The Halls of Fate, Part Three

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

In the last chapter of our merry tale of What The Hell, we were treated to a boatload of genetic and esoterical confusion, courtesy of the Hawkfamily, a demon, a wizard, and Dove. In this chapter, we get more build up, a lot of supposed therapy... oh, and plotholes. Big ones. But after the first two chapters, you should have seen that last one coming. Twenty three pages from six issues. I tried this time to limit the ranting. Sort of.

When we last left our merry band, the JSA were getting their asses handed to them by Mordru, who'd used Hector's emotional instability in order to commandeer his body for nefarious purposes (Only it wasn't really Hector's body he took, but... Oh, you'll find out in the next few pages). While the battle rages, Hector wakes up inside the Amulet of Fate.









Arion, for those who've been trying to keep up with Power Girl's revolving door origin story, was thought to be her grandfather at this time. When she actually meets him while being one of the people who go to Gemworld to free his soul, he'll inform her that this was a lie on the part of others, which eventually leads into her tie-in miniseries to Infinite Crisis.

But that's neither here, nor there. Back to the Fate Family Reunion:















Nabu-Infused!Hector once again kicks Mordru's ass and, this time, gets some help from the Wizard (as in the one who powers the Marvel family) in doing a better job of sealing him away. Everything's shiny, right?

Yeah, uh, remember that this is DC.

For example, that little intervention? The one where Nabu said that all of the former agents were all just imagination figments? Yeah, he lied about that. And the whole affectionate worried fatherly figure thing was pretty much fake too. In fact, after he decides that Hector's too soft to do things his way, he pulls a Mordru himself and locks Hector back in the amulet in order to take a more ruthless hand in the fight currently going on between the JSA and Black Adam's forces (Black Adam having gone back to his homeland to squish a brutally dictatorial regime -literally, thanks to Atom Smasher- and take over the country himself).



And now for the return of someone very familiar...



Lyta! Honey! Good to finally see you instead of another illusion! But how did you get into the amulet? And why are you wearing your old Fury costume?



And why are you...uh...well...sane?

Oh, and these are hypothetical questions, of course, because they'll never get answered in this run, aside from a brief glossing over of everything that happened to Lyta. No, I'm not kidding. Chalk it up to yet another potentially interesting story that got chucked off a cliff.

Anyway, Hector regains control of his body and brings Lyta into the outside world with him, where they briefly join the fight with Black Adam before a truce (sort of) is called and the JSA go home.

Meanwhile, Degaton is floating through time, enjoying the more painful moments the JSA have lived. He decides Hector and Lyta haven't had enough to give him proper entertainment, and pays a visit to Fate's tower, only to get warned off by someone even he doesn't want to cross.





Yes, that voice in the mirror is exactly who you think it is. Whether it's genuine concern or a reflection of the promise-threat he made to Lyta at the end of The Wake, Daniel's protective of his folks.

Several issues later, we find that the crew of Prior Fates are still keeping Nabu locked up, trying to force him to understand that the method by which he imposes his will on his agents is fuuuucked up, and they're not putting up with it anymore. I had to leave those pages out for keeping-up-with-plot reasons, sadly, because it's one of the very few tiny bits where we get to see Lyta actually be badass in this series. However, we do get the barest glossy explanation as to why the hell she's being so chipper lately.



The situation Daniel alerts them to is a new-old problem of the JSA's returning. Namely, Sand, who was trapped in the Earth in a prior fight and has now had his soul sucked into the Dreaming, which is slowly driving him mad and causing tectonic problems. Doctor Fate and Fury rejoin the others to deal with it (and Power Girl's face when Lyta hugs her is both hilarious and totally appropriate, considering this is the first time they've even seen each other since way back in Infinity Inc.).



While half the team head underground to try and retrieve Sand's physical body, Doctor Fate and the others go into the Dreaming/Sand's mind to fix the problem there.











Damn, there's a familiar costume. Tune in for the next chapter, in which we have a "History Lesson Interlude" (Mine. They don't do this in the comic, thank God), and the team attempts to get Sand back.

Comments

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

In all fairness, any attempt to explain what happened to Lyta would have run afoul of Vertigo turf. DCU main canon and Vertigo don't mix well.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

That apparently didn't stop them from extensively referencing the Vertigo half of what happened to Hector and Lyta in the Dreaming in the arc started by the last issue of this post.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

They allude to it and dance around the subject more than anything else. To explain where Lyta went, they'd have to be far more concrete.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

Reading the issue again, I see what you mean, but I don't agree with the "there'd have to be something concrete" argument, just because of the fact that they've already alluded to Daniel more than once. Hell, I would have even been happy with "I went insane for awhile and got involved in magic things I really shouldn't have and one of the people/things/whathaveyou brought me here where your predecessors helped me put myself back together." It wouldn't have been blatant, but it would have been more substantial than "oh, all the past years just seem like a blur to me."

[blake_reitz.insanejournal.com]

Hawkman's mask with the lower half of the bird-beak is just...redonkulus.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

It seems to be a quirk of that particular artist (if I remember right, Cramer took over after Kirk for that arc), but it's pretty hilariously bad, I agree.

[amazingman.insanejournal.com]

Actually, that's a variation of his original mask, from the late 30's early 40's. The open beak was used pretty extensively during a lot of Hawkman's original appearances. It's just rarely used because so many artists hate drawing it.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

I bow to history! But I'm with the people who'd hate drawing it. I'd never be able to keep a straight face while working if I had to do it.

[zordboy.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that whole sequence where the farm-house with all the past-Fates turns out to not be real, and then later it turns out it that it actually was real, that annoyed the crap out of me at the time.

I always felt it was more of a retcon than anything else. Like, at the time, it was meant to be just all a figment of Fate's imagination, and Nabu's empathy was real -- but Johns' needed a reason why Fate wasn't super-duper-powerful so he went *back* to whole Fate-farm concept, and retconned that into existance.

It still bugs me.

And I gave up on JSA towards the end. Whatever to happened to Fate and Lyta? Are you going to cover those issues too?

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

It'll be the fifth/last post of the series, yeah.

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

I always thought having Kent and Inza inside the Amulet mentoring Hector against Nabu's mind games (and another way Geoff Johns had as a way to keep Golden Agers alive and do away with the destruction of Zero Hour) and I actually liked Hector as Dr. Fate along with Lyta, it brought back the Kent/Inza feeling of a married couple. The cameo by the Dream was a nice touch too. Of course, all this got washed away and never brought up again and Hec/Lyta were killed to make way for a new Dr. Fate (another Kent Nelson - how original). I really wished I know exactly what went down there. Was it Karen Berger and Vertigo wanting Lyta back and declaring the characters off limits or was it just another attempt by DC to bring in a different Dr. Fate?

[btravage.insanejournal.com]

The way I heard it was that DC thought that Hector and Lyta's personal histories were too convoluted and had best be done away with.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

I think I agree here. And the problem with any story that rooted in mind games is that it's so easy for the next writer to come in and say the previous story was more mind games.

[yaseen101.insanejournal.com]

Even though I don't comment on them, I did enjoy your Halls of Fate posts. Between this and the Essential Bones posts, it's great to know about characters that have been so misused in the past years.

Also can we for once have a god entity that is not crazy fucked up manipulating card carrying villain all along? I swear it's a product of Geoff's and DC's paranoia when it comes to god like entities.

[neuhallidae.insanejournal.com]

The next post'll have bits from Infinity Inc. and Sandman in it, because a little backstory's always helpful.

And the handling of Nabu is... confusing at best. Dude's got more mood swings than Sybil when Johns is writing him.

[yaseen101.insanejournal.com]

I look forward to it.