Justice League #37 - "The People Vs. Justice League, Part 4: The Fan"

[laughing_tree]

Justice League Task Force, more or less, THE DYSFUNCTIONAL X-MEN of DC Comics. The premise was the Task Force was the Navy SEALS of superheroes, a strike team that would be sent on missions by the main Justice League. Only, there was no cooperation between the two editorial offices so the main Justice League never sent the Task Force anywhere.

In protest, I told my editor, Ruben Diaz, that, until they (the office across the hall) began to treat us as part of the JL franchise, the Task Force would do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because that’s how the franchise was supposed to work. If the main League never sent them anywhere, our guys would be like firefighters waiting for an alarm that never came.

And that was, literally, the premise of that Justice League book: superhero firefighters waiting for an alarm that never came. Virtually all of their adventures happened quite by accident while they were watching Wheel of Fortune and reading dogeared copies of Road & Track.

Justice League 2018 is similar in the sense of it being largely character-driven and their missions being more circumstantial than structured.

-- Christopher J. Priest

Comments

[sanjuro]

The way Batman is pointing on the cover is hilarious.

[thanekos]

I'm going to assume " Propose a solution for imitating or neutralizing the capabilities of a member of the Justice League " is part of the interview process for every Lexcorp technical position.

[michaelsaint]

Is that Wonder Woman with blonde hair or someone else?

[aperturedreams]

It's her, she was wearing a disguise.

[starwolf_oakley]

Joshua seems to be from the Zoom School.

"This will make you better heroes."

[berani00]

But here the GL wannabe wants to protect the Justice League... By killing the Justice League? At least Zoom believed misery can build character but what was the wannabe thinking?

[kamino_neko]

He's not trying to kill the League. (Simon and Jessica, maybe, since he seems to be a Hal fanboy (though even that's not clear from their interaction) but not the League as a whole.) Just their detractors.

[ovaltinepatrol]

Exactly what came to mind for me.

[shadowpsykie]

i always find priest to be a little... hit and miss... for me, right now... this is a miss... I GET what he's going for...but it comes off a bit heavy handed and clunky at places. "You Aembrace our call" "He can NEVER be allowed to testify, if he does..." I mean. it's CLEARLY trying to make the justice league come off bad, and honestly, most of the arch has them passing around the "idiot ball".

[kamino_neko]

I really wish he wasn't using the same formatting of the story that made me drop his Deathstroke. It's a distracting affectation.

[kore]

That art in the first two panels is paaaaainful.

[zylly]

Priest's comments about the JLTF (which was actually a pretty fun book) bring to mind just what a mess the post-Zero Hour era of the League was. Three different groups all calling themselves, two of which (Captain Atom's and Diana's) were kind of at odds with each other over legitimacy, and (even speaking as someone who LOVES B, C, and D-List characters) pretty much completely stacked with lower tier characters (other than Diana and Wally).

That's a lot of books, but it definitely seems like no one higher up felt like the League was a priority or should matter.