Everybody seems to want to talk about the revelation of
Hal Jordan's alleged menage a trois with
Lady Blackhawk and the
Huntress, as revealed in this week's
Justice League of America: Cry For Boredom. Well, certainly these people don't know their target audience, because there's
no way comic book fans would be interested in
sordid sex details. Nope, we fanboys should focus on what's really important:
idiot costumed heroes throwing their secret identities around like
cocained monkeys on a Twitter binge.We start with
Green Lantern and
Green Arrow hanging on a
Gotham rooftop, being
simultaneously witty and angsty, which can be hard.
Anyway, while meeting with "
Batman's private detective"
Jason Baird...
Right there, out in the open,
in front of a detective for
Oa's sake,
Ollie is dropping Hal's name like it's hot.
Now, to those of you who will say that Green Lantern's secret ID is no big deal, I reply
a) he still wears a mask, and
b) Geoff Johns had Hal's family make a big deal over how important keeping Hal's secret was in
Blackest Night #1. You want to say Geoff Johns is wrong on anything Green Lantern, you'll have 50
kabillion hyper-ventilating fans to deal with.
But wait--it gets
worse. GA and GL have taken down a dozen or so "
B-grade" villains (of course, it happened off-panel, because in this Cry For Boredom mini-series we never,
ever want to see heroes
actually fight villains, when they could just be standing around
pontificating). Anyway,
with a dozen villains within earshot, flying in from off-panel:
That's
Ray Palmer, professional judge of when and when not to be careful with secret identities. And hey, Ray, while we're at it, let's blow
Captain Marvel (Jr)'s secret ID, too:
Yeah, yeah, I know what you're saying: so
what if it's on a public street, all the villains are unconscious.
Wrong...Look at the left hand side of the left panel above.
Javelin is awake!!
Yes, Javelin is a
doofus. But he's also a villain, and within easy earshot as these idiots are name dropping secret identities like nobody's business. And if Javelin is awake, the odds are someone else has retained/regained consciousness, right?
Ollie continues to
blather on, revealing street names while Javelin is watching:
Come.
On.
You know, if we're going to have a mini-series whose
premise is avenging
J'onn J'onzz and preventing crimes, maybe (just maybe) you
shouldn't be giving criminals easy ammo to wipe out more heroes? What are the odds Javelin didn't hear, or keeps his mouth shut? One offer to sell info to
Luthor, and
blam,
Freddy Freeman is done for before he can say his magic word. Hal Jordan's family:
dead. Well played.
Look,
James Robinson, I know it's all
cool and everything to have your heroes palling around on a first name basis, dropping
Bruce and
Ray and
Hal and
Freddy into conversations as often as possible. It makes us feel like they're friends, and by extension our friends. Ah, such sweet and warm sentimentality. And it's nice to backlash against those
Silver Age stories that often seemed to revolve around nothing
BUT protecting secret identities...see, we don''t care, so we're modern and hip.
But again, in a series supposedly about how
vicious and
nasty and
brutal villains are, it doesn't make a lick of sense to have your heroes behaving like first year Yalies who can't stop bragging that they were tapped for
Skull and Bones.
Then again, maybe this series
ain't anything to do about villains, because none have showed up so far. None in issue #1; in this issue
Houngan shows up unconscious (he was beaten up off-panel,
surprise), and the dozen B-listers are beaten off panel. And no trace of an actual
plot, either. But damned if we don't have lots and
lots and
lots of dialogue with heroes worrying whether Bruce liked them, or who got hurt in the past, or what justice means, or...zzzzzz.
PRO-TIP: When you have a 7-issue mini-series, it's not a good sign when the second issue is entitled "
The Gathering." Especially since you're heroes
AREN'T all gathered at the end.
Yay!! A secret code!!
Hey, wait a minute!! That ain't no Buzzin' Bee Code!! You slackers just took plain old Morse Code and relabeled it as something new, and drew some cartoon bees!! What a rip-off!!
You're giving me homework in a comic book?!? No wonder this mag was canceled two issues later...
Yay!! A secret code!!
Hey, wait a minute!! That ain't no Buzzin' Bee Code!! You slackers just took plain old Morse Code and relabeled it as something new, and drew some cartoon bees!! What a rip-off!!
You're giving me homework in a comic book?!? No wonder this mag was canceled two issues later...
