Gooey Kooeykooeykooey Hooey: JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #34-35 (JLI 47)

[tcampbell1000]

Giffen plot and breakdowns, DeMatteis script, Hughes pencils.

“Club JLI” (#34) has a real “1970s-1980s movie comedy” vibe. Ex-millionaires Blue Beetle and Booster Gold are still broke and anxious for a new side hustle. Their repo gigs have been getting too depressing, and Booster’s old merchandising and licensing deals don’t bring in much bacon. But they are members of the Justice League International, the highest-profile super-team on the planet! That’s got to be monetizable somehow, right?

Sure it is! And wait until you hear the plan for their new business venture!

It really starts in issue #33, as Beetle and Booster take a meeting with the chieftain of Kooeykooeykooey…




“Think of it! Breakfast with Donald Trump! On this island, where your word is law! You could kill him right here and no one could stop you!”

This is just as Kilowog is joining the team, which presents our entrepreneurs with an opportunity they soon seize.






In #34, with Kilowog’s help, Beetle and Booster have gotten “Club Justice League” up and running with astonishing speed. But a club needs more than just a master builder; it needs building materials, employees, advertising.



So what lateral thinking did Beetle and Booster use to fund their venture? As soon as Batman poses that question, Max Lord realizes the answer.




My wife works in finance and accounting, and this is one of several moments in this story arc where she’d be protesting the feasibility of events. Could Booster and Beetle really have stolen every dime from the JLI accounts, even with 1990s-level safeguards? Not very likely. (Could they have done all this hiring and advertising in the amount of time it took Max to notice all the money was missing? Even less likely.) But man, am I here for stressed-out, vengeance-crazed Maxwell Lord.



Variant edition:



The (real) cover has a couple of misleading elements. One, that’s not the real Fire but a lookalike dressed as her: this issue’s populated with “Club JLI” staff in various levels of cosplay. You’re meant to think she’s the real deal until you look inside (and TBH, that confused me until this re-read). Two, the two Injustice Leaguers seen in costume here are in civilian disguises as Joe Smith and Frank Jones. And their strategy is, unusually for them, legal.




Even more unusually for them, it is a smash success. This will be the Injustice League’s biggest win ever.



We get a little more insight into the gray morality of some white-collar criminals…by which I mean Beetle and Booster. Just so you don’t think they’ve gone full supervillain.



The real losers here are the Club JLI employees whom Beetle and Booster now have no money to pay, but before they can dwell on that, Aquaman shows up to warn them they need to evacuate the island. His warning comes too late, and earthquakes start shaking up the newly rich and newly poor alike.



“I told you, Beetle…the island of Kooeykooeykooey…is alive!”
“God, if only I’d known about this sooner…I could’ve put it in the brochure!”



Issue #35 is titled “Lifeboat,” highlighting a tense subplot in which Max and a handful of others try to pursue Beetle and Booster, only to find that the teleport tube on Kooeykooeykooey has fallen off the island and into the bottom of the ocean.







As hopes of reaching shore dim, the Huntress gripes again that she’s a street-level loner who doesn’t fit in with this superteam shit. “I don’t even know why I joined this team in the first place!” This pricks Max’s conscience. He decides that since they might die, he’d better clear that up for her. He reveals what we all saw back in issue #30…



It doesn’t go well.



This raises some questions about psychology. Max’s power could make Huntress a grinning JLI fan for a moment, but moments pass. “What’ve I done?” Was Max’s power still controlling her on any level after that, or was she just driven by a sense of duty and self-consistency? “I don’t know why I promised this, but a promise is a promise. As Bob Dylan sang, ‘To live outside the law, one must be honest.’ A woman has to have a code.”

Max seems to have taken his time sticking to his resolution to re-tell Helena. Either that, or he did try again, ended up with the same result, and THEN took his time about it. We’ll revisit that matter when Helena does leave the League in about eight more issues.

While all this is going on, Major Disaster and Aquaman are teaming up to anchor the island to an underground volcano, which the Major’s powers pull out of dormancy.



This reception would change the Major’s whole life.

For a while.

Major Disaster’s big pile o’ money gets caught in a rip current and ends up right in front of Max, Oberon, and Huntress, who have continued to fall apart under the constant stress and tropical heat.

Watch on YouTube

Aquaman deposits the quartet on the island, where other Leaguers are gathering. Minutes later, Guy gets Ice to a hospital, and by evening, Max reports she’s going to be fine. Kooeykooeykooey is happy to be reunited with the volcano, which it considers an “old friend.” And the Chief actually pays the Major back for his lost winnings…in Kooeykooeykooey currency.

There were a lot of jokes in this two-parter about Max killing Beetle and Booster…disturbingly many, in light of later events. If he took them to court for grand larceny, he’d have a strong case. (The "borrowing defense" doesn't usually hold up.) But that wouldn’t help the JLI’s reputation any. And getting the JLI funds back and getting rescued has taken some of the edge off his fury.

Some.



Adam Hughes really gets to flex his exaggerative muscles with these issues. He’d take that energy into his later career. But left to his own devices, he was more likely to put his exaggerated expressions on women than men.



Saturday: AI comes for Mister Miracle’s job.

Comments

[thanekos]

Kilowog, like an engineer, builds the bad idea because he sees it as a problem to solve and apparently does not face any consequences for it.

[cainofdreaming]

"An orphan crushing machine? Are you cra..."
"I just thought you could make this bit more efficient."
"Let me get my wrench."

[iamrman]

I'm starting to think Max wasn't all that wrong for shooting Ted in the head.

[cainofdreaming]

The fact he didn't start at the knees and work his way to the head makes him a saint.

[mazway_75]

Booster I get as after all he was banned for gambling on football games and the entire hero thing began as a huge scam for fame. It's Beetle who should know better thanks to years as a businessman.

[metadronos]

Ugh, more "let's flirt dangerously with stereotypes of hunter-gatherers but not completely buy into them so it's all A-OK!" stuff. (Example: "Kooeykooeykooeyans aren't cannibals!" --"For you, they would've become cannibals.") Now before anyone says, "It was a different time," that different time was the 1990s, not the 1920s. The writers and editors should've known better.

That said, I did chuckle at "Don't let the natural beauty throw you. It'll be great once you're done with it!" Sentiments that the nineties Trump, namechecked here, would no doubt have approved of, without getting the joke. (Any other old-timers here miss the days when the Orange One was a late night talk show punchline, instead of a daily threat to the stability of the entire world?)

----

Meanwhile, the "Worst Possible Timing for an Attack of Conscience" award goes to: Max Lord! And your prize is: a Homer-and-Bart moment you and Helena will no doubt look back on and laugh. Or... not. Hehe.

[full_metal_ox]

Ugh, more "let's flirt dangerously with stereotypes of hunter-gatherers but not completely buy into them so it's all A-OK!" stuff. (Example: "Kooeykooeykooeyans aren't cannibals!" --"For you, they would've become cannibals.") Now before anyone says, "It was a different time," that different time was the 1990s, not the 1920s. The writers and editors should've known better.

In the 2010’s, MCU! M’Baku’s threats to Ross play successfully with that trope, I think: the Jabari Tribe’s isolationism notwithstanding, M’Baku is perfectly aware of insulting colonizer stereotypes—and treats an invader whose nonsense he’s not even remotely going to enable as an opportunity to play 4D Troll Chess. (Three well-placed sentences were enough to touch off avalanches of fannish speculation about exactly how Jabari diet and lifeways work.)