Justice League America #81, October 1993

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Before you ask, no, I do not intend to play the new Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League video game. I have no desire to play a villain who kills heroes like Superman, and, frankly, I'm a little disturbed that Warner Bros thinks there is enough money to be made by people who do have such a desire that they allowed such a game to be made.

I am willing to concede that there are some people the world would be better without. I recognize there is a role in human society for people who are willing to execute those people. Although I believe a strong ethical argument can be made against it and a perfect world wouldn't need it, capital punishment has its place in what passes for modern "civilization."

As a fan of crime movies and video games, I am also willing to admit that watching a nefarious ne'er-do-well pay the ultimate price for his misdeeds can sometimes be a thrill in a story well told. But that's not because I enjoy seeing people die; it's because I believe in justice. Crime doesn't pay, and villains should never win.

I shouldn't need to say this, but Superman isn't a villain.

Maybe Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has some great gameplay mechanics and stunning graphics. But any story that warps the Man of Steel into a selfish monster deserving of execution is not one that I want to read, much less play. That's not a game; that's a tragedy.

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I like to think I know a lot about comics, and this sure seems like something I should have been aware of before now.

"Superman Jr." (drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and inked by Dick Giordano) is from the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide, where it is accompanied by the following description:

SUPER JRS. give licencees the opportunity to use pint-sized versions of DC's most popular heroes, including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Robin, and Flash! All have been transformed into the most loveable and huggable mini-heroes you've ever seen!

I mean, yeah, like everyone else, I knew there were Lil' (Justice) Leaguers who have occupied their own corner of the DC Multiverse — Earth-42, 'natch — since 2008. For some reason I assumed that the Lil' Leaguers had been inspired mainly by the popularity of the late-1980s X-Babies comics, an adorably alternate-reality version of the best-selling X-Men from DC's chief competition, Marvel Comics. As it turns out, those 2008 characters were more likely descended from the only Super Jrs. comic appearance: The Best of DC Special #58 digest-sized comic in December 1984.

The really weird part is that 1984 story had actually been created seven years earlier for a format nearly twice the size! According to October 2014 issue of Back Issue magazine — which also includes a list of all known Super Jrs. licensed products — the Super Jrs. were originally developed (by Tom DeFalco, Vince Squeglia, and Kerry Grandenetti) to be used in a DC treasury-sized comic book in 1977 as the first in a whole series of Super Jrs. comics. But the treasury edition line was canceled, and DC instead decided to shop the Super Jrs. characters around for a cartoon series that never materialized, finally printing the comic in '84 to give the digest series a "new" Christmas story.

(I find the Super Jrs. an interesting contrast to DC's Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, also a kid-friendly take on DC's Justice League of America characters — the Zoo Crew began as "Just'a Lotta Animals" — created in the early 1980s as a cartoon pitch only to become a comic series in 1982 yet doesn't appear in that Style Guide. Did the Zoo Crew perhaps have a different licensing agreement?)

Anyway, that 1982 Style Guide entry up there is for a character created in 1977, licensable for a television cartoon that never happened, and who wouldn't see print until 1984. In hindsight, I've certainly seen the cover of that Style Guide before, and I must have confused the Super Jrs. with the likes of Superbaby (first appearing in 1948) or any of the many Superboys or even the several Sons of Superman (some more imaginary than others). But no, it turns out Super Jrs. are their own thing.

Aren't comic books great?

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Welcome to June, the 16th annual Wriphe.com Superman Month, this year with 100% less Superman!

As it happens, DC Comics killed off Superman (again!) in last month's Justice League #75. It's an especially bad bit of timing; most days it feels like 2022 has just been one disaster after another.

Wonder Twins #12 (2020)

Maybe not, but a little x-ray vision would go a long way.

I figure things will have to be better by this time next year. That's about how long anyone stays dead in comic books, and the world sure could use a Superman.

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My hope that 2021 would be better than 2020 didn't last a whole week. Blech.

I uploaded this page from Justice League Unlimited #17 (2005) to my comic book blog, Boosterrific.com, on Monday. I liked it then. I like it more now.

Hold tight, Sam.

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from Justice League of America #113 (1974)

Three things.

Thing 1: The Freedom Train was a real thing designed to unite America against the dawning Cold War. Ironically, the train was forced to bypass several cities because they refused to allow black and white people on the train at the same time. (In this comic, the train will be hijacked by the villainous Wizard, who only wants it to prove to his Injustice League pals that he's good at stealing trains.)

Thing 2: That's some weird perspective in the second panel. John Adams was 5 feet 7 inches tall. Thomas Jefferson was 6' 2". Adams must have been standing on his soap box.

Thing 3: It's funny to think that the self-righteous John Adams is just being a dick, but the "improvement" he's talking about is the phrase "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," which was added after that first comma as one of many revisions the Continental Congress made to the declaration draft that Thomas Jefferson unveiled on June 28, 1776.

The daily minutes of the first Continental Congress for June 28-July 4 do not indicate who was responsible for adding the phrase. Popular opinion points to New Jersey delegate John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration. Witherspoon was at the time the president of Princeton, and just before joining the Congress, he made a big splash with a sermon titled "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men." The movie 1776 gives him credit, which is good enough for me.

For the record, since this seems to be that kind of year, Witherspoon owned slaves. So did both good ol' Tom Jefferson (who often took his to bed) and, believe it or not, Benjamin Franklin (who did eventually change his mind and argue for universal emancipation). Of the four Founding Fathers mentioned in this post, the only one who never owned slaves was the self-righteous dick, John Adams. Give 'em hell, Johnny!

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Powerless is DC Comics' latest television show on NBC. Unlike the teen soap-opera dramas crowding the CW lineup, this one's a situation comedy, a cynical workplace lampoon similar to Fred Savage's late-90s Working. Fresh-faced Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) is the newly hired straight woman setting up punchlines for by a fantastic cast of comedians led by Alan Tudyk (Suburgatory), Danny Pudi (Community), and Ron Funches (Undatable), among others.

The series (at least the pilot episode) was tooled to long-time DC Comics fans like me. Many fan reviews online claim the show is a DC version of Marvel's Damage Control comics, but that's not quite fair. For decades, one of the biggest differences between the Marvel and DC comic universes was the way the general public responded to super heroes. Marvel citizens lived in distrust and fear, while DC citizens tended to embrace their supermen (at least until DC saw how much money they were losing at the box office to Marvel movies and made their worlds much, much darker places to live). The characters in this sitcom are definitely old school DC denizens, the sort who would be employed by Hero Hotline.

If you're the sort of person who has heard of Damage Control and Hero Hotline, this show is aimed squarely at you. Since the series takes place inside a four-color comic book world, characters are bright, and reminders of DC's enormous cast of heroes and villains are dropped early and often. A heavy emphasis is placed on the trappings of Batman comics — which only makes sense given that Batman has been DC's best seller for going on thirty years. But that's not really the good stuff. This is the good stuff:

Look! It's Starro the Star Conqueror, the first Justice League villain, making a throwaway cameo appearance! Starro is essentially a giant purple space starfish who mind-controls heroes to do his bidding by putting tiny clones of himself on their faces. That's the Silver Age of comics in a nutshell, a generation better suited to comedy than dour Zack Snyder action films (which, frankly, aren't suitable for anything).

The Powerless pilot also references such minor DC characters as the Global Guardians' Jack O'Lantern and Justice League Europe's Crimson Fox, neither of which is exactly a household name even among people who consider themselves DC Comics fans. Most of these references are used as setups for punchlines, but it's still a pretty niche market.

Unfortunately, Powerless dedication to aging comic book fans may mean it's not long for broadcast television. The pilot only attracted about a million viewers. That's not a good start. TV By The Numbers gives the show a 50/50 chance of making it past May, which is a shame. Even Working got three seasons.

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Six Flags Over Georgia has blown the doors off entertainment by announcing their new ride for 2017, Justice League: Battle for Metropolis! Riders will get to help Batman and the Justice League chase down and defeat an animatronic Joker.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes it thusly:

"Riders will travel in six-passenger vehicles on a track through rooms in the 'Hall of Justice,' but the motion of the vehicle allows them to enter into a 3-D and even 4-D world."

To be clear, the park isn't in Flatland. Any rider who can ride this ride exists in a 3D world with length, width, and depth. I would think that anyone writing for a major metropolitan newspaper would know that. Clark Kent sure does. (As for a "4-D world," if you can't figure out what a 3D world is, I don't think I care to hear your theory of either spacetime or Euclidean geometry.)

To give credit to Six Flags, that statement wasn't in the original press release. The press release was much more interested in promoting the ride as "debuting one of the world's best innovative and interactive attractions" for the park's 50th anniversary.

That's an interesting use of the word "debut." Identical versions of the ride are already operational at Six Flags Great America and Six Flags Over Texas, with other copies planned for Six Flags Great Adventure and Six Flags Magic Mountain in 2017. What better way to celebrate 50 years in business than to providing the exact same shitty experience as you can get a half dozen other parks!

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The annual Superman Celebration returns to Metropolis, Illinois this weekend. Scheduled guests include three Jimmy Olsens: Marc McClure from Superman: The Movie, Michael Landis from Superman: Lois and Clark, and Mehcad Brooks from the current Supergirl show on CBS The CW. That's a lot of Jimmies! Too bad the real Jimmy Olsen didn't live to see this. (Rest in Peace Jack Larson.)

Also dropping by is Peter Facinelli (just $20 for a photo op!). He plays Justice League founder Max Lord on Supergirl, but he's no doubt best known for his participation in the Twilight movies. It might be interesting to see how the Twilight and Superman fan bases overlap. Sparkle, sparkle!

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It was announced last week that the upcoming (2016!) Batman and Superman movie has a title. And it's terrible.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

The two characters are household names. They've made a movie called Superman and a movie called Batman. Both of those moves were huge successes. That's why we're getting a film about the formation of the Justice League of America that uses the names of two of its founding members and an unwieldy subtitle. I wonder if Warner Brothers thought that Marvel was making a mistake calling their movie The Avengers instead of Iron Man v Captain America: Destroy New York?

Perhaps the studio felt compelled to squeeze a subtitle in there so that they could make more Batman v Superman movies. Hollywood knows that people are stupid and easily confused, we need some way to differentiate all the Batman v Superman movies that Warner hopes to stuff down our throats:

Batman v Superman: Darkseid of the Moon
Batman v Superman: Luthor's Big Day Out
Batman v Superman: Et Cetera
Batman v Superman V

Besides the title's ham-fisted pretentiousness, I don't even like what it is suggesting. Was there was no justice before Batman fought Superman? Was one or both of the characters so out of line that they needed a good beating from the other to find the moral path?

Ugh. None of that sounds like something I want to see. If I'm in the mood to see an amoral Superman in a fight, I'll turn on my VCR to watch Christopher Reeve fight himself in Superman III again.

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