I didn't like the story choice to split up the Justice Society into two titles, nor was I enthusiastic about either creative team set to take over the books. Justice Society of America: Axis of Evil, however, is fantastic, far exceeding my expectations. It's a Mr. Terrific story, mainly, with less emphasis on the entire team, but this is eminently forgivable since it turns out to be writer Bill Willingham's both first and only solo outing on the book. Whether read as a Mr. Terrific miniseries or a Justice Society special, Axis of Evil is exciting and moving, a sleeper hit -- the best kind.

[Contains spoilers]

The rather run-of-the-mill Nazi-themed villains the Fourth Reich attack the Justice Society, the Justice Society beats them back -- and suddenly, Willingham sends us twenty years into the future, where superheroes live in concentration camps and Mr. Terrific spies for the resistance. The difference between the two eras is striking -- Willingham's villain team in the present are laughable caricatures (like "Doctor Murder"), whereas Willingham and artist Jesus Marino achieve a real atmosphere of horror in placing DC Comics's heroes essentially against the background of the Holocaust.

Willingham's success in this book is all in the details. The five issues of the "Fatherland" storyline give Willingham a lot of space to flesh out Terrific, his Nazi guard Karla Lander, the other captured heroes (many from outside the Justice Society), and this new Reich-controlled world. In a terrible situation, the de-powered heroes are even more heroic -- Batman, and then Blue Beetle both sacrifice their lives without hesitation for the benefit of small gains; in a twisted splash page, true to the characters, Willingham has Batman and the Joker die side-by-side.

The Nazi brutality is shocking -- as when fuhrer "Kid" Karnevil swiftly shoots Karla -- and the compassion Willingham has the characters show all the more touching -- as when afterward Terrific and Obsidian discuss living with the terrible memories of that future, or when Terrific goes to visit young Karla in the present.

Aside from Obsidian's role in the end, "Fatherland" is mostly Mr. Terrific's story. The fantastic cameo-filled escape sequence name-checks scores of DC heroes, but those who get the most screen time include Superman and Batman -- Dr. Mid-Nite, Terrific's best friend, barely even gets a nod in the future. I didn't mind this so much, perhaps because this is the end of Willingham's Justice Society stint -- no danger that the other heroes will always be behind the scenes, just a spotlight on Terrific this time, taking his place in the DC Universe pantheon.

And I like Terrific as a character, liked him in Checkmate (wish we might've seen some Checkmate characters), liked his nobility here with Karla and with Obsidian and in the beating he has to appear to take from Blue Beetle. Though I've balked at Green Lantern and Flash stealing the spotlight from Superman in DC's crossover events, I loved watching Mr. Terrific, essentially, save the entire universe and every other DC hero -- it's not all that often that Terrific gets the spotlight, and I found all of this entirely appropriate for the Justice Society title.

Axis of Evil leads off with a two-part tale of the Justice Society against Legion of Super-Heroes villain Mordru. That story is rather dull, emphasizing the likable new Dr. Fate but not offering much intrigue or suspense. It was, with apologies to Willingham (whose Fables I adore), about what I expected -- even with Shadowpact, Willingham sometimes has a tendency to over-narrate, pit the heroes against repetitive parallel dangers, and drown out the story with too much supernatural verbiage. I found the bland gang of villains in Willingham's previous Justice Society: The Bad Seed too much like his bland gang of villains in Robin: Days of Fire and Madness, and I thought that's where we were headed at the beginning of "Fatherland." Be patient, however, because Willingham's expansive story of the dystopian Fourth Reich future is worth the wait.

Justice Society: Axis of Evil's tale of alternate realities, time travel, and DC heroes coming back from the brink contains shades of JSA: Stealing Thunder and JLA: Rock of Ages, two of my favorite volumes from those two series. I would have, without question, read another Justice Society book by Bill Willingham, and I'm unexpectedly sorry to see him go so soon. This makes Axis of Evil all the more notable of a volume; this is a book I can see myself picking up again for a great go-to, self-contained Justice Society story.

[Contains full covers. Printed on glossy paper.]

We'll follow the Justice Society now over into their Justice League crossover with Dark Things, coming up next.

Number 944


Still lost in the Land Of the Lost


This is the third and final story from EC Comics' Land Of the Lost #1, 1946, written by Isabel Manning Hewson--who created the radio show on which the comic is based--and drawn by Olive Bailey.

The other two stories from issue #1 are available in Pappy's #706 and Pappy's #859.

Bailey, who provided the artwork for 9 issues (and one unpublished issue, for which I have scans of original art, available on this blog at some point in the future), and the illustrations for one LOTL hardcover book, is an artist whose comic book career may have been on this one title alone. I looked on the Grand Comics Database and found only her credits for LOTL, so if any more knowledgeable fan knows if she did any other comics work please let me know.

I've also included the in-house ads from the back of the comic.

Number 943


The Butterleggers


The last couple of Plastic Man stories I've shown I've expressed doubts as to whether they were done wholly or in part by Jack Cole. This story from Police Comics #30, 1944, looks like it could have been penciled by Jack Cole. He signed the cover, but not the story.

I was born soon after World War II, and growing up I heard stories of wartime rationing. Gasoline, tires, meat, sugar, butter, etc., were rationed. And when something is in short supply criminals will find a way to make a buck off it. So this Plastic Man story is set firmly in the time of war, with its tale of "butterlegging." I love the word, but it is of its era. I couldn't think of anyplace nowadays to use it, but then thought it could be used as a more polite version of the "m-f" word: "Up against the wall, butterlegger!"

**********

Where do ideas come from?

When Police Comics #1 came out in 1941 it contained the short origin story of Plastic Man, written and drawn by Jack Cole. Cole created Plastic Man, one of the most original of the bunch. He had what could be called a "cartoon brain," ideas full of gags and comic exaggeration.

I found this Arrow Shirt ad in the February 26, 1940 issue of Life magazine. I don’t claim Cole saw the picture of the man with the stretched neck and said, "Aha! That would make a great super hero, one who can stretch!" But I'm also not saying he didn't. In our era of Photoshop something like this is clever, but not uncommon; in those days a trick photo like this would have gotten attention. If I put myself into Cole's cartoon brain at the time and found myself looking at this ad I think it would trigger a response.

It's interesting to speculate, anyway.

Number 942


Bill Ely's tough guys


Bill Ely was an artist who kept busy from the earliest days of comics until at least the 1960s, when he was drawing Rip Hunter, Time Master for DC. I presented some short stories from House Of Secrets by Ely last July in Pappy's #772.

"Beowolf" is from Famous Funnies' Conquest, a reprint of a 1953 one-shot comic, the reprint dated Spring 1955. Bill Ely's contribution was the unusual 7-page version of "Beowolf" (also known as Beowulf). It's been over 40 years since I was a college student and had an exposure to "Beowulf," the epic poem, but I don't remember the monster Grendel being a dinosaur. It's an interesting interpretation, anyway.

Another example of Ely's work is this 1948 "Iron Man" strip, which as you've already noticed, is not the Marvel Comics Iron Man, but an undercover policeman who beats the crap out of crooks. The story is the backup strip in Dell Comics' Dick Tracy Monthly, from 1948. I showed three more stories, including another Iron Man story by Ely, in Pappy's #695.

Arsenal Roy Harper appears next in Eric Wallace's Titans: Villains for Hire after Justice League: Rise and Fall; in short, if you didn't like the earlier volume, you're not going to like this one either. But moreover, I actually thought Rise and Fall had some redeeming moments, and I still didn't much care for this Titans relaunch. I think I know what DC Comics attempted here, but it didn't succeed.

[Contains spoilers]

There's nothing new about teams of antiheroes; just after Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC had success with John Ostrander's Suicide Squad, and more recently there's Marvel's Thunderbolts and Gail Simone's villain-focused Secret Six. I'd even venture that Judd Winick's Outsiders, though heroes, were the groundwork of a team just a little bit over what the law allows (not to mention that the book itself offered some overly edgy material), that lead the way for the ongoing Secret Six series.

I can't quite see Titans as more than DC trying another series to capitalize on the popularity of Secret Six. It's another villain team; there's a mild undercurrent of morality among them; they do lots of bad things, but yet we're supposed to be sympathetic to them. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder than that to catch lightning in a bottle a second time.

For me, Villains for Hire went wrong immediately with the villains' murder of Atom Ryan Choi. Letting alone the poor political implications (I'm not in favor of DC killing nor creating a character based on ethnicity alone, but they had to know this wasn't going to play well with the fans), this early murder of an essentially defenseless hero makes the new Titans seem mean-spirited, and this never goes away. Early on the Secret Six proves their "toughness" fighting a bunch of other villains; the Titans swoop in and murder a hero. This worked for Max Lord in Countdown to Infinite Crisis because we were supposed to dislike Max; here, we're supposed to want to follow Deathstroke, but I never found myself wanting to.

Second, the conflicts the Titans face in this book are wholly unremarkable. We believe they're trying to assassinate Lex Luthor (too similar, again, to the first Winick Outsiders trade), but really they're trying to protect him; their enemy is a generic shapeshifter named Facade. Later, they battle an equally generic drug kingpin Elijah and his super-team The Dominators, made up of villains with names like Spike, Brute, and DJ Molecule (no kidding). These are throwaway characters, there just for the purpose of the Titans' conflict, but pages upon pages of the Titans fighting someone the reader doesn't care about, by my estimation, ends up with the reader just not caring at all.

I believe what's actually supposed to draw the reader further into the book is not the characters themselves, but the puzzle of Deathstroke's mysterious final goal. I don't discount this -- it may be, ultimately, what gets me to flip through the next trade -- but neither do I think the mystery serves as quite enough. Deathstroke collects various artifacts, but his purpose is too vague, and the book fails to offer even a mildly satisfying conclusion; it just ends. We get, for instance, a cut scene where a child the Titans just rescued is ignored by his father -- and that's it; no tie to the greater story. Is this something that will factor in later? Is Wallace simply making a statement on parents and children? Possibly the book needed to be a few issues longer; here again, it's just not clear to the reader what's important, or for whom we're supposed to feel emotion, and so it just leaves Titans seeming flat.

All of this is even more a shame because I can see where Titans might otherwise have potential. I should mention again that I enjoyed Eric Wallace's Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink, specifically how it examined race through the lens of superheroics and villainy; unfortunately Titans lacks any such nuance so far. The characters included in Titans are both more recognizable than those in Secret Six, and delightfully weird -- Cheshire teamed with Tattooed Man teamed with Osiris? -- and the book has the potential to go in a hundred different directions (spy thriller, urban mystery, supernatural -- it even ties in to Brightest Day) but remains in the end just a shoot 'em up. More's the pity; "just a shoot 'em up" is the last thing DC Comics needs right now.

It's easy for us to look back and comment on the excesses of 1990s superhero comics from today's vantage -- there was an overemphasis on rebellion, perhaps, and on legacy heroes like Green Arrow Connor Hawke and Manhunter Chase Lawler that were "cool" without much substance. What, I wonder, will we say about the 2000s? There's a return to purity and traditionalism, of course, as in the resurrections of Green Arrow Oliver Queen, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, and Flash Barry Allen, but then in contrast an almost cartoonish amount of violence. Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis, in my opinion, put excessive violence to good use, but to me Titans: Villains for Hire seems to follow the trend without getting the point. Bloody murder of a superhero? Check. Villains acting as antiheroes? Check. Leader has a secret plan that the writer keeps from the reader? Check.

All of these elements have worked to great effect in various recent titles -- but that doesn't mean they'll always work, and that doesn't mean you can just drop these elements into a book and expect success. Ultimately, that's how I see Villains for Hire; it attempts to take its place in the DC Universe next to Secret Six and others, but wanting such unfortunately doesn't make it so.

[Contains full and variant covers]

I honestly feel bad when a book lands with such a thud; I could find some aspects to like in the controversial Justice League: Rise and Fall, but not really here. Coming up, however, we follow some of these Brightest Day threads in to Justice League of America -- I hope that fares better.