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Giffen, Jones, Rogers. Warning for some cruelty-to-animals comedy on a couple of covers.

Justice League Europe was in no hurry to get back to high-octane excitement after the Extremists arc. The last two issues had seen the team playing around on the beach and shopping in London. Issue #22 involves an actual crime and a JLE-adjacent character in some jeopardy, but within those bounds, it’s still as low-stakes as you can imagine.

We start with a cover tribute to The Harvard Lampoon's most notorious marketing-gimmick parody. It's a little MUCH for me, but then, I am the one person in my friend-group who can't stand the comedy song "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."

Kara takes her cat for a walk, and it immediately takes off running. To be fair to the little beast, it has just been relocated from Paris to London, so it’s probably a bit freaked out and trying to make sense of all these new smells. But Kara’s not in a fair mood.

Two idiot teens on the cusp of manhood, Robin and Johnny, have recognized the cat as Power Girl’s, taken it back to their flat and sent out a ransom note.

This is the worst mistake of their young lives. Captain Atom’s resulting aggravation and Power Girl’s resulting tantrums are fun, but the issue’s best scenes are its regular check-ins with the “lads” as their confidence erodes:

The situation has drawn the attention of Mister Bigger, the one who sent the men in black to obtain Wally Tortolini’s notebook on the JLA. He runs a shady call center that offers up information to a shady clientele…

The boys finally break down and place a call to surrender the cat. They’ve used pay phones up to now, but this call is made from their own apartment. This allows Bigger’s men in black to catch up with the teens before the JLE does.

Just tranq darts, don’t worry.

Biggers’ organization injects an implant into the cat, allowing them to see through its eyes, albeit not hear through its ears. However, this leaves them with the problem of getting the cat back to the JLE without being spotted. So…

With issue #23, Bart Sears returns, just in time to reestablish the series’ main love triangle. Or…lust triangle? It’s more that.

Lust quadrangle, if Wally gets his way.

So, yeah, Crimson Fox has some pheromone-secretion powers she keeps quiet about, and I’m not sure how to feel about her thought process here. On the one hand, at least she hasn’t used those powers on the Captain yet. On the other, if she did, wouldn’t that be much sketchier than Max Lord’s “You want to talk to me” suggestion to Wanda at the party? And Max did a lot of post-hoc agonizing about that move, not giggling about what a scamp it made him. I know some of these issues are different for men versus women, but psychic roofie-ing seems bad, no matter how cute you are?

Don’t worry too much, though: these powers will never be used in any Giffen stories. At all. Pheromone powers--and general "seduction" powers, as opposed to straight-up psychic abilities--tend to (1) make you a villain like pre-Harley Poison Ivy or Zebediah Killgrave, (2) make you a downright creepy “hero” like Starfox, or (3) get almost forgotten like with Jessica Drew, maybe to avoid options 1 and 2.

Anyway, Fox comes back to Vivian D’Aramis’ office, and yet Vivian is already there, telling her editor to go home for the night. But wait, Vivian is the Fox, isn’t she?

In response to a letter, assistant editor Kevin Dooley broke down the Fox’s appearances so far: she was Constance in JLE #13…

…and in JLE Annual #1…

…and Vivian in JLE #10 and through the Extremist storyline.

That last example shows that “the” and “ze” difference isn't ironclad. But given the strategy the Fox shows in Justice League Quarterly #2, she seems more likely to be Constance. Even if a little of her dialogue seemed more like Vivian. Cosplaying as your twin seems like it could give you some issues.

Back to the current story. Vivian reads over what her company’s magazine has prepared about the Crimson Fox, a highly speculative biography and origin story.

Puanteur is, as it huappens, nuow the lueader of a wueirdo cult puosing as an exclusive cuountry club...sorry, now the leader of a weirdo cult posing as an exclusive country club. Or maybe those two are the same thing? He is a wanted man and cannot appear in public, but just as Vivian and Constance have been hunting him, he’s been hunting them:

As Constance-as-Vivian walks into Puanteur’s trap, the JLE investigates a flatland where a factory used to be.

Right on cue, Simon Stagg and Java show up, Stagg fulminating about his property. Stagg’s involvement is a clue. The newest member of Puanteur’s club has a serious hate on for Stagg, and Puanteur has performed a ceremony as cult leader, striking a tuning fork and kicking off some “his enemies are our enemies” chanting. I am out of pages I can reproduce here, but the last-page splash resembles the cover of the next issue, so let’s just go with that…