“SEND FOR… THE SUICIDE SQUAD!” | “CRY HAVOC!”
Plotter: John Ostrander | Scripter: Len Wein
Penciler: John Byrne | Inker: Karl Kesel
Letterer: Steve Haynie | Colorist: Tom Ziuko | Editor: Mike Gold
Plotter: John Ostrander | Scripter: Len Wein
Penciler: John Byrne | Inker: Karl Kesel
Letterer: Steve Haynie | Colorist: Tom Ziuko | Editor: Mike Gold
While Jason Todd recuperates at Gotham Hospital, Billy Batson continues to mope over what he believes to be his role in the “death” of Macro Man. At Mount Rushmore, Brimstone kills Task Force X member Blockbuster, but his distraction allows the rest of the team to defeat the monster. On Apokolips, Darkseid prepares to release his War Hounds on Earth.
(Issue 4) In Star City, Black Canary tussles with Count Vertigo. In Gotham City, Batman ends a killing spree by the Joker. In Los Angeles, Guy Gardner stops Ms. Magnificent and her Pretty Boys from carrying out a jewelry heist. In Chicago, Blue Beetle thwarts a robbery by Chronos the Time Thief. In Salem, Massachusetts, Kent Nelson transforms into Doctor Fate and leaves his sanctum. In Washington, Rick Flag releases Deadshot and Captain Boomerang from Task Force X, and Boomerang promptly leaves. In Gotham, G. Gordon Godfrey incites a mob and requests volunteers to become Warhounds. In New York, the Flash and Changeling stop Captain Boomerang from carrying out a robbery.
And on Apokolips, Darkseid and the Phantom Strange continue to discuss the fall of the Earth’s Legends. When the subject of Superman comes up, Darkseid fires his Omega beams to Earth on a mission to transport the Man of Steel to Apokolips.
Following the fight with Brimstone, Enchantress prepares to use her power for nefarious ends, but Bronze Tiger knocks her out.
Superman promises President Reagan that he will follow the order to refrain from using his superpowers, and hollowly assures the president that he believes things will work out fine “…in the long run.”
The public sentiment against superhumans grows even stronger in these issues, even leading to one police officer inadvertently shooting another during a skirmish over whether or not to let Black Canary go. By the conclusion of issue 4, the president realizes Gordon Godfrey is inciting the mob mentality and orders his arrest.
Darkseid dispatches Desaad to the subterranean realm of Skataris to launch a campaign against Travis Morgan, the Warlord. I assume this is a thread which continued in Warlord’s own title (a series I really, really want to read someday, by the way).
Also, Darkseid uses "star gates" for travel between Apokolips and Earth in this issue. Were boom tubes out of fashion in the eighties? I actually recall that the eighties era SUPER FRIENDS episodes used star gates rather than boom tubes too, so maybe they had been swapped out at this point in continuity for some reason.
Captain Boomerang recognizes the Flash as Kid Flash, and the Scarlet Speedster corrects him.
My Thoughts: I’m a little confused by the timeline of this story. Len Wein’s script uses no temporal signifiers I’ve noticed — nothing like “Meanwhile…” or “Later…” or stuff like that — which can be fine if dialogue indicates the passage of time, yet that hasn’t been the case either. We know Glorious Godfrey has been on Earth for a while, at least, making the rounds on TV, at rallies, etc., stirring up the populace. But in the first couple issues, while he did that, Brimstone was on an apparently very slow-moving rampage across the United States which no heroes attempted to stop after the Justice League’s failure.
While all this was going on, Deadshot was arrested in New York. Rick Flag traveled from D.C. to New York to pick up Deadshot, then from New York to a hidden bunker whose location is not specified, then took his team to South Dakota to fight Brimstone. And while all that was going on, Superman was just sort of loitering around the White House chatting with President Reagan, and the Justice League never bothered to take a second crack at Brimstone!
(Oh, and also, Captain Boomerang travels from D.C. to New York in the apparent blink of an eye after he’s released from the Suicide Squad.)
But as readers of the blog should be well aware by now, I’m extremely anal when it comes to in-story time passage, and this sort of thing probably doesn’t bug other readers to the extent that it bugs me.
Otherwise, I like the story well enough. The art by Byrne is great, and I like that so many of the Earth’s heroes have chosen to stand up to the ill-conceived presidential order — though I’m not a fan of Superman choosing to apparently blindly obey it. “Big Blue Boy Scout” or not, he has a brain, and he must see that his passivity does more harm than his actions ever could. Perhaps he’s trying to set an example for the rest of the superhuman community, but when no one else is listening, it makes him look more than a little silly. I wouldn’t be surprised if this story is what gave Frank Miller the idea to present the Man of Steel as little more than a government stooge in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.
Next Week: Darkseid’s Omega beams catch up with Superman on Earth in SUPERMAN #3, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #426, and ACTION COMICS #586.
DKR was published Feb-June 1986 so almost a year earlier. And I would bet LEGENDS got the idea of Reagan and gov stooge Supes from DKR.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Teemu. I should've checked that, but for some reason I really thought DKR came after LEGENDS. Of course if I'd given it even a little thought, I would've realized that was impossible since I know DKR preceded YEAR ONE, and YEAR ONE is just around the corner in the Batman comics at this point.
DeleteMan, that first panel with the two cops...all you need is to change "vigilante" to "mutie" and that's some prime Claremont right there. The Byrne art isn't helping there at all.
ReplyDeleteWhile Teemu correctly pointed out in last week's comments that hating heroes was in the air in 1987, I still think it felt terribly forced here. Superheroes, demonstrably, do good in a superhero universe-especially DCs, where you have an exemplar of goodness in Superman-and Marvel could get away with hating mutants but NOT other superheroes with the "they're going to replace us!" angle, DC in the 1980s didn't have that advantage. Legends always felt like someone at DC trying to grab some of the fire that the X-Men had gotten out of being hated and feared.
The problem is hating and fearing SUPERMAN is just plain ridiculous. That is likely one of the reasons why he is largely sidelined in this series, even at the risk of being out of character-Superman doing heroic things undermines the entire concept of the story. I too blame Miller for inspiring the idea of Superman, government stooge, but he's never really been that. Hell in his earliest appearances he was damned near a socialist lefty crusader.
I seem to remember that DC were talking about doing, post-Crisis, a series with a working title named Crisis of the Soul, which seemed to be about examining superheroics much as Legends did, and I have to wonder if Legends would've been helped if it had been more set up to like a Crisis series would have been. Darkseid spending months building up to this would be far more believable than Godfrey showing up out of the blue and turning people against heroes in no time.
This series is a bigger mess than I recalled it being.
I dunno, I can buy humanity turning since it's established that Glorious Godfrey has the power of suggestion -- but were it not for that little loophole, I'd have a problem with it too.
DeleteOne of my favorite bits in JLA/AVENGERS was when the Avengers came to DC Earth and were astounded at the level of affection the citizens had for their heroes. It was, even for a beloved group like the Avengers, unprecedented.
I agree, though -- Superman is not and never was a government stooge, and that's one of my major issues with DKR. He may be a boy scout, but he has a mind of his own and will go against the establishment if doing so is in the interest of the greater good.
At least, that's the way I see him.
For some reason Gruenwald's SQUADRON SUPREME never quite got to be the third big thing of middle 80's, but it was an ambitious efford by a Marvel guy to have the "DC" heroes make a mess of things by going over the top with the "good" and solving the problems of the world that are not for superheroes to solve.
DeleteAlso, IDK, I buy the DKR Superman. He's not exactly a sellout, but rather sold himself as a token for the government to stand down on hunting and prosecuting/sanctioning the other superheroes, and, as the finale has it, also has his own angle to his supposed job, to the extent that you think if he was on it all the time. Not exactly the boy scout. He's also presented suitably larger than life in the nuclear missile business.
DeleteSo, in the cynical 80's world of the DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, this is the extent that world has managed to do to corrupt Superman. In the crapsack world where everyone else has been forced to pack their batarangs and bows by the powers that be, the biggest of the heroes still stands vigilant at the Oval Office with his X-ray peepers focused point blank where they should. And Reagan hasn't got idea!
DeleteSo who's watching the watchmen? Superman, that's who.
I recall liking both these issues. #3 for the Suicide Squad/Brimstone battle and #4 for the rapid-fire scenes of different villains being taken down by different heroes. If I recall correctly, we get some Byrne-illustrated dead bodies littering the scene when Batman attacks Joker, don't we? I remember finding Batman's familiar "I'd be no better than you" riff particularly lame in that context (can't remember if I'd read Dark Knight Returns at this point, I think I had, which would've made this issue's exchange that much lamer...at least act a little angsty and conflicted, Bats!).
ReplyDeleteI thought this was the issue with the infamous Guy Gardner/"Jim Shooter" fight, but I guess that's next issue, which also has a bunch of short battle scenes (the meta-context of that "Shooter" send-up was totally over my head at the time...).
Looking forward to more Byrne Superman next week!
-david p.
Yes, there are a few corpses in residence when Batman takes out the Joker. Joker is also enjoying the companionship of a young groupie when the confrontation occurs, though he quickly switches her to human shield configuration when Batman appears.
DeleteThe Jim Shooter moment is indeed next issue, and I wrote a bit about it, which you'll see in two weeks!
The third and fourth issues of "Legends" have been absolutely intense with the storyline's dark nature.
ReplyDelete