Romancing The Stone: Oh, It Doesn't Matter What You Wear...

Justice League of America # 249
Written by Gerry Conway
Art by Luke McDonnell, Bill Wray & Gene D'Angelo
Published by DC Comics

This is a little bit of an arranged situation. Perhaps somewhat like and arranged marriage or being set up by a matchmaker. I, on my own, would not have even thought, "Hmmmm....let me check out some comics from the 80s - wait! Let me specifically read some Justice League of America from the 80s!"

I tell you why at first glance I would normally say no. Let's face it - I'm shallow. I judge a book by its cover. And I would clearly read the "Justice League of America" title, see the super hero costumes (although, due to the "hook" of this cover - dying, aged superheroes reaching out for help - I might not know they were super-heroes. Might. Oh, who am I kidding. The red and blue old man has a mask on.) I'm just not much for super-hero comics.

The second reason that I normally would have turned away from this comic is the newsprint. I just have a visceral reaction to it - I don't like to hold it in my hands, for some reason. And I don't like the way color looks on it. I feel like colored pictures on newsprint always looks dirty. (Actual dirty, not porn-dirty.)

So, yeah. It's all about how the comic looks sometimes, and that would have kept me from reading it.  

But I wanted to try something different this week, I wanted to go out on a weird, funny date. I wanted to do something like this, so I flipped through a stack of these kinds of comics, and looked at the covers and this one called out to me. I mean that seriously. She (Gypsy, I found out) is literally calling out to the reader "Help Me..." and reaching her hand forward. There's no "fourth wall" here. It's got that whole "If you don't read this comic book, I'll DIE!!" vibe going on. Everybody's laying there, all of her friends are strewn about, also aging and/or dying, and they've all fallen into a giant spotlight! I know that it's just to make a striking cover and not to be realistic--and it works. So cute.  

And well, you know what else? I am COMPLETELY CHARMED by this comic book! Is it crazy that I love it? It's probably because it was very similar in writing to that of the superhero cartoons when I was a kid. I think that's okay, right? I mean, comic books once WERE for kids, and its cool that they aren't anymore, I guess everybody knows what they're doing, but this seems like a pretty fun way to do them too. Its not to salacious, it hits upon some universal themes, like being afraid of dying before it's time to die. That's pretty universal. That can be a fun ride.

The most enjoyable part to me, though, is that it's sort of an Encyclopedia Brown format. (Okay, I haven't actually read one of those in a long time, but the Encyclopedia Brown format as I remember it.) Meaning - we have a mystery! And it's a mystery where the reader is in on the inside track. We "get it" before they do, and we are rooting for the characters to all wake up and realize what's going on. Well, they don't wake up in time, and instead, my favorite thing happens. There is a wonderfully creative explanation for why exactly "Junior" (who looks like a gigantic potato that's been under the sink for a year) has something to do with all of our heroes losing their marbles and aging. But it's told to us as a discovery by "The Martian Manhunter" and his computer. The computer has a whole history of some previous (and unknown) Superman story that puts it all together.  

If you've kept up with me for a while, you'll know that I love magic realism. But only when it really works for the story, when there's some wonderful way it all ties up. I think it's why I love Mouseguard, because Mouseguard is telling an epic story that cleverly connects animal nature to the story's characters and revealing something to us about human nature. And while Mouseguard is more straight fantasy than it is magic realism, it hits me in a similar place. But when these things don't work, when they don't hit, I find myself resenting them. I LOVED the new Battlestar Galactica. I didn't really feel the final episodes were their best, but as a "whole thing", I thought it was pretty great. And yet, when I tried Lost, I couldn't get into it at all. There were just too many loose ends and storylines and very little concrete explanation that worked for me, and I gave up before I was halfway through the first season. It didn't hit, and the near-miss irritated me. 

Why say all this? I'm not sure. I found the Justice League's device for explaining what was happening in the comic, the solving of the mystery, to be very satisfying. It's kind of silly that the computer tells stories dramatically through the use of camera angles it could never have access to, and it's so incredibly tidy and concise that you wonder why nobody thought to check the computer earlier, but it's still so lovely and perfect. And besides that, just because the mystery is solved, you still have to ask: is it too late for our heros?!?!!? It's a perfect cliffhanger because the question "what is happening" ends in a way that forces the question "so what happens next?"

Other things of note in this comic are that there are two other plots introduced. I sort of loved how they were handled, just getting their one or 2 pages and then - that's it! There's no confusing back-and-forth between plots and subplots. It's more like a commercial break in the main story to bring you a teeny bit of a subplot. It was pretty cute. One of them even started with "Begin Interlude" and concluded with "End Interlude."

It's hard for me to comment on the art. It's so different from today's comic book art. And, although I did not grow up reading comic books, I grew up in the 80s and so I feel like I might have seen something like this. For whatever reason, this looked like what I think of when I think "super-hero comic books. That's neither an insult or a compliment. I just don't have a critical eye for it at all, except to say that I enjoy a lot of today's art more than this. But I also think that has a lot to do with the newsprint, which I still kind of dislike. 

All in all, this is a completely enjoyable read. It was a bit quaint, and maybe a bit silly, but I didn't feel like I was making fun of it when I was reading it. It felt like I was looking at something that was very special once, and while time had moved past whatever that specialness was, a part of it still remained. I don't know if I would return to something like this. I wonder if a larger investment of time might ruin my experience or deepen it. I can't tell. I just know that I don't regret it, and if I remember it--which is never a guarantee--I believe I will do so fondly.

-Nina Stone, 2010

Comments

[Diabolu Frank]

I run a Justice League Detroit blog, so I'm well versed in the pleasure/pain that comes with reading their short run. Pretty much everything south of #246 is lousy with ethnic/cultural stereotypes and bad-bad/so-bad-it's-good junk, until the pleasantly mundane stuff/subplots kick in. The Junior story was resolved in the following issue, with an epilogue that led into a self-contained four part epic nightmare involving a reality warping alien infesting Gotham City with demonic manifestations. The subplots return in #255, in a freaky weird hot mess of teenage runaways, techno-molestation, mystical cults, and trippy metaphysics that bows out in #257. The final four issues are the best of the lot, with the group struggling through existential angst and a disfigured psycho killer picking the team off one by one.

[mateo]

I have this issue, and remember it fondly. I have to say, I found this review more interesting than the reviews you do of modern stuff. The current books are aimed at adults, and there should (emphasis: should) be something out there that an adult can enjoy. But countless comic fans still read and love these old books, which truly were aimed at children. I am interested what a smart, uninvested adult like you finds/thinks while taking a look at these old books. Can you find anything that justifies the fondness comic fans have for these artifacts? I like the idea of you finding out.

As an adult (intelligence debatable) I still like these old books (even if I rarely revisit them), and I LOVE the old newsprint, but how much of that is just base nostalgia? I'll leave it to you to let me know.