Boss Battle: JLE #29, JLA #54 (JLI 81)

[tcampbell1000]

Max’s replacement looks ready to make Peter Gyrich look like Edwin Jarvis. But maybe he won’t be so ba--



JLE Giffen-Jones-Robertson, JLA Giffen-DeMatteis-Wozniak.

Ambassador Heimlich is a contrast with General Glory’s enemy Schmidt: both were Nazis back in the day, but instead of being a chest-thumping “the Reich will rise again” type, Kurt flexes his authoritarian leanings within power structures meant for better people than him to occupy. All too relevant in the 2020s.

Even so, a broken clock is right twice a day, and some of Heimlich’s…🙄 …some of Heimlich’s maneuvers are more defensible than others.



I like Ralph, but where’s the lie? Calling his power “limited” might be harsh, especially if he’s next to Bluejay or the Crimson Fox. But after all those panels of Ralph stretching around the room and invading everyone’s personal space at once, I’d say “sometimes disruptive to the group” is warranted.



The best argument for having Ralph in the League is that his abilities and mindset are distinct: he can see what others miss, perform moves they couldn’t. Sometimes those “trivialities” are what a detective needs to be focusing on. And even at his most correct, Heimlich doesn’t value diversity of thought.



Thing is, just before Captain Atom’s firing, Inspector Camus turned up some evidence that ties Max’s shooting to the Queen Bee. Atom, now at liberty, goes to Bialya to get some answers. How will Heimlich handle that?




Oh, no, not…wait, who is that? From later issues, I know he’s supposed to look like the very dead Rumaan Harjavti, which would indeed be gasp-worthy. But Darick Robertson’s pencils just aren’t close enough to Kevin Maguire’s (or Keith Giffen’s, or Bill Willingham’s) for us to look at an average husky beardo and go, “oh, wow, it’s him!” Maybe if Gene D'Angelo had colored his hair and beard the same way he colored the original (black with blue highlights, like Silver Age Superman)?



Also, did Queen Bee NOT brainwash the new Jack O’Lantern to serve her? That seems like an oversight. Perhaps we’re meant to think that she did, and that Numaan here un-brainwashed him? But it’s never spelled out that he did so, or how he could’ve without the Bee’s knowledge.

J’Onn and Sue Dibny can both see the likely consequences of Cap invading a nation that now has its own brainwashed super-team. So can Heimlich, though he has a different approach to crisis management than they would. Cap, we can assume, is not thinking so clearly.





Sue answers a call and is nearly washed out of the monitor room by the tidal wave of smugness that is Jack O’Lantern announcing they’ve “neutralized the Captain Atom problem…Thank your chief for the tip! Ta!”

As we move into the next chapter, the plotting takes a turn for the ridiculous, and I know “ridiculous” is often a JLI selling point, but this time, I don’t mean it as a compliment.



You have got to be freaking kidding me here, Keith. Sumaan Harjavti, Rumaan’s never-mentioned-before-now twin brother? What, is the Bialya arc boring you to the point of mining soap-opera cliches to spruce it up? Did the actor who PLAYED Rumaan have some time in his SCHEDULE? How in the world did the Queen Bee miss this obvious threat to her power base? And WHY ARE HIS HAIR AND BEARD NOW *SOLID* BLUE? IT’S NOT A DIFFERENT COLORIST, GENE D’ANGELO COLORED BOTH THIS ISSUE AND THE LAST ONE!

Also, after the last issue got us all worried about him, Captain Atom gets out of Bialyan custody, like, immediately.




And he’ll be fine after THIS, too! However, in light of the Sumaan scenes, this at least makes sense. Sumaan couldn’t care less about capturing or killing Captain Atom: what he wants is to engineer a showdown between the League and the Queen Bee. Framing her for multiple assassination attempts (this one, plus Max’s shooting) serves that end.

Meanwhile, the firings continue.




“But sir, don’t you see? My dreams are foreshadowing the War of the Gods mini-series! I have commercial value!”
“My dear, War of the Gods will not be the high point on anyone’s resume.”

Kidding aside, the compassionate note Heimlich strikes with Ice is a nice touch, again making him more than a simple hate-sink bad guy. Heimlich may be disgusted with Ted, but he probably thinks he’s rescuing Tora. And before her experience with Ivo, she might’ve agreed with his assessment.




BEETLE, ON COVER: “Wait, what am I thinking? I can at least sell that costume for a couple grand on eBay!”

Heimlich brings in two new members to replace Beetle and Ice: the Tasmanian Devil and the Japanese Doctor Light. Their tenure (Light’s second, his first) will be such a nothingburger that I’m not even going to show them here. Both would be back in post-Giffen issues.

Beetle and Ice go to visit Max’s bedside again, and Beetle tells the comatose Max that he's not going to die. that he's going to wake up and toss Heimlich "out on his callused butt."



One unauthorized use of the teleport tubes and taxi ride later, our pink-slipped posse is in the Revson Building, heading up to the Crimson Fox’s penthouse. Since the Fox is really two people, she’s uniquely equipped to outmaneuver Heimlich: as far as he knows, “the Crimson Fox” is still at the embassy. And he doesn’t care what any ex-JLI members are doing, not even…




Monday: Everyone goes to Bialya. It’s the beaches, I guess.

Comments

[metadronos]

Was hoping you'd show Heimlich's interview with Dmitri:





Normally I'm not into "LOL, lookit them foreigners talking funny English" jokes, but this one gave me a good laugh with poor Dmitri's unintentional innuendo.

[scorntx]

Visit scenic Bialya! Come for the (non-existent) beaches, stay for the horrific levels of oppression, whether you want to or not.


Thought for a moment there Heimlich's role in this would be getting exposed to the JLI's general dysfunction and driven mad in a matter of hours.
Guess not.

Last time, was thinking "bet this sort of crap doesn't happen to the Global Guardians". And here they are, right in the middle of exactly this sort of crap.
So much for that, then.

Suman getting off to a start on the whole dictator thing by speaking about himself in the third person intermittently.
Next step: Writing a romance novel.
Nothing like it to instil the proper attitude for despotism.

As unclear as it makes me feel, Heimlich isn't really wrong about Ted.
Like, at all.
Wondering if that's an intentional bit on Giffen's part, having the unctuous jerk addressing reader criticism.
"Sure, you can object to Ted's depiction in this series... but it'll mean agreeing with this guy! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

Good thing that between Captain Atom, Elongated Man and Camus, there's not enough investigative ability for anyone in the JLs I and E to look in to Max's injuries and see whether there's anything to be suspicious about regarding all the evidence pointing them straight at Bialya.
Maybe that's why Heimlich didn't mention Ralph's sleuthing skills when canning him.

[beyondthefringe]

Well, if one was determined to dismantle the team, firing half its most experienced and useful members is certainly one way to start.

Ralph is more than a stretchy guy, he's a detective with a ton of experience and lots of friends. Ted is more than an acrobat, he's a scientist and inventor. Ice is more than her powers, she's practically the heart of the team with her general demeanor... and so on.

No offense to Doctor Light or Tasmanian Devil, but they're not exactly my first choices for the League. At least not in this era. She's more of a scientist than a hero, he's an Australian cliche masquerading as a walking carpet.