So in this week's "Justice League of America" #31, Dwayne McDuffie gives us the fallout of Hal Jordan's decision to form a splinter team, taking some of the best and the brightest away from Black Canary's JLA because, basically, they haven't done a damned thing but help other superheroes out for 30 consecutive issues.Jordan's new Justice League team has obviously had a huge impact on the DCU, and, oh wait... the part about the Hal Jordan Justice League hasn't actually happened yet.
And it won't for a few months.
So this week's JLA issue gives us a crossover with the James Robinson-written series that was promised when Robinson first returned to DC, except even in this JLA issue, it indicates that the series won't debut until this summer. And how that will mesh with the scheduled Blackest Night event remains to be seen. Though you'd think that whole all-the-dead-DC-guys-coming-back-from-the-dead-with-Evil-Lantern-powers would get in the way of Hal Jordan's ability to hang out with his old pals and make Black Canary feel bad about herself.
So here's Question #1: Do you care about any of this, and if so why? And is it really that hard to schedule comics so they kind of come out somewhere in the same season at least?
This week's "Mighty Avengers" #23 provides a twist ending that I won't spoil, but it's pretty clear that Dan Slott hasn't just cobbled together a random team of Avengers here. It's a team that's analogous to the original Avengers team, basically, and it breaks down something like this:
- New Team = Old Team
- Hulk = Hulk (who is around at the inception, then bounds off to smash stuff elsewhere)
- Hank Pym = Wasp (because that's his new code name and will probably change costumes regularly)
- Stature = Ant-Man/Giant-Man (she grows and shrinks real good)
- Hercules = Thor (talk funny, punches hard, god-like)
- U.S. Agent = Captain America (shield, flag, wings on head)
- Jocasta + Vision = Iron Man (it takes two metallic characters to match the moustachioed egomania of Tony Stark)
Also out this week, "New Avengers" #51, mostly drawn by Billy Tan, but with nine Chris Bachalo pages featuring the where-is-he-now of the CSBG upset hero of the year: Dr. Strange.
Question #3: Don't Billy Tan's pages look really bad when put next to Chris Bachalo's? I actually don't dislike Tan at all -- unlike my colleagues like Chad Nevett, who think that Billy Tan is the reason the world economy is in such disarray -- but putting him next to Bachalo? That's like sprinkling Bacos on your delicious ice cream sundae, right?
