JLA #5 Annotations

Commentary

After the conclusion of the opening act of Morrison's Brave New JLA last issue, this stand alone tale both sets up the status quo for the rest of the run, with the team moving in to the Watchtower after its cameo appearance lin issue four, and starts messing with the 'Big Seven' formula the book was founded upon with the first JLA tryout of the new era. The League's membership is agreed at twelve, mirroring the traditional Pantheon of the Greek Gods.

Morrison's tale of an 'evil' android that successfully rebels against its programming to do good only to be destroyed in the process, is inspired, as per Morrison's Supergods book, by the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, from the eleventh century Mabinogion, in which two sorcerers, Math and Gwydion, create a woman from flowers who marries, and ultimately betrays, the mythical hero Lleu Llaw Gyffes, leading to his death. The story of Blodeuwedd forms the backbone of Alan Garner's 1967 young adult novel The Owl Service, a work Morrison has acknowledged as an influence many times over the years.

Annotations

Cover - The potential new recruits, from left to right: Green Arrow (Connor Hawke); Artemis; Steel; Tomorrow Woman; the 'electric' Superman; Plastic Man and Hitman.

Page 1 - The antagonists of this months tale are two of the JLA's 'classic' rogues gallery. Professor T. O. (Thomas Oscar) Morrow is the creator of the superheroic android and ex-Justice Leaguer the Red Tornado. He was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino and first appeared in 1964's Flash v1 #143. Something of a pet villain of Morrison's, he also appeared in 52 as one of the mad scientists spirited away to Oolong Island, and played a large role in Duncan Rouleau's 2008 Metal Men mini-series, based on 'ideas and concepts by Grant Morrison'. Prior to his appearance in this issue the character had largely lain fallow since 1986's Crisis on Infinite Earths, mad scientists going somewhat out of fashion in the grim and gritty late eighties and early nineties.

Morrow's partner in crime this issue is Professor Ivo, who first appeared in the third adventure of the original Justice League of America alongside his evil robot creation Amazo in 1960's Brave and the Bold #30 by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. In true comic-book mad scientist fashion, Ivo is a multi-disciplinarian whose science skills range from creating an android imbued with all the powers of the JLA to formulating a serum that will allow him to live forever, though the price he pays for his immortality is horrendous disfigurement and insanity. Ivo's villanous stock saw a sharp uptick in the mid-eighties as he launched an assault on the 'Detroit League' that resulted in the deaths of Vibe and Steel and the 'permanent' disbanding of the Justice League of America, paving the way for Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis' relaunched Justice League title in 1986.

"Never thought I'd see an angel, but seein' is believin'" is the first line of Seein' is Believin', a 1935 hit for Connee Boswell, a successfull recording artist, both solo and with the Boswell Sisters, in the 1930's, 40's and 50's who has the pretty unique distinction of having been wheelchair-bound for her entire career after a childhood bout of polio.

Page 2 - The first appearance of Tomorrow Woman, an android who combines the best of Ivo and Morrow's previous creations, the frightening power of Amazo and the rigid moral centre of the Red Tornado.

In keeping with Morrison's stated aim of bringing back the best of the Silver Age League with a modern twist, the resolutely old school Roll Call makes a welcome reappearance to the title page.

Page 3 - Metamorpho's funeral, after his 'death' in the aftermath of the Hyperclan's attack on the previous League's satellite in issue one. His epitaph, "Not Gone, Only Changed", is especially fitting given that he had already died once before during 1988's Millenium crossover, only to return two years later during the Invasion! crossover. To the surprise of nobody at all he didn't stay dead this time either, returning in 2002 in John Arudi's short lived Doom Patrol series.

Its well harsh that none of the rest of the Justice League or any of the Outsiders showed up to his funeral though...

Superman, finally shorn of the mullet that had plagued him since his own return from beyond the veil in 1994, sports his short-lived 'electric' look here and over the next year or so of the title. Morrison wouldn't get his hands on a regulation hair-length Supes in the traditional red and blue until his return to JLA after a brief hiatus spent writing The Flash with Mark Millar. The electric Superman was an attention-grabbing stunt from DC's Superman office in an attempt to capture some of the headlines, and sales dollars, that resulted from the much-hyped 'Death of Superman' in 1993, an event referenced here by Superman's odd recollection of his own funeral. Did he watch the TV footage after his return maybe?

Superman's only companion at the graveyard is Java, the (actual) Neanderthal bodyguard of Simon Stagg, ruthless industrialist father-in-law to Metamorpho. He's cradling Metamorpho's son Joey, who disentegrated Java's arms as a tiny baby, necessitating new robot arms kindly supplied by the Metal Men's Doc Magnus... Though painted in a decidedly darker pallette, the spirit of Metamorpho creator Bob Haney lived on in some of the frankly nuts comics DC put out in the 1990's.

The Justice League graveyard, a spin on the Legion of Super Heroes' Shanghalla, is filled with statues of fallen Leaguers. From left to right we have Green Arrow (Oliver Queen); Green Lantern (Hal Jordan); Ice, long-serving member of Justice League International; the Justice Society of America's Hourman and the original Atom; possibly The Spectre; Metamorpho; the original Doctor Mid-Nite; The Flash (Barry Allen) and the All Star Squadron's Johnny Quick. Given that every single one of these characters, bar the octogenarian JSA'ers who have all been replaced by youthful equivalents, have since returned from the grave, the priest's "Everyone knows you people come back all the time" line is right on the nose.

The Immortal Man was a caveman whose exposure to an irradiated meteor gave him immortality through perpetual re-incarnation, He was supposedly killed 'for good' during Crisis on Infinite Earths but, after making a cameo during Morrison's Animal Man run, he too was brought back in Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning's Resurrection Man series. According to contemporary interviews, he was also part of the pulp-hero Earth -20 glimpsed briefly in Morrison's Final Crisis.

Page 4 - Prior to Morrison's JLA run, the Superman-Batman 'World's Finest' team had been somewhat antagonistic toward each other ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths, probably inspired by the idealogical schism between the characters mined by Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns. Morrison puts them firmly back on a 'mutual respect', if not 'friendly', footing, instigating the "Bruce"/"Clark" dynamic that appears numerous time in the remainder of the run.

Though JLA editor Ruben Diaz negotiated with Denny O'Neil's Bat-office that Batman would not be seen in space or engage in any far-fetched epic superheroics during his tenure with the new JLA, Morrison gradually tears down the walls betwen the uptight, grim 'n' gritty Batman of the 1990's and his outre Sci-Fi history, a process he would continue through his own work on the Batman titles after O'Neil's retirement. Its unlikely that the Batcave's JLA teleporter tube was seen in many contemporary issues of Batman or Detective Comics.

The Mad-Hatter's Looking Glass People aren't, as far as I can tell, a reference to an actual story, but they sound suitably 'Alice In Wonderland'esque for a Hatter caper. Paris Island is a region of Gotham that houses an abandoned amusement park (don't they all?), as established in John Ostrander's 1994 Gotham Nights II mini-series.

Page 5 - The IF's rampage puts this story (or this part of it at least) chronologically after the JLA/WildC.A.T's one-shot, where it was impounded as part of the Lord of Time's weapons haul after his unsuccessful attempt to rule the Twentieth Century. It later showed up in Tom Peyer's Legion of Super Heroes #1,000,000, and during his Hourman run. The IF was also the title of an unfinished novel by Morrison, begun after the conclusion of the Invisibles, an extract of which you can read here.

The Flash/Green Lantern team, despite initial antagonism, begins to show signs of a developing mutual respect. Like Zach Braff in Scrubs or Noah Wylie in E.R. , Kyle is our P.O.V. character into the magisterial world of the Justice League, providing a convenient outlet for info dumps on developments in individual characters' titles. The chronology gets a bit wooly here as Kyle and Wally react to Superman's new electric duds like they're seeing them for the first time, placing the JLA/WildC.A.T's crossover somewhere between pages of this issue. Also occuring off panel between this page and the next is a Mark Millar story of the Superman's re-initiation into the League - Silver Age Legion-style, the Man of Steel insisted on it as his power's had changed so much - from one of the Secret Files & Origins one-shots.

Page 6 - The JLA meeting room, along with the Monitor Womb glimpsed on the previous page, are seen here for the first time and become key elements of the JLA's Watchtower headquarters. The proposed membership of twelve mirrors the Classical Greek Pantheon.

Page 7 - The potential new recruits, from left to right:

Artemis, a hyper-violent Egyptian Amazon who briefly replaced Wonder Woman in the mid nineties, ala the Azrael/Batman debacle, was created by William Messner Loebs and Mike Deodato and debuted in 1994's Wonder Woman #90.

The second Green Arrow, Connor Hawke, is the long lost son of the original, raised in a Buddhist monastery while his dad remained blissfully unaware of his existence. He emerged just in time to take up the Green Arrow mantle after his father's death in 1995's Green Arrow #101. Though most associated with writer Chuck Dixon, he was created by Kelly Puckett and Jim Aparo and first appeared in 1994's Green Arrow #0.

Damage, a character with convoluted continuity ties to the then-lying fallow Justice Society of America, first appeared in 1994 in Damage #1. Eventually revealed to be the son of the orginal Atom, he was created by Tom Joyner and Bill Marimon.

Hitman was a cynical satire on super-heroics created by Garth Ennis and John McRae. First appearing during 1993's Bloodlines crossover, specifically The Demon Annual #2, of the two dozen or so characters introduced during Bloodlines he proved to be the only one with any longevity, managing a respectable 61 issue solo series.

Warrior was the mid-nineties incarnation of Guy Gardner, better known then and now as one of Earth's Green Lanterns. From the mid nineties through to 2005's Green Lantern: Rebirth series, Gardner sported this unfortunate look while he re-engaged with his half-alien heritage (hence the 'tattoos'). He also rocked the quintessential 1990's comic-book superpower of turning his arms into guns. Originally created by John Broome and Gil Kane as Hal Jordan's backup Green Lantern, Guy first appeared in 1962's Green Lantern #59.

Steel was one of the four 'replacement Supermen' who surfaced in the wake of the Man of Steel's 'death' in 1993. An approximate DC analogue to Marvel's Iron Man via the folk legend of John Henry, he first appeared in 1994's Adventures of Superman #500 and was created by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove. Along with Green Arrow, Plastic Man and Aztek he would go on to be a vital part of the League later in Morrison's run.

Plastic Man, a character acquired by DC when they purchased the defunct publisher Quality Comics in the 1950's, first appeared way back in 1941's Police Comics #1 and was created by noted writer/artist Jack Cole. Defiantly slapstick and off the wall in his original Quality appearances, most of Plastic Man's DC history up to this point was played depressingly straight, resulting in the unenviable position of being regarded as a poor man's Elongated Man. Morrison's reclaiming of the character's comic relief heritage has been unanimously adopted by all the creative teams working on the character since his reintroduction here.

Supergirl is familiar to most as Superman's cousin, Kara Zor El, a native of space-faring 'lost' city of Krypton, Argo City. She first appeared in 1959 in Action Comics #252. Life is too short to recount her continuity status circa 1996. Suffice to say, she doesn't play any meaningful role in Morrison's run.

And finally... Aztek, The Ultimate Man, was the star of a short-lived eponymous series running for ten issues in 1996-1997. He was created by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and N. Steven Harris and first appeared in Aztek The Ultimate Man #1. Something of a Mary-Sue character, Morrison has him join the League in the final issue of his solo series. We'll see him again as 'Rock of Ages' begins in JLA #11.

Max Mercury, tagging along for the sightseeing opportunity, is based on another Jack Cole creation for Quality Comics, Quicksilver who first appeared in 1940's National Comics #5. Reintroduced by Mark Waid during his Flash run (and renamed to avoid confusion with Marvel's speedster of the same name), at this point he was functioning as guardian to Impulse, essentially Kid-Flash for the 1990's in everything but name.

Page 8 - Hitman went on to have a memorable follow-up encounter with the JLA in the largely forgotten two issue JLA/Hitman mini-series, published in 2007.

Page 10 - Tomorrow Woman's look appears to be based on a combination of silent movie star Louise Brooks and Liza Minelli's Sally Bowles from the movie Cabaret. Following on form that, there's another Cabaret reference later in the issue.

Page 11 - "I'm a mutant, born with a four-lobed brain... The first of some new species born ahead of my time." Captain Comet, who bridges the gap between DC's Golden and Silver Ages, was also a mutant billed as being born '10,000 years' ahead of his time.

Page 13 - 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' is the title of a particularly memorable song from 1972's Cabaret, sung by a young member of the Hitler Youth and signifying the impending Nazi opression of Weimar-era Berlin.

Morrows' "... The ones that are actually worth killing" is a snide dig at Ivo's murderous rampage in the story that closed the original run of Justice League of America in 1986, and resulted in the death of two minor Leaguers, Vibe and Steel.

Page 14 - 'IF' reaches Metropolis. That's Lex Luthor's Lexcorp tower on the left of panel one.

Page 15 - 'Implicate Field' is a double handed reference, firstly to David Bohm's theories of implicate order, heavily referenced in Morrison's Animal Man run. The theory can be easily explained, and robbed of all of its poetic charms and staggering consequences, by a clumsy science brute such as myself with the old adage of "As above, so below.". Essentially, the intricate and peculiar behaviour theorised at the quantum level can be expanded to the macroscopic 'normal' world, and unifies us all together in one, staggeringly complicated, organism. Its far from a universally accepted scientific notion, with such luminary historical detractors as Einstein, but its certainly an interesting hook on which to hang a sci-fi comic-book plot. The second fringe science theory its referencing is Rupert Sheldrake's Morphogenetic Field, a more biology-leaning theory of species memory and a one-world organism, which also played a part in Morrison's Animal Man. The IF itself, an unstoppable engine of destruction, doesn't seem to really tie in to either Bohm or Sheldrake's theories. Cool name though.

J'onn J'onnzz, near-indestructable super-Martian, is, as with all of his people, vulnerable to fire, as we saw in the last arc.

Page 18 - Morrow's other great android creation, the Red Tornado, similarly rebelled against his master's orders and chose to be a hero in 1968's Justice League of America #64, in contrast with Ivo's Amazo who has always been a dull-witted bad egg.

Tomorrow Woman's super-energized tears are a neat humanizing touch.

Created as a one-shot character for this story, Tomorrow Woman has been seen a couple of times since. Tom Peyer's Girlfrenzy: Tomorrow Woman one shot published in 1998 acts as a prologue of sorts to this issue. Though I haven't read it, common wisdom suggest Peyer somewhat misses the point of the character by turning her into a tortured emo-bot. Peyer also had Tomorrow Woman appear as a potential romantic interest in his Hourman series, rescued temporarily from the time stream in a bittersweet tale of robotic lost love. More recently, she appeared as part of a parallel universe version of DC's Big Three (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), alongside Green Arrow and Black Adam, in Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley's 2008 weekly Trinity.

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