Justice League: The Teasdale Imperative
Dec. 9th, 2020 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI started reading the Justice League International omnibus volume 2
and once again it is and isnt how I remember.
Like, they are saving the world, but they are also being funny about it, and making jokes about how bad the Justice League comics are because the characters are trying too hard to be funny.
I think in my memory I smoothed out the jokes to action ratio so I filled in more fighting between panels.
To be fair though I also remembered and was amused by many of the jokes. There's just a lot of them at once.
Also though: Simon Stagg.
The more I read and remember, the more I think Reverse Flash in the tv show had a defensible point.
This Stagg employs people in a bioweapons division, and when one of them makes a working bioweapon, transmitted in gas form or person to person by bites from the victims, Stagg tests it on whole communities of humans.
And makes it in mass quantities.
Also hides behind the Justice League when this plan goes wrong, without telling them there's huge tanks of bioweapon right there.
And without the extra weird stuff taking control, he'd just have a self replicating bio weapon out in the wild, going person to person in inhabited areas.
Somewhere before that point a responsible time traveller could very reasonably decide to stop him.
Sure it might be a better idea to get him arrested, stabbing is obviously a problem, but you can see where stabbing him would be coming from.
And Stagg blames it all on a rogue employee and as usual gets no consequences.
As bad guys go he's no Luthor but it appears not for want of trying.
This is the time traveller problem: Flash would bever believe it in the tv show.
... so obviously there should be less stabbing and more criminal prosecutions, solve every angle at once.
Still.
ANYway
The other thing that stood out was Doctor Fate - previously a man, Fate is now a hero usually created when a man and a woman join to make a mystically balanced being, but here represented by just the female half. She's super unsure she should be getting into anything like this, but she saves the world anyway. Is good.
But Guy Gardner is a dick about it.
... I mean that barely needs saying, he is defined by that at this point.
Specifically it goes:
GUY: Now lemme get this *straight*... sometimes you're a man... and sometimes you're a woman...? That's disgusting!
DR FATE: *We* like it.
{page 38 in this format}
Which is not great to read.
But everyone is always telling Guy off, calling him an idiot, shutting him down when he's being all kinds of jerk, so whatever side of an argument he is on, the team and the comic is pretty clear it is the wrong one.
Fate is there explaining how she's sometimes a guy and sometimes a woman and sometimes neither, and everyone's reacting by getting Dr Fate's pronouns wrong and being confused, and that dont make much sense if same costume new person is the idea they're stumbling on. They're basically flailing on the idea Dr Fate is trans.
And the one being angry and rude about it is the one everyone else tells off.
That's a little more layered than I'd expect alongside a lot of this.
A lot of the men in this story are kind of... ugh. I mean, the way they treat women disrespects their skills, but also keeps talking about how hot they are and asking them out. Repeatedly. After they say no.
At the end of the issue I just read someone out of uniform is talking to a team mate in a coma
a coma
and he says "An' I tell you what: you come out of this in one piece -- and I'll stop all the crude come ons. Well -- most of 'em, anyway."
She. Is. In. A. Coma.
And the team mate they have entrusted with watching over her
while she is unconscious
is promising to stop sexually harrassing her
mostly
if she wakes up.
That's the way a hero acted in these things.
See this stuff I did not remember, because why keep that? It's not funny, though it thinks it is. It's just really grindingly ugh.
The only upside is the women consistently saying no, nope, stop calling me sweetcheeks, no to dating, I'd rather watch paint dry. The only thing more annoying than them treating women like this is if they'd giggle and like it. But they do not.
So that's something.
... ugh.
I remember from Guy Gardner's own title later the time he got turned into a woman. I can see some of the many reasons they figured that would be both funny and satisfying.
https://www.comixology.co.uk/Guy-Gardner-Warrior-1992-1996-42/digital-comic/519089
I also remember an ooooooold plot bunny where Guy gets to know and care about a woman before he finds out they're sometimes a male team mate. The idea being that once he cares about someone he keeps caring, so he would not in fact be a dick about it if it was that way around. Guess I just re read what I wanted to fix with that one.
The good bits version in my head didnt keep very much of this. I remembered Power Girl getting hit, much angst and woe about that soon, some depowering. But a lot of the chatter is not so amusing later.
Honestly the funniest bit was Beetle falling asleep on Booster and snoring on his way towards danger.
... well he said he was asleep...
None of the ways men treat women are worth remembering
but the women all get stuff to do and take turns saving their team mates.
That bit I remembered.
and once again it is and isnt how I remember.
Like, they are saving the world, but they are also being funny about it, and making jokes about how bad the Justice League comics are because the characters are trying too hard to be funny.
I think in my memory I smoothed out the jokes to action ratio so I filled in more fighting between panels.
To be fair though I also remembered and was amused by many of the jokes. There's just a lot of them at once.
Also though: Simon Stagg.
The more I read and remember, the more I think Reverse Flash in the tv show had a defensible point.
This Stagg employs people in a bioweapons division, and when one of them makes a working bioweapon, transmitted in gas form or person to person by bites from the victims, Stagg tests it on whole communities of humans.
And makes it in mass quantities.
Also hides behind the Justice League when this plan goes wrong, without telling them there's huge tanks of bioweapon right there.
And without the extra weird stuff taking control, he'd just have a self replicating bio weapon out in the wild, going person to person in inhabited areas.
Somewhere before that point a responsible time traveller could very reasonably decide to stop him.
Sure it might be a better idea to get him arrested, stabbing is obviously a problem, but you can see where stabbing him would be coming from.
And Stagg blames it all on a rogue employee and as usual gets no consequences.
As bad guys go he's no Luthor but it appears not for want of trying.
This is the time traveller problem: Flash would bever believe it in the tv show.
... so obviously there should be less stabbing and more criminal prosecutions, solve every angle at once.
Still.
ANYway
The other thing that stood out was Doctor Fate - previously a man, Fate is now a hero usually created when a man and a woman join to make a mystically balanced being, but here represented by just the female half. She's super unsure she should be getting into anything like this, but she saves the world anyway. Is good.
But Guy Gardner is a dick about it.
... I mean that barely needs saying, he is defined by that at this point.
Specifically it goes:
GUY: Now lemme get this *straight*... sometimes you're a man... and sometimes you're a woman...? That's disgusting!
DR FATE: *We* like it.
{page 38 in this format}
Which is not great to read.
But everyone is always telling Guy off, calling him an idiot, shutting him down when he's being all kinds of jerk, so whatever side of an argument he is on, the team and the comic is pretty clear it is the wrong one.
Fate is there explaining how she's sometimes a guy and sometimes a woman and sometimes neither, and everyone's reacting by getting Dr Fate's pronouns wrong and being confused, and that dont make much sense if same costume new person is the idea they're stumbling on. They're basically flailing on the idea Dr Fate is trans.
And the one being angry and rude about it is the one everyone else tells off.
That's a little more layered than I'd expect alongside a lot of this.
A lot of the men in this story are kind of... ugh. I mean, the way they treat women disrespects their skills, but also keeps talking about how hot they are and asking them out. Repeatedly. After they say no.
At the end of the issue I just read someone out of uniform is talking to a team mate in a coma
a coma
and he says "An' I tell you what: you come out of this in one piece -- and I'll stop all the crude come ons. Well -- most of 'em, anyway."
She. Is. In. A. Coma.
And the team mate they have entrusted with watching over her
while she is unconscious
is promising to stop sexually harrassing her
mostly
if she wakes up.
That's the way a hero acted in these things.
See this stuff I did not remember, because why keep that? It's not funny, though it thinks it is. It's just really grindingly ugh.
The only upside is the women consistently saying no, nope, stop calling me sweetcheeks, no to dating, I'd rather watch paint dry. The only thing more annoying than them treating women like this is if they'd giggle and like it. But they do not.
So that's something.
... ugh.
I remember from Guy Gardner's own title later the time he got turned into a woman. I can see some of the many reasons they figured that would be both funny and satisfying.
https://www.comixology.co.uk/Guy-Gardner-Warrior-1992-1996-42/digital-comic/519089
I also remember an ooooooold plot bunny where Guy gets to know and care about a woman before he finds out they're sometimes a male team mate. The idea being that once he cares about someone he keeps caring, so he would not in fact be a dick about it if it was that way around. Guess I just re read what I wanted to fix with that one.
The good bits version in my head didnt keep very much of this. I remembered Power Girl getting hit, much angst and woe about that soon, some depowering. But a lot of the chatter is not so amusing later.
Honestly the funniest bit was Beetle falling asleep on Booster and snoring on his way towards danger.
... well he said he was asleep...
None of the ways men treat women are worth remembering
but the women all get stuff to do and take turns saving their team mates.
That bit I remembered.