![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcampbell1000 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
scans_dailyWarning for horrific brutality, torture, fascism, slavery.
*Also, length. This update ran so long that I’m splitting it into two installments, even though that mucks up my numbering and scheduling a little. The second installment will run tomorrow!
Dan Jurgens, like John Byrne, is a neo-traditionalist: his work shows strong Silver Age influences but is splashy and of its time. Most of it boasts a direct simplicity, a sort of purity. Which is why the “Destiny’s Hand” arc is a shock: it lets him indulge those influences…but also shows a subversive streak well out of his usual register.
You PROBABLY know most or all of the characters depicted on this #72 cover…
The interiors look at first like a Classic JLA flashback. But there ain’t no good guys here, just bad and worse. And the worse ones are the ones convinced they’re good…
China tries to nuke the JLA satellite in response to the team’s overreach. The Atom and the Fash…er, Flash…intercept with some quick sabotage. Atom could have fixed the missiles to explode harmlessly in space; instead, he jams the silo doors.
For a moment it looks like the “J”LA has finally gone too far, but really, they’ve just exposed the weakness of any opposition to their regime, even from the highest offices…
“Continents? Talk sense, Ollie, there’s more than seven of us! The only way that’d work is if we pulverized the planet to end up with more continents than there are now. (Pause) Hmmm…”
Hawkman and Green Arrow are channeling the JLA of the 1970s, when they butted heads like super-Hannity and Colmes…or so comics fans like to remember it. But in the Silver-Age and Bronze-Age JLA stories, the “politics” usually boiled down to “distrusts authority” and “doesn’t.” Mostly, Arrow was just ready to argue with anyone for any reason, and Hawkman was just the kind of guy to give him the conflict he was looking for.
If you see a panel with the two arguing politics…
…it was probably produced some time after GA's actual JLA career.
Today, of course, heroes debating the merits of fascism is disturbing for a different reason. (The Absolute Universe has its own version of the Green Arrow-Hawkman rivalry, which, ah, did not go well for Ollie.)
If this is all starting to feel like nightmare fuel, the last page reveals there’s a reason for that…
Doctor Destiny is the (1) supervillain who gives you dreams and nightmares, so you could say he’s a real “dreams-lay-er,” (2) five-time winner of the Intergalactic Skeletor Lookalike Contest, (3) only JLA villain to get an arc in Sandman, (4) guy with the birth name “John Dee,” which, like “Victor von Doom,” seems like an argument for nominative determinism.
His showing up here is a clue that the Junta League are some kind of nightmare come to life, which means this can’t be resolved just by punching Bass Lass in the face.
This wouldn’t be the first or the last depiction of a JLA-like group as black-and-white thinkers who slid into dictatorship…as opposed to the Crime Syndicate, who were morally inverted from the start. The “psi-scrubbing” Hal mentions below recalls the measures taken by the Squadron Supreme (1985)…
Whereas the big prison is more of a Kingdom Come move (1996)…
And the response to the weakening of external authority feels pretty Justice Lords (2003).
But the sheer, wild cruelty of it all? That’s more unique to this version, though plenty of other comics have replaced individual heroes with more brutal counterparts as a response to/commentary on Nineties market trends.
Most were mavericks who rejected the heroic code and played by their own rules, but “Destiny’s Hand” envisions a time when the code becomes uglier, dirtier, more fascistic, with “toughness on crime” a paper-thin veil for savagery and murder, even mass murder…
Did it just get chilly in here? I feel a need to cover up.
Justice League #71 introduced four new members: Wonder Woman, the Ray, Black Condor, and Agent Liberty.
WW would actually hang around awhile this time after doing a second micro-tour with the JLE and buzzing off over religious differences with Metamorpho.
The Ray was a light-based hero--like Firestorm and Starman before him, he had theoretically top-tier powers but some inexperience in using them.
Black Condor was a Hawkman-type, and one of those “just because I wear a COSTUME and HAVE POWERS and HELP PEOPLE and FOUGHT DARKSEID LAST WEEK, that doesn’t mean I’m some kind of SUPERHERO, I mean, ME?, the very idea is RIDICULOUS” superheroes. You know, like Blue Devil or John Constantine.
Agent Liberty had a gun license.
I couldn’t say what qualified any of them to be League recruits over other candidates, except…oh, right, Ray and Condor had new series to promote and Liberty was a Jurgens creation, got it. Max still has that recruitment policy that's less meta-human, more metafictional.
The Leaguers test Ray’s powers and find them off the charts, but he’s so insecure that he thinks the brevity of the testing means he’s no big deal. Guy does some more fantastically awful flirting with Maxima:
Honestly, they're so close to each other's frequency I'm surprised it DIDN'T work out for him.
Shortly after that, the fascist League’s reality starts bleeding into the “real” League’s (#73).
Tomorrow: The fate of Earth's reality boils down to stopping one giggling guy with a knife.
*Also, length. This update ran so long that I’m splitting it into two installments, even though that mucks up my numbering and scheduling a little. The second installment will run tomorrow!
Dan Jurgens, like John Byrne, is a neo-traditionalist: his work shows strong Silver Age influences but is splashy and of its time. Most of it boasts a direct simplicity, a sort of purity. Which is why the “Destiny’s Hand” arc is a shock: it lets him indulge those influences…but also shows a subversive streak well out of his usual register.
You PROBABLY know most or all of the characters depicted on this #72 cover…
The interiors look at first like a Classic JLA flashback. But there ain’t no good guys here, just bad and worse. And the worse ones are the ones convinced they’re good…
China tries to nuke the JLA satellite in response to the team’s overreach. The Atom and the Fash…er, Flash…intercept with some quick sabotage. Atom could have fixed the missiles to explode harmlessly in space; instead, he jams the silo doors.
For a moment it looks like the “J”LA has finally gone too far, but really, they’ve just exposed the weakness of any opposition to their regime, even from the highest offices…
“Continents? Talk sense, Ollie, there’s more than seven of us! The only way that’d work is if we pulverized the planet to end up with more continents than there are now. (Pause) Hmmm…”
Hawkman and Green Arrow are channeling the JLA of the 1970s, when they butted heads like super-Hannity and Colmes…or so comics fans like to remember it. But in the Silver-Age and Bronze-Age JLA stories, the “politics” usually boiled down to “distrusts authority” and “doesn’t.” Mostly, Arrow was just ready to argue with anyone for any reason, and Hawkman was just the kind of guy to give him the conflict he was looking for.
If you see a panel with the two arguing politics…
…it was probably produced some time after GA's actual JLA career.
Today, of course, heroes debating the merits of fascism is disturbing for a different reason. (The Absolute Universe has its own version of the Green Arrow-Hawkman rivalry, which, ah, did not go well for Ollie.)
If this is all starting to feel like nightmare fuel, the last page reveals there’s a reason for that…
Doctor Destiny is the (1) supervillain who gives you dreams and nightmares, so you could say he’s a real “dreams-lay-er,” (2) five-time winner of the Intergalactic Skeletor Lookalike Contest, (3) only JLA villain to get an arc in Sandman, (4) guy with the birth name “John Dee,” which, like “Victor von Doom,” seems like an argument for nominative determinism.
His showing up here is a clue that the Junta League are some kind of nightmare come to life, which means this can’t be resolved just by punching Bass Lass in the face.
This wouldn’t be the first or the last depiction of a JLA-like group as black-and-white thinkers who slid into dictatorship…as opposed to the Crime Syndicate, who were morally inverted from the start. The “psi-scrubbing” Hal mentions below recalls the measures taken by the Squadron Supreme (1985)…
Whereas the big prison is more of a Kingdom Come move (1996)…
And the response to the weakening of external authority feels pretty Justice Lords (2003).
But the sheer, wild cruelty of it all? That’s more unique to this version, though plenty of other comics have replaced individual heroes with more brutal counterparts as a response to/commentary on Nineties market trends.
Most were mavericks who rejected the heroic code and played by their own rules, but “Destiny’s Hand” envisions a time when the code becomes uglier, dirtier, more fascistic, with “toughness on crime” a paper-thin veil for savagery and murder, even mass murder…
Did it just get chilly in here? I feel a need to cover up.
Justice League #71 introduced four new members: Wonder Woman, the Ray, Black Condor, and Agent Liberty.
WW would actually hang around awhile this time after doing a second micro-tour with the JLE and buzzing off over religious differences with Metamorpho.
The Ray was a light-based hero--like Firestorm and Starman before him, he had theoretically top-tier powers but some inexperience in using them.
Black Condor was a Hawkman-type, and one of those “just because I wear a COSTUME and HAVE POWERS and HELP PEOPLE and FOUGHT DARKSEID LAST WEEK, that doesn’t mean I’m some kind of SUPERHERO, I mean, ME?, the very idea is RIDICULOUS” superheroes. You know, like Blue Devil or John Constantine.
Agent Liberty had a gun license.
I couldn’t say what qualified any of them to be League recruits over other candidates, except…oh, right, Ray and Condor had new series to promote and Liberty was a Jurgens creation, got it. Max still has that recruitment policy that's less meta-human, more metafictional.
The Leaguers test Ray’s powers and find them off the charts, but he’s so insecure that he thinks the brevity of the testing means he’s no big deal. Guy does some more fantastically awful flirting with Maxima:
Honestly, they're so close to each other's frequency I'm surprised it DIDN'T work out for him.
Shortly after that, the fascist League’s reality starts bleeding into the “real” League’s (#73).
Tomorrow: The fate of Earth's reality boils down to stopping one giggling guy with a knife.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 11:29 am (UTC)Don't you know that fascist heroes never go out of style?
no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 12:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 12:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-08 01:30 pm (UTC)I suppose we should be thankful that Justice Lightning Fascist League never got its own dedicated Earth once they started handing out new designations again.
Agent Liberty... meh.
The Ray: I never really followed him, but he was definitely The New Hotness for a while in the 90s, serving with iterations of the League (including Task Force) for a while before settling into Cameo Guy once his title folded and the shine wore off.
Black Condor was even more "that guy who winds up serving on different teams" with stints in Primal Force (remember THAT series?) and later the Freedom Fighters up until Infinite Crisis and...
But that leads into a huge digression about the way the Freedom Fighters have been handled by DC for a while now, and the various people filling the legacy roles of Ray, Dollman, Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Black Condor, etc.
Suffice it to say that the new members of the League may not be the most memorable, most iconic, or most tenured, but they certainly do have... spirit?
Oh! And also... How DOES Bloodwynd know that that can't be the Justice League he's facing? Why does he think it's impossible? Because, as we all know, Bloodwynd is really ********!