A Year In The JSA: 2000 (issues 6-9)

[knight_moves]

I think something is about to happen to the hierarchy of power in the DC universe.



Now that the JSAees have decided to be the JSA again, it's time to hold a press conference.



But the festivities are interrupted by a meteor landing nearby. I do believe it's Black Adam, last seen in Jerry Ordway's run on Shazam.







The team's attempt to take out Adam eventually becomes a two-pronged assault, with Hourman traveling through time while others keep Adam occupied.





Basically, they Back To The Future their way into hitting Adam with the same lightning bolt that first empowered him. Time travel!







Gee, Black Canary, how come your mom lets you have TWO one-liners?



This is why I'm glad I'm a Marvel Zombie. I only have to keep track of SHIELD, not the billion spy agencies the DCU has.

Skip ahead a bit and it's time for the simmering Obsidian plotline to come to fruition.













So you see where this is headed. People being taken over by shadows, turned into shadow monsters--your basic highly literal Geoff Johns story. And because it's Geoff Johns, we get the deadliest threat of all... a character that no one's heard of for sixty years.













Thankfully, Dr. Mid-Nite is on the scene and has hooked up with Dinah (not like that... well, not yet at least). He intervenes with his pet owl, because when Golden Age superheroes had a gimmick, they COMMITTED to it, dammit!



By the way, would it be churlish to ask how gay we're supposed to take all of this? Since... you know... Obsidian is one of the few gay characters DC had before they realized they could create fifty different gays and then just never showcase them outside of Pride Specials.





It's not weird. A lot of supervillains fist their close male companions to death. It happens.

Obsidian expands his darkness to cover the whole globe and things get very Kingsman.





Not to be edgy, but millions are dead now, right? Even a few minutes of everyone in the world trying to kill everyone else is going to give Obsidian a bigger body count than Hitler. Let's not even think about what happened with caretakers for the massively ill, the elderly, and the very young. I mean, if you're suddenly possessed by murderous rage and you're holding a baby at the time, or working in a nursery... yeah.

There's pretty much a war crime going down every second Alan doesn't just smack the boy. And this is going on for minutes on end, maybe even an hour, not a matter of seconds like in Kingsman. So, good going, Obsidian, your gayngst has made you one of the biggest mass murderers in human history.













Well, this is a pretty happy-go-lucky way for things to end. Everyone's a bit sad about Todd, but not 'millions of dead babies' sad. Ted's even horny, and no slight on Catwoman, but I don't think even she could manage that reaction after the entire world became a concentration camp for half an hour. So I guess no mass murder? Maybe the Spectre did something. Yeah, let's go with that.

Oh, geez, to say nothing of the damage SUPERMAN and his power level could do if they went on a rampage for even a few minutes. Metropolis would be rubble.





Man, they'd moved into their headquarters for like a day and already the Injustice Society has shown up. That's some high-quality haterade right there.

Comments

[scorntx]

DEET DEET DEET DEET
A wild CREATOR'S PET appeared!

But since this is early days, Black Adam gets the crap kicked out of him and is shipped off, rather than being an unstoppable murder monster who is inexplicably too cool and awesome for anyone to possibly defeat.
Such an innocent age.

(Though most or all of DC's spy agencies got wiped out by one of Bendis' big character derailment plots. Or did that get undone?)


You can tell Kendra's new at this because she's never been to Ancient Egypt.
Every superhero goes to Ancient Egypt sooner or later.
It's in the top 5 cliched time travel destinations, along with Ancient Rome, Camelot, Victorian London, and WW2.
(And they'll be doing it again soon.)


Oh no, Todd's been turned evil, and worse, he's trying to quote Nietzsche.
"My son, a POSER?!"

-"Some people are just born bad."-
Ah, the sensitive and considerate depiction of mental health you come to expect of Geoff Johns and DC from the 00s.
If you're bad, you're bad. Forever an' ever an' ever so there.
And yet funnily enough, no-one glaring at Jade like she's some ticking time bomb of potential evil who could turn at any moment.


... that introduction of the Injustice Society would be a powerful moment.
Except that the way Tigress is drawn it looks like she's trying to avoid looking at Wildcat.
"(C'mon, Artemis. You've got a man. Don't look at his crotch, don't look at his crotch... crap!)"

[mister_terrific]

Well, considering that Ted and her mom hooked up (by his admission in that issue of JSA), I'd be looking away too in sheer "ewwww".

[beyondthefringe]

Ted Grant having phone sex with Catwoman is just so wrong on so many levels, and not the least of which him being one of the oldest superheroes alive. :)
But then again, he's apparently got appeal to a lot of women.
And I guess guys. A rugged older charm.
(Now I want to write him as an aging himbo...)

[bruinsfan]

In this era I saw him as DC's answer to Ben Grimm as far as personality and connections go. Though I suppose there's some correspondence to Daredevil too when you factor in the boxing angle and his love life.

[panthyr]

'-"Some people are just born bad."-
Ah, the sensitive and considerate depiction of mental health you come to expect of Geoff Johns and DC from the 00s.
If you're bad, you're bad. Forever an' ever an' ever so there.'

Well, Jay DID say that was Jim Corrigan's viewpoint. You know. The Spectre. Spirit of vengeance, blar de blar de blar. Not sure we're supposed to think that's a good hot take, although you never know. It would have been nice to have Al call that out as bullshit, since I'm pretty sure he had a lot more time with Todd than Jay did.

[christianconnor]

Tigress might be trying to avoid looking but Icicle is very much into it.

[beyondthefringe]

Yeah. Leviathan wiped out the DEO, Checkmate, Spyral, ARGUS, and even Kobra to consolidate as the big bad intelligence/secret agency. Yawn.

I still remember the Janus Directive of the '80s which saw Task Force X pitted against Checkmate, the Force of July, the Captain Adam project, Peacemaker, all through Kobra's mechinations. Many good spies and most of the Force died that day... that's when Sarge Steel got appointed to a Cabinet level position overseeing what was left, alongside General Eiling.

[cainofdreaming]

Marvel did get the most it could from SHIELD, though -- SWORD, WAND, STRIKE, HAMMER, ANVIL, et cetera.

[beyondthefringe]

And they never got around to explaining what HAMMER meant.

You forgot SPEAR. And ARMOR. And maybe HATE.
Marvel loves their acronyms.

[mazway_75]

Did love Mid-Nite's intro saving Dinah

"So you're an actual doctor?"
"You sound surprised."
"Let's just say I've met a few Dr fill in the blank types who didn't come close to the Hippocratic Oath."

Again a strong run to build on things and not the first time seen one of these "there should be mass death but no one mentions it later" in comics.

[digicom]

I think my favorite riff on all the spy agencies in the DCU was the new Spy Smasher introduced in BIRDS OF PREY some years back.

She pulled out her wallet and revealed she was an agent of ALL of them: