InsaneJournal

The story starts out fairly quiet, as J'onn and Diana deal with some Vesuvius trouble and we establish a couple minor plot resources that will be important later.





"Pax defensor" means "defend peace," by the way, which apart from being appropriate to the League in general, is pretty much Amazon culture in two words. Anyway, with southern Italy out of danger, Diana feels she's good for some vacation time, and heads back home for a few days.

While there, she indulges in a sacred personal ritual.





This is just... yes. Exactly this. Diana knows who she is, she knows her own faults and weaknesses and failings, and she owns up to them and accepts them in herself as she accepts them in others. She doesn't posture, she doesn't lie, not to her friends and not to herself. And that second half, that's the true key, that's why the lasso is so Goddamn scary - we do not like to acknowledge that we're human, that we have faults, that we fuck up, that we're petty, nasty, hateful, selfish, prejudiced little shits who thrive on violence and schadenfreude and do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. So we lie. We refuse to admit to ourselves our darker natures, our self-deceits and failures. But the lasso does not allow that luxury. Being its guardian does not allow that luxury. Diana knows what it means to be human - she knows it better than Clark, who only sees the good in most people, or Bruce, who only sees the bad. She sees both, even in herself, and has no problem reconciling that apparent contradiction, because it's the truth, and that's all there is to it. The terrible strength that takes - that she can do that, carry that burden, is awesome in the most literal sense of the word.

Anyway, the offpanel voice there is Zoe, a naiad. Althea and Zoe have a little back-and-forth about some secret that they're not supposed to tell Diana, or even know in the first place, except they heard anyway because satyrs can't keep secrets...



Diana goes to Delphi and the girls take her underground, to where the Oracle resides, so she can hear the prophecy.





Zoe and Althea beg Diana to quit the League and save her own life, but that's not really Diana's style. She's not entirely sure what to do, offhand, but leaving her friends to their fate is obviously not an option.

Elsewhere - Altdorf, Switzerland to be precise - two gnomes, Emrick and Elmen, are lamenting the impoverished state of their warren. Gnomes are the reason stuff goes missing, see, like when you lose one sock in a pair or can't find the last screw, but around Uri Warren, where Emrick and Elmen live, their nightly haul is apparently limited to bottle openers that nobody wants and car keys that people have duplicates of. If only something *big* could happen to them! Like, how about, I don't know, discovering a sleeping dragon deep in the bottom of their caverns?



This is Drakul Karfang, ancient and evil queen, last of the dragons. The gnomes are stoked, and the whole warren, plus some neighboring Zurich Warren gnomes who thought they were cool when they collected TV remotes, leave off stealing bric-a-brac and start in on jewels and gold. Not a good idea to wake up a dragon without bringing her some nice presents, first.

Elmen has misgivings, thinking that maybe glory isn't worth, um, waking an ancient evil, and all. But he doesn't really have any authority in the warren - even Emrick doesn't listen to him - so the other gnomes all pile together and wake up Karfang anyway.





See? Elmen totally saw that coming. The green fire, by the way, is a transmutation effect - it makes ordinary gnomes into drakunomes, which are crazed, murderous, mostly mindless draconic servants of the dragon who made them (also works on cows and people). Also, it hit Emrick, much to Elmen's dismay.

And with that, back to the League we go, where J'onn is giving the lowdown on current crises that are of League interest.





(Kyle means Lagrange point. Objects in a Lagrange orbit are sometimes called trojans.)



The nice thing about being Diana is that everyone knows you don't lie, so when you do, even if it's really obvious, people just assume you're being honest anyway. Hence, the League figures the thefts are meaningless, and split up to deal with the rest. Bats and Flash head off to the Amazon to deal with a river clog (Bruce glaring weirdly at Diana the whole way), Clark checks the solar flare stuff, and Kyle goes after the asteroid, with J'onn in the Tower co-ordinating. Diana is supposed to help Arthur with the tanker, but she asks to stay behind and talk to J'onn for a moment.



While that's happening, Kyle gets his asteroid stuff taken care of and comes back to the Tower.





That little star pattern she crunched into his mask cracks me up.

After Kyle comes Arthur, who's successfully evacuated the tanker while she was messing around in the Tower. She flies in, pulls it off the rocks before it can spill, and then scoops up Arthur and flies him into a whirlpool.



Zoe thinks this is all a splendid game.

Diana, not so much.



Naturally Drakul is ravaging the countryside by this point. Along with breathing fire and the savage drakunome attacks, she also has some kind of aura of antagonism, turning neighbors against each other as she passes.

Meanwhile, in the Amazon, Flash is dealing with Poison Ivy, who's clogged the entire river with toxic lily pads hyacinths, while Batman gets his detective on and tracks Diana's movements over the past few days. Flash clears the river, then does one final loop to make sure everything's good before he meets back up with Batman. And then he trips over a root.



That little red frog is so cute it kills me.



Agent Orange, for those who don't know, is a very nasty herbicide, which also has unfortunate effects on your average mammal. I do like that Bruce recognizes a dryad when he sees one. He doesn't like magic, but he does keep track of it. Though given the man's very dubious kill standards, this scene is actually kind of troubling - he might actually not be bluffing, here, which is a rather unpleasant thought.



Fight scene!



... man, Diana. I know you're desperate here, and Bats is making you improvise, but "I'm so afraid"? Weak. Even if you were as brilliant a liar as Bruce himself, that one was not going to fly with anyone.







I'm... kind of skeptical that that thing he does with his cape would work. It can't possibly exert greater pressure than, say, Clark trying to push his arms outward, which the lasso would hold against. But we'll let it go for now.



Regardless, of course, Batman didn't have a chance in the end.

So having dealt with everyone but Supes, Diana launches all her friends out into space, and has herself a little Gesthemane moment.



Then she heads out to Australia; five down, one left.





Dude, way to sucker-punch Superman. Note though, she's actually crying a little at this point. Of all of them, Superman is the most trusting, the closest to her, and her very best friend in Man's World. It *kills* her to do this to him.





I love those vultures. (And the symmetry of the "hd hd hd" - Supes did that too after she kicked him, although I had to cut that panel.)



We've had this discussion before, many times in many places, but her saying she couldn't actually beat him isn't accurate. They've been trading victories and breaking even since before this version of Diana existed, and their very first post-Crisis fight, Perez and Byrne went out of their way to establish them as equally matched. I really wouldn't bet the farm on either one of them, frankly. But even if she did win, a full-on combat with Supes would leave her in pretty sorry shape to face a dragon, so her logic here is still fair, even if the dialogue is a bit off.



Little bit of self-deceit there - we've seen this before and will again, Diana's belief that the world can better afford to lose her than it can Clark. That's entirely a projection of her own unwillingness to lose Clark. Apparently the lasso doesn't catch everything.

Speaking of her friendship with Clark, I find the contrast between him and Bruce really interesting here. Batman finds out what's up and starts in on her with orders and threats, graduates immediately to insults, and makes an attempt to outfight her and impose his will; only when he finally gets truly desperate does he admit his concern for her or try to reason with her. Superman's first reaction, on the other hand, is "What's going on", followed by one solid hit to get her off his back, followed by "I don't understand, but let me help." Says a lot about them and the way they relate to her.

Having gotten Clark out of the picture, Diana heads off to Switzerland.



"Hmeh" is the greatest word ever, by the way.

Karfang and Diana yak at each other for a minute, but Diana foolishly gives up her name, and so Karfang is able to cloud her brain with enchantment and out-talk her, all "I know the prophecy too, and you're just as dead as I am, and there's only one of you anyway, you lame-o." This being Diana, though, it doesn't really stick; Diana realizes that Karfang is afraid of her, and gets her name out of one of the drakunomes, breaking the enchantment. Then she flies up and punches Karfang a bit. Of course, that isn't real effective either.



Way to fall for the oldest trick in the book, Karfang.

Diana and the nymphs follow Drakul back to her lair and run into Elmen.



They get attacked by some drakunomes, and Diana ends up tumbling down a big chasm and landing right in Karfang's lap.







... that damn bathing suit. Imagine what a great poster that would make if she were wearing the Diana Rockwell armor, or even the getup from the Medousa fight.





You know, I get why she does this. Karfang is the last of her kind, and a pretty spectacular beast, and taming her would be much better than killing her. But all the same, Diana is not on her A-game today. Because, as you might guess, Karfang is totally lying. Diana takes a couple steps closer and Karfang whacks her a good one, grabs the heart, and flies off.

Of course, fast as dragons may be, Diana is faster.







He manages to save her...



But all is not well.



And Bats is still a dick. (Look how happy he is that she's okay, though. D'aww.)





I think it's really interesting to compare Diana's victory over the League here to what happened with Batman's protocols in the JLA Babel arc. Batman's plans are individual and specific, exploiting the particular weaknesses of each of his friends. They fail, because they fail to take into account the fact that the League is a team, and they can compensate for each other's weaknesses and take care of each other. Diana's plans, on the other hand, rely entirely on the League's greatest strength, on her assumption that her friends will look out for each other. She's able to defeat J'onn and Kyle because they trust her; she gets Clark out of the picture by forcing him to rescue their friends. She's able to launch the League into space in the first place because she knows they'll be okay. He plan succeeds because she sees things in terms of relationships and reactions, rather than individual physical traits. (Well, also, because from a meta perspective, she had to succeed and Ra's had to fail, but that's much less interesting and doesn't say anything about Bruce or Diana).

It's also significant that Diana came up with this entire plan off the top of her head. One of the things that I like about her is that she's such an instinctive fighter and tactician - she can process what's happening, realize what needs to be done, and do it unhesitatingly all in the same instant. She doesn't doubt herself or second-guess. She apologizes to her friends, yes; she's sorry that she has to do this, and sorry that they're hurt, but she's not sorry that she's done it, and she won't pretend otherwise, even to pacify Superman. She knows she's done right by her own principles - knows from no less an authority than the lasso itself - and she doesn't need any other approval than that.

All scans from JLA: League of One.