JLA/Avengers #1 by Jess Lemon
Believe it or not, I actually sort of like superheroes. Sometimes I even get the craving for them, which I used to quench with watching the BATMAN cartoon show--lately, it's been mostly reading ALIAS books. And this week, once I finished my first paper of the year (just fine, thanks for asking), I decided I wanted a really good superhero comic. Andy's back home, and honestly he and I are having one of those bad sibling moments, so I had to ask the guy at the comic shop what would be a good new superhero comic to get. I should have just noticed the twenty copies of JLA/AVENGERS #1in the window and avoided the first five minutes of what probably would have been half an hour of him being way more helpful than I'm comfortable with if I hadn't "remembered" a mid-afternoon dinner date.
But when I got back to my room and read it, I remembered why I have a problem with comic books about superheroes in general: they let me down. What I want from superhero comic books is what I think Andy and his friends get from them, at least sometimes. I want stories that feel big and exciting, with clever plots and smart ideas and sharp dialogue. I want to be in suspense about what's going to happen next. I think I'm entitled to that.
JLA/AVENGERS, though, is exactly what I used to think of when I thought of comic books (and still do, most of the time): people in stupid costumes having fights for no particular reason, and shooting beams out of their hands. (What is it that you guys have about beams coming out of people's hands?) There's a lot of sound and fury, and not much that it signifies. This is actually just about the most agoraphobic story I've ever seen--no breathing room, no sense of scale, no suspense to speak of, just non-stop boom-boom, cranked up all the way, with a dozen new characters coming in on every page and blowing stuff up. It's so big it feels tiny.
I'm not expecting any kind of my-father's-family-name-being-Pirrip-and-my-Christian-name-Philip-type explanation, but it'd be nice to get some kind of sense of who all these characters are, and why they're doing what they're doing. Too bad, because what they're doing is nothing but huge. Cosmic, even. So cosmic that a whole planet gets blown up on the first two pages. Excuse me, did I say planet? I meant universe. One of those universes with where people grab wineskins to go "khef-hunting" in the hills and then talk to their viziers on video-phones. Then, two pages later, the same thing happens to a bunch of nasty superheroes and their whole planet, I mean universe. Universes, I say! Boom! People shooting beams out of their hands count: 1.
Then two blue guys who don't shoot anything out of their hands fight a little in outer space. Then Superman and Batman and some other superheroes fight a giant robot; the robot shoots beams out of a staff, one of the superheroes shoots beams out of his hand, and another one shoots "telepathic bolts" out of his head. Somebody who's supposed to be the hand of God shows up for half a page, appears to shoot some kind of beam (of course), and doesn't get mentioned again after that. Then a whole bunch more superheroes, six of whom shoot beams out of their hands, fight an invasion of evil mind-controlling starfish.
Yes, that's right. Evil. Mind-controlling. Starfish. Who jump onto your face and take over your mind. Oh, I'm going to have nightmares now. You'd think they could come up with some kind of more reasonably menacing aquatic life, like bad scallops or something. Incidentally, they win because one of the heroes levitates in lotus position with her hands in "rock 'n' roll!" position while her ex-husband, who is a robot, puts an evil starfish over her face. Don't ask how. And don't ask me what that's supposed to symbolize. I'm trying not to think about it.
Some emergencies break out. Flash runs really fast so that he can go into another universe, where shovel-wielding soccer dads beat him up, but then his "vibrational rate goes back to normal" and he comes back to his own universe. A couple of aliens turn up and tell some of the superheroes that their world will be destroyed unless they find twelve "items of power," six from each of their universes, although what they are or how they could possibly help isn't explained--it's basically this huge cosmic scavenger hunt. Flash runs really fast and sends his teammates into the universe where he got beaten up earlier, although it's not clear why their "vibrational rates" don't go back to normal and pop them back home as soon as they get there.
This goes on and on. And on. But the comic still isn't big enough to fit the story into. When you've got something this crowded and only 48 pages to put it in, things go by the wayside--like, oh, plot, characters, motivation, any explanation beyond That's How It Works. For instance: the superheroes show up to collect Scavenger Hunt Item #1--since I have no idea what that yellow globby thing that could destroy the universe is supposed to be, let's call it a 1963 nickel. So to find the 1963 nickel, they have to beat up some monsters on a jungle island. But how are they going to find a 1963 nickel on the island with the monsters? Um--they can sense where it is. With their 1963 nickel-o-vision, I guess. There you go.
Finally, at the end, the two superhero teams meet. And what do they do? They start beating each other up. Because that's what they do. And I can tell you already that it's going to end in a draw, because that's what always happens in stories like this.
But when I got back to my room and read it, I remembered why I have a problem with comic books about superheroes in general: they let me down. What I want from superhero comic books is what I think Andy and his friends get from them, at least sometimes. I want stories that feel big and exciting, with clever plots and smart ideas and sharp dialogue. I want to be in suspense about what's going to happen next. I think I'm entitled to that.
JLA/AVENGERS, though, is exactly what I used to think of when I thought of comic books (and still do, most of the time): people in stupid costumes having fights for no particular reason, and shooting beams out of their hands. (What is it that you guys have about beams coming out of people's hands?) There's a lot of sound and fury, and not much that it signifies. This is actually just about the most agoraphobic story I've ever seen--no breathing room, no sense of scale, no suspense to speak of, just non-stop boom-boom, cranked up all the way, with a dozen new characters coming in on every page and blowing stuff up. It's so big it feels tiny.
I'm not expecting any kind of my-father's-family-name-being-Pirrip-and-my-Christian-name-Philip-type explanation, but it'd be nice to get some kind of sense of who all these characters are, and why they're doing what they're doing. Too bad, because what they're doing is nothing but huge. Cosmic, even. So cosmic that a whole planet gets blown up on the first two pages. Excuse me, did I say planet? I meant universe. One of those universes with where people grab wineskins to go "khef-hunting" in the hills and then talk to their viziers on video-phones. Then, two pages later, the same thing happens to a bunch of nasty superheroes and their whole planet, I mean universe. Universes, I say! Boom! People shooting beams out of their hands count: 1.
Then two blue guys who don't shoot anything out of their hands fight a little in outer space. Then Superman and Batman and some other superheroes fight a giant robot; the robot shoots beams out of a staff, one of the superheroes shoots beams out of his hand, and another one shoots "telepathic bolts" out of his head. Somebody who's supposed to be the hand of God shows up for half a page, appears to shoot some kind of beam (of course), and doesn't get mentioned again after that. Then a whole bunch more superheroes, six of whom shoot beams out of their hands, fight an invasion of evil mind-controlling starfish.
Yes, that's right. Evil. Mind-controlling. Starfish. Who jump onto your face and take over your mind. Oh, I'm going to have nightmares now. You'd think they could come up with some kind of more reasonably menacing aquatic life, like bad scallops or something. Incidentally, they win because one of the heroes levitates in lotus position with her hands in "rock 'n' roll!" position while her ex-husband, who is a robot, puts an evil starfish over her face. Don't ask how. And don't ask me what that's supposed to symbolize. I'm trying not to think about it.
Some emergencies break out. Flash runs really fast so that he can go into another universe, where shovel-wielding soccer dads beat him up, but then his "vibrational rate goes back to normal" and he comes back to his own universe. A couple of aliens turn up and tell some of the superheroes that their world will be destroyed unless they find twelve "items of power," six from each of their universes, although what they are or how they could possibly help isn't explained--it's basically this huge cosmic scavenger hunt. Flash runs really fast and sends his teammates into the universe where he got beaten up earlier, although it's not clear why their "vibrational rates" don't go back to normal and pop them back home as soon as they get there.
This goes on and on. And on. But the comic still isn't big enough to fit the story into. When you've got something this crowded and only 48 pages to put it in, things go by the wayside--like, oh, plot, characters, motivation, any explanation beyond That's How It Works. For instance: the superheroes show up to collect Scavenger Hunt Item #1--since I have no idea what that yellow globby thing that could destroy the universe is supposed to be, let's call it a 1963 nickel. So to find the 1963 nickel, they have to beat up some monsters on a jungle island. But how are they going to find a 1963 nickel on the island with the monsters? Um--they can sense where it is. With their 1963 nickel-o-vision, I guess. There you go.
Finally, at the end, the two superhero teams meet. And what do they do? They start beating each other up. Because that's what they do. And I can tell you already that it's going to end in a draw, because that's what always happens in stories like this.