce would never be responsible for the illegal scamming and sketchy shit that Max started his Leaguewith. Babs would know that Ted wasn't suicidal (and Babs especially would know that her memories don't match up, since she's got perfect recall and there's no way Max could build a perfect lie). They're living in a world where everything that Max did, happened, and all the consequences of those actions trace back logically through cause-and-effect to Max and no one else. If someone else had done those things, or if they hadn't been done at all, the fallout would be different, and that discrepancy's going to be obvious to them.

It's like Speilberg going back and swapping all the guns for radios in the ET rerelase - yeah, the guns are gone from the film, but the actors are all still in poses like they're holding guns, the plot still unfolds as though there's direct physical danger to the heroes, and it's jarring. You can tell something's off. Retconning the cause without retconning the effect causes inconsistencies, things that don't fit right and don't match up. And noticing that things don't fit right and vigorously pursuing those inconsistencies until you figure out why not is like 110% of exactly what being a Bat is about.

It's not quite as egregious as Diana because Max never almost destroyed everything Babs and Dick are or stand for, and they don't have an "auto-dispell mind control" effect built into their daily powerset (if Bruce were around we'd have a real problem). But I still don't find it particularly plausible that Babs can actively investigate the JLI's claims, some of which are quite personal to her as well, without noticing one single crack in Max's (clearly incautiously constructed) fiction, or that Dick can be a dick to Booster and not wonder twenty minutes later "waitaminute, why did I act like that?"

[thokstar]

there's no way Max could build a perfect lie

That's not quite true. He'd need time and a lot of computer power (and by a lot, I mean ridiculous by comic book standards.)

I suspect for this to work, they'll need Max to reveal that he developed this plan even before he was killed. Pre-death he had Brother Eye+ Checkmate+ a couple years to develop this. (Yes, all of that stuff was dismantled, but Max could then have redundant back up systems. Yes, this demands the question of why Max didn't try it before his death, but you know, he doesn't particularly like getting the world's worst nosebleed either if he can avoid it.)

And to be fair, I like this story more that I mind the "but several dozen characters shouldn't act like that" issue.

[jlbarnett]

I think in the Booster Gold issue with the alternate timeline they identified him as an alternate Lex Luthor so some may do that. As for the OMACs... well if you're getting paranoid then consoliadating all this insanely important info isn't smart and that really wasn't what made the OMACs dangerous so maybe they no longer remember Brother Eye had that info.

Dick actually seems like the most decent acting person to the JLI. Of course if they're assembling that entire team then Batman was on it, so Dick may end up accompanying them to check out their claims.

They definately should have said "Ted had a heart attack" or something like that. Since there's no body it's not like they can investigate.

[cmdr_zoom]

This.
The whole damn thing should come down like a house of cards as soon as Diana and/or her lariat come into play.

[jlbarnett]

I figure that memory removal qualifies as enough of a different thing from mind control that it's not a problem. Meanwhile if she knows she can't be mind controlled then when someone comes across her with a different set of memories then it probably suggests a mental problem.

With Dick being Booster's secret keeper I'm kind of surprised there isn't some sort of "Are you sure you're the Booster of this timeline?" or "Are you jsut remembering an alternate timeline?" thing.

[darkknightjrk]

"Also, unless the capes are programmed to respond like this, I think it's pretty strange that they would. Mind control is common in their business, after all."

They are. In the scene with Superman shown in the previews Atom remarks on how odd Supes was acting.