The Human Target #2-3 - "We Cry"

[laughing_tree]

My seven-year-old son, his favorite superhero is Ice. It's his favorite superhero in the whole world. Every day at dinner, throughout this whole pandemic, we talked about — I'm writing constantly, and what are you writing for the day? And my son always says, 'Why aren't you working with Ice? When are you going to do Ice? Please do Ice.' So when I came up with this premise, which involved a murder and suspects, I decided that the suspect should be part of the JLI, just so I could put Ice in the book... -- Tom King













Ice discusses her backstory:

Comments

[dan_ingram]

Oh yay, King used Ice's super racist origin.

Yay.

[tinygaylaura]

Super racist and absolutely nonsensical

[arilou_skiff]

What is the origin?

[dan_ingram]

Basically, Tora is a mutant/meta from a Roma clan with all the racist trimmings you can imagine.

Lie, steal, outsiders, etc.

When Grandpa Ice found out about Tora's powers, they went haywire and she killed him and her parents accidentally. So dead parents to boot!

My favorite line is when the Grandpa talks about how they're gonna use Tora, "We won't steal anymore, we'll take!"

Totally different.

So that's Ice's real origin. A Roma from a clan with all the most racist tropes imaginable, who made up the secret ice people as a way to cope with her trauma

[scorntx]

From a comic written in 2010.

Which is both terrifying and depressing.

[dan_ingram]

Wonder if that story is why Winick's stepped away from comics

[scorntx]

Sadly, that... seems unlikely.

[lordultimus]

Didn't Geoff Johns write that comic?

[scorntx]

Nope.
Justice League: Generation Lost, by Judd Winick.

[lordultimus]

Knew it was that series, just forgot who wrote it. My bad.

[scorntx]

In fairness, unnecessary angsty retcons are a Geoff Johns specialty.
(It's like he's got a retcon addiction or something.)

[tinygaylaura]

Unfortunately not surprising tho

[tinygaylaura]

The ice people who we literally saw appear in the comics repeatedly and who met and interacted with Ice's friends and teammates which is awfully impressive for figments of her imagination to do

[dan_ingram]

Yeah, but this way, Ice has dead parents! That's totally original!

[tinygaylaura]

Dead parents who are also a racist caricature!

It's the most silver age origin ever

[lordultimus]

Obviously. His whole schtick is "happy past is actually a lie and super sad and tragic and good person isn't good".

[tinygaylaura]

There's so much here that just makes me go: "Wait what?" but the biggest is "Lex Luthor made a deal with the Overmaster"

....

No?

The Overmaster didn't "Make deals" with anyone. The Overmaster was literally a Galactus level threat. All of humanity was utterly inferior to him, including Lex Luthor. Overmaster didn't need to make deals with lesser beings. Overmaster could have destroyed the entire planet with a thought if it weren't for superheroes standing against him and using the powers they had to stop him.

Lex would have NOTHING to offer the Overmaster. And the Overmaster didn't need any help in destroying the earth. He was billions of years more advanced than humanity.

Also Lex Luthor is meant to be pretty smart...he'd have to be a special kind of fucking moron to make a deal with a being whose goal was "Wipe out all of humanity" because that was literally what the Overmaster was doing. His whole motivation was literally "Kill all humans" not "Kill all humans except this one asshole who can't grow hair"

On a scale of how little fucking sense this makes this is like if the MCU revealed that Justin Hammer was Thanos's secret ally and played a secret and never ever to be explained part in something at some point in Infinity War/Endgame

[laughing_tree]

You’re talking about a guy whose lieutenants were these guys: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/4/42/Aryan_Brigade_0001.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200713175534 Let’s safe it, he’s far more Thanoscopter Thanos than Starlin Thanos.

[tinygaylaura]

Christ I'd forgot about these fucking worthless wastes of organs

Okay yeah maybe he really was so fucking stupid he needed Lex Luthor's help

[thanekos]

The Overmaster and his many henchgroups, for all your piker needs.

(Or, as that old Mightygodking post on the Overmaster's Cadre put it: " Some villains are good for being the focal point of a lengthy story – not these guys. Some villains are good for when you need to have a rookie hero prove themselves – that’s not the Cadre either. The Cadre are the villains you need when you need to have a scene where your hero meets up with the other hero you want to write a teamup story for, but that other hero needs to be busy fighting bad guys to show that he deserves to be in your hero’s comic book on equal ground. ")

[dan_ingram]

Was Superman even part of the Overmaster storyline?

Also, IIRC, he had some new cannon fodder/ethnic stereotypes to do his fighting.

[thanekos]

Turns out when you take Guy Gardner's temper out of the context of " bwa-ha-ha!! " JLI stories, he's an ass.

[dan_ingram]

Is that supposed to be a surprise?

[tinygaylaura]

Guy Gardner, the "hero" who literally has actual medically diagnosed brain damage as part of his "Superhero origin"

Those little space oompa loompas really need to start being more selective about who they give rings to

I mean

Imagine being an alien species desperate for a champion to save you and protect your planet/galaxy

And then you find out you got Guy Gardner

"Oh great

There goes the neighborhood"

[starwolf_oakley]

Alien species desperate for a champion to save them have a special name for Guy Gardner.

"Run! It is he!"
"The One who is NOT Hal Jordan!"

http://www.guygardnercolonwarrior.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ggreborn2-nothaljordan.jpg

[beyondthefringe]

worse, those are Quard Weaponeers. They tend to shit themselves at the sight of Green Lanterns.

[cygnia]

Did Guy steal Lobo's bike?

[starwolf_oakley]

No, Lobo is giving him a lift. Those panels are from issue #2 of the GUY GARDNER REBORN miniseries.

[scorntx]

The Guardians of the Universe: "Yeah, okay, these guys look bad, but you should see the people we don't take."

Sometimes you really have to wonder if the reason the DC universe is still standing in the modern day is simply because there was just a lot of universe to begin with.

[tinygaylaura]

Given that Hal spends all his time looking after like ONE planet in his entire sector I'm pretty sure that at the very least every planet they foolishly gave him responsibility for other than earth is a lifeless wasteland now 0_0

[dan_ingram]

In fairness, it's not like any other planet is half as much trouble.

I mean, how many times have earthers torn asunder time and space and rewritten history?

As the king of cosmic cock-ups, it should be no wonder we have so many green lanterns around.

[lordy_co]

And, much like any jerk, he gets all shaky when a bigger fighter steps into the ring. I just love how issue #3 ended XD.

[lordy_co]

Smallwood is the perfect artist for a story like this. He does noir so good that when the superpowers get used, they feel really on another level...which is a pretty good encapsulation of Chance's situation in this whole affair

[numeronone]

This feels like undeserved character assassination for poor Guy.

But what else could we expect from King.

[blues32]

Christ, Chance, just give him the short notes version. Someone tried to kill Lex, they poisoned you instead. That's your problem, man.

[coldfury]

Naw, Chance is playing this more or less right. Guy is being way too possessive, so this fight was coming. On the plus side, it'll probably get Guy in hot water with Ice.

I agree that this feels out of character for the guy I read back in the GL Corps days... he's a jerk but he wouldn't use his powers to beat up on a regular powered guy like this. But even putting aside Tom King's tendency to write the worst version of characters, I feel like Guy has a version of Hank Pym syndrome where any given writer will pull out the least favorable interpretation of his character whenever it suits their purpose, subsequent development be damned.

[beyondthefringe]

But if you go back to the JLI days, Guy Gardner was a hot-headed asshole ready to pick a fight with anyone, from Hal to Batman to random villains. Sad to say, this isn't out of line for him at his worst.

[jgraygaming]

King, obviously, loves the noir storyline. Much like Bendis. And they both have an incredibly distinctive voice on the page. Interestingly, the voice works here with characters it shouldn't work with because King's being fairly smart about who they are.

Fire is the femme fatale with the secret past.
Ice is the sweet, charming girl next door (who might be hiding a dark secret).
Guy is a hot-tempered cop who will happily abuse his authority.

Those aren't the only takes possible for those three characters but they're valid ones for this story.

I'm going to call it now that this is Lex behind it all. Not sure why yet, but he wants something from the JLI days dug up and exposed (possibly involving the Overmaster) and he's using the Human Target to do it.

I'm curious who else King draws into this. J'onn? Dinah? Ted and Michael? And how does he boil them down to the noir archetypes he needs them to be for this story to work?

[crabby_lioness]

I think you called it there.

[starwolf_oakley]

Ted and J'Onn are going to be in there, the countdown/preview/recap from the first issue shows Day 5 and 4.

"Tonight's dandy, J'Onn."

"You're a nice guy, Ted."

Rocket Red will be in there as well on Day 8. So there's some JLI stuff planned.

[beyondthefringe]

I find that I don't hate this. I've made my dislike of King's writing quite clear, but sometimes, he actually does something right. I don't know if he was just a bad fit for stuff like Heroes in Crisis, or if it was editorial's fault as well, but...

Okay, I like noir on occasion and this isn't bad so far. It plays the tropes really nicely.

And we see Booster in this issue as well, with his latest money-making scheme, and well, he's played about as you'd expect for Booster--a time-traveling money-grubbing guy with a tendency to fuck up. Not the best, not the worst interpretation of him. What noir trope he fulfills... I'm not sure yet. Red herring/false lead for sure.