26/9 The Multiversity annotations Pt 4

Part Four

LIBRARY artefact #027

THE JUST #1

The Just is my favourite of the Multiversity books and the one I felt had something new to offer so-called ‘cape fiction’.

I wanted to do something with the new generation of DC heroes that was created in the 1990s, at a time of innovation and experimentation. These younger takes on old favourites should have replaced the previous generation, as the superheroes of the Silver Age replaced their Golden Age counterparts, but a growing Silver Age nostalgia and a desire to reinstate old ‘classic’ favourites for an aging audience proved too compelling. This left many of the ‘90s new generation of characters without a direction and I wanted to explore that feeling – the grown-up Teen Titans inherited a future with no room for them!

I based the rhythm of this issue on a typical episode of The Hills, a popular reality show that ran from 2006 to 2010 and depicted the spoilt, glamorous and generally vapid lives of a coterie of Beverley Hills uber brats.

From The Hills’ bag of tricks, I borrowed the helpful chyrons/captions explaining who everyone was in relation to everyone else and where they were meeting. The rapid turnover of short, intensely emotive encounters and the elliptical dialogue that always reads like we came into a scene a few moments too late, are direct influences from the show.

Lena Dunham’s Girls also contributed a little to the cynical flat tone and the ‘privileged young millennials’ feel.

With the ‘90s very much in mind, I also wanted to reference the mighty Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross which told its own ground-breaking story of a dangerous new generation of super-youths back in 1996; Ben Oliver’s beautiful painted artwork provided the call back to Kingdom Come’s lushly rendered pages that we were looking for.

I felt that this comic was the most contemporary and exciting to write of the bunch.

As I’ve said, The Just felt for me like a genuinely new way of doing superhero books and I could have written this comic forever – doing endless brief soap opera scenes and non-sequitur conversations, mishaps, blow-ups, pointless non-stories about super kids with nothing to do. I think readers would be absolutely hooked on a well-done satirical superhero book like that, in the same way the Kardashians have managed to engage people in watching and participating in void activity for over a decade and still going…

The cover was designed to resemble a typical supermarket celebrity mag. I imagined a whole series of The Just with this kind of approach – just endless rambling soap opera rearrangements of the same plot elements; who’s with who, who’s breaking up, who’s breaking down, who’s bouncing back…etc..

Sister Miracle is a new character. I saw her as the daughter of Shilo Norman, (the third Mister Miracle after Scott Free and Thaddeus Brown), who had appeared briefly as a child in the Mister Miracle issues of my Seven Soldiers series.

Megamorpho, daughter of Rex Mason AKA Metamorpho the Element Man and his romantic interest Sapphire Stagg, was created for this story.

Ray Palmer, the original Atom, appears here for the simple reason that he was de-aged to an 18-year old in the ‘90s when he led an iteration of the Teen Titans. I figured he’d be of an age with the young leads in this.

Damian Wayne is Batman’s son with Talia Al Ghul and while variations on a Luthor’s Daughter character have appeared in previous stories, Alexis Luthor here is a distillation of all those versions.

Chris Kent (Lor-Zod) is the short-lived son of General Zod, adopted by Clark Kent and Lois Lane, who served briefly as a next gen Superman beginning in Action Comics #844, before the more successful, bisexual Jon Kent took over recently. He and Damian are the only characters from the 2000s.

The ‘toyetic’ appearance of the 5th dimensional gun echoes the design of the ‘hyperpoon’ used by Klyzyzk Klzntplkz, the Superman of the 5th dimension in All-Star Superman issue #5  - the use of an All Star Superman prop may seem to violate the all-‘90s rule of The Just – but the gun is 5-dimensional and exists outside spacetime so of course it can easily show up here from the future!

Offspring was introduced by Mark Waid and Frank Quitely in Offspring #1 - a spin off from Kingdom Come follow up The Kingdom – as the son of Plastic Man Eel O’Brien. Naturally I liked the unspoken implications of a relationship between two young people who could radically transform their shapes!

Offspring talks here about the previously mentioned ‘Essential Genocide’ crossover series. In issue #1 of The Multiversity we saw the real-world outcome on Earth-7 of what is just a comic book story on Earth-16.

More ‘90s characters get cameos in the gallery scene including Max Mercury and a bunch of also-rans even I can’t be bothered trying to remember!

Harlequin is inspired by the Alex Ross iteration from Kingdom Come, whose appearance Ross based on artist Jill Thompson, hence her name here, Jill Scott, daughter of the closeted Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott and his wife, the original Harlequin

Connor Kent/Kon-El was Superboy in the ‘90s, established to be a clone made of DNA from both Superman and his arch-enemy Lex Luthor. It occurred to me that clones of Superman generally turned into ‘Bizarro’ creatures in stories dating from John Byrne’s superman revamp in the ‘80s, so it seemed cruel and amusing to subject Kon-El to the same fate. We can only hope his Luthor side prevents a full transformation!

Vapor, the girl Kon-El inhales then exhales, was a member of the short-lived Conglomerate, a corporate-sponsored superteam formed by Booster Gold in Justice League Quarterly #1.

On to the battle re-enactment scene, where I figured a bunch of superheroes with nothing to do would end up restaging old victories to keep themselves occupied!

Federal agent Nick Kovak AKA Argus was granted his powers of ‘invisibility in the shadows’ (ie. ‘hiding’) by a passing alien in The Flash Annual #6 1993 and used that opportunity to at last live the dream by confronting crime in a purple skintight costume.

Artemis, who made her first appearance in Wonder Woman #90 from 1994, took Diana Prince’s place as Wonder Woman for a time in the mid-‘90s.

Natasha Irons is the armoured niece of John Henry Irons, DCs Iron Man expy who pinch-hit as Superman’s replacement during the Death of Superman story and proved a popular and distinctive enough character to have his own slot on the ‘90s JLA. Natasha appeared recently as one of Superman’s secret team in Superman and the Authority, my farewell to DC.

Our second generation Aquaman is former Aqualad Garth, wearing his mentor’s ‘90s costume as designed by the late Neal Pozner.

Alpha Centurion is Marcus Aelius, a Roman Centurion chosen by aliens to visit their world and master their technology, who first appeared in 1994’s ZERO HOUR: CRISIS IN TIME #3. When he returns to Earth, however, 2000 years have passed and it’s now impossible to buy those sandals he loved so much!

I like the idea, the character is fun, and his alien armour is appealing but I don’t think he’s been seen for a long time in the comics. A lot of these characters have potential and could use revisiting.

Although he resembles his father Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow here is an older version of Conor Hawke, the young Buddhist straight edge son of the swashbuckling Ollie, who took his dad’s place in 1994.

I had the idea – and the same idea appears in the Rock of Ages story arc from JLA - that Conor might grow up a bald and goateed rogue like his dad.

I really liked the daft idea of Red Amazo, imagining a Crisis on More Than One Android where the Justice League’s mechanical stalwart Red Tornado is fused with their ultimate android enemy Amazo!

Menta is a new character and one of an even younger emerging generation of super-kids that includes Arrowette. Her father is Steve Dayton AKA Mento from the Doom Patrol and she’s inherited his brain-boosting helmet…

Doctor Mid-Nite is again, the March 1999 update of the character as Dr. Pieter Cross, a night doctor who used his medical skills to help street people and also fought crime on the side…

Bloodwynd, saddled with one of the most uninspired, undignified and ugly hero names of the ‘90s (it was common to create names from a list of various interchangeable qualities – in one column ‘blood’ in the other ‘storm’ ‘fire’ ‘wind’ ‘stone’ ‘fist’ ‘star’ etc) was otherwise an interesting character who deserved better. As DC’s ‘Multimage’ he represented an opportunity to give DC its own black Dr. Strange – but no… it had to be ‘Bloodwynd’…

The barefoot, bangled ‘Gypsy’ was introduced in Justice League of America Annual #2. Somewhat compounding the in-hindsight insensitivity of her name is the fact that, in her secret identity as Cynthia Reynolds, she lives in the suburbs with her parents!

The ‘Planet Krypton’ superhero-themed restaurant chain is from Kingdom Come based on the Planet Hollywood franchise.

Arrowette was my favourite character in this book. She was loosely based on the Arrowette character created for 1997’s Impulse #28 who was the daughter of a famous tennis pro and demanding mother who pushed Cissie to strive for excellence and acclaim. She was a member of Young Justice.

The comic companies Batman mentions are all based on real world publishing outfits; Keyhole Comics is a stand-in for Gold Key, published on Earth-5 (one of their titles is Doctor Manhattan the Quantum Man drawing the line between Gold key’s Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom and Watchmen’s blue-skinned supergod). Quantum Comics are published on Earth-4 but I can’t recall what they were supposed to represent – Quality Comics? Spire Comics (Tower) are released monthly on Earth-34! Blue Stamp is Archie’s Red Circle, and Victory Comics is Atlas!

Jakeem ‘Jay-Jay’ Thunder became the named possessor of the 5th-dimensional Thunderbolt genie in JLA #26 in 1998.

Next – Pax Americana!