The Understudies Get Their Turn: JUSTICE LEAGUE QUARTERLY #4 (JLI 72)

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As Keith Giffen began to pull back, the longest era of Justice League Quarterly (#4-11) would feature other writers following in Giffen’s footsteps…as best they could. The fluid tone of the Giffen League, the way it could lurch from goofy meta to holocaustic grimness and everything in between, could be a challenge to imitate.

But the exercise gets off to a strong start, with a couple of fun stories by DeMatteis and an even livelier one from new contributors.

The Injustice League is caught between their impulse to be good guys and their impulse to be bad guys, but when the Mighty Bruce stumbles into a superchurch-style cult, they realize there might be a chance to be both at once. By RUNNING OVER JOEL OSTEEN WITH A TANK! No, sorry, wishful thinking…



The name “Minister Sun” is a riff on Sun Myung Moon, whose believers were known not as Sunnies but Moonies. I doubt anyone involved with producing this story considered that “Sunnies” also looks close to Sunnis, as in Sunni Islam. 1991 was still a little early to think of things like that.

The IJL agrees to do the job in a way that’ll leave their hands clean for later good deeds…



“The Sunnie Caper” by Will Jacobs and Jason Pearson is a madcap 35-page heist movie, which makes it difficult to excerpt because so much of it is about momentum. After our “heroes’” first attempt goes south, they get chased by Minister Sun’s elite guards and his surprisingly violent followers, and yet their attempts to flee lead them right to…





The guards are waiting right outside. The octet of would-be thieves commandeer a truck and use Big Sir’s muscle to load a lot of the gold into it. But that only leads to a new problem…










In “Cracked Ice,” by J.M. DeMatteis and Darrick Robertson, Max is taking a meeting with some old Doctor Fate associates who are trying to escape to the Justice League before Doctor Fate gets cancelled. Won’t work: this will be their last major appearance. General Glory has noticed Max taking a drink…one drink…to take the edge off the stress of his position. That means GG has only one course of action that makes sense to him.



Meanwhile, it’s a day at the fair for the JLA’s two unmarried “power couples.” (No, I don’t mean Beetle and Booster.)





A demon seeps through the crack and turns Ice into a forty-foot possession vessel, as per the cover.



The League fails to contain her, and law enforcement is considering more desperate options, but Petey the Demon might have more luck. This situation shakes something loose in Guy.



Something he can’t take back.




Max hires Petey as a paranormal expert and Jack Small as a lawyer, and even though we’ll never really see them again, this is not a bad way to cap off their stories. This would also be a sweet, charming way to cap off the Ice-Guy relationship, or at least Giffen and DeMatteis’ part in it.

If it ended here.

This issue also featured four “CaTales,” quick cat-centered stories by DeMatteis with art by Marshall Rogers (and P. Craig Russell on inks!). Here’s a page from one and the entirety of another…






As a part owner of four cats, all I’ll say is: accurate.

Monday: I’ve talked about the Justice League stories I find the saddest, but those stories don’t make me cry. This next one does.