JLA: Classified #12 - New Maps of Hell, Part 3

[dc2houseofmystery]

The Justice League has assembled on the Watchtower, and they're putting their heads together to solve the mystery of the strange suicides, massive explosions, and other disparate weirdness surrounding the black and green glowing tablets that have been found at ground zero of each crazy event.





One thing I enjoy about this story is that there's no hierarchical nonsense about who should be giving orders. No chairperson. They're all equals. No second guessing, no doubt. They just do what needs to be done, without the interpersonal drama that bogs down some interpretations of the characters.





I've skipped a chunk of flashbacks to Mars' past, but I think the art conveys what's been said. This has happened before. It happened on Mars. Millions died. And now it's happening again on Earth. But why?





Ugh, just hold me. I've skipped some panels to get where we needed to be, but there's such grandeur with this team. I wish Aquaman were here, because he completes this era for me, and while it would have made sense for the time, I'm glad Plastic Man doesn't make an appearance. His addition to the team in Joe Kelly's run was fantastic ("Trial By Fire" is my second favourite JLA story, and I might get round to posting that at some point) but Eel in the hands of Warren Ellis? That might have brought out his worst tendencies for comedy-during-drama.




"I'm the President."

...I just got horrible present day shivers.

President Lex wasn't really followed through on in a satisfying way, was it? I think it's because the main architect behind the change, Jeph Loeb, was taken off the Superman books. He was the "head writer" of the Super-books around the time, and was given Superman / Batman to wrap up the President Lex strands (because Infinite Crisis was coming...). I think the creation of that book was meant as a "promotion", because Superman / Batman was an Event Book for nearly two years, but being given that little corner without it meaning anything else makes it seem less important. 

Remember when Superman / Batman was the next big thing?

I think there was a pre-Bendis Superman story where they married Obama-mocking-Trump with Clark-mocking-Luthor as the impetus behind Luthor becoming President again? I think it might have been a Max Landis story, but I can't remember if it was considered canon or not. Is Lex the President again in DC continuity? 

ANYWAY. Something terrible happens in Las Vegas. The Flash is sent on ahead. There's a cool transition with the Flash moving faster than a thought, so he gets there between a line of dialogue. So good. Buy! This! Book!



The team arrive, they have to figure something out, and similar to my early comment with the lack of chairperson, decisions are made and orders given-- and everything is accepted because these people are equals. And I love it.



The team are united and face down the threat humanity faces. It's awesome.

To Be Continued.

Comments

[crinos]

I know the connections to Trump are obvious, but with the talking of destroying enemies before they can light oil fields on fire its pretty clear that Luthor here was meant to be channelling Dubya (Who was probably just as bad or worse than Trump, but was at least better at acting like a decent human being, even if he wasn't one).

Now, Young Justice Season 3 UN Chairman Luthor? That's the guy channeling Trump. Honestly I feel like maybe they went with the President Luthor storyline too early in the comics, but how could we have known how bad it would have gotten. I mean who would have guessed the guy who inspired Luthors pivot into a corrupt businessman would have actually become President?

And no, President Luthor did not get a good resolution since, as been pointed out, the end of it was Luthor climbing into a mech suit, injecting himself with kryptonite and Venom and having a fight with Superman and Batman.

It went about as well as you think it would.

Honestly I feel like the best use of the Luthor presidency plot was in JLU, where he reveals he never intended to be President, he was just doing it to piss Superman off and distract everyone while he got ready to transfer his brain into an AMAZO robot.

[thanekos]

It's a shame that the mapping of contemporary evils to Lex hasn't really caught up - the closest we got is Zuckerberg!Luthor in the DCEU, and that's buried in the DCEU.

(Jon Cryer's Maggin-esque Luthor is great, though, and Mark Russell will probably give us a Bezos!Luthor in a year or two.)

[mazway_75]

Cryer's Superman is brilliant nailing the arrogance and how Lex truly and honestly thinks he's the good guy saving humanity from this would-be alien dictator.

The best part is in Crisis when he meets the Smallville Clark Kent. First, how he can't understand Superman giving up powers to have a normal life as a farmboy. Second how he thinks it's only this Clark Kent that's Superman and no way his Clark could be him.

[zachbeacon]

Cryer is just one of those castings that shouldn't work and it does. I was so ready to dismiss him as the guy from the terrible sitcom and yet he's been such a perfect Lex.

[crinos]

I feel like the Luthor from the recent Super hero girls series by Lauren Faust also feels a bit like a modern Jeff Bezos/Mark Zuckerberg style millionaire, where they present themselves as being hip and breezy but are still an utter bastard deep down.

[mazway_75]

Loeb really suffered a huge downfall in his writing because of his son's condition and death and that hurt what should have been a fine takedown of Lex.

And yes, the JLU ep nails it much better. "Do you know how much power I'd be giving up if I had to become President?"

[coldfury]

> "Do you know how much power I'd be giving up if I had to become President?"

So we thought back then, anyway.

[mazway_75]

Well, keep in mind, this is Luthor whose ego is unbounded and the storyline made it clear even this wasn't enough for him. Nothing would be as he would still feel second to Superman.

A "Greatest Superman Stories" book had an essay with a terrific point: "Luthor is like Salieri in Amadeus who recognizes the genius of Motzart and to be number one again, he must destroy Superman. The difference is, unlike Salieri, Luthor cannot accept Superman is his better which is why he fails."

[cygnia]

Clancy Brown was an AWESOME Luthor. :-D

[zachbeacon]

Pres Luther was clearly a reaction to Bush but his smug, over the top villainy fits better with Trump in hindsight.

Kinda like I thought the central premise of No Man's Land was highly implausible until Katrina happened.

It is worth noting that Lex divested from his company when he became president so Trump is literally worst than a cartoon super villain.

[crinos]

Well, Luthor as a businessman isn't meant to be the actual Trump, he's supposed to be Trump as he presented himself, before everyone realized the only thing Trump is actually good at is self aggrandizing. And that he's actually an idiot otherwise.

Luthor is what Trump wished he was.

[zachbeacon]

I mean, yeah, its an oversimplification.

Its like how people call a certain real-world tech billionaire a "real life Tony Stark" when he's really more of a MCU Justin Hammer.

It stops working as shorthand when you bog to down with qualifiers.

And honestly I think we're living in more of a Biff Tannen presidency.

[mazway_75]

It's like how Elon Musk likes to act like he's a real-life Tony Stark when he's more a poor man's Thurston Howell III.

[lego_joker]

I dunno... I think NML is still highly implausible, because the DCU is supposed to have dozens and dozens of, y'know, superheroes. Who are routinely willing to disobey the government in service to basic human decency, and powerful enough to get away with it.

That's kind of the problem with doing Real Issues in superhero comics - for them to exist at all, the heroes have to be several magnitudes less competent than they usually are when fighting supervillains.

(Some stories, like "Must There Be A Superman?" and "Grounded", try to head this off by portraying the heroes' restraint/inaction as a virtue in itself, but circa 2020 that doesn't really look acceptable anymore.)

[crinos]

I am suddenly reminded of Battle for Bludhaven, which had a scene where the Titans were going to go in to help with evacuations, but got stopped by the Force of July (A bunch of Outsiders villains who were basically a bunch of far right super humans with faux patriotic names and costumes) who were renamed Freedoms ring here (Because they somehow thought that was less stupid) and basically kept any super heroes from entering the city while they rounded up all the metahumans and weird stuff they could find for experimentation.

I dubbed them "Super FEMA" at the time.

God Battle for Bludhaven was awful. Its like DC looked at Civil War and was like "You think that's the dumbest most hamfisted super heroes as political allegory out there? Hold my beer."

[repto]

I just shrug and go along with it--at some point you just have to ignore the whole shared universe concept in order to make a story work. I mean, the Flash could literally round up every villain of Batman's in less time than it takes me to type this sentence, but we just pretend that every hero stays in their own city and fights their own little battles.

(Also, "Force of July" is a fantastic name and I love it.)

[mazway_75]

TV Tropes has a page for that: "Superman Stays Out of Gotham."

I do remember Kurt Busiek lampshading that in "Astro City" where Samaritan and Winged Victory are on their first date, she mentions a baddie called Golden Boy who preys on women and he muses on how each hero "sort of has guys we all think of as their villain. Shouldn't it be we all go after the same guys?"

[zachbeacon]

I was thinking more along the lines of "Reed Richards Is Useless".

Even putting aside the people who can fly and throw cars, most superhero universes have people with access to crazy tech and knowledge but yet the lives of the average citizen is unchanged.

(Maybe its because the Four from Planetary are a-holes. Maybe you swapped out Steve Jobs for Tony Stark and people have slightly better phones. Maybe the energy companies are paying Reed Richards NOT to move forward with his alternative energy plans)

Unless the person involved is a superhero, I can't apply superhero logic to their actions in most superhero stories. I have to pretend they would act as they would in the real world.

In 1999 I naively believed that the US government wouldn't abandon one of its major cities after a natural disaster. In 2020 I know better.

[mazway_75]

In 1999 I naively believed that the US government wouldn't abandon one of its major cities after a natural disaster. In 2020 I know better.

Oh I remember how for six years fans slammed NML as so horrible and terrible and "right, a major city and urban center left to rot like that and the rest of the nation barely caring."

Then Katrina hit New Orleans.....

[tcampbell1000]

We'll have to disagree on which president was worse. My read on Dubya is that he was a woefully naive man who was for the most part in far over his head but trusting his daddy's buddies to see him through. That doesn't absolve him completely, but the sins of the era were more the responsibility of those who knew what they were doing. President Luthor reads more like a smoother Cheney, one confident enough to run himself instead of hitching his wagon to someone else's dynasty.

Our current president is more like... I don't know, maybe Doctor Arthur Light? Not only in over his head, but also wildly delusional about his leadership abilities and general competence. I'd say the Penguin, except that (1) the Penguin's a better businessman and (2) he's clinging to notions of class that Trump's mostly abandoned to serve as an anger translator. (Though I suppose it's a toss-up whether it's worse to want to date your daughter or to date an actual penguin.)

Luthor would never have fumbled the COVID-19 response this badly, that's for sure. He'd probably use it to consolidate his power, and that would be a problem, but on the surface his policies would look a lot more like Mongolia's.

[repto]

Any competent politician loves to have a crisis--I mean, they probably don't love whatever is causing the crisis, but they love being able to look "presidential" and give speeches and show "leadership through trying times." Americans want a leader to step up and take action. George Bush's popularity went up 30 points--30 points!--after 9/11. Trump is actually losing support during a national crisis, which is not only amazing, it's pretty much unheard of. He literally could have just given normal, empathetic, supportive speeches during the Coronavirus briefings and he probably would have gained 10 or 20 points. It's completely unbelievable how much he has bungled what could have been the gift that sealed up re-election for him.

[liliaeth]

And the worst part is that most of his followers still won't drop their support of him, and are instead holding protests against their (smarter) governors for actually trying to deal with the crisis.

[shadur]

Any competent politician can make good use of a crisis.

It's just that even pretendingnormal human empathy is beyond Trump's capabilities.

[zachbeacon]

"One thing I enjoy about this story is that there's no hierarchical nonsense about who should be giving orders."

Unrelated to this story, I love the scene in Devin Grayson's Titans run where the "kids" can't agree on who the leader of the Morrison-Era JLA is (or if there is one).

[scorntx]

-"As if you weren't an ordinary criminal
You are not my president. And you are utterly without any intrinsic importance to me."-

... I don't think I've ever had a greater fondness for J'onn than reading that.
And I like J'onn anyhow.

Could Cyborg say that? Maybe Wonder Woman or Aquaman in Dumb Surface Dwellers Mode would, but not so bluntly in tones of "couldn't give less of a damn".
(well, okay, Aquaman might say it that bluntly, come to think of it.)

[zachbeacon]

WW and Aquaman have to worry about international relations. Most of the others are US citizens.

J'onn doesn't care. He doesn't have roots in the US. He changes identities like most people change socks. If he suddenly finds himself unwelcome in North America. ..well, South America appreciates him more anyway.

[scorntx]

That is why I said Aquaman in Dumb Surface Dwellers mode. That version of Arthur doesn't seem to care about international relations very much.
Or even basic courtesy.

[silicondream]

Aquaman would say it that bluntly, but it wouldn't sound quite that blunt because he wouldn't be as careful with his phrasing--because he does not, in fact, give a damn about courtesy or about Luthor as a person.

What's great about J'onn's snark is that he phrases it extremely precisely, because he actually does care about courtesy and about treating everyone as a person. He's dissing you for your own good, so it's important that you understand the diss as clearly as possible. He's kind of an attack philosopher in that way.

Same energy in the Morrison JLA #6 issue, when the angels invade. "See this, hear this: we will not do as we are instructed."