Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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Table of Contents

• #10 – Genesis and Revelations
• #11 – Hostile Takeover
• #12 – Wonderworld
• #13 – Wasteland
• #14 – Twilight of the Gods
• #15 – Stone of Destiny

Issue Ten – Genesis and Revelations

All rightey then, people. Time to sit up and pay attention, because this is where Morrison really starts to crank it up. You’ve had nine issues of warm-up. It’s now time to hit us with Rock of Ages.

Green Incompetence #1: GL, dude? It's right in front of you.

It’s all to do with some nefarious scheme by the All New Injustice Gang. Lex Luthor’s in charge of this new version and he’s come up with all kinds of zany schemes, from hiring The Joker as his second in command to dressing up the evil satellite headquarters in a kickin’ death’s head theme. Because, y’know, that’s the way to remain inconspicuous.

The main crux of his plan, however, is to attack the Justice League on a ‘business level’ – using techniques more associated with the boardroom to bring them down. To that end, he has signed an exclusivity deal with the Teen Titans and has further cornered the market on lycra and mask glue. Also, he’s sent out an evil solid hologram version of the JLA to wreak all manner of havoc on Star City. This, of course, being how Microsoft took down Netscape in the 90s browser wars.

Yet, madcap as Luthor’s scheme may seem, it still seems to work okay. This may have less to do with its merits than with the sheer incompetence of the League members facing it. For example, Captain Fish-Head is in the thick of it, taking up valuable panels with his useless antics. He tries, for example, a mind probe on his evil counterpart, despite Supes already patiently explaining about their holograminess.

Green Incompetence #2: No more useful than Jennie Garth

Green Arrow also whines a lot about how he can’t shoot an arrow into a superspeed menace - “Why were you hired, GA?!” shouts Bats, furiously. “If we were looking for somebody who couldn’t fire an arrow into a speedster we could have hired, hell, I dunno, Jennie Garth.” Okay, Bats doesn’t say that – he was always more into Party of Five than Beverly Hills, 90210 anyway – but you can tell that’s what he’s thinking. The less said about GL (squabbling with civilians) and Aztek (persevering with his stupid helmet) the better.

MVP: Wonder Woman. She’s dead at this point in continuity, so she doesn’t have to put up with the amateurish antics of the younger JLA members. Well played, Diana.

Issue Eleven – Hostile Takeover

Things start to get even funkier now. While the rest of the JLA is sitting around the meeting table having a chinwag about teleporting sections of ocean and air from one place to another, Bats is actually doing some work. Well, kind of. He’s compiling a database of possible supervillain members of the Injustice Gang. Sounds impressive and gets him out of Supes’ interminable meeting, but surely its a very simple SQL query, isn’t it? I bet he’s just lazing around in the cave, browsing assorted Bat-forums.

Anyway, the teleported water ends up in Los Angeles, so the Green Twins (Green Lantern and Green Arrow) head down to sort that out. GL creates a giant straw to suck the water out. GA, um, shoots an arrow at a shark. Then they’re seduced by the villainess Circe. I don’t think there’s anything surprising in any of that.

Meanwhile, Supes and Martian Manhunter head off into one of those awful hologram satellites that’s just popped up. But it’s a trap. As so many hologram satellites are. Turns out it’s a maze powered by the Joker’s lunacy. Only by shrinking the rational right hand side of the brain and growing the irrational left hand side can MM make his way through the maze. Supes makes a politically incorrect joke about how he could have just changed himself into a woman, but that falls flat, as MM just shoots him a withering glare. Supes then detonates a booby-trapped Michael Buble CD that blows up the satellite and everyone within it (ie him and MM).

God! What a prat!

And Captain Fish-Head? For no good reason, he heads off into a completely different plotline. He’s desperately trying to look cool as Metron of the New Gods bursts into the JLA headquarters and starts rambling about Philosophers’ Stones and Darkseid taking over the cosmos. “I’ve handled cosmic and lived,” says Fish-Head, like the unyielding prat he is. He and Flasheroo abandon this whole Injustice Gang problem and head off to play with Metron.

MVP: Bats. He ‘deduces’ that the Injustice Gang is headed by Luthor and that he’s using boardroom techniques against the JLA. So he calls on the spirit of Bruce Wayne, a master businessman, to fight him on that level. Which is kinda impressive, I suppose. But then, he’s also hired Plastic Man for the team. So I’m not sure exactly how fearsome his business nous really is.

Issue Twelve – Wonderworld

Morrison cranks that notch up one step further. Sure, on one level we’ve got standard kind of shenanigans. Luthor’s teleporting nuclear missiles into the watchtower to freak out that pussy Aztek, he’s signing Green Arrow up as a Junior Vice President of his team while Supes and J’onn escape the exploding satellite from the end of last issue with a combination of pluck and, um, energy absorption.

That’s all well and good. But that’s only about a fifth of the book. The rest of it is crazy, cosmic zaniness as Flasheroo, GL and Captain Fish-Head find their way to Wonderworld – apparently a ‘global fortress [that] traverses the entire spacetime frontier at hyper-temporal speeds’. It is also the ‘worldquarters of the Theocracy, order’s last outpost before the eternal dark’. There they ‘patrol and defend the boundaries of the known Universe. Beyond, there is only the eternal abyss… and the anti-sun’.

Which, y’know, sounds all very cool, like. But then they go and ruin it all by offering a position on their team to Captain Fish-Head and the others. The exact same mistake the JLA made. Apparently, Mageddon, the anti-sun is coming and they must prepare against the terrible-day-that-comes (hyphenated for your convenience).

I am Hourman, also known as the Time Trapper wannabe

This would make sense, if Mageddon, the anti-sun, was a fish. But he’s not. So Captain Fish-Head, Flasheroo and GL head back to Earth to fight the rest of the JLA. For, as part of his wandering about through time and space in between panels of this issue, GL had a chat with Hourman (also known as ‘The Master of Time’, no ego there) who told him that a) Metron’s a smelly liar and b) unless they stop the JLA from defeating the Injustice Gang, Darkseid will conquer the world. And, whaddayaknow, when they get back to Earth, that’s just what he’s done. So that’s a downer.

MVP: Green Lantern. He’s supposed to be traversing space and time, looking for the Philosopher’s Stone. Instead, he spends a few months living in some mansion populated by sex slaves that he concocted with his ring. Way to slack off, GL.

Issue Thirteen – Wasteland

The most startling thing about this particular issue is the cover – a giant Martian Manhunter head. What makes this especially cool is the fact that MM makes no appearance in the issue. Instead we have Captain Fish-Head, Green Lantern and Flasheroo having a bit of a holiday in their fifteen-year-in-the-future bodies.

Joining them is Wonder Woman, the Atom, Amazo, Aztek and, um, Argent (the latter four insist on being called ‘The All New A Team’, a naming scheme that is immediately ignored). The problem, it seems, is that Darkseid has conquered the Earth (as prophesied last issue by Hourman, aka The Greatest Single Thing That Was Ever Made In Time). The heroes are trying to work out how to bring Darkseid down. For some reason, they put Captain Fish-Head in charge.

Darkseid is. He just 'is'. He doesn't deal with adjectives.

As you’d expect, that leadership strategy only lasts until the Bat-dude shows up. He’s spent a fair chunk of the last eight years locked in mental combat with Desaad, Darkseid’s head henchman. This is in stark contrast to whatsisname, Supes, who just turned himself into a rainbow, or some damn thing.

So Bats takes over from Captain Fish-Head, just in time for the arrival of Darkseid. Who is… well, who just is, apparently.

MVP: Green Lantern. The Green Lantern of the present arrived in ‘the vacant mind’ of the Green Lantern of the future. No surprises there, surely.

Issue Fourteen – Twilight of the Gods

So where are we? Well, we’re fifteen years in the future. Darkseid’s conquered the world and has a zombie factory. It’s located on the moon for tax purposes. Argent and Aztek are planning to blow it up, while Bats, Captain Fish-Head, GL, Flasheroo and Wonder Woman go head to head with Darkseid and Metron. Green Arrow and the Atom are lazing about as ‘backup’, an eminently sensible idea.

Here's a punch in the jaw for being such a stupid New God of knowledge

Wonder Woman takes on Darkseid, who has apparently been watching Superman 2 recently and has gone a little bit General Zod, with ‘Kneel before Darkseid’ talk. Well, either Superman 2 or Deep Throat. Meanwhile, Bats has defeated Metron via the difficult to, uh, swallow tactic of daring Metron to give up all his superhuman powers for a second. Unless he’s too ‘chicken’ to do so. Metron is not chicken, and falls for this tactic, so Bats knocks him out for being the stupidest smartest being in the cosmos ever.

So Captain Fish-Head, Flasheroo and GL are sent back to the present to stop Supes from bringing this future into existence. Bats and Wonder Woman therefore decide they might as well die to deliver a sense of imaginary poignancy to the tale. Aztek also blows himself up, which is not so poignant, given his stupid helmet. And then Green Arrow shoots the Atom into Darkseid’s brain where he fries his synapses, much like a tab of acid (urgent anti-drug message, kids!). And Orion, that damn fool, destroys the entire Universe so the time stream can be rebuilt.

MVP: The Black Racer. He narrates the entire issue which is really hard to do when you’re an incarnation of death on skis.

Issue Fifteen – Stone of Destiny

If you haven’t been paying attention up until now, then you’re in deep trouble. And if you have, then even moreso. We’re back in the present, always the most sensible place to live one’s life, and after a quick Hourman recap, we have Luthor’s plan falling completely to shreds.

The Joker’s been replaced by Plastic Man (a fact discovered by Ocean Master in the only thing he’s actually done of any use – clearly, he’s a perfect evil counterpart to Captain Fish-Head), Mirror Master’s switched sides and Green Arrow kinda hasn’t. Also, Supes and Martian Manhunter are throwing rocks at Luthor’s evil satellite. This sounds petty and childish, but they are rocks the size of ‘three Chinese restaurants’. So fair enough, I guess.

Oh no! I've totally, like, burned your hands to a crisp. Um, sorry.

There’s a bit of radio wave nonsense from Dr Light, transmogrifyin’ from Circe and Philosopher’s Stone-wielding from Luthor, but that’s eventually sorted out with the usual brand of fisticuffs. Supes then goes to destroy the Philosopher’s Stone, but instead only succeeds in burning Martian Manhunter’s hands. Not because Supes’ aim is uncharacteristically off, or because he secretly hates J’onn (although he might – I’m not prepared to rule it out). Rather, it’s because J’onn covers the Stone with his hands, because he gets a telepathic summary from GL of the last few issues with the Darkseid and the doomed future and so forth.

Eventually the Joker has a go of the Philosopher’s Stone and undoes all criminal activities committed by the Injustice Gang (this includes Ocean Master’s public nudity) so they’re free to go. Supes is so irritated at this brazen flaunting of the fundamental tenets of justice, that he disbands the entire JLA in protest. What a total sook.

MVP: Green Arrow and Aztek. “You can’t fire us,” is their theme. “We quit two pages ago.”

Next: Strength In Numbers

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