InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "T-a-y to the Z."

bluefall (bluefall) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-03-24 23:44:00

Entry tags:

char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: bryan hitch, creator: mark waid, group: justice league of america, series: when wondy was awesome, series: world of wondy

When Wondy was Awesome, part 12 (Against the Id)
Well, we've seen a lot of Diana beating up her friends with our last couple arcs, so let's go back to JLA proper for a bit and watch her save all her friends instead. We're into February of 2001 here (continuity-wise, contemporary with or perhaps a little after Hiketeia, though few years shy of that story by publish date), during the Waid run of JLA v3, and the glory years of the Big Seven League.

Now, despite being one of the strongest JLA writers I've read, Waid has done Diana an injustice or two in his day. (And he wrote "Fairy Tales," which I am not inclined to ever forgive him for). But by the time we get to this point in the JLA, Waid was well past his Kingdom Come foibles and hitting some very good notes with her character - such as during the "Id" arc that I bring today. In which there actually isn't much Diana, but when she is, it's damn well worth noting.

Place and time: The Batcave, soon after the events of "Babel." Despite the fact that the JLA functioned just fine for years without Batman's help, several of the remaining Leaguers apparently feel he's essential to the formula (hooray authorial fiat); at any rate, there's some idiocy happening where they've all fractioned into two groups, "yea" voters and "nay" voters, and everyone's being suspicious and stupid and teamwork has fallen apart (and frankly the idea that Diana and J'onn would ever come into conflict over something Batman did is an idiocy I can't quite wrap my brain around, but it's what we're given, so we'll roll with it). So Supes has come to hang out in the 'Cave and beg Batman to fix it.

Ignoring the silly histrionics here, pay careful attention to Clark's words in the second panel. (And how cute is it that Bats thinks he deserves an apology?)

Anyway, Clark spins this story about how the League (sans him, he was elsewhere) went to fight Dr. Destiny, and J'onn split them into teams to try to reconcile their differences and everyone bickered yadda yadda this is all an unimportant out-of-character-for-everyone subplot. Eventually they find Destiny and realize that he's swapped his dream-self for his real-self somehow, and the only way to defeat him is to take the fight to him on the astral plane.

Stuff like this is always cool (allowing for the crappy Top Cow-esque art) for what it says about a character's self-image. This is how they all see themselves in battle; J'onn as a full-on Martian, Wally as a blur, Kyle as the whole Lantern Corps with the world's best set of brass knuckles. And Diana, who sees herself as exactly as she is, except fifteen feet tall. That strikes me as reasonably accurate and entirely appropriate.

So they kick Destiny's butt (Supes calls Diana's plan an "unintentional masterstroke," which is to laugh - like Bats is the only guy on the team with any tactical comprehension whatsoever? I mean I get that she probably didn't anticipate the bonus effect of the dream-world on their teamwork, but still. It's not like she was just chucking darts blindfolded, here).

But that doesn't really make things better.

Insert comment about Supes who wasn't there and Bats who isn't even a member talking about what's wrong with the League and how they're going to deal with it here. Patronizing? Patriarchal? Who, the World's Finest? The devil you say.

Regardless, Bruce catches Clark's drift and calls the whole League into the Batcave, where they look for Bats and discover Bruce.

And also Clark.

Interesting that they're both looking at Diana when Bruce says "That's what you wanted, correct?" (And for that matter, so is Arthur.) I mean, I get that this is a big deal for the boys, but Diana already knew both their IDs and obviously didn't have a problem with them keeping them from the others. That wasn't her complaint with his behavior at all, and I don't see why this should placate her or suddenly renew her trust in him. On the other hand, it does make perfect sense for them to appeal to her as the team's default leader here - if she buys in on this gesture, the rest will follow - so while it's odd from her side, it does work from theirs.

Then everyone else hops on the meme.

Look, Diana's friendship with J'onn in evidence! It's always so subtle, but it's there, people, and strong. I maintain they got badly cheated in FC: Requiem. (Also neat: that Diana knows everybody's secrets. She doesn't have Clark's x-ray vision or Bruce's detective skills, but she doesn't need them; people tell her the truth.)

Then Batman shows up.

Things get wierd fast after that.

Through use of the lasso and some fancy telepathy tricks, the League ascertains that everybody is legit. Mysteriously, the whole JLA has been split into two; their secret IDs and hero IDs are now separate people. Further, Clark Kent and John Jones are human; Eel O'Brian can't morph; Wally West has no speed.

It's all very strange, but for the time being, they decide to send all the alter egos back home to their normal lives while the heroes keep heroing and try to figure out what's wrong.

Meanwhile, similarly weird things are happening all over the world.

The League gets called in to respond to some weird happenings in Washington.

I am all about Supes getting randomly teleported to Saturn, but it's kind of annoying when you consider the science of it. He's not supposed to be faster than Wally, and Wally's not supposed to be faster than light (or at least not without becoming part of the Speed Force), and in that case it should take Supes at least an hour and change to get back to Earth. But he shows up again right away, which means he's flying superluminal, which means he's faster than Wally. Considering that's all Wally has while Clark also gets to be strong enough to pull the moon out of orbit and sturdy enough to fly through the sun, that doesn't really seem just.

Anyway, they bring down the homeless dude.

Diana, it should be noted, has been somewhat skeptical of the heroes' behavior since this started. I can't say I blame her, since here they are going all Justice Lords on her and it hasn't even been two days since the split.

Things get worse pretty quickly, too. Lantern seems to forget how to use his ring as anything but a literal weapon, while Kyle flips out and obsessively draws, everywhere, on every flat surface he can find (although it does make his room look really cool). Plas becomes more and more useless comic relief, while Eel is fighting criminal impulses. Bruce is steadily becoming an angry psycho. And John Jones gets in a car crash.

John begs Arthur to let him stay John, stay separate, when the League finds a way to fix everything. Clark, too, seems satisfied with his new lot.

Good of her to check on her friend Clark. Shame she didn't stop by Kyle's place, although I give her some leeway here. This may be her first stop, and she can't exactly sonic boom into Kyle's neighborhood in full uniform without raising suspicion.

(Diana's "good hands" also seems a little optimistic, considering, but in her defense, she wasn't there for the green goo fight where her team went *really* off the rails).

Huh. Time for an explanation for all this, doncha think? Okay then. Introducing: the freaky 6-D bug guys.

See the little kid on the big cube face in the second panel? He's this kid:

This is the signal alert that Diana was recieving. We're looking at Metamorpho's son Joey, here - the arguing family he speaks of are his mother Sapphire and his grandfather Simon Stagg who, to be quite frank, could not stop arguing about Metamorpho if the sky fell, regardless of what Rex himself is or is not doing. However, in this instance, they are ostensibly arguing because, at this point in continuity, Metamorpho is dead. (Sort of.)

Hey, the bug guys are here! And know what the hell is going on! To save you the headache of trying to parse their speech bubbles, I will summarize the next couple pages of exposition for you. It seems that they created what they call "Id," a runaway "sentient energy" from the sixth dimension that, when brought to our dimension, has the ability to grant desires and wishes. So when Joey wished for his dad back, freaky Metamorpho showed up. Operative word "back," not "alive." The bugs then tell the League to give them a couple minutes to get into the kid's head and fix things.

I bet you can all guess what happened to the League now. Nice one, Supes.

The League holds off Metamorpho for a couple pages, and the bugs manage to access the part of Id that's lingering in Joey's brain and reverse the wish.

Y'know, it'd be a good moment no matter who said it, but coming from Diana, who doesn't lie, that line becomes about a hundred times more powerful.

Anyway, the 6-D bugs explain that they're trying to recapture the Id and recruit the JLA to help them.

Also, Supes, impressively, manages to strike upon a design that looks even dippier than his normal suit.

Kal, honey. Of all the kryptonian motifs you could have incorporated, you had to pick the ruffles? Really, big guy? Really?

Elsewhere, John Jones is playing with matches, and Eel O'Brian comes to talk to him in one of the best Plas scenes on record.

That had nothing to do with Diana, but it was too good not to post regardless. The point is basically that Eel is hardcore, and knows this needs fixing, and so he starts rounding up all the other alter egos and strongarming them into playing along. He starts with Bruce, who just flipped out and beat some thugs bloody before Eel pistol-whipped him.

I don't know how much I buy this read on Bats, but I suppose it's an interesting concept.

So Eel gets the whole gang together, and they charge off to the scene of another wish-gone-bad, where the League and the 6-D bug dudes are trying to get Id under control (with fair success).

Oh NOES, a 6-D doublecross!

Fortunately the alter egos show up right about then. Eel gets the bright idea to grab the little thinking band the bugs were using to fix people's heads before and put it on Supes, since it was his wish in the first place.

The half-merged identities go to war with each other, unable to accomplish anything. Arthur talks J'onn and John into getting over it, though, for the good of everyone, and they wade into the lasso-bound Id in an attempt to reason with it (remember, it's sentient). The bugs get pissed by this and zap J'onn/John, then split Arthur.

Is it just me who finds it equally badass and hilarious the way Diana just saved Arthur?

What is Diana's dichotomy? Where is the split, the contradiction in her nature?

(Don't worry if you can't read the bugs' word-bubbles here, they really aren't important.)

She's a mortal, a simple woman made of dust and returned to dust like any other. And she's Truth, so elemental that she was once its goddess.

Boo-ya.

Then J'onn sets up a mindlink and they beat the bad guys.

So this whole story sort of exemplifies, for me, why Diana's such a good fit for the Justice League. Yes, she's one of the most powerful heroes on the planet, both as a matter of raw scale and in terms of tactics and battle prowess, but it's more than that, and maybe not even primarily that. It's that she's fundamentally a team player, and that she makes the team a better team by being there. When they fight with each other, she calms them; when they're acting weird, she picks up on it first; when they're incapable of acting as a unit, of agreeing even with themselves, she puts them back on the right track. She makes it easier for the rest of them to do what they have to, and she pulls her own weight as an individual. Of the others, only J'onn is as aware of and as beneficial to the cohesion of the group. (Which is no small part of why I think it's incredibly stupid to have the two of them, of all people, who've respected and trusted each other since years before Bats came into the picture and who are the most conscious of unity, the least judgemental*, the least upset, and the least prone to projection, to be at odds over Bats leaving, but again, whatever.)

* Usually. Not counting J'onn's periodic "humans suck, you're all hateful bastards and I don't know why I even bother with the lot of you assholes" cycles.

It's worth noting that this is not the first time Wondy's clay/spirit nature, combined with fundamental awesomeness, saves the entire JLA; and in fact of the two stories I can think off offhand (the other being Primeval), this one isn't even my favorite. She's written better in Primeval, too, without the burden of the "Babel" stuff hanging over the League. But as a Wondy spotlight, "Id" gives her more throughout - and since part of my goal with this series is to show as many different facets of Diana's character as possible, I couldn't leave out the Metamorpho lie. That always sticks with me as one of Diana's defining moments - it hits on her compassion, her decency, her honesty, and the burden she's willing to shoulder all in two tiny syllables. It even gives me chills sometimes.

All scans from JLA v3, #50-54, collected in "JLA: Divided we Fall."

Next time: Diana faces down Darkseid in an OW@W interlude, with pretty, pretty Jimenez art.

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bluefall
2009-03-25 12:48 am UTC (link)

Well, every writer sees the lasso differently. The party line since Byrne has pretty much been "it's just a focus for her inherent Truthiness," but if Gail wants to mess with that there's certainly no iron-clad "Bruce doesn't kill" level of canon to stop her.

How did the team split, anyhow?

Last time around I posted the Babel arc before League of One, which I probably should have done this time too, just for context. Oh well. Basically Bruce had Contingency Plans to take out all the other Leaguers, which he didn't bother to tell them about; Ra's got his hands on said plans and used them against the League. In the aftermath, everyone was seriously pissed off at Bruce and they voted him off the satellite, four to three. J'onn, Wally, and Kyle voted for him to stay; Diana, Arthur, Plas and Clark wanted him gone. The League then split along those lines and were pissy at each other until he came back.

I would have simply had Diana lasso the dream catcher to expose its falsehood

Well, the dreamcatcher's not exactly a falsehood. One's astral self is, on the astral plane, as legit an entity as one's normal self in the real world.

The problem is, as we've discussed before, that Batman has to be the irreplacable tactical genius for him to justify his presence in the League, operating on a plane beyond even the champion of Athena.

See, most of the time that works, but he wasn't even there for that one. Surely there's no need to downplay her talents when doing so doesn't even do anything to boost up anyone else.

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perletwo
2009-03-25 01:23 am UTC (link)

Just to make a quick amplification to your summary of the Babel arc, if you don't mind? I think it's worth noting that Bats' hypothetical scenarios to "neutralize" each Leaguer were so intense, once put into practice, as to constitute torture, either mental or physical and in some cases both. In at least Arthur, Diana and Wally's cases, death was a very strong possibility. In more than one case, the plans hinged upon confidences given Bats as a fellow JLA'er with regard to each other's deepest fears and personal scars, which is why the question of trust remained such a sore point even this far past Babel.

The JLAers weren't simply pissed off at Bats when they took that vote; they were in a righteous fiery rage, and if they were any other group of people he'd have been drawn and quartered. That's part of why hard feelings lingered not simply toward Bats, but also among the rest of the JLA down the voting lines.

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kamino_neko
2009-03-25 02:02 am UTC (link)

In at least Arthur, Diana and Wally's cases, death was a very strong possibility.

Arthur, Diana, Wally, and J'onn - and, at the time, he had no way of knowing that what he did to Plas wouldn't kill him - although I will grant that it's possible that the smashing him part was a flourish added by Ra's.

A rundown of what was done, for those unfamiliar:

J'onn: Nanites insinuating themselves with his skin, which burst into flame upon contact with oxygen.
Arthur: Hypnotically induced hydrophobia.
Diana: Put into an illusion of endless combat. (According to Ra's, potentially lethal for her.)
Plas: Frozen, then shattered into a million pieces.
Wally: Induced a superspeed grand mal.
Clark: Red K (created to be less lethal, but untested, so the actual results - making Superman's skin transparent, so he absorbed too much solar radiation to control his powers properly - weren't known.)

Then there's Kyle, who's hypnotically induced blindness seems absolutely harmless in comparison. Rendered him powerless, and was no doubt unpleasant for him, but lacked the level of stress and pain the others involved, even ignoring the potential lethality.

It's actually funny that the four who were subject to the worst are actually split 50/50 on the vote. (J'onn's refusal to condemn him makes sense, since it would be hypocritical...Wally's is more surprising.)

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perletwo
2009-03-25 02:12 am UTC (link)

True, Kyle's was less painful than the others. But while for most GLs blindness would be a manageable handicap, for Kyle and only Kyle, it was crippling - because he's a visual thinker, an artist, and that means the plan depends on The Enemy knowing him intimately, not just as a GL but as Kyle. That's a significant betrayal of trust, enough to foster lingering damage to relationships.

Tangent: Is it wrong that I kinda want to know what Bats had in those files for Metamorpho? I watched the JLA:TAS episode that gave Rex's origin a couple weeks ago, and watching it I thought, this guy is theoretically unkillable.

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kamino_neko
2009-03-25 02:44 am UTC (link)

But while for most GLs blindness would be a manageable handicap, for Kyle and only Kyle, it was crippling [and more stuff, clipped strictly because it's right there in her post]

Oh, certainly - please don't think I'm denying that. All I'm saying is that it's, relative to the others, a reasonable plan - unlike the others, it does no real damage to anything BUT his trust in Batman. J'onn, Arthur, Wally, Diana, and Plas all could have died from it, and J'onn, Arthur, and Wally, at least, in pain and terror... J'onn, Diana, Wally, and Clark could have done serious, unintentional harm to other (innocent) people^*, which would be very bad for their various psyches.

The others have the betrayal of trust, compounded with all of that.

^* Straying from in-character considerations, this is my personal worst problem with the plans - a lot of them wouldn't work in the intended context - Arthur, it wouldn't be a problem for him for a whole hour - and he can do a whole lot of damage in an hour, Wally and Diana are flailing about at super-speed and with super-strength in Diana's case, meaning anyone who comes close will take a pummelling, J'onn potentially becomes a walking/flying bonfire to set random people and objects on fire...Clark, given how the Red K turned out to effect him, was only stopped because he's still regular good Superman - if he'd gone evil or been mind controlled...well, he's just been made even more dangerous. Granted, he didn't know that it would do that, but that just makes it even more bizarre that base a plan around it - basing any plan, other than one improvised on the spot, on something that's completely untested is just bad tactical thinking.

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	enerprime 2009-03-25 08:02 am UTC (link)
	About the plans though, everyone assumes the plans Ra's used are Batman's plans exactly. I always thought that Ra's changed them to be crueler. Or Batman could have had a few possible plans (Because how often does Bruce only have one plan prepared?) and Al Ghul simply chose the most painful and/or destructive possibilities. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

kamino_neko
2009-03-25 07:49 pm UTC (link)

I always thought that Ra's changed them to be crueler.

Doesn't stand up to the story - if he was going to do that, why would he NOT do so to Superman or Kyle? He could really put out Kyle's eyes, and have the same effect as hypnotically inducing false blindness, without the easy out. He could have lifted a chunk of Green K, instead of the Red K, and killed, or at least sickened and tortured, Superman...

And, of the others, the only two that could have their lethality/torture level lessened, and still remain even vaguely workable are Plastic Man (freeze him, then contain him, no smashing), and Aquaman (do what they did - once he's weakened from lack of water, sedate him, put him in a pool, and KEEP him sedated). J'onn, Wally, Diana - you can't take them out of it until their minds are their own again.

And to address the idea they might not be precise plans (not your point, but I'm writing this post, might as well hit all the points at once) - just saying 'fire' for J'onn, 'Kryptonite' for Clark, or 'no water' for Arthur aren't exactly Batman-level deductions. None of the three weaknesses are really obscure - in fact, the only one that really suggests Batman's involvement if you remove the actual methods involved is Kyle - most villains wouldn't realize vision is such a big deal for him.

And the idea that they need to be kept secret from the other Leaguers is the height of arrogance, on the Bat's part - as if anyone in the League, or any of their mind-controlling enemies are stupid enough to underestimate him, or any other low/non-powered member of the team, and not either neutralize or control him along with the others. Also, that he's the only one who won't go evil or get mind controlled.

If the other members of the League know there are plans to take them down if they go bad/get mind controlled, they can rest easy. If the rest of the League know there are plans to take down everyone else in the team - and what they are - that means it's not just on the Bat, there are multiple chances to get the plans into play. If Superman goes bad/gets controlled, and neutralizes the Bat, Wonder Woman can still put Clark down without having to wreck half of Metropolis, and break her own bones in a knock down fight. (Not a random example.)

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perletwo
2009-03-25 11:36 am UTC (link)

Yeah, that kind of brings it back around to my original point for those who haven't read Babel - that severity is why, even so many issues after Babel and Bats' walkout, the JLA'ers still display various levels of butt-hurt over it all. Most of those plans were epic, like call the Geneva Convention epic.

Re the footnote: I'm wondering how fully developed the plans in Bats' files really were. Maybe they were just notations of weaknesses and Ra's extrapolated from there? I'm not trying to excuse Bats - some of them like Diana and Wally's may have been very precisely developed - but if, say, Supes' entry just said "kryptonite" Ra's may have thought any kind would do? I just can't imagine Bats, control freak that he is, ever thinking something as unpredictable as Red K was a good idea - he'd have gone for green or gold. Point being, Ra's wouldn't care about collateral damage, while Bats out of habit would tend to control for every possible outcome in the planning stage.

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bluefall
2009-03-25 11:48 am UTC (link)

Bats invented the Red K, though, and Talia stole it from the Cave. It's synthetic, he was developing it for the sole purpose of taking Clark down.

The story's pretty clear on the fact that these are Bruce's plans, start to finish, which is a massive failing. Even apart from the lethality question, Clark's, Diana's and Arthur's are incredibly bad plans; they don't pass the "ask a ten-year-old" test. Give Arthur an hour to do all the damage he likes. Leave Diana's insanely powerful body with a big ol "no vacancy" sign over the door for any passing Deadman or Starro. Do SOMETHING to SUPERMAN but WHO KNOWS WHAT, because that can't possibly end up a disaster, no sir. I mean, Bats is a dick, I'm the first to say it, but the man is not stupid, and those plans were.

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perletwo, 2009-03-25 11:56 am UTC

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kamino_neko, 2009-03-25 06:53 pm UTC

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perletwo, 2009-03-25 07:50 pm UTC

	jlbarnett 2009-03-25 04:52 pm UTC (link)
	I would assume it would be to force him to transform into some easily containable form and then contain him (Reply to this) (Parent)

arbre_rieur
2009-03-25 02:37 am UTC (link)

"Then there's Kyle, who's hypnotically induced blindness seems absolutely harmless in comparison. Rendered him powerless, and was no doubt unpleasant for him, but lacked the level of stress and pain the others involved, even ignoring the potential lethality."

The way this one is carried out was always strange to me. The bad guys sneak into his room and slip the ring on his finger. If they can do that, why not just go one step further and kill him in his sleep.

I can just barely buy that Ra's al Ghul, not wanting to take any chances, doesn't want to risk straying even the slightest from the absolute letter of Batman's plans. But just barely. It would have required only the slightest amount of initiative for them to realize the opportunity before them.

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	magus_69 2009-03-25 05:19 am UTC (link)
	Actually, this one makes sense. The ring is an independent entity. There was no way of predicting what it would do if Kyle was killed. It is entirely possible that it would have gone to Guy or John, which would have resulted in an experienced wielder retaking control, and there would have been no plan for that. This way, the GL was definitely neutralized. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	warpedhand 2009-03-25 08:21 am UTC (link)
	I always wondered why Kyle didn't make a set of super goggles, or used the ring's sensory capacities in some other way. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	perletwo 2009-03-25 11:39 am UTC (link)
	I figure that any other GL could easily have done that, but blindness worked in this case because it's Kyle's personal phobia and it trapped him in a panic-loop. (Reply to this) (Parent)

icon_uk
2009-03-25 05:09 am UTC (link)

I always assumed (given Batman's firm "No killing" rule) that none of the plans used were Bruce's plans fresh out of the drawer, but ALL of them warped to lethal level by Ra's own genius and mindset. Bruce, being who he is, WOULD take responsibility for them because they ARE based on his plans, but they're not exactly as he would have implemented them.

And I still hold that Diana and Arthur voting against Batman (for the reasons given) is the height of absurdity. Neither of them are naive, both are trained warriors and leaders, and if they can't see the inherent stupidity of "We wouldn't have minded that you had these secret plans to take us down if you'd told us you had them" which completely defeats the point of them being, y'know, SECRET" then frankly they shouldn't be in the League

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	bariman1987 2009-03-25 11:38 am UTC (link)
	Bruce didn't necessarily have to tell them what the plans were or what they involved, just they he has them and why. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

icon_uk
2009-03-25 11:45 am UTC (link)

But that's the point, as long as they KNOW he has them he's their instant target should some homcidal being take control of them and access their memories. "Nuzzink in ze vorld can stop me now... oh wait, zat bat guy in Gotham, he could... zo let ooz zee how far zis heat vision can reach"

As long as they DON'T know he has them, he's less of a target at a time when he needs to NOT be a target so he can implement them.

Again, I keep remembering a line of fanfic that came out after this, when Dick calls Clark on their decision and Clark replies "You think he has a file on how to stop you?".

Dick's reply is "I really hope he does, because if something were to take control of me and use the skills I've learned to hurt or kill innocent people, I'd WANT there to be someone who would know how to stop me, and Bruce is the one I'd trust to do it. It would be the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, and it would probably destroy him, but he'd know it's what I would want."

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oddpuppets, 2009-03-25 04:51 pm UTC

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kamino_neko, 2009-03-25 09:10 pm UTC

	aaron_bourque 2009-03-25 03:00 pm UTC (link)
	were so intense, once put into practice, as to constitute torture I usually wank that away as either the basic form of the counter was there, but Ra's tweaked it to make it even worse, because he's Eeeeevil, or he used previous versions of said tactics that Bruce eventually moved away from when he got a better idea that was as effective without being as harsh. (Reply to this) (Parent)

unknownscribler
2009-03-25 01:50 am UTC (link)

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bluefall
2009-03-25 11:17 am UTC (link)

Well, that's the thing. If it's a focus for Diana truthiness then equally it might be a focus for Genocide's hate and fear?

That's been my assumption of the storyline. If you're powerful and skilled enough to use it, you can use it to channel your own divine nature. But that's still a bit of a warp from what it's been in the past, when it was not *a* tool, but specifically Diana's tool; an extension of her will as much as Darkseid's Omega Effect or a GL's light constructs; so symbiotic with her that when she loses faith, it shatters, a physical representation of her mental state; so much a part of her that when it gets stolen, she can locate it simply by concentrating, because it calls to her like a wolf howling for its pack.

Though there's still room to assume that, so far; Diana's flipping her shit ever since she lost the lasso - she basically resorts to torture in the current issue in order to get the location of the Society out of Cheetah - which could be pretty easily ascribed to the idea that her lasso is embedded in Genocide's body and therefore its corruption is affecting her, even from a distance.

Same reason Clark shouldn't be able to out-speed Wally?

Yeah, but that's an objective measure. You can look at that and flat-out say "Wally wouldn't have been able to do this;" with a plan of attack, you can always say "Well, yes, that was quite smart, but Batman would have thought of something even smarter," because there's no real way to measure what plan someone *might* have come up with.

Which just makes me wish even more that he'd never been made part of the league.

Oh, a million kinds of motto.

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kalanyr2.livejournal.com
2009-03-26 01:46 am UTC (link)

I think I have a different take on this, a large part of the public image of Batman *is* the Batman of the League (as distinct from the Batman of Gotham), he's been a member of the league since it was founded pretty much (in the real world, in current continuity I don't know, he was just after Infinite Crisis but there's been 2 (or 3 ? depending on when Trinity happens and how it ends) potential reboots since then that I know about).

I pretty much agree that the Batman of Gotham has no place on the League (he doesn't fit, he's significantly more human than even the most human Batman takes that exist outside of Gotham, he makes mistakes with an incredible frequency, is regularly run down and outwitted for large chunks of an arc by normal people etc) and that is precisely why he's not used , the Batman of the League needs to be *more* than that to fit , he needs to be more like Ozymandias or Mr Terrific or Reed Richards etc, his brilliance needs to be raised to a ridiculous level and you can get away with this because there is no boundary between intelligence and super-intelligence (or given that JLA is a comics book setting between leetly skilled and low-end superpower, like his stealth tricks). Its a meta-solution to a meta-problem. I seriously doubt JLA sells as well with Superman and/or Batman off the Roster for prolonged periods, so you end up with a different Batman who does fit (and then gets bitched about because he's Batgod, but frankly BatGod is *weakcakes* on a DCU scale, he can't take Darkseid on 1 on 1 (and never has , everytime its come up there's been extenuating circumstances, even the most cited version for hatred has him being protect by a Mother Box and its made explicit in the text that this won't last long) and this isn't Darkseid of near omnipotence of Final Crisis, this is the Darkseid that Superman can defeat fairly easily when properly motivated)).

On a metalevel it even kind of makes sense, Gotham itself seems to vary on how much DCU it is, sometimes its almost normal, sometimes its a strange kind of gothic horror that hints at but never explicitly reveals its unnatural elements (Scarface), sometimes its a little more explicit than that in its not quite normalness but still low key (Poison Ivy (usually), Ra's Al Ghul , impossible but not particularly powerful), and sometimes its full out DCU (Superman drops by, its remembered that Green Lantern lived there, WayneTech is working on some kind of supertech, LexCorp enroaches etc), it kind of makes sense that Batman also varies along those lines (the first is the one where Batman spends an entire arc being made a fool of by a normal, the second is the one who manages to make bats appear from nowhere and do creepy things with his shadow and the last is the one who tends to show up in the League). Admittedly how the hell they reconcile this in universe I haven't a clue.

But in summary, Batman's been in the league since before most of the current writer's were born, they can't take him out without hurting sales, and there's no possible solution that doesn't result in someone being pissed off, either you write him at League levels in which case you get BatGod-Hatred, or you get someone who in no way belongs on the league because he's nowhere near competent enough to make up for his teammates superpowers.

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	icon_uk 2009-03-25 05:03 am UTC (link)
	The party line since Byrne has pretty much been "it's just a focus for her inherent Truthiness," That's been the party line since Perez no? That the lasso has no truthfulness in and of itself? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-03-25 11:23 am UTC (link)

Nope, started with Byrne. Per Perez, the Truth was in the lasso and Diana was just a normal amazon (except for the ability to fly... a weird little quirk in the relaunch that has caused no end of small but real subsequent confusion); in WML's run, when Artemis took over the job, the lasso was given to her, because it was Wonder Woman's tool, not Diana's, and Artemis was able to use it freely (though unlike even Perez' Diana, she never did anything more with it than force people to tell the truth, and was demonstrated several times to lack the control over it that Diana had). Then Byrne did the whole Goddess of Truth thing and it was just an unbreakable rope out of her hands from there on out.

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	icon_uk 2009-03-25 11:46 am UTC (link)
	It at least had the fires of Hestia regenerating it and making it infinitely long and indestructible though, didn't it? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-03-25 11:55 am UTC (link)

The indestructibility and infinite length have, to the best of my recollection, never been tested by anyone other than Diana since Byrne changed the lasso (unless you count Donna running out of rope in the Heinboot, but, y'know... Heinboot). My default assumption has always been that without Diana, it can't be cut or broken, but that's it; the infinite length property would require semi-conscious control to be of any use, and be intimately related to her ability to twist the thing into weird, physics-defying flight paths during combat, which both speak to it being a Diana-specific ability.

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