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Underground > Comic Books >

JLA Classified #1

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11:12 / 09.11.04

eh? mid fifties innit. batman went into space three times a month back then, getting superpowers and lasers as necessary. writers? not so sure, will have a look tonight, but they weren't exactly well-credited back then. mid seventies was when the lights started to dim again and his feet got back on the ground, though there are big traces of o'neill's hairy-chested globetrotter and wein's monster-hunter in gavin's latest bat-type. as said elsewhere, the bat-pendulum has held a long long distance from this entrenched and entirely valid spin on batman's swing in the comics for years, the cartoons having taken up the fun bat-slack.

15:16 / 09.11.04

Wasn't GM's run on JLA classified supposed to be a 12 issue run?

Meanwhile I think the art is FAB! perfectly appropiate for the story.

Don't know if this story is any more compressed than GM's previous JLA stuff. Still much more per page than people standing around discussing who would play them in the film version.

15:32 / 09.11.04

No, Grant's JLA was always slated for just this 3-issue story. Grant may do more mainstream DCU stuff (apart from Seven Soldiers, which isn't really "mainstream" DCU) -- there are rumors of a JLA or DCU project with Frank Quitely ahead...

17:42 / 09.11.04

Exactly Tricks. This is normal pace as opposed to the decompressed nonsense that the Marvel people are obsessed with.

Also are you sure these Ultramarines are Ultimates analogues? I'm not at all sure, not with the shameless flirting between Jack (lantern instead of a sun) and Knight, who also looks familiar.

18:32 / 09.11.04

Anyone know the song that was playing on the radio/headset of the Knight in the beginning, when he rides in on the motorcycle? ("...you'll get no reply"...)

18:40 / 09.11.04

Sex Pistols - "Pretty Vacant"

19:02 / 09.11.04

Oh, and by the way, agree with Tricks, eeoam, et al about this being "normal" speed rather than "supercompressed". It's only supercompressed by comparison to say, the latest issue of Planetary or one of those Ultimate Spider-Man issues in which Spider-Man frequently does not appear. This issue felt like the kind of comics that got me into superheroes as a kid. The wonderful Batman/Alfred dialogue is two pages, and that's EXACTLY AS LONG AS IT NEEDS TO BE.

However, I do think it's a fun term to bandy about. "Supercompression." It makes you sound like a mad physicist or something.

On another matter, anyone notice that Morrison seems keen on making JLA villains out of solar antitheses? Maggeddon was the "Anti-Sun," Solaris was the "Evil Sun," and now we have a villain hailing from the "Vampire Sun". It's a curious repetition and I'm interesting in seeing how this one will compare.

19:20 / 09.11.04

All that Black Sun gear in Zenith, too.

Invisibles.

In terms of plot advancement not supercompressed, perhaps. But there's loads happening every page.

Re: McGuinness; he does remind a little of Porter, just in poppy superhero terms, but is aksherly loads better. I compared last night. (Incidentally, as for the fill-ins on the original run, Pajarillo/Wong and Arnie Jorgensen, I think they managed a sum total of 3 good panels 'tween themselves.)

19:30 / 09.11.04

I would love these JLA minis to become a regular thing. It'd allow George to work his JLA jones, which he clearly enjoys whilst not making him feel too comitted. Either that or, you know, give him BATMAN.

miss wonderstarr

20:24 / 09.11.04

"Pretty Vacant" doesn't seem quite right for the Knight...he comes across as more pip-pip tally-ho than punk.

20:28 / 09.11.04

According to this fella, I'm spot on with all my analogues. Except I forgot to mention Giant Man (+ Hulk) for Goraiko.

Check the Grant interview, auch.

Youse = ownz0red.

20:35 / 09.11.04

In his own words . . .
"Imagine if the Avengers had Cap and Bucky, Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Wolverine, the Thing, Elektra, etc all on the same team. Well, that's the Ultramarines"

from here

21:08 / 09.11.04

this is the batman I want GM to write:

21:21 / 09.11.04

According to this fella:

The Utramarines ... were a kind of proto-Authority team dedicated to ridding the world of evil dictators and corrupt businessmen...

Looks like we're both right.

21:35 / 09.11.04

That Howling Curmeudgeons gent from above has been reading our threads, I'll reckon! His analogues are pretty spot on.

I think it's a bit premature to label Pulse-8 renamed to The Master simply because the Knight refers to him that way in a commonly known (if anachronistic) colloquialism.

Morrison likes Anti-Suns - I'd lump Anti-Dad in with them, my self. They're all nothing-giving, all-destorying fathers, forces of nature beyond control.

21:50 / 09.11.04

Forgot to add to the above that villains like that are a good fit for the JLA, who are all sort of Dad archetypes anyway (even Wonder Woman). Technically Superman's still beating up deadbeat dads, they're just a bit larger.

Also, for those who haven't seen it, the cover and a page of preview art from JLA: Classified #2.

-----------------
JLA: CLASSIFED #2
-----------------
Written by Grant Morrison; Art and cover by Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines

Part 2 of a 3-part story of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes by the dream team of writer Grant Morrison and SUPERMAN/BATMAN artists Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines! With the whereabouts of the JLA still a mystery, Batman is forced to face off against Gorilla Grodd and his army...with the aid of a Justice League of the Dark Knight's own design!

DC Universe | 32pg. | Color | $2.25 US

On Sale December 22, 2004
-------------------------

Batman's quite proud of that Boom Tube Gauntlet - he's still wearing it on the fifth panel there. I'm beginning to think the robotic Leaguers this run out are alterations of Superman's old patrol-bots. Manhunter droids? JLAndroids? SuperManbots? Place your bets...

22:30 / 09.11.04

JLAgasm!

Observations: Is Carrie Kelly cutting/listening into the baby universe of QWEWQ in the middle panel there? It looks like she's got some kind of Aquamanish prosthetic on. Aside, I love the Kirby Krackle inside the cube.

Smiling Batman!

Is there some kind of disconnect between the cover and the issue. I'm seeing JLAndroids on the front but an all Supermandroid team on the inside.

How does Metal Gear Lantern's ring work? He's got no willpower/imagination, and if Sci-Fi Batman has a ring to spare why isn't HE using it?

03:06 / 10.11.04

Dude, it's probably not an actual GL ring but a fake one that generates and manipulates force fields.

That cover looks horrible but that page looks fantastic!

miss wonderstarr

06:32 / 10.11.04

How come that's apparently the old-style Aquaman and the John Stewart GL? I'd assumed this story was contemporary and in-canon, although the "hypertime" get-out posited above is plausible.

The SF-Batman tone does suggest that those are the Superman Robots who filled in for him when he was at the North Pole, though those looked a lot more realistic and these are more like Cliff Steele.

miss wonderstarr

06:36 / 10.11.04

As I'm not an expert on the GL mythos, here's my back-up:

07:59 / 10.11.04

didn't someone say in t'other thread that they're the jlandroids from hourman? makes sense, moz always bigged up peyer's run on that.

11:35 / 10.11.04

Didn't Bats pick up the boom tube gauntlet during the Cosmic Odyssey mini?

12:06 / 10.11.04

Kovacs- That's basically the JLA line up these day's. Aquaman's shaved and has magick watery hand and JS is GL.

14:17 / 10.11.04

Is it weird that there's already a "Vixen" in the DCU, recently used in Gail Simone's rollicking fun and pretty nifty BIRDS OF PREY?

14:21 / 10.11.04

Verrry interesting... (from the page on this issue linked above, pretty cool page, that):

>> • The infant universe of Qwewq. First mentioned in JLA #12, this baby universe was being protected and nurtured by the heroes of Wonderworld. Apparently it survived Wonderworld’s destruction and somehow found its way into the hands of the JLA. The name is a reference to Italo Calvino’s stories about Qfwfq, a being as old as the universe who narrates the stories of Cosmicomics and t zero.

>> (I’m disappointed that Qwewq looks exactly like the “information sent backwards in time” form that Neh-buh-loh assumes to trap and consume the Master. Unless there’s some good plot reason for this in the later issues, it just seems unnecessarily coincidental and misleading.)

Also, I just love the hypersigilesque power of a 'cosmic keyboard' that re-writes and "edits" reality like film editing + fiction writing.

So the Vampire Sun, Terror Queen, Huntsman etc. are the big villains for Seven Soliders... kewl!

It was kind of creepy and strangely childlike for "Neb-Uh-Loh" to say "Look, I have filled up this human form with my essence." kinda like 'hey, look, look at this cool thing I did!!

14:25 / 10.11.04

>> Kovacs- That's basically the JLA line up these day's. Aquaman's shaved and has magick watery hand and JS is GL.

And Aquaman's been back in a slightly-tweaked version of his old orange and green togs for about a year now over in his own book.

The Natural Way

14:46 / 10.11.04

One of the things I really like about this is the feeling, which is kind of hard to define, that we've really gone beyond having to justify all this weird DCU shit now; that we're no longer just enjoying the suprise and the novelty of jet-apes and robo-supermen. There's a feeling of "hey, that's just how it is over there." It's everyday stuff.

Personally I love the art: clean, animated, Bruce Timm-esque. And, inspite of what Kovacs thinks, it seems to me that both Grant's JLA Classified and We3 are very important; at least in terms redefining the formal approach to storytelling in a mainstream book. That panel with Goraiko giving it the quantum clap (or whatever it is he's doing) rocks harder than anything ever in the world on a mountain with YYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAARRRRGH!

Fun. Fantastic. Fight.

Regrettable Juvenilia

16:08 / 10.11.04

"I don't think we're seeing Batman here..."

No, he's Goldfish Man: can't you tell? Jeez, Morrison puts a load of amusingly obvious "this is not Batman as people with short memories remember him, but it's still BATMAN" gags in there, and people still say "nope, that's not Batman".

Loved this. Best comic of a great, great week, as someone has already said. I think Morrison is slowly building back up to absolute top form: Seaguy > We3 > JLA Classified, and Seaguy was my favourite Morrison comic in what felt like years...

That page with Batman answering the hotline. The page with Goraiko slapping his hands together. The bitchy Knight/Jack flirting.

The Knight's motorcycle plays 'Pretty Vacant' as he rides into battle: my heart goes BOOM.

i loved the "don't tell my friends at the GCPD" line. translation: "i'm resurrecting an aspect of Batman's character which is embarassing to fans of the grim-n-gritty school of Batman, but fuck them - this is fun!"

Bang on. I loved the ambiguity of whether that line referred to "don't tell them about this situation I've gone off to deal with" or "just don't mention my closet to them, ever".

miss wonderstarr

17:40 / 10.11.04

, inspite of what Kovacs thinks, it seems to me that both Grant's JLA Classified and We3 are very important; at least in terms redefining the formal approach to storytelling in a mainstream book.

Not sure if you have entirely understood me here or if I've slightly misunderstood you -- but for the record I think both are of mild to moderate importance in their approach to storytelling.

Neither is doing more than giving comics narrative a nudge (JLA) and a push (We3) in an interesting and enjoyable direction. And I don't mean that in a negative way at all -- I don't think "more radical" necessarily means "better".

In fact, as the debates over key plot points on its dedicated threads indicate, We3, the slightly more experimental of the two, is less successful at making its details clear and telling its tale effectively; indicating that ground-breaking revolution in narrative -- which I don't think either of these provide -- wouldn't necessarily make for a great comic series.

18:30 / 10.11.04

other fun in this issue:

- Jack O'Lantern's head flames forming a question mark

- Warmaker's "dust-cams" - did anyone get what that means? I sure didn't... the cameras are so good they can spot dust? Or the cams are part-gun, part-camera so they can 'dust' any targets into oblivion...?

- "crushed like autumn leaves in my hands / the bones of
bad monkeys" - FUCKING BRILLIANT!!

- The Knight on zapping Grodd: "See, they have vulnerable area in the brain called...oh, never mind"
= GRANT AS ANTI-ELLIS -- bucking the trend of dropping kewl factoids and research to show how impressive you are as a writer, which ironically enough is a trend Grant was part of, what with his dropping ideas cribbed from New Scientist and other research...

- the ever-luvvin' GLOB!!!! Maybe he says "It's blobberin' time!" ha ha

18:59 / 10.11.04

I thought the Dust cams where SOOO small as to appear to be dust. Billions of them could be dropped from a high distance and then accessed as needed depending on location effectively allowing him to get very good intel.

19:43 / 10.11.04

Neb-uh-Loh says he's part of the Wild Ride -- there's something called The Wild Hunt in Norse mythology (also used by Walt Simonson in his amazing THOR run) that sounds like this...

19:49 / 10.11.04

Cause you know, Nebs is a Huntsman and all.

I created a character called Nebula back in late high school/early college and my old username was Hunter...so I feel extra-warm 'n' fuzzy about Neb-uh-Loh (even though Nebula Man of JLA/Seven Soliders fame was created long before I ever existed, and there was the female Avengers villain called Nebula).

Oh, and good call on the dust-cams, I bet you're right on that.

20:56 / 10.11.04

Batman's smile is more a grimace, I should say.

21:16 / 10.11.04

google "SMART DUST"

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