InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "I GOT BLISTERS ON ME FINGERS!"

seawolf10 (seawolf10) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-31 22:36:00

Entry tags:

char: bo "bibbo" bibbowski, char: cyclone/maxine hunkel, char: mr. bones, char: nuklon/atom smasher/al rothstein, char: stargirl/courtney whitmore, creator: jerry ordway, group: infinity inc., publisher: dc comics, title: justice society of america

JSA #27
So, it looks like Jerry Ordway's going to be doing at least one JSA arc (writing and art both, possibly -- definitely for this first issue) before Willingham takes over.

GOOD.

The mere beginnings of the plot that we see in this issue still appear to be of much higher quality than what Geoff Johns produced in his final throes on the title.

I'm just going to post the first 4 pages, because the rest are so intertwined that cherry-picking anything from them would require tons of explanation that I don't have time to write up.

So, I avoided Final Crisis as much as possible -- is this Global Peace Agency (presumably that's the word, given the acronym) a plot element that came out of that, or is it something Ordway just came up with for his JSA run?

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thokstar
2009-05-31 09:54 pm UTC (link)

So, I avoided Final Crisis as much as possible -- is this Global Peace Agency (presumably that's the word, given the acronym) a plot element that came out of that, or is it something Ordway just came up with for his JSA run?

Yeah. It seems to be a kind of sort of replacement for Checkmate, for whatever reason Morrison thinks that is necessary. Theoretically, Final Crisis: Escape will explain more about it, but it's also doing the Prisoner thing.

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	seawolf10 2009-05-31 09:59 pm UTC (link)
	A Morrison creation. huge sigh Oh, joy. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-05-31 10:17 pm UTC (link)

for whatever reason Morrison thinks that is necessary

I can't speculate as to Morrison's reasoning, but "Checkmate" says to me, "spy agency with its own concerns, probably trying to do mostly the right thing with a certain amount of self-serving agenda and an MO fairly dependent on who's in charge," while "Global Peace Agency" sort of screams "hoshit it's Big Brother these guys will do HORRIBLE THINGS for YOUR OWN GOOD." The first is asking for a sensible, evenhanded treatment. The second is begging to become a boilerplate creepy, evil spider-in-the-shadows. You might have been able to get away with a cheerfully forthright statement of benevolence like putting "global peace" in your actual name back in the Silver Age, but in the modern age it's begging for trouble. So at a guess, Morrison was either trying for that Silver Age simplicity, or more likely, setting up for an oh-so-clever subversion.

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	thokstar 2009-05-31 10:22 pm UTC (link)
	Wikipedia actually claims that the GPA dates back to the Kirby OMAC series, so it could also just be Morrison's Kirby fetish (and which also suggests the tone the group will take.) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	volksjager 2009-05-31 10:30 pm UTC (link)
	The GPA was responsible for the creation of OMAC. I posted it a while back, When Starlin brought OMAC back, the GPA turned out to be aliens. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-05-31 10:31 pm UTC (link)

Oh, there's no question that's where the idea *came* from, but consider the difference between Damian's story per Morrison and the original Elseworlds, or the connected-only-by-name Egg Fu and Chang Tzu, or even the momentary one-off use of the original Bat-Woman as some kind of meaningful lost love for Bruce. Morrison has an excessive fetish for harvesting old-school crack, but he has no interest at all in fidelity to the actual original concepts he's drawing from. I have no doubt that, like everything else he's reintroduced, Kirby's GPA is a writing prompt to him, not a concrete and whole concept to be updated and imported in a way that preserves its basic essence.

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	bluefall 2009-05-31 10:35 pm UTC (link)
	(Not, mind, that that's inherently a bad thing. Sometimes you get Barbara Minerva from that philosophy. Sometimes you get Comet the bisexual horse angel. It's kind of a crapshoot. Just saying, there's no reason to think that the GPA will resemble anything that's existed before in the DCU just because it shares a name with something Kirby once did.) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

aaron_bourque
2009-05-31 11:34 pm UTC (link)

That said, it's not a Morrison creation, and I am sick to god of people spouting irritation at Morrison because he handled his latest couple of stories poorly, so everything he does is crap. Especially here, where Morrison has almost nothing to do with anything. Gerry Ordway is the writer, the GPA is a Kirby creation, Final Crisis wasn't that bad, and just stop it, jayzus.

::pant pant pant::

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; okay, so I guess it wasn't completely out of my system.

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bluefall
2009-05-31 11:44 pm UTC (link)

Ah, but that's precisely what I'm saying - it is a Morrison creation, because the things that Morrison adds to his stories as "callbacks" seldom bear any real resemblance to the thing he's calling back; the GPA might as well be a completely new invention, just as Damian is a completely new invention or Chang Tzu is a completely new invention, or, to pick a non-Morrison example, the OMACs of the second-most-recent Crisis are a completely new invention. That the GPA here, of which Renee is apparently sometimes a part, happens to bear the same name as a Kirby product, is completely irrelevant and will offer no meaningful influence on or insight for fandom as to what it will become.

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	aaron_bourque 2009-06-01 05:58 pm UTC (link)
	Damien could still be from the original story. I mean, he's a child, and was just born in that story. Any characterization would have required invention. And the only thing that's really different from Egg Fu and Chang Tsu is Chang's got no 'stache. Besides, I'd rather new flavor Egg Fu to oldstyle Egg Fu. It sucked. The OMACs are valid. You pass. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	rabican 2009-05-31 11:52 pm UTC (link)
	... But I liked Comet. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-05-31 11:57 pm UTC (link)
	I'm actually neutral on Comet himself. He didn't do anything for me but he was a reasonably interesting take on the "horse who's in love with Supergirl" bit. Andy, though, was like rolling in sandpaper after a bad sunburn. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	rabican 2009-06-01 12:00 am UTC (link)
	Ha! Yes, the horse part was much better. That is a sentence I never thought I'd type. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	suzene 2009-06-01 04:28 am UTC (link)
	I don't actually like Comet, I just like being able to tell people at the shop about the lesbian space-horse while being able to keep a perfectly straight face. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-06-01 05:36 am UTC (link)
	Given the fact the GPA in OMAC clearly WAS a malevolent Big Brother organisation with a socio-political control agenda who treated humans like cattle, no I think he's pretty much got it nailed so far. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	volksjager 2009-06-01 07:53 am UTC (link)
	Where are you getting "malevolent big brother organisation" from ??? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-06-01 08:04 am UTC (link)
	Hmmmm.... good question, I'm clearly not on my game this morning, as I recalled the blank faced guys being the ones that OMAC stood against, not worked for. Sorry about that.. Ignore me, nothing to see here, these are not the OMAC's you're looking for... mysterious wavy hand gesture... you can go about your business. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	aaron_bourque 2009-05-31 11:30 pm UTC (link)
	THANK YOU. I was about to EXPLODE with rage. Kids these days, yeesh. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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