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JLA Book 5: DC One Million

Table of Contents

Issue One - Riders on the Storm

Okay, here's the scoop: Morrison's got out his pocket calculator, done a bit of dividing by twelve and summing and come to the inevitable arithmetic conclusion that the millionth issue of DC's line of comics are all going to arrive sometime in the 853rd Century. Impatient and mortal sod that he is, however, he can't wait that long, so he's telling the story of DC One Million right now. It's a four issue miniseries written by Morrison springing out of JLA, so I'm including it in these here reviews of Morrison's run on JLA. Deal with it, people.

The 853rd Century version of the JLA have shown up. They're called Justice Legion A and they have a very simple proposal for the present day group. They want them to pop off into the future and perform like circus animals as part of a celebration of the return of the original Superman, who has been inexplicably living in the sun for the last ten thousand years or so. Apparently, senility affects Kryptonians in very different ways.

Supes is a bit taken aback by this, because essentially he's off to honour his own future self. "I don't know whether I should feel schizophrenic or just deeply embarrassed," he says. Additional subtext: 'why don't any of these modern day JLA people show me this kind of respect'. GL and Flash are all for the future jaunt, however, as is Wonder Woman. She, in fact, is of the opinion that they should start holding superhero Olympics in the present, presumably because she knows she'll nail all the women events. She has gold medal fever.

Less enthusiastic is Captain Fish-Head, who is prattling on about how he's royalty and therefore above performing like a circus animal. When nobody pays any attention to this, he changes his mind and agrees to go. Bats, as you'd expect, wants nothin' to do with nothin', and so the future Batman has no choice but to beat him up and make him go.

Over in Northern Mongolia, by the way, the villainous villain Vandal Savage (#3 on the all time list of great supervillain names after Sinestro and Doctor Doom) has procured some nuclear weapons from the Russkies and beaten up the Teen Titans (now well into their thirties) in that order. This is because of the foreshadowing that the city of Montevideo is going to explode in a nukular conflagration in a couple of days time. But that's a problem for another day.

For now, the JLA's off to the future. As soon as they go, however, the robotic Justice Legion A member Hourman is struck down by an autoimmune nanovirus, which, it turns out, will infect all machines and people on Earth within 24 hours. This is part of a nefarious scheme from the future by Vandal Savage (immortality rules OK!) and his co-villain Solaris, the evil computer sun. So Montevideo? Your foreshadowed destruction must wait.

MVP: Future Bats. He beats up 20th Century Bats with 'a martial arts move developed by a telepathic octopus species inhabiting the infooceans of Durla'. Cool enough, right? But as he does so, he also critiques his own dialogue ('and by the time you realise this sentence seems way too long and that the Huntress was right, it'll all be over'). 853rd Century Bats, Renaissance Man.

Issue Two - The Day After Tomorrow

Assume you have a city (eg Montevideo, Uruguay) completely destroyed by nuclear missiles and reduced to rubble. Which superhero would you most want looking into the situation? If you said the Blue Beetle, then you are correct, at least in the frenzied eyes of Mr Grant Morrison. Fortunately, the Justice Legion A show up before Ted can botch up his moment in the (radioactive) limelight and they take over the issue with their futuristic panache.

Of course, I'd like to think it goes without saying that all the 20th Century heroes are opposed to the future heroes. They believe them to be responsible for a) the destruction of Montevideo (not true), b) the virus currently in the process of destroying all of humanity (mostly true) and c) a dazzling new era in crimefighter costumery (highly true indeed). My gist's nub is, of course, that the 20th Century heroes immediately pick a fight with Justice Legion A.

This goes about as well as could be expected, given the 'heroes' I'm referring to are lameass characters such as Firestorm (insanely jealous that future fashion has not followed his startling lead) and Ray (who is named after Ray Romano). The Captain Fish-Head of the future perhaps says it best: "We don't have time to waste in these power workouts. What is it with these pre-stellar creatures." He's as arrogant as our Captain Fish-Head, but with much more justification, given his kickin' trident bindi. He needs no question marks at the end of his sentences. That's soooo pre-stellar.

So we fight for most of the issue, with brief interruptions by The Linear Men (responsible for maintaining the time stream), J'onn (responsible for maintaining an impressively large forehead) and The Atom (responsible for maintaining a, uh, sub-molecular presence in, um, Oracle's bloodstream - ew!). Eventually the issue comes to an end with Vandal Savage making villainously over the top demands (he wants complete control of the world and a reinstatement of Arrested Development to network television) and then firing the defeated Post-Teen Titans (now locked in nuclear-activated Rocket Red suits -- don't ask) at Metropolis.

MVP: Zauriel. He, Barda, Plastic Man and Steel have had the good sense to chill out in the JLA moonbase while the Earth goes to hell with Hourman's virus. To kill time, Zauriel suggests Steel builds a time machine. No tedious games of Pictionary for this angel.

Issue JLA One Million - Prisoners of the Twentieth Century

Okay, I'm sneaking the JLA issue number 1,000,000 into the middle of the four part DC One Million series because that's where it belongs and who am I to argue with Dame Structural Consistency? Anyways, it's another all-fightin' episode with the remnants of the modern day JLA (Zauriel, Barda, Plastic Man and Steel) reacting to the arrival of Justice Legion A in their moonbase with a disappointing lack of hospitality. It's called common courtesy, JLA.

Steel is leader of the last four members of the JLA by virtue of the fact he wears an 'S' on his chest. This is a clearcut, yet easily manipulated alternative to the modern democracy model. And one that works just as poorly. Sure, Plastic Man eats the future Flash and Barda fires a lot of ineffective ray blasts at future Wonder Woman but Justice Legion A is still pretty much doing it in a cakewalk. When a version of Captain Fishhead beats your strongest remaining member by enclosing him in a soap bubble, you know you've got troubles.

Luckily, future Bats and future Supes take pity on the modern day JLA remnants and declare a truce. Steel, canny negotiator that he is, decides to accept - again, primarily because future Supes has that fandangled 'S' on his chest. Let's hope for Steel's sake that the Secret Society of Supervillains don't ever decide to adopt uniforms ("Three S's! You must be the nicest people on Earth!").

Once everybody is friends again, they all pool their collective knowledge to build Solaris (the Tyrant Sun, natch). Why they need to create the 'Galaxy's greatest villain' is left as an exercise for the reader. Something to do with curing the virus that threatens to destroy all of humanity. Of course, if they don't create him, then he won't exist to unleash the virus in the first place. But this is not the time or place to get bogged down in time travel paradoxes. Instead, we close on the cliffhanger of future Bats accusing future Starman of 'betraying the Legion, the System and the Commonwealth of Humanity'. Sounds serious.

MVP: Future Supes. His powers are waning, but he still has sufficient strength to jump to the moon. Sure, his 'Up, up and away' catchcry is cut off by the silent vacuum of space, but does any of us seriously consider losing the super-ventriloquism power a tragedy?

Issue Three - Solaris Rising

So Justice Legion A is up on the moonbase, busily building Solaris the Tyrant Sun. They're all getting irritable with one another as a result of the virus running through their systems and this has resulted in name-calling and hair-pulling. Future Bats, meanwhile, is busily interrogating Future Starman. And by 'interrogating', I mean, of course, 'beating the snot out of', because while he may come from 833 centuries in the future, he's still Batman.

So while they're building and beating, the Atom's actually doing something that doesn't involve creating the Galaxy's greatest villain or punching some lame-ass clown in the head. Namely, he's curing the damn virus. He does this by swimming around in Oracle's brain and punching the virus into submission. So it has, in fact, come back to mindless fisticuffs again. Good stuff. And, also, shame on our non-comic-book real-world doctors for not adopting such medical pugilism.

Elsewhere, Vandal Savage has been infected with the same virus. Y'know, the one he originally helped introduce. So perhaps he's not the great criminal mastermind he's cracked up to be. On the other hand, he does escape the combined forces of Supergirl, Arsenal, Martian Manhunter, Jesse Quick and Captain Fish-Head, Jr. by, uh, running into a sandstorm. So I don't know what to believe there.

While this staggering battle of incompetence goes on, Justice Legion A have finally finished building Solaris. They switch it on with the assistance of future Starman, who has had heroic sense beaten into him. Solaris then sucks everybody's virus out of their body because, lo, it turns out the virus was really just his inherently evil computer program (this is also how Microsoft are developing Windows Vista). But before Solaris can, like, destroy the solar system, Future Starman sacrifices himself to send it across the universe. Presumably it will destroy the solar systems over there instead. But is that Justice Legion A's problem? No, it is not. Let that other solar system get their own immaculately garbed heroes.

MVP: Future Supes (again!). He decides to end this all-punching issue with the most audacious punching effort ever. Sure, Atom may be punching a virus out of Oracle's brain, but Future Supes has decided to punch through the time barrier. Top that, Shorty!

Issue Four - Death Star

Future Supes has decided to punch his way to the future. Enough of traditional time travel theory - that may be fine for puny Earthlings such as Stephen Bloody Hawking, but he's Super-goddamn-man. While he's doing that and ignoring the naysaying of his team mates, the modern day JLA are stuck in the future trying to work out a way to stop the rampage of Solaris, The Tyrant Sun. One way might have been to leave a note in the past on the JLA fridge for Steel and co not to build the Galaxy's Greatest Villain in the first place. But this is no time to dwell on what might have beens.

Instead, Bats has come up with a plan. It's not the greatest one he's ever come up with. Essentially, he's decided Green Lantern should fly into Solaris and make him go supernova. "But won't that cause the destruction of the entire solar system anyway?" seems to be the number one issue the rest of the team have with the plan. "Exactly!" says Bats. "That's why he won't be expecting it." Which, while true, does seem to be taking one's eye off the big picture. Still, he's Batman, so according to JLA bylaws, nobody else is permitted to overrule him.

GL sends Solaris supernova then tries to prevent the destruction of the solar system by enclosing him with a bubble from his ring. (His power ring, people. Let's not be childish.) As you'd expect, such responsibility is beyond him but before he stuffs up and lets the exploding sun out, who should emerge but future Supes! Boo-yah!! Punched his way to the future!! How can you not love this story? He helps GL hold the supernova'ing Solaris in check. But not before Solaris shoots out a kryptonite fragment given to him by Vandal Savage. His target? The original Superman who, as we recall, is lounging around in the sun.

The original Superman from the 20th Century gives chase to the kryptonite fragment lest it kill his future self. But he's too slow. The K hits the sun. Oh no! But wait a moment, it turns out that back in the past, the original JLA has done a bit of sleight of hand. It's not a piece of kryptonite at all. It's another Green Lantern power ring. So the Supes in the sun pops it on and crushes Solaris into a bloody (okay, not bloody - he's a freaking sun!) pulp. Then, amid frenzied cheering, he emerges from the sun, makes out with a robot version of Lois Lane, builds a new version of Krypton and goes to live there. And shoots GL a sly, post-modern wink as he does so. Magnificent stuff - several million out of ten.

MVP: Martian Manhunter. J'onn's survived to the 853rd century, as you'd expect. Sure, he seems to have merged with the soil of Mars for no clear reason, but that hasn't stopped him from overseeing the counter-attack plan. In addition to the Green K-Power Ring switch, he also made sure somebody switched Vandal Savage's teleportation programming so he'd teleport back into, uh, Montevideo just before it was detonated by the nukular Rocket Reds. Oh, J'onn. Your sense of irony is yet to betray you.

Next: Justice For All

Begone,

Indy

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