The Death of the Justice League

It’s been done before, better. Much better.

Twenty years ago, Joe Kelly’s “Obsidian Age” arc gave us the death of the Justice League. The six-issue story, building upon many issues that preceded it, showed the Justice League being defeated and killed by another league of super-beings. The story was structured around two intertwined narrative threads that initially alternated issue by issue, odd-even, between the past and the present, with prophecy and the interleaved narrative challenging the reader to guess where things are going, and even where they’ve been. I have written about that story before and won’t try to reproduce here a tally of its merits, or even its faults, which surely exist.

Then today, there was this story, 2022’s Justice League #75, with “Death of the Justice League” emblazoned on the cover. Guess what happens inside? Spoiler alert: It’s the death of the Justice League. The cover needn’t have tipped you off, though, because DC’s promotion of the event has already detailed this, down to the fact that Black Adam would be the one survivor. So as you read, page by page, you know what is coming, exactly. There is no drama on any single panel of the issue. It doesn’t matter if Batman can get to Pariah’s machine to stop it (whatever that machine does). It doesn’t matter if Jon Stewart can summon a ring-powered army. It doesn’t matter if Green Arrow’s arrow does something. He will not be cooking chili as a celebratory dinner. We already know this. There is no drama.

In fact, I was at all points during this issue more certain about how it would end, and what would happen on the next page, than I often was about what was happening on the page I was actually reading. What does Pariah’s machine do? If the Dark Army isn’t fighting as themselves, what does that mean? When someone’s utterance is cut off mid-sentence, what were they trying to say? How can Aquaman and Aquawoman fight Doomsday fist-to-fist? These are details that I wanted to have clarified, but that never were. And they never mattered. Ultimately, Pariah had wave-your-hands-and-it-kills-Superman power. Why? Did he always have that? Did it come from his machine? Did the machine give him that power because Green Arrow failed to stop it? Or did that just not matter? This is the correct answer: None of it mattered. The Dark Army didn’t even actually do anything except fight the heroes to a draw for way too many pages of unimportant busy-ness on the page before someone waving their hands around did the one and only important event in the whole issue, and that was an event that we already knew was going to happen.

It was flimsy story telling that seemed like an imitation of better storytelling with not enough effort to make a pretense of being good storytelling.

Not only is the issue predictable, but so is this: As April 26 goes on, fan and professional reviews will appear online calling this a great issue. It will get ratings of 10/10, 9/10, 8/10, and perhaps 11/10. There will be false claims that this issue had drama and emotion, when it had zero of those. Reviewers will be impressed by the last cast of characters, even though there isn’t a single page worth of those characters exhibiting any personality. This was a visual spectacle, and in that, I will acknowledge the one thing that impressed me as interesting: The deaths of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman visually echoed the death of Barry Allen in Crisis on Infinite Earths. their faces peeling away to bone, in a series of minipanels. The homage is not deep, but this act of borrowing, borrowing though it be, was imaginative.

 “Pop will eat itself.” Andy Warhol said. Food looks a lot better going into the digestive tract than coming out. Anyone looking to have an engaging experience reading about the death of the Justice League today should put down today’s “new” Justice League #75 and pick up 2001-2002’s Obsidian Age. 

I’m more interested in the source of the automatically-positive reviews than in anything Williamson put on the page. I suspect that it’s this: Positive reviews end up with higher click counts, and psychology’s study of classical conditioning tells us that a rewarded behavior will be repeated. Drama has been replaced by the presence of eyeballs on pages. It is mere gaze. Storytelling is dead. And that is the true death of the Justice League. 

Retro Review: JLA Top 5 - Obsidian Age

As Joe Kelly's JLA ran began in 2002, the team ran into powerful magic users in separate, seemingly-unrelated incidents. Kyle Rayner started having nightmares and visions that showed the JLA dying in battle. With unprecedented planning and foresight, Kelly used his first eight issues to set up the central storyline of his run, a story called "Obsidian Age" that took the team through the lowest lows and highest highs they ever faced. At its darkest point, Superman's skeleton and a mocking note served notice that the team was dead. The population of Atlantis was enslaved. We see Wally West captive with his neck broken and legs amputated, and then the whole team dies in battle. After that happened in the past, a seemingly-undefeatable witch in the present is about to make the Earth fall into the Sun. It's bad. It's very bad.

This sets up a finale when a staggering number of heroes in a greatly-expanded roster go on precisely the winning streak that saving the day requires, everyone playing a key role in a victory that cheats death several times, gives half a dozen characters arguably their finest moments, and then finally moves the Earth. There's a pause before the finale where a ghostly, undead Kyle Rayner tells Nightwing, "You're doing a hell of a job, by the way." It's impossible to reach that moment unmoved by the sentiment behind it.

But it began with the preparation earlier in Kelly's run. After the JLA had tangled with a Central Asian ruler/magician named Rama Khan, the story begins in earnest when two powerful opponents representing ancient Mexico and an unspecified Native American culture materialize at Disneyland and use their combined magic in an attempt to kill the JLA. They nearly succeed when Batman awakens from a spell that is supposed to keep any human asleep, and Kyle Rayner arrives in time to blindside the attackers, who escape where Atlantis used to be. This begins a mystery in which the JLA begins to search for Aquaman on the spot where Atlantis has, apparently, disappeared into the past. With Batman and Kyle expressing strong misgivings, they go 3,000 years into the past, and then things turn sour.

Kelly divides the story into parallel narration of the past, in even-numbered issues, and present, in odd-numbered issues. While the Big Seven plus Plastic Man gradually realize they are in over their heads in 1000 BC, a new replacement team led by Nightwing faces existential threats in the present, eventually realizing that their problems and the disappearance of the main JLA are related.

The split narration makes it all a mystery for readers to unravel, too. We know the JLA is missing before we know they are dead, and we know they are dead before we know why. The invocation of time travel makes it a little hard to unravel even at the end, but the flow of events goes like this:

In 1000 BC, a malevolent Atlantean sorceress named Gamemnae unites forces with Rama Khan, the forerunner of the Central Asian mystic whom the JLA had encountered in the present. Rama Khan in 1000 BC has visions of a seven-headed destroyer from the future. This is interpreted as being the JLA, but will eventually prove to be Gamemnae herself. The two of them gather a team of rather formidable super-beings from around the world and prepare to lure the JLA into the past and ambush them. Rama Khan and other members of the team do so believing that the JLA really is evil. Gamemnae, however, does so to facilitate her conquest of the Earth and manipulates the rest of the "League of Ancients" into eliminating the JLA for her.

Aquaman and the citizens of modern day Atlantic travel into the past as a refuge from the "Our Worlds at War" crisis. Arthur the first to fall, trusting Gamemnae before he is turned into a disembodied water wraith trapped in a pool. Then she raises the underwater city back to the surface and leads the ancient Atlanteans in enslaving the modern-day Atlanteans. Two of the League of Ancients travel to the present to battle the JLA, which succeeds in luring them back to their time, and into a very well-prepared trap.

In the past, the JLA covertly investigate Atlantis, trying to avoid walking into a trap. However, when they think they understand the situation, they do not, and the League of Ancients has mutilated the Flash in a separate ambush before the other heroes make their appearance. Behind the scenes, however, the Native American magician Manitou found out that Batman was unharmed by a weapon that could not harm a just person, a discovery that begins to win Manitou over to the JLA side. This is too late, however, for the rest of the team, who go down hard in the face of Gamemnae's perfect battle plan. Martian Manhunter is lit afire, Plastic Man shredded, and Superman physically beaten to death. Kyle Rayner is the only one who wins his matchup, using his ring to save Atlanteans who seem to be his enemy; this is the act of mercy that definitively brings Manitou to the JLA side, and in a brilliantly ambiguous moment, Kyle allows Manitou to rip his heart from his chest as part of a magical spell that's necessary for the league's resurrection.

With the JLA dead, Gamemnae turns against her allies, absorbing them into her own body with magic, which gives her the sum of all of their powers, all but that of Manitou, who hides the spirits of the JLA in Kyle's heart for three thousand years.

In the present, Gamemnae, now hideously monstrous, absorbs Tempest and Zatanna before the new JLA shows up in force, and she begins to pick them off, too. President Lex Luthor nukes the battle site, appearing to kill the heroes even while Gamemnae is unaffected. And after that bleak point, everything turns around.

Kyle Rayner, who has survived as a combination ghost / power ring entity for three thousand years, uses his ring power to save the new JLA, who put Manitou's plan into action. Nightwing declares, "I don't know jack about magic, but I do know people. If Gamemnae does have a weakness, it's her strength. It makes her confident, and will blind her." That observation is the pivot in the confrontation. Nightwing's people skills, his ability to lead the replacement JLA, ultimately turns the tide against a villain so powerful that she is basically a god.

The six dead JLAers bond as ghosts on the spirit plane, with Batman playing the chess master, directing Manitou to animate them as skeletal forms that are immune to Gamemnae's magic, and as the undead JLA begin to fight the witch, Kelly unveils some of his best dialogue…

Gamemnae: What good are a handful of shades against the force of Earth's gods?!?

Batman: You're about to find out.

[...]

Firestorm (to Manitou): I didn't think it was possible… but you actually made Batman scarier.

Attacks by the undead Superman and Wonder Woman manipulate Gamemnae into using her magic to bring the Leaguers back to life, while Batman whispers, "The chess match has begun. Force the move."

Meanwhile, the replacement Justice League under Nightwing try to find a way to beat Gamemnae. Jason Blood sacrifices himself in order to liberate Zatanna from Gamemnae, the Atom makes himself too small for magic to affect him, and the demon Etrigan and a Kelly creation named Faith lead a delaying attack before Firestorm uses his matter-transmuting powers to connect the pool confining Aquaman with the sea, in effect giving him command over the entire ocean.

At this point, with the teams in the past and present both at impressive levels of power, they win a double battle against the sorceress, with Manitou's magic, Aquaman's power, and the resurrected JLA beating her into submission.

Kelly uses the extremely traumatic events in the story not as a gimmick to impress the reader but as a means of bringing out the personalities of the characters. And so, we're not asked to believe in Wally West's nobility because he is running fast, nor even because he is risking danger. We feel it when he's being held by his broken neck, legs amputated, at the mercy of a merciless enemy, and he tells his comrades, trying to save their lives at the cost of his, "Run. Please. Just run." J'onn's death transforms Plastic Man's zaniness into fury, driving him to suffocate Rama Khan and yell, "You like burning?!? How about the burning inside your lungs as they choke for air?!? LIKE THAT?!?!" Superman tries to reason with the League of Ancients even as they try to kill him. Firestorm and Zatanna are frustrated by not knowing how their powers can be used to beat Gamemnae, then figure it out at the last minute. We see Kyle Rayner grimly whisper, "Be alive, be alive" before falling silent when he sees that every one of his teammates is dead.

And it hurts. It hurts Kyle and it hurts us. Seeing the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash die is a shock, one that might be a cheap stunt if handled differently. Joe Kelly, yes, brings them back to life, cancelling out those deaths as he certainly had to do, but he uses the death-and-resurrection to achieve a grand narrative payoff in the rich characterization it allows.

Kelly gets it. Death in comics isn't a moment for the writer to step back, quit writing, and hope the penciller can imitate Michelangelo's Pietà. Death isn't a moment at all. It's a process, an event, a beginning rather than an ending. Kelly wrote a story around the JLA's death, but it's neither cheap nor lazy. It's a tangled story that started setting things up twelve issues before their deaths and kept unspooling the consequences for several issues longer. It's obvious that he worked not only smarter but also harder than writers usually do, and the result was what I consider probably the finest Justice League story ever written.

Rikdad's JLA Top 5 Stories (in chronological order)
Steve Englehart – No Man Escapes the Manhunters
Steve Englehart – The Origin of the Justice League Minus One
Grant Morrison – New World Order
Grant Morrison – Rock of Ages
Joe Kelly – Obsidian Age

A Christmas Story

This story is not original. Credits at the end.

It came upon the midnight clear, a gloved hand traced over a computer screen, touching names and addresses, as the man who owned the hand made connections, saw patterns in police reports, and planned his nightly patrol so that Gotham City’s criminals would have the least chance of escaping justice. His route was determined, his car fueled, a warm cup of tea drunk, and Batman arose to go into the night, when suddenly he saw another figure, one who had somehow gotten close – here in the Batcave of all places! – without being heard. Batman instinctively ducked into a crouch and drew a batarang to throw at the red-suited man who was standing on a sleigh. It seemed to be Santa Claus, but obviously it could not, and whatever the explanation for this man’s presence was, it could as easily be dangerous as not. Until the man spoke in a calming voice.

“Bruce,” he said, “It’s good to see you. I know you’ve been a very good boy. Merry Christmas!”

Upon hearing the rich, deep voice, Batman lowered his guard. He knew this was no enemy. “Merry Christmas. It’s good to see you. But I can’t stay and visit. My patrol starts now.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “Gotham can always count on you. And I’ve been watching, all these years. All those thieves and muggers, the Joker, Mister Freeze and Penguin and Clayface. I’ve been watching people for a long time, and I don’t know anyone who’s better than you. So tonight, let me give you a present.”

“Leave it over there,” Batman said, striding towards his car.

But Santa Claus said, “I can’t leave the present here, Bruce. The present is that you get to stay. The present is that you get to have Christmas.”

“That’s very kind,” the man in the black cowl answered. “I would like to take a day off. But when I take a rest, crime goes on, and innocent people get hurt. So I have to go out.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, beaming, “That’s what makes you so good, what makes you so deserving. Why you deserve Christmas more than anyone! So here’s your present: You get to stay home all day. And your work, your good work… you can return to it tomorrow.”

“It’s not that simple. I wish it were. But any time that I take off, any, that’s more crime that goes unchecked. This would be the worst day of all for me to stay home and leave the city unprotected.”

“Bruce,” Santa said, a little sadly. “When was the last time you had Christmas? A normal Christmas, opening presents, being with the people you love? Was it…?”

Touched, to the point it stung, Batman hesitated. “It was… then. Before they died.”

“Oh, Bruce. All of this, all you’ve done for everyone, and for them, too. Don’t you think they would want you to be happy? Don’t you think your parents would want you to have Christmas?”

Nothing else could make Batman feel so deeply as the subject of them, of the parents who had loved him, who gave him the only Christmases he’d known. Now, years later, it was hard for him to speak without showing more feeling than he could let himself show to the man in the red suit. “Of course…” Batman answered, and then he had to pause. “Yes. But my work.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “tonight your work will be done. Call Gordon.”

A moment later, with a red phone in his hand, Batman spoke with Commissioner Gordon. Santa watched with a knowing grin. When the call ended, Batman looked shocked. “He said there’s been no crime since earlier this evening. By this hour, there should have been eighteen crimes reported, but there’ve been… none. Not one.”

“And there will be none,” Santa said to Batman. “You have my word. At midnight tomorrow, you can go back out, go back to your good work. But tonight, and tomorrow, the city will be safe without you. That’s my present to you. Go to bed tonight. And in the morning, join the people you love. Call Dick. Call Tim. Call Alfred. Spend Christmas with them, spend it full of love. They can join you by the fire and together, you can celebrate Batman’s first Christmas.”

The caped crusader was unable to contain his emotion. Freed from his duties, for the first time in years, he was at a loss for how to speak or move, how to be Bruce Wayne, how to be himself, on Christmas. After a long pause, he answered, “I will.”

Santa Claus laughed his famous laugh. “I’m so glad, Bruce. Everyone deserves Christmas, but nobody…” he paused, and stretched out his hand “…nobody deserves Christmas more than you.”

His head down, Batman could not speak, not without showing more feeling than he could bear to let the other man see. He nodded, and while he was looking down, the other man and his sleigh disappeared.  When a minute had passed, Batman’s composure returned. Then Batman looked up in the direction of the faraway sky, and in a soft voice that only the man in the sleigh could hear, Batman whispered,

“Thanks, Clark.”

Acknowledgements

No idea in this story is mine. Most of the credit belongs to ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, who posted a video called Twas The Dark Knight Before Christmas in 2007. I saw the video and found it wonderful. It returned to my thoughts many times afterwards.

At some point, at least a year or two after my first viewing, I watched it again and found that one key idea that I had remembered from the story is not actually in the story at all. I was perplexed until I thought harder and realized that my foggy notion of Superman watching over Gotham City on Christmas was actually something about Supergirl, and then my memory lead me to the DC Universe Holiday Special with a cover date of February 2009. In that issue, a 5-page story by the great Joe Kelly contains the rest of the inspiration for my mis-remembered version of RandomGuy's video. Kelly's story has Gotham devoid of sirens on Christmas, an event largely narrated from Jim Gordon's perspective, with a cameo by Batman. At the end, we find out that the combined efforts of Barbara Gordon and Supergirl had kept Gotham crime-free for a single day. In Kelly's story, this gift was given anonymously, with no advance notice or explanation after the fact, to make Gotham's protectors believe that a miracle had given it a day without crime.

My memory had unconsciously worked that detail into my memory of the video, with Superman convincing Batman to take Christmas off, not merely with a "pep talk" but with the guarantee that Gotham would be safe during Batman's holiday. It seems more Batman-like to me that he would need that guarantee before canceling his Christmas patrol.

Almost all the rest of how I rendered the story here is from the video, particularly the twist ending. And part of what I found wonderful was imagining Superman's Christmas over Gotham, swooping down to stop crimes here and there, hustling back into the sky to watch for more crimes, beaming with the grandest smile, knowing that he was helping ordinary citizens, and doing something truly special for his friend.

What I find especially touching about this is the history of the Superman-Batman friendship, cemented in decades of comics, but later erased in stories by Frank Miller and John Byrne, before being revived in stories by Jeph Loeb and others. Because you don't know the continuity of a story like this one, you can't be sure what the status of the two superheroes' relationship is, but in a brilliant twist, you find out that they are friends in precisely the last word, which is the only place in the story that indicates that Superman is in the story at all.

Apologies to RandomGuy and Joe Kelly for co-opting their ideas. I felt that the mash-up of their stories was more powerful than either alone. I hope people enjoy.

Best of the Decade #1

I believe that most successful comics recreate Action #1. They can't do this by retelling the exact same story -- readers are already familiar with the legacy of that story. Instead, it's necessary to create for today's reader the same sense of amazement and exhiliration that 1938's comics created, despite the fact that today's reader already expects those qualities as an absolute minimum. The need to out-do what's already been done leads to stories that exceed older ones in trivial ways; for example, the Flash running seven times the speed of light in one early story, then ten times the speed of light in a successive one. Sheer arithmetic alone is not the wellspring of great fiction.

Action #775 was one of the greatest comics ever written, and it did so by establishing a team of villains who had the means and the inclination to bully anyone on the planet around -- a threat that begged for someone to rise up and challenge them. How does a writer make a threat like that work in 2001? In the Thirties, the writer might give the villain whatever pseudoscientific menace came to mind -- a ray beam, say, or mind control powers. It's very hard to be original with villains. Joe Kelly made What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way? work on an entirely different level -- he dug into the comic literature of the time and found a real challenge for superheroes -- antiheros. And so, his invention, The Elite, is based on the existing characters The Authority. But instead of competing with the Justice League and their kind at the cash register, and in fans' hearts, The Elite was placed into the DC Universe and became the antagonist facing the representative of all superheroes for all time -- Superman.

In a series of encounters, Superman and The Elite faced brazenly evil opponents in contrasting styles, the contrast keying on whether or not to kill an enemy. This difference of philosophy rapidly escalated into confrontation, with the brilliantly insolent dialogue of The Elite's leader Manchester Black insulting Superman with a passion for antagonism. The action opened when The Elite handled a case in Libya in their own murderous style before Superman got to the scene. Then they were just getting started in Tokyo where their awesome powers dropped Superman from the sky as collateral damage while they massacred another threat. In their third encounter, Superman arrived on the scene first, sparing the lives of alien invaders; when The Elite were about to kill Superman's captives, Superman threw a punch, prompting the challenge of an all-out dual between this Macchiavellian foursome and the Man of Steel.

In their earlier encounters, The Elite had twice gotten the best of Superman with their various superpowers. Lois attempted to talk Superman back from the confrontation on the grounds that he might not win, but found her husband's principles to be unyielding. And as the fight began, things went against Superman from the beginning, leaving him apparently incapacitated. Until, as The Elite tramped on his cape, with the hero's body altogether absent, The Man of Tomorrow launched his counterattack, unseen, with feats of superspeed and power that quickly took them down one by one. When the telepath Manchester Black was the only one left, a bloodied Superman showed up to win the argument after the fight, and it was a win for the entire genre of superheroes. In a face-to-face confrontation, the antihero had no powers left to use, and no argument left to offer. And the mountainous Superman, told that he was living in a dream world, closed with a manifesto: "I wouldn't have it any other way. Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear... until my dream of a world where dignity, honor, and justice becomes the reality we all share -- I'll never stop fighting. Ever."

There are no flying men who can lift mountains. But there is a Superman, and he is a dream, and lifting us up is exactly what he does.