Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "It was great."

Username: 
Password:    
Remember Me
  • Create Account
  • IJ Login
  • OpenID Login
Search by : 
  • View
    • Create Account
    • IJ Login
    • OpenID Login
  • Journal
    • Post
    • Edit Entries
    • Customize Journal
    • Comment Settings
    • Recent Comments
    • Manage Tags
  • Account
    • Manage Account
    • Viewing Options
    • Manage Profile
    • Manage Notifications
    • Manage Pictures
    • Manage Schools
    • Account Status
  • Friends
    • Edit Friends
    • Edit Custom Groups
    • Friends Filter
    • Nudge Friends
    • Invite
    • Create RSS Feed
  • Asylums
    • Post
    • Asylum Invitations
    • Manage Asylums
    • Create Asylum
  • Site
    • Support
    • Upgrade Account
    • FAQs
    • Search By Location
    • Search By Interest
    • Search Randomly

neuhallidae ([info]neuhallidae) wrote in [info]scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-21 13:03:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:char: brainwave/henry king jr., char: dream of the endless, char: flash/jay garrick, char: fury/lyta trevor-hall, char: green lantern/alan scott, char: hawkgirl/kendra saunders, char: nuklon/atom smasher/al rothstein, char: silver scarab/dr. fate/hector hall, char: stargirl/courtney whitmore, creator: chris bachalo, creator: geoff johns, creator: jerry ordway, creator: michael zulli, creator: neil gaiman, creator: roy thomas, creator: vince argondezzi, group: infinity inc., group: justice society of america, publisher: dc comics, series: halls of fate, title: infinity inc., title: justice society of america, title: sandman

The Halls of Fate, Part Four
In our last chapter, Hector was subjected to bodysnatching, psychic intervention, ancient wizard dickery, and finally found a long lost someone. In this chapter, we get two reunions, a fight, and a lot of history hopscotching between DC and Vertigo. Twenty-five pages from six issues, spread out over JSA, Infinity Inc., and Sandman.

Also features the second-creepiest panel of Hector ever.



When we last left the crew, the JSA had split up on a rescue mission to save Sand, half deep into the earth to retrieve his physical body, and the other half into the Dreaming to challenge whatever had a hold on his mind. There, we find that Sand's undergone a similar brainwashing to what Hector once suffered, at the hands of two very familiar faces.



::snrrk::

And yes, that's exactly what Hector acted like when he was in the red yellow costume.





Oh, right. Sand had a crush on Kendra. She actually kissed him... once... when she was trying to prove to herself that she wasn't Shiera-In-A-New-Body. That didn't exactly go well, since he knew what she was doing and pushed her away, and she ended up with Carter anyway after Sand got trapped in the earth.

::moment of reincarnation-dating-your-wife-in-the-body-of-your-great-niece-squickflailing::

Okay, got that out of my system. Anyway. Back to Lyta kicking ass.





Whoo! Oh, Lyta, how I've missed this you.



About the time that Brainwave manages to snap-connect, Power Girl finally succeeds in ripping Sand's body loose from the mantle and, despite getting some nasty burns in the process, manages to fly him back up to the surface so he can regain human form. The tectonic disturbances stop, and Sand's put in the hospital to recover.



D'aww.

But wait, what is this Project Sandman thing, you ask? Okay, you didn't ask, but humor me. Well, that's the subject of the second part of this post, aka "Hallidae's History Lesson", in which I dump a lot of backstory on the lot of you.


Way back in Infinity Inc. #42-44, the family curse of the Hawkclan came to pass, and Hector's consciousness was apparently destroyed, allowing the Silver Scarab to inhabit his soulless body (God, this happens to the guy a lot, doesn't it?). With no other way to defeat the Scarab, the other members of the team were forced to kill what was left of Hector in order to get rid of the bastard, leaving Lyta alone, in mourning, and pregnant.

In issue #49, Lyta apparently picks up a stalker who visits her in her sleep. When the team investigates, they find that there is someone who became the Sandman after Wesley Dodds, a man named Garrett Sanford. On the assumption that this is who's peeping in on Lyta, they set up a trap, only to find not Garrett, but Hector under the mask.

In issue #50, he explains how the hell he got there.









Al's reaction there is classic love triangle stuff, just for the record. Anyway, while this is going on, Skyman (formerly the original Star-Spangled Kid) is having a mental crack up that turns out to be due to magic influence. Hector joins the fight to get rid of the source of all the reality warping, then goes back to see Lyta again in a page that gives us the aforementioned second-creepiest Hectorface ever.



This run of Infinity ended shortly after, but as we all know by now, Hector and Lyta didn't get off that easy.

In Sandman, we find out that the 'base' is located inside the mind of a little boy named Jed Walker, and, contrary to what Brute and Glob are having the pair believe, their little corner of the Dreaming has actually been sealed off from the rest of the "dream stream", to keep them from interacting with anyone who might fuck up "the plan".

Also, Jed's dream life with Hector and Lyta doesn't exactly mesh with his real life.









Of course, things aren't completely shiny for our pair either. Hector, by now, has been completely brainwashed, and is stuck in Parody-Of-Golden-Age-Superhero Mode 24/7. Lyta, meanwhile, having not been put under control, has been sinking into depression and becoming more listless and doll-like outside of her interactions with Jed.

She's also been stuck at somewhere around 6-8 months pregnant for over two years now.

Anyway. Dream of the Endless finally escapes his imprisonment and is cleaning up the messes incurred in his absence, among which are missing nightmares like Brute and Glob, and the presence of a new Vortex (which breaks down barriers between dreamers and causes mass insanity, and thus, must be killed). The reason the Vortex part is important to the story of Hector and Lyta is that it, or, rather, she, is Jed's older sister Rose. Thus, the reasoning as to why Jed was picked becomes genetic, as while he doesn't have his sister's slowly emerging powers, he has a similarly strong connection to the Dreaming.

Dream makes his way into Jed's mind to confront his erstwhile nightmares, causing a psychic backlash that both kills Jed's abusive caretakers and brings everyone into the waking world.











This ends Hector's part of the story, until he's reincarnated as the new Doctor Fate. However, Lyta continues to wander in and out of the Sandman plotline (at one point, Dream shows up and orders her to name the child Daniel, and at another, the previously mentioned Rose Walker is Daniel's babysitter). Ultimately, Lyta becomes instrumental in the death of the Morpheus incarnation of Dream, allying with The Kindly Ones when Daniel goes missing and she mistakenly assumes Morpheus came back to kill him, the last of her sanity snapping in the process.

At the wake for Morpheus, she's met by old faces...





And a new-old face.





Lyta wakes and goes back out into the world, and the last we see of her between this and her appearance in the Amulet of Fate (at least as far as I know), is Mike Carey's Furies miniseries, which was already posted here.

So, here ends the history lesson, and this chapter of the series. In the next chapter, the magic world goes even more batshit than usual, and Daniel comes to visit his parents once more.



(Post a new comment)


[info]kusonaga
2009-10-21 07:41 pm UTC (link)
I imagine it must have been frustrating being Hector Hall and Lyta Trevor fan during and after the Infinity Inc years. I however, came onto the Hec-fan scene after his debute as Doc Fate and read all the older stuff later. Without all the intervening years, the total story is quite awesome.

While I didn't think they needed to go, I do think this pair got the perfect ending.

(Reply to this)


[info]nezchan
2009-10-21 07:49 pm UTC (link)
Man, Hector looks creepy in that scan in the Tower library. Mind you, he's got a history of that.

(Reply to this)


[info]manofbats
2009-10-21 08:13 pm UTC (link)
I always hoped someone would take Hector's old Silver Scarab nth metal suit. Because a suit made out of nth metal is just awesome.

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]kusonaga
2009-10-21 09:01 pm UTC (link)
There is another Silver Scarab that has an outfit similar to that, as I recall. Showed up in the first JSA trade. Never quite figured out what part he played in all that. Black Beetle (from Booster Gold) also has a similar outfit, although not made of Nth metal.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]icon_uk
2009-10-21 09:48 pm UTC (link)
I wrote a fic once where Nightwing has the Golden Eagle suit delivered to his care after Charley Parker's death in Titans Hunt. (This was during the period when Charley's origin (such as it was) made no sense, since there was no link to any suitable Hawkman)

Dick finds out that Charley had been something of a smart kid in his day, and a college student in his early teens. There he'd met older student Hector Hall, who'd been wanting to build a battlesuit out of Nth metal, but didn't have all the science smarts required to construct a functional suit (never mind one with energy blasters). So Charley helped in return for a small quantity of the Nth metal for himself. Shortly afterwards he had a bit of a mental breakdown, dropped out, became a surf bum, but had kept the suit he'd designed, and a short time later debuted as a Golden Eagle. Charley trusts Dick to find a use for the somewhat trashed costume, and so Dick dcides to use some of the materials from it to create his glider-wing suit.

I thought it tied Silver Scarab, Golden Eagle, Hawkman and Dick's never quite plausible glider costume together quite nicely...

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]manofbats
2009-10-21 09:51 pm UTC (link)
Nice, a while after Ted Kord's death I thought it would be nice if they brought him back and made him the new Silver Scarab because he didn't want to steal the new kid's thunder.

Sure it would change the duo to Gold and Silver, but Ted would be back, he could keep the Bug, and he'd be harder to kill.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]bluefall
2009-10-21 08:53 pm UTC (link)
Shame Daniel's protection wasn't more useful against Alcmaeon.

(Reply to this)


[info]drsevarius
2009-10-21 10:17 pm UTC (link)
what was the creepiest panel?

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]neuhallidae
2009-10-21 10:25 pm UTC (link)
Panel two of this page.

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]volksjager
2009-10-22 12:19 am UTC (link)
That is what I call going through the ringer. No wonder Dream told Per Degaton "hands-off"...

(Reply to this)


[info]jlbarnett
2009-10-22 01:15 am UTC (link)
You know that whole "put your life together" crap is really annoying. I wish they'd have a Post IC version of these characters just to have some decent stuff happen to them. Or maybe Power Girl encounter Dream and rip into him, suggesting the only reason they were used was because of CoIE and what it did to their origins. Not that he'd care but I'd like to see it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]neuhallidae
2009-10-22 01:30 am UTC (link)
It probably wouldn't do much good, no, since COIE and all its subsequent fuckery happened while Morpheus!Dream was still in captivity. Daniel's been shown once to honor the debts of his predecessor/prior self (in return for Martian Manhunter having pointed Morpheus to the location of his ruby, Daniel assisted them in beating Starro by allowing them into the Dreaming to fight), but since his protection of his parents evens things, from his perspective, he probably wouldn't feel any connection or obligation to any other Earth-2 survivors.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]jlbarnett
2009-10-22 01:42 am UTC (link)
Except I'm not saying they're owed anything for being Earth-2 survivors. I'm saying they're being intentionally targeted and fucked over because they're Earth-2 Survivors.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]neuhallidae
2009-10-22 02:14 am UTC (link)
Exactly. And the imbalance or wrong against them is what causes obligation. But Morpheus Dream believed he had done nothing to wrong Hector or Lyta (which isn't true, though the thing she eventually brought the Kindly Ones down on him for was neither his doing, nor fully true), which freed him from being obliged to do anything for them. Daniel felt differently, but only as a son, not on a cosmic level. Therefore, while to him there was obligation, he's already balanced it from his end as far as he's concerned, especially by his actions at the end of this JSA run. And that's why he wouldn't particularly care if Peej went off on him.

...That made sense in my head, but I'm not sure I'm making sense in writing. And I just realized that you might be talking about the writers targeting them, not the in-universe forces, in which case I kinda rambled for nothing, but oh well.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]jlbarnett
2009-10-22 02:16 am UTC (link)
yeah, ny point is basically who cares what Dream thinks. He's an asshole and he deserves to have someone tell him.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)


[info]kingrockwell
2009-10-22 07:28 pm UTC (link)
It'd just be a waste of breath. Dream's too self-absorbed to give a shit about mortals when it wasn't to his advantage.
What ever made you think he's on our side?

(Reply to this) (Parent)


[info]curlyjo1
2009-10-22 06:27 am UTC (link)
Huh. Jed became Shaggy. Weird.

(Reply to this)


[info]kingrockwell
2009-10-22 07:33 pm UTC (link)
The Garrett Sandford Sandman (and Jed, Brute and Glob) was actually the subject of a mid-70s series started by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Roy Thomas brought him into the DCU proper in Wonder Woman #300, and what we see here is what he Roy did with him afterward.

and how come i never noticed before how Little Nemo that "Land of Marvelous Dreams" bit is?

(Reply to this) (Thread)


[info]neuhallidae
2009-10-22 07:42 pm UTC (link)
Ooh, backstory I didn't know! Now I have to try and check it out.

And it was pretty much intended as direct homage to the Little Nemo strips, because that was the biggest dichotomy between the dream world and Jed's real life that they could come up with.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

jordan retro 1
[info]llklkl
2010-08-24 01:17 am UTC (link)
I'd like to thank you for your efforts that you just have produced
in creating up this submit. I'm hoping the same fantastic function
from you within the future too. In truth your fantastic creating
abilities has assisted me to start out my own web site. Definitely the
blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your publish up is known as a fine instance of it.Jordan Retro 1

(Reply to this)

Nike Shox Rivalry
[info]fouse
2010-09-30 01:14 am UTC (link)
Your blog detail is really what I required, I love your website, I truly hope your blog page should be a speedy rise in shoppers, I will assist you to enhance your weblog as well as look for forward for your weblog regularly updated and come to be additional towards much more wealthy as well as vibrant Nike Shox Rivalry.

(Reply to this)

Nike Dunk Low
[info]jihonh
2010-10-13 07:48 am UTC (link)
Quite beneficial publish. I just stumbled upon your blog page and desired to say that We have truly enyed reading your blog site posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing for your feed and that i hope you post yet again soon.Nike Dunk Low

(Reply to this)


[info]mobme30
2010-11-06 07:07 am UTC (link)
In the beginning the designs of these shoes were basic but as time went by the style of these changed according to the style of the sports. Nike Shox started as the brainchild of a track coach and runner, only to grow into one of the largest shoe manufacturers in the world.

(Reply to this)



Home | Site Map | Manage Account | TOS | Privacy | Support | FAQs