Michael Bair

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

This volume of JSA by Geoff Johns (where every story is co-written by David Goyer, but I guess he doesn't rate) collects two story arcs from the main JSA comic and also the graphic novel JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice and then some other stuff. What I am realizing is that I don't really care for Johns's approach to this book. First we have the seemingly obligatory storyline about a new Injustice Society, which like a lot of Geoff show more Johns stuff, is full of seemingly gratuitous violence in order to prove the situation is serious: he invents a whole Chicago superteam just to torture and brutally murder them, there's an evil Flash who runs through kids so fast they explode. It's just like... it's juvenile, and I don't read superhero comics to read about kids being murdered. I found it very hard to care.

The second big storyline is about a trip to Thanagar to resurrect Hawkman. I did really like Hawkworld, but Johns ignores any of its interesting complexities in favor of a melodramatic sub-Darkseid villain and a subplot about how a teenage girl just needs to give in and be romanced by an eighty-year-old man for the good of the universe.

This book isn't totally unlikeable. In between those two storylines, there's a decent done-in-one that gives us some much-needed character focus, and actually the Our Worlds at War tie-in issue was pretty good too. And I also enjoyed the Secret Files & Origins issue that leads into Virtue and Vice, as well as the early parts of Virtue and Vice itself. When Johns (and Goyer) want to write these characters hanging out and talking about things, they do a decent job... but it seems they rarely do. If you compare this to the characterful and deft way that Len Strazewski wrote the last JSA ongoing, this just doesn't compare; I have very little sense of these people as, well, people. Like I said, Virtue and Vice starts good, but it soon becomes Yet Another Apocalyptic Battle with huge masses of people dying violently... which I am sure will promptly never be mentioned again. I also don't care much for stories where heroes are mind-controlled to be evil, especially if they promptly become stupid.

Some other thoughts: I think Secret Files & Origins and Virtue and Vice are included out of sequence; suddenly Mr. Terrific is JSA chair, and Stargirl is living in Metropolis, and Captain Marvel is a member, and there's a new Hourman who I don't think is the new Hourman from the previous book. None of these things have happened in the actual JSA series yet. It amused me that suddenly Green Arrow is alive again, so he has to contend with the fact that Black Canary has moved on romantically since his death. Virtue and Vice had some good President Luthor stuff. The way the heroes swap places with the statues in the Rock of Eternity is pretty neat.

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I had honestly forgotten I'd already read this years ago (Really, over a decade ago? Wow...) until I came to Goodreads to add it. Luckily, I had also forgotten the plot so it was like reading it for the first time again. This really is a fantastic plotline about how superhero secret identities are meant to protect the heroes' loved ones. So when someone starts attacking and threatening them, the DC heroes declare war to find the perpetrator.

Reading this again with a different eye, I still show more loved the story but found parts of it very problematic. For one, it focused almost exclusively on male superheroes - no women heroes had their family members targeted. Given who the murderer was, it sort of made sense, but still seemed very skewed. It never really showed a women hero worrying about a loved one, as if that protective instinct was only reserved for men, though there were two panels showing Dinah and Zatanna standing at their fathers' graves. Meltzer could very well have had a brief scene of Barbara calling her dad; instead, we get a flashback of her getting shot by the Joker.

It's hard to reconcile a really powerful storyline with the paternalistic undertone. The story is supposed to make the reader feel uncomfortable, though I'm not sure this is a facet that the author had intended. While Dinah and Zatanna had major parts to play in the plot, they were never a POV character - and it was an odd choice to make Ollie Queen one, I thought.

A good -- if problematic -- read. show less

One of my very favourite graphic novels, and perhaps my very favourite super hero team-up or event book of all time. Meltzer's ability to quickly get me inside the heads of the myriad of characters -- both ones I was familiar with from before and the many I was not -- and to feel their emotions and think their thoughts is quite impressive. Especially considering how often the narrative hops back and forth between different viewpoints. Morales' artwork is fantastic -- pretty, exciting and show more most importantly, deeply emotional when it needs to be. Which is often, in this story.

I first bought this comic on a whim, needing something to read on a 4 hour boat ride. I'm not ashamed to say I teared up several times there in my seat, reading this. It's not often a Justice League comic makes you cry, let alone multiple times, but this one did. I've re-read it twice since then, and while the emotional impact is of course somewhat muted upon revisiting, my eyes got distinctly moist at several points even during the third read-through. It's that effective.

"Identity Crisis" is a murder mystery, a conspiracy thriller, a character drama, and a super hero action adventure, all rolled into one, and even upon finishing it, it's tough to know which it is more. What it most definitely is, is a loving dive into DC's many fantastic characters, and -- almost incidentally -- tribute to the Silver Age comics that somehow simultaneously makes the darker, modern incarnations all the more compellingly flawed and conflicted. And what it is most of all is a story about love, and grief, and relationships. And if you know the names of more than five DC characters (which you do. You know you do. Even if you've only ever seen one of the movies, you know the names of three characters from "Superman" alone.), I think you'd enjoy reading this. show less

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

When I read JSA Classified, the story where Wildcat goes to Gotham and bumps into Catwoman indicated there was a history between these two characters... one I knew nothing about! So I did some research and that brought me to this collection, which contains the four-issue Catwoman vol. 1 miniseries from 1989.This is basically "Catwoman: Year One" in all but name. It runs in parallel to Batman: Year One, showing how Selina show more Kyle decided to become Catwoman after being inspired by Batman, and how being Catwoman let her escape from her life as a prostitute and rescue both her fellow prostitute and ward, Holly Robinson, and her sister, who is now a nun named Sister Magdalene.

The Wildcat content is pretty small. Basically, Selina bumps into Flannery, a cop in the vice department who advises she protect herself from her abusive pimp and recommends a guy named Ted to her. Ted appears a bit in the first two issues, training Selina in how to fight and teaching her how to use her whip. Honestly, he comes across as a bit sleazy but ultimately well-intentioned. And then that's it; he doesn't appear in issues #3 or 4, though it's one of those issues where we finally learn his last name is "Grant" and thus that he's the JSA's Wildcat. In the then-current post-Crisis timeline, this would be many decades after the JSA had to retire from superheroics because of Congressional interference, and a couple years before their first encounter with the new JLA would bring them back into action. So I guess for those forty years, Ted Grant just worked in some sleazy gyms... which, you know, I buy. I will have to see if future stories featuring Ted and Selina make more explicit use of Ted's identity as Wildcat.

Other than that, this is a solid story, albeit one very much of its time. That's not a criticism per se, but this is definitely right out of the gritty-but-without-being-gruesome Batman aesthetic birthed by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli in Year One and continued into other stories of the time like Shaman, Venom, and Night Cries; it's little surprise to see that it was edited by Denny O'Neil, because it was a vibe he was cultivating all over the place at the time. If you like that vibe, it's one of its more effective examples. Writer Mindy Newell effectively takes what could be kind of an awful twist on Selina from Year One (making her into a prostitute) and uses that to launch a character who feels like a meaningful person. I appreciated the fleshing out of her supporting cast with both Holly and Magdalene; giving Catwoman two people she's working on behalf of stops her from feeling like an out-and-out villain. (Holly Robinson will go on to have big role in Catwoman vol. 3, as I recall, but I'm not sure what becomes of Sister Magdalene in future stories.)

J. J. Birch and Michael Bair are strong artists, capturing the Year One aesthetic without feeling derivative, and there's some great coloring from the ever-capable Adrienne Roy. I really like 1980s coloring, and this book's noir stylings are particularly suited for it.

My edition is from 1992; I would guess it was collected (in this case by Warner Books, not by DC itself) in order to have a Catwoman-related product in bookstores when Batman Returns came out. Since then, DC seems to have let it go out of print... which is weird, given DC's love of having "Year One" collections. Thirty years later, why haven't they rereleased this as Catwoman: Year One with a more legible cover?

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