Guy Panic: JLA CLASSIFIED #4
May. 23rd, 2026 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_daily99a of 108. Warning for some gay-panic stuff. I'm breaking this update into two parts, not because it runs long, but because the second part is tricky to address.
JLA Classified was mostly “extra” stories featuring the best-known incarnations of the League, but for issues #4-9, it picked right up where Formerly Known as the Justice League left off. These stories were probably planned to be Formerly Known #7-12, but instead, they became a six-issue collection of adventures (with later trade paperback) titled “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League.”
As we catch up with the Super Buddies, their ostensible problem of the week is an issue with their new neighbors. Early on in this new team’s existence, the SBs had to face a lot of static and NIMBYism from others in the area. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and they’re the ones throwing suspicious looks at moving vans. But by “they,” I really mean Sue. The real problem of the week is…something is UP with Sue.
In one of several signs these stories were written in the Dubya era, Sue is the team’s voice of Web-savviness. “This is the Information Age,” she actually says. And so she’s pegged Mr. Hertz as an ex-supervillain thanks to www.superhumanresources.com, a [mimes quotes] “Web site” on the “Internet.” She knows this site because Ralph is obsessed with googling himself. (Of course he is.) It catalogs every known superhero and supervillain, no matter how obscure. Like https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/DC_Comics_Database.
Well, that’s what it did in fictional 2004: today, it’s some dumb company promoting “HR Excellence.” Kind of a step down.
It’s never made clear why Sue is reacting this way, despite everyone agreeing it isn’t at all like her. I doubt her new quick temper is meant to reflect the traumatic backstory Identity Crisis saddled her and Ralph with…but without that excuse, I’m at a loss. This would seem to be a mystery made to order for Ralph, but instead of working it out, he leaps to a conclusion he finds irresistible. This all results in some especially great funny-face work from Kevin Maguire.
(And yeah, this plot ALSO hits a little different when placed next to Identity Crisis, but let’s do our best to block that out of our minds for now.)
Meanwhile, Fire and Mary Marvel are moving in together. There is still a hole in Fire’s life since Ice died, and Mary stirs some of the same protective big-sister instincts in her. They bonded a bit after the Roulette incident, when Mary needed a lot of reassurance she wasn’t a monster.
But Mary isn’t Ice. And sometimes part of being a big sister is having your sibling annoy the hell out of you:
I don’t mean to keep mentioning 2000s TV comedy, but this 2000s work keeps reminding me of it. For one thing, Giffen and DeMatteis dabble in the kind of gay-panic jokes common in prime-time sitcoms of this period.
I’m generally okay with those when the target seems to be the fragility of hetero masculinity rather than LGBT people themselves, but they do feel very much “of the era.” Max’s “I do not hit like a sissy” is at least gay-panic-adjacent, and then there’s how Beetle and Booster were introduced in the TV ad…
Plus this:
Speaking of the 2000s, the way Sue is miming an imaginary flip-phone is a great bit of observed detail, but it would stop being the gesture to use around 2006. My real gripe, though, is when Giffen and DeMatteis veer away from the 2000s network-TV vibe and dip into “edgy” 2000s cable-TV stuff, and we’re coming up on that next.
It turns out Sue has been freaking out about the wrong neighbor. The real problem is Hertz’s business partner, an experienced bar owner who has some small history with the Super Buddies. I’ve run out of space to show the last-page reveal until next time, but I think you can piece this together from the covers:
Sunday: Guy’s first encounter with Mary Marvel goes about the way you’re already imagining it will, and uh, look, if you want to skip this next installment, I’m not gonna hold it against you.
JLA Classified was mostly “extra” stories featuring the best-known incarnations of the League, but for issues #4-9, it picked right up where Formerly Known as the Justice League left off. These stories were probably planned to be Formerly Known #7-12, but instead, they became a six-issue collection of adventures (with later trade paperback) titled “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League.”
As we catch up with the Super Buddies, their ostensible problem of the week is an issue with their new neighbors. Early on in this new team’s existence, the SBs had to face a lot of static and NIMBYism from others in the area. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and they’re the ones throwing suspicious looks at moving vans. But by “they,” I really mean Sue. The real problem of the week is…something is UP with Sue.
In one of several signs these stories were written in the Dubya era, Sue is the team’s voice of Web-savviness. “This is the Information Age,” she actually says. And so she’s pegged Mr. Hertz as an ex-supervillain thanks to www.superhumanresources.com, a [mimes quotes] “Web site” on the “Internet.” She knows this site because Ralph is obsessed with googling himself. (Of course he is.) It catalogs every known superhero and supervillain, no matter how obscure. Like https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/DC_Comics_Database.
Well, that’s what it did in fictional 2004: today, it’s some dumb company promoting “HR Excellence.” Kind of a step down.
It’s never made clear why Sue is reacting this way, despite everyone agreeing it isn’t at all like her. I doubt her new quick temper is meant to reflect the traumatic backstory Identity Crisis saddled her and Ralph with…but without that excuse, I’m at a loss. This would seem to be a mystery made to order for Ralph, but instead of working it out, he leaps to a conclusion he finds irresistible. This all results in some especially great funny-face work from Kevin Maguire.
(And yeah, this plot ALSO hits a little different when placed next to Identity Crisis, but let’s do our best to block that out of our minds for now.)
Meanwhile, Fire and Mary Marvel are moving in together. There is still a hole in Fire’s life since Ice died, and Mary stirs some of the same protective big-sister instincts in her. They bonded a bit after the Roulette incident, when Mary needed a lot of reassurance she wasn’t a monster.
But Mary isn’t Ice. And sometimes part of being a big sister is having your sibling annoy the hell out of you:
I don’t mean to keep mentioning 2000s TV comedy, but this 2000s work keeps reminding me of it. For one thing, Giffen and DeMatteis dabble in the kind of gay-panic jokes common in prime-time sitcoms of this period.
I’m generally okay with those when the target seems to be the fragility of hetero masculinity rather than LGBT people themselves, but they do feel very much “of the era.” Max’s “I do not hit like a sissy” is at least gay-panic-adjacent, and then there’s how Beetle and Booster were introduced in the TV ad…
Plus this:
Speaking of the 2000s, the way Sue is miming an imaginary flip-phone is a great bit of observed detail, but it would stop being the gesture to use around 2006. My real gripe, though, is when Giffen and DeMatteis veer away from the 2000s network-TV vibe and dip into “edgy” 2000s cable-TV stuff, and we’re coming up on that next.
It turns out Sue has been freaking out about the wrong neighbor. The real problem is Hertz’s business partner, an experienced bar owner who has some small history with the Super Buddies. I’ve run out of space to show the last-page reveal until next time, but I think you can piece this together from the covers:
Sunday: Guy’s first encounter with Mary Marvel goes about the way you’re already imagining it will, and uh, look, if you want to skip this next installment, I’m not gonna hold it against you.
