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Irwin Teasdale’s showcase issue begins with him hidden from the Leaguers and the army, rigging a catapult as evening begins.
At about this point, Giffen and especially DeMatteis started leaning on the meta and running jokes a little hard, in my view. Any time they make some jab at comic books or clichés, take a sip. Any time they repeat a memorable phrase from a previous issue, take a sip. By JLA ANNUAL #4, you should be hammered. By JLA #50, see a doctor.
Didn't take Bea long to go from "oh my God, they're running THROUGH the flames, the humanity" to "DIE DIE DIE," did it?
Teasdale leads his horde toward the Stagg Industries chemical plant that used to employ him. He’s not the least bit worried about becoming infected himself, but there’s a reason for that.
Irwin commands the horde via his knowledge of how the disease affects the mind…maybe others could learn to countermand his orders, but there isn’t time for that. Batman’s deduced the zompire state comes from a toxin, but they don’t know anything about Teasdale until Simon Stagg shows up. And even after, they STILL don’t know if they can trust what they “know.”
Atom’s hunch is right, for all the good it does the heroes, who’ve lost their PPE without the army’s help to maintain it. This puts them in a vulnerable position as they gather around the Stagg plant.
Meanwhile, Irwin gives into the madness. He gives in…to his catchphrase:
Elsewhere, Dr. Fate and the Spectre have been trying to get the Lords of Order to clean up their own mess. How’d that go over?
The zompires surround the building, held at bay by the electrified fence. Then Teasdale and the Grey/Gray Man show up. Batman, who knows from experience how dangerous Gray Men are, orders the others back.
On the verge of triggering apocalypse, Irwin has a moment of lucidity. But the Gray/ey Man knows how to smother it.
Doctor Fate is blocking Teasdale from turning off the power to the fence, but she’s not blocking the PA system, so the Graeae Man orders Teasdale to order his zompires to rush the building anyway. He does, and they do, electrocuting themselves. You might think the plan here is to kill a bunch of zompires so the rest can climb a mound of their corpses to get over the wall, like in World War Z…
But the zompires were never the primary threat.
I mean, Guy’s not wrong.
Linda tries to fight, with limited success, then tries to reach the /ɡreɪ/ Man’s saner side, with none. Neil Graiman just screams, “YOU ARE THE ONE WHO LACKS SANITY, FATE! I AM THE SANEST OF ALL!” Then, in an especially sane move, he turns on his one ally, blaming him for the loss of the serum vats.
After yelling some more at Teasdale’s flattened corpse, D.Gray-man turns his attention back to Fate, leaving Stagg and Java to escape. But before he can do anything else, he realizes he’s attracted some attention of his own…attention he sort of asked for.
The Lords of Order and Chaos combine their forces for the first and perhaps last time in creation’s history. The GRRR--AAAAAIIIIIIEEE Man screams and shrinks to normal size, and then…then he doesn’t do anything else.
The G-Unit will continue to perform his role as he should have before, but without any pesky consciousness to get in his way. You can’t rebel if there’s no “you” to begin with! Having zombified thousands of people through Teasdale, he is now zombified himself. One doubts that either set of Lords appreciates the irony in that.
This was by far Linda Strauss’s biggest star turn and her only JLI appearance. She would die in the pages of Dr. Fate, reincarnate (with Eric) into a happier life, and be replaced by Inza Nelson until the series was cancelled. Today’s Fate, Khalid Nassour, is the first to have an actual Egyptian heritage.
And unlike with Linda, you can retell his origin story without ending up on a watchlist. So Linda seems like that rarest of DC Comics characters, a former headliner who is actually gone for good.
All wrapped up? Not quite. Stagg is helicoptering away, no doubt already phoning his team of lawyers. But the more pressing issue is that Power Girl never returned after the blast she took. Even Superman’s vulnerable to magic, and she took a bigger dose than anyone else. Hours later, while Captain Atom agonizes in his office, Wally West is visiting the unconscious Kara in the hospital. And he takes a halting step toward maturity…
Thursday: Two surprise guest stars try new careers, one as a surgeon, one as a helicopter pilot. Success rate: 50%!
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Date: 2026-01-12 03:32 am (UTC)Snerk.
I thought the over-reliance on running jokes started earlier, but either way, it certainly did get tiring.
That said, I am continuing to enjoy this retrospective, and I didn't realize Hughes was like, in his early 20s here. He's... different... than he is later.
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Date: 2026-01-12 10:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 03:22 pm (UTC)Batman with his ears squashed flat by the helmet is an adorable little touch.
Can't tell if Linda's version of the Helm of Fate is intentionally being drawn to look like perpetual bug-eyed terror or not.
Dmitri, effortlessly taking home the Best Teammate trophy by being supportive of his colleague's desires.
To, uh, burn brainwashed people.
... it's the thought that counts?
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Date: 2026-01-17 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-13 12:16 am (UTC)Probably because she was a short-lived holder of a legacy title, and those sorts of characters will always be shoved under the rug in favor of either the original or one other successor. (Just like Jared Nelson, another relative blip in the Fate lineage.)
(See also: Manhunter, which is -probably- remembered best as either Paul Kirk, Kate Spencer, or Mark Shaw depending on which era you started reading. Forget about Dan Richards, the many Kirk clones, or Chase Lawler.)
I mean sure, some identities can sustain multiple holders at once (Especially these days, with your Green Lanterns and Arrows, Robins, Flashes) but Doctor Fate isn't one to lend itself well to more than one at a time.
Hey, maybe 15 years from now, some writer will try to make Linda and Eric Strauss work, Though given the sample sentence from their Wikipedia entries of "Over time, despite Eric's mind being similar to a child of ten years old, Linda developed romantic feelings for her stepson" I really hope not.
As for former headliners gone for good... are we talking about those who actually headlined their own comic (and, for good measure, were firmly in the DCU and not off to the side)? Because that's definitely an interesting selective crowd... and again, well populated by short-lived legacy characters. (Again, the post-Zero Hour versions of Manhunter and Firebrand, the rock n' roll versions of Hawk & Dove, come to mind...)
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Date: 2026-01-13 02:40 pm (UTC)It is interesting to me, whenever I look back on team books like this, to see which characters were all over the place and how the rosters change. Rocket Red went from nobody to solid B-lister in this period and then...DC just sort of forgot him, until they killed him off during the OMAC thing. Then brought in a new one and...killed him off. Then the New 52 happened and they brought the non-Dmitri one back and...killed him off a few months in.
This series of posts really does feel like DC had a solid thing going with the JLA/JLE/JLI stuff, even more than I remembered. Consistent writers and solid editorial control made this stuff hang together really well...even if they running gag stuff did grow very tiresome as time moved on. It still felt fresh from what had comed before, IMHO.