Yes. I do love Mark Waid and Grant Morrison's stories. :-)
oh and p.s., if you read this please review!
Chapter Twenty One: "Cosmic Legends of the Universe"
The Justice League died with Aquaman's dissolution of the team. Sure it lasted a while after the Earth/Mars war but the subsequent Crisis on Infinite Earths showed it to be a wounded animal that needed to be put out of its misery. In fact, DC made a point of that when they suspended the publication of Justice League of America at #261. That issue ended with the Detroit League walking away from Martian Manhunter; he was left alone in their darkened headquarters knowing that his adopted family was finally finished. For one year the DCU had no Justice League with Waid's JLA: Year One taking its place. Every issue ended with the promise that when Year One was finished that a real JLA would be restored.
DC told the truth because when, as a companion to Waid's last issue, it released JLA #261… and ½. Rather gimmicky, true, but it worked. It had the Big Three in the Secret Sanctuary—in shadow of course—going over photos of various heroes. That's when JLA resumed normal publication and #262 opened with hero X stopping a crime. Batman then invited him outside where they were teleported to the Hall of Justice amidst a crowd of many other heroes. There was Superman giving a speech about the direction to which the League had to take.
Acknowledging the flaws of both the all-star and dedicated nobodies approach, Mark Waid—and Grant Morrison's—League would have its reserves but there would be a solid core. The leader would be Superman, Zeus in the pantheon of gods, because he, more than anyone else, showed what it meant to be a true hero. Batman would be there but now in the more realistic post-Crisis DCU it would be as the brains of the operation. Wonder Woman would be there as is a titaness who power is matched only by Superman himself and whose compassion is second to none.
The rest of the Main Seven's main writers, however, were reluctant to loan out their characters but Waid and ultimately Morrison knew that the big three were enough. In terms of internal continuity, the Crisis forced them to realize that they of all people can't leave the League. If there's ever another big challenge like that, they would have to be there. The Trinity was the Justice League's big guns; they served the role of leaders with the other leaguers looking up to them.
Past the big three, Waid included Martian Manhunter. While a member of the original seven, he played a sufficiently small a role so as not to risk overshadowing the Big Three. He had underutilized powers that Waid made a point of playing up—telepathy, invisibility, shape changing, and intangibility. Dr. Light made her debut in the Crisis and, aside from having interesting power set and costume, she was a certified genius and served as their science consultant. There was Captain Atom; formerly of Charlton Comics or Earth-Four, he was their greatest hero. This is no surprise as his military training and control of all forms of energy and radiation made him a force to be reckoned with. Dr. Fate, previously of Earth-Two was there; his skills in magic were of course useful for their own sake but also because he could be their consultant on all things occult. He also served as the old man since Cary Bates' new Superman was trained by the Fate's old team, the JSA. There was Captain Marvel of Earth-Shazam who served as a backup Superman of sorts when they faced magical threats.
It was a League that could never have happened pre-Crisis. Aside from the Trinity and Manhunter, none of them had ever been Leaguers and some hadn't even part of a formal team. Still they and others proved their worth. For many years, classic Leaguers such as Black Canary were outnumbered by lesser known heroes such as Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, Fire, and Ice but the Big Three guiding it kept it the Justice League. That was proved with the fight against New Krypton.
In the wake of the Crisis, the people of Rokyn/New Krypton released Zod from the Phantom Zone and offered him the reins of power. It was revealed in Superman's revised post-Crisis origin that Zod had been one of the only people who had listened to Jor-El when the scientist had warned of the planet's destruction. That was in fact part of the reason he staged a coup—take over and force his subject people to evacuate. When that failed he was exiled to the Phantom Zone but he was not forgotten.
Years after, Superman managed to recover the shrunken Kryptonian city of Kandor and just a few years before the Crisis enlarged it and placed it on uninhabited planet for colonization. Whilst under Braniac and later Superman's care they had never had to worry about taking care of themselves but now freedom meant new responsibilities and new challenges. They knew that Zod had served his time and they also knew that he could get things done. Some people even saw him as the real hero, and not Jor-El, for his attempts at forced evacuation.
That's not to say that Zod's chief motivations were not driven by greed as was amply illustrated by turning New Krypton's red sun bright yellow. He thus had a superpowered army when he decided to invade Earth. There was the prestige of succeeding where every other despot failed but there was another greater reason. He dreamed of a great Kryptonian empire that stretched across the galaxy and, more than anyone else, Superman had to die if Zod and what he stood for were to prevail.
This time however Superman did not stand alone. The Detroit League had been evicted from its Bunker by its owner and so needed a base of operations. (Cyborg/Hank Heywood's reactionary grandfather didn't like how his boy's PC League was going.) True, having the homeless League move into the Fortress of Solitude—some people fulltime—somewhat defeated the Fortress's purpose. However, Superman hardly used it much and he knew that his teammates needed a temporary base. They were that much closer to him and stood that much nearer their leader when battle came.
Wonder Woman met under truce and appealed to Zod's greed by asking the battle be fought in the Antarctic wastes instead of some populated city. Zod was after all a conqueror; why would he want to risk destroying his prize? (Athena's wisdom indeed.) Aphrodite's granddaughter convinced the man of that logic and it was fought there. Faora volunteered but Diana asked for Zod himself; no one else would do for a contest of champions
Diana and her great aunt Artemis used their command of beasts to evacuate any animals there. Thus no penguins were harmed when she broke a mountain over Zod's head. The mightiest female in the universe, god or mortal, managed to beat the general down quite handily with the strength she dared to bring to the table. She alas won a little too handily when Zod saw that he very well might lose and decided to cheat by hiding behind human shields. He ordered attacks on all major Earth cities. It was as Batman had expected and, as he had hoped, the delay had given the rest of the League and Earth's forces needed time.
Captain Atom was uniquely qualified for the fight; his ability to generate red sunlight and various kryptonite radiations let him cut a swath through Zod's undisciplined, inexperienced, troops. Green-k to hurt them and gold to strip them of their power. The Kryptonians couldn't even get close to him with the low level radiation field he generated at all times. Worse still for the enemy, Captain Atom was a former military man who was, technically, military again due to the League's serving under the US military for the duration. He was not only mentally able to kill but had legal license too…
Captain Marvel was strong and fast enough to face Zod's soldiers and he bested many in personal combat. The exhausted hero, however, quickly saw that he wasn't strong enough to defeat all of them. Realizing that he had to fight smarter he decided to pull a trick he was never able to use on Superman. He flew up and raced at breakneck speeds over his enemies' heads, yelling "Shazam!" constantly. As he hoped, the sky exploded with enchanted lightning and left dozens of magic weak Kryptonians bested.
Similarly Dr. Fate used his magic against the enemy though in a more tactical way. The magic vulnerable Kryptonians found themselves weakening, growing afraid and confused, losing themselves in some of the most mana rich areas of the world: Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle, Paradise Island, the Nazca Lines, Atlantis. Even leaving Amazons and Atlanteans aside, the Kryptoninas were well met by Earth's military forces waiting in the traps. It was far from easy with how every last one of Zod's soldiers was still more powerful than the proverbial locomotive but the men of the US Army faced them with blood, sweat and all the Dr. Light designed red sun laser rifle charges they could carry.
They all fought valiantly but their gallant leader Superman went to the final battle alone. Or so they all thought. It was ironic that at his side was Lex Luthor.
It was like Cary Bates had outlined years ago at the meeting. In the wake of Luthor's selling out humanity in an attempt for universal domination in the Crisis, the lawful authorities had finally decided that he had to die. He had already proven a hundred times that no prison could hold him and now he had proven that they could no longer take the risk. Alas, the self-proclaimed "greatest criminal mind of our times" rigged his execution so that the electric chair activated a teleporter he made minutes earlier. Why? So that he could blow up New Krypton in revenge for Superman's destroying his adopted homeworld of Lexor—Luthor's exonerating himself of all blame of course.
Superman fought valiantly against Zod; a friend and local superhero, Nightwing of Kandor, led the resistance and kept the tyrant's forces busy whilst he himself went straight for the villain. It's worth saying that Superman might very well have defeated Zod and thus saved his people but Luthor shot the Man of Steel with a kryptonite bullet. He didn't mean to kill Kal-El, no. A few robots took the wounded hero away to a waiting spacepod so that the medical droids on board could heal him in time for him to appreciate what would happen next.
Even with Zod's exhausted condition, even with Luthor's power armor, the Kryptonian tyrant still won. Zod boasted that he had not saved his friend. The beaten Luthor laughed and said that no, he had won. Luthor's trading places with Superman was to make sure that Superman was evacuated to safety to see what happened next and secondly to keep Zod too busy to prevent the big surprise.
Superman by that point had found out and had tried to warn Zod—not that Zod had bothered to listen. He was alive and well out of danger when he saw the planet's sun go supernova and destroy New Krypton. And yes. After Luthor left his teleportation pod to look at the computer screen linked to Superman's own pod, he saw that it did hurt the Man of Steel as much as he hoped it would.
As for Luthor, it made him the most feared and respected member of the criminal underworld; the first for sheer ruthlessness, the second for helping to save the world. (Few villains had the stomach for the enslavement/genocide of the entire human race.) Luthor never bothered to seek the pardon he knew that could have claimed for all that instead using his new infamy to reunite all the villains that had been under his and Braniac's leadership less than a year before—in comic book time—in the Crisis. His escape from death and his subsequent victory reaffirmed in the villains' minds that if anyone could lead them it was Luthor.
That the villains needed the protection of Luthor's "Legion of Doom" was proven when he revealed the JLA's long history of mind wipes. Prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths, writers had leaned more towards fantasy and spectacle and so such things could be dismissed as "just a story." But with the increasing realism of the post-Crisis DC universe it provided instant fodder for Lex Luthor.
He cited 1979's Justice League of America, # 166-8. It was dubbed "The League that defeated itself" and had the villains learn the heroes' true identities only to be mindwiped by Zatanna. Many of them were there present in the Hall of Doom and were horrified on realizing they'd been lobotomized.
He also cited the fact that Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth didn't technically make people tell the truth; it mind controlled them. That, however, was small potatoes compared to something far worse. He revealed how the goddess Aphrodite using her magic to brainwash the entire planet into thinking that a Steve Trevor who'd recently arrived from another timeline had always been the real Steve Trevor who'd recently died. All for the sake of one of those o, so special "superheroes." (Wonder Woman # 271)
But surely Superman, paragon of all goodness would do differently, right!? Hardly. Luthor brought up the events in Action Comics #369; it's the one with the famous cover of a dejected Superman walking away into a red sunset, rifles in trashcans and newspapers blaring "war outlawed," "Earth a utopia." He cried because it was a world that didn't need a Superman. Luthor said that it was because, according to his sources, the week-long so called paradise was caused by do gooder super computers that used cosmic powers to mentally reprogram Earth's populace into being "good." The worst part, however, was that when Superman realized that the computers he had destroyed really had been sincere he felt guilty for restoring human freedom.
Bosh! Surely Luthor was exaggerating, there was no way Superman would ever contemplate something like this! That was when Luthor used his dimensional scanners to show an alternate timeline wherein the Man of Steel decided to force people to be good by broadcasting morality rays from his mind controlling satellites. That decision was the one and only difference between that Superman and the real one. (Superman #162)
Small wonder the villains sought Luthor's protection.
It was nothing new to Luthor; he after all had been a founding member of the Secret Society of Supervillains. This was to be something far greater, however. He sold the Legion of Doom as a protection racket and as a co-op. If a member ran into trouble or even if he just suspects it, he could request backup in exchange for X% of the take. Pay your dues, be on call for missions, and Luthor has your back. In fact, any member who wound up captured could expect Luthor to bail him out with a hot shot lawyer or even a jailbreak. And of course protection from the so-called heroes' mindrapes was another plus. With all that and how the LoD would usually win two or three victories before the JLA foiled the master plan—and with how the less dramatic schemes usually did work out—metahuman criminals flocked to join it.
In contrast to its enemy the JLA, the Legion's nature meant that the LoD lowest ranking members, with the exception of Luthor, tended to be full time members. Lesser villains knew they would do better as Luthor's thugs than on their own. Killer Frost, Dr. Polaris, Silver Banshee, Atomic Skull, Copperhead, they were all there.
Higher ranking members, on the other hand, were part time only. They were reservists or even just cautious allies. They included folks like Cheetah, Black Adam, Gorilla Grodd, Vandal Savage, and Black Manta. Sinestro saw the LoD's potential and sent Arkillo, his right hand Sinestro Corpsman, as a liason. Similarly, Luthor established cordial relations with Circe and agreed to a mutual assistance pact. Even Joker, to everyone's shock, was invited to join. Luthor, the only man who could control the psychopath, explained saying, "Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
Captain Cold was absent as he already led the Rogues Gallery.
In real life, the idea proved successful, getting its own comic and serving as a counterpoint to the JLA. The villains became their own characters with their own goals motivations be it simple greed, the thrill of violent crime, revenge, or something else. As for Luthor, he was in some ways the only sane man in the DC Universe by pointing out that Superman and the other metas didn't have to do anything. When all was said and done the gods not only answered to nobody, just by being there they were destroying human civilization.
On the other side of the fence, the Legion did get its Darth Vader helmet base back even as the League got the Hall of Justice back. It was there that Max Lord handled the League's paperwork, acted as a liason with world governments, balanced the budget, etc. (At one point Captain Marvel memorably asked, "We have a budget?") Lord was the only civilian staff readers saw on a regular basis and really the only one who ever got a name but he was there enough for readers to know that a staff did exist. To further accentuate the nature of the Hall it was really more of a superhero museum and a place where the League gathered for appearances and press conferences. The Fortress of Solitude was the actual HQ.
It was also at the Hall of Justice where the Justice Society of America found a new purpose. The JSA was the first hero team ever and the direct ancestor of the Justice League. For years DC Comics was able to justify the redundancies between the teams by saying that they lived in separate dimension but in the wake of the Crisis, it could no longer do that. It might seem that in a post-Crisis DCU where they went from being the greatest and indeed only hero team to being just one of many that they were irrelevant. It was Max Lord who cast the idea aside.
With the Justice League now in possession of an address, young metahumans began streaming towards the Hall dreaming of being superheroes. It wasn't something the League could readily do however, regardless of Firestorm or the Wonder Twins. One or two kids maybe but not so many! Max Lord saw this and told the JSA that even if some of them were too old to save the universe anymore, they're not too old to train up young metas to be real superheroes. They did it for Superman, didn't they? Well, look how he turned out!
It was one of Max Lord's few schemes that actually worked.
The Justice Society thus became just that, a Society. Its purpose was to provide support for "civilian" populations of superhumans on a global scale in a world where the superhuman population was constantly growing. It raised awareness for and worked as a mouthpiece for superhuman/superhero community. After all, not every hero had superpowers and who says that everyone who gets powers would has to become a superhero?
The Justice League worked to save the day. That never changed but with them there, the Justice Society didn't have to do the same work it used to. They know the torch was passed; they trained the torch bearer… and they'll keep on training torch bearers. Parents know that if their kids are developing super powers that they can take them to the Hall of Justice where they can receive a good quality education amidst those of their own kind. The Society is there to teach young metas that they are not alone. It teaches them how to use their powers and more importantly use their power responsibly.
That's not to say that JSA never saved the day, far from it with how retired members passed their names to new heroes. Most of them were former members of Infinity Inc which was itself made of the children and protégés of the JSA. The only first generation heroes to remain on full duty were the Jay Garrick Flash and the Alan Scott GL.
Rick Tyler began using his father's Miraclo Pills but before long he began harnessing new his time travel based hour of power. His girlfriend Beth Chapel remained on board as Dr. Midnight though she changed her costume to be more like the original. The previously suicidal and currently third smartest man alive Michael Holt eventually became the new Mr. Terrific after the Spectre convinced him to find new meaning by upholding "fair play." Yolanda Montez stayed on for decades (real world time) as Wild Cat, even mentoring Ted Grant's son as he had trained her. Lyta "Fury" Trevor took an extended maternity leave through the early 90s but when her husband needed her, however, she was ready to leave the child with a sister and save the day.
As to where that husband was…
The JSA's field leader was Sandman; his right hand, Hawkman. Sandy Hawkins had served alongside his Golden Age forebear for years before turning into a sand monster in the late 40s. After his revival he used his granular powers and years of training to establish himself as the most senior of the new heroes. As for Hector Hall, he turned down the chance to be leader—and a secret identity—for fear of being like his father. He loved his dad and was honored to wear the wings… but he wanted to spend as much time as possible with his family. He wanted to tell little Daniel, "You come first in my life, not being Hawkman."
As for the Justice League they saw their share of new recruits as well. It was mostly in Grant Morrison's Justice League run, one best known for reuniting the magnificent seven. It opened with "Protex" and his Hyper-Clan landing their space ship on the White House where they promptly declared that they had arrived to save the world. They did so with a flurry of quick fixes like executing criminals and turning the Sahara into a verdant garden to bribe a suddenly gullible public. The Hyperclan, it was revealed were really White Martians led by old JLA foe, Commander Blanx who using this ruse combined with mass mind control as part of an invasion plan. The newly reunited heroes foiled Blanx of course and the storyarc ended with a shot of the League's new Watchtower moon base.
There were many new faces in Morrison's League, though.
By that time, Hal Jordan along with many other GLs had been called off on a deep space mission involving every Corps from the emotional spectrum. A War of Light or some such. Not wanting Earth left unprotected (it had a bizarre tendency of needing all the help it could get), one young starving artist Kyle Rayner was chosen by the Guardians. He had the potential for courage and he had much more imagination than Jordan ever had. He was offered provisional status as a Corpsman with the promise that he would be made a full Lantern after the War of Light if he proved worthy. With Alan Scott as a mentor and every bit of geeky fanboy trivia he could muster, the cartoonist went on his way to become a new hero.
Fans also saw Roy Harper graduate to Red Arrow in Morrison's run. Oliver Queen had died in Green Arrow V2, #100 stopping eco-terrorists called the Eden Corps. (That was 1995 and as of 2015, he's still dead.) Ex sidekick Speedy was by that time a grown man and was approached by Queen's long lost bastard son Conner Hawke to be the next Green Arrow. Connor admits that he's blood but it wasn't him that fought at Queen's side for years. Spurred on by Hawke's words, Harper decided that he would follow in Queen's footsteps but that he wouldn't be a green Arrow. He still had too many father issues. Nah, he'd be a Red Arrow. As for Connor he would be his partner Arsenal.
When the JLA decided to expand the League beyond the Magnificent Seven (with Flash and GL replaced by the new generation) it was Wally West who invited his old friend from the Teen Titans to League tryouts. When Red Arrow defeated the Key and rescued the Leaguers who'd all been trapped in the villain's dream realities there was really no denying that Harper had earned his place. He'd paid his dues and Green Arrow's place on the League was now his.
Grant Morrison and Mark Waid wrote many astonishing Justice League stories together, sometimes separately and sometimes together over the course of their run. At times it even seemed as if they were in a contest to see who could outdo the other. Rogue angels attack Earth and God's holy paladin, Superman, plays Saint Michael. Darkseid finally claims the Anti-Life Equation and destroys free will but the surviving resistance leaders change time so that the dark future never happens. They're recruited to intervene in a magical Civil War in Gemworld and oversee its reintegration into the DC Universe. There was DC One Million where in the distant future good has finally and forever triumphed over evil and Superman Prime and Goddess Wonder Woman are parents to a literal pantheon of deities. They learn of the existence of the old multiverse and access it via alternate timelines where the Crisis never happened.
The restoration of the multiverse and the subsequent dimension hopping in turn, led to something else.
The spirit of the old JLA/JSA teamups was revived by having the League travel to a different universe every summer through the 90s and meet with that universe's heroes for a crossover. The multiversal jaunts proved rather popular. Awesome Comics' Allied Supermen of America, Malibu's Ultraforce, Image Comics' WildC.A.T.s, Thundercats, Maters of the Universe, Sailor Moon(!), even Transformers. And yes, Wonder Woman's Invisible Jet's transformed into the cutest fifteen foot tall female Autobot you ever saw.
There were all sorts of stories but Grant Morrison saved the best for last.
He had been building up to it all through his run on JLA, the idea that humans were meant to be gods. In the first storyline against Commander Blanx and the Hyperclan, Blanx revealed that the only reason humans weren't a race of superhumans like Kryptonians or New Gods was that White Martians had interfered with their evolution. One of the storylines involved a sincere but dangerously misguided individual attempting to imbue Earth's populace with superpowers to prepare for "the ultimate war-bringer." Big Barda joined the team after she saw the word Mageddon inscribed on the Source Wall.
The immediate story began when a riot broke out in Belle Reve prison. When several members of the JLA investigated, the cause was revealed to be a Mageddon spore that had formed around the telepathic villain Hector Hammond. Red Dart, a Legion of Doom member, then stole Green Lantern's ring and delivered it to Luthor for study (actually the subtle guidance of Mageddon) before returning it. The riot stopped once the spore was destroyed and Hammond was freed.
Big Barda then warned the JLA that Mageddon, a planet sized tentacled chimerical… thing, was approaching Earth's solar system. The New God reveals that Mageddon was one of the war machines used during the Ragnarök of the "Old Gods." It is unknown which side used it but what is known that it went out of control and destroyed their world. It would have gone on to destroy the multiverse—or even the omniverse—had Yahweh not sent His angels to bind it at the edge of the space time continuum inside an "immense gravity sinkhole." It later broke free under undisclosed circumstances.
Big Barda and Wonder Woman traveled to deep space to confront the monster and to that end were aided by the combined Lantern Corps who rightly saw the Mageddon as a threat to all their lives. The Red Lanterns fueled by righteous anger were especially effective but in the end even they were beaten back.
As Mageddon entered Earth's solar system, Lex Luthor, under the influence of a second spore that had just begun to form around him sent the Legion of Doom on a direct assault of the Justice League Watchtower. Why? Because it was high time that the Justice Leaguers all die. The Legionares were confused at their leader's sudden attitude change; they had fought the JLA many times but always as a means to an end or at least with a well orchestrated plan. Luthor was never so short sighted or so reckless… It's a testament to Luthor's leadership and charisma that his minions trusted him regardless and went along with it. After heavy fighting the JLA defeated the entire Legion of Doom even as planet sized Mageddon arrived in Earth's orbit and revealed its plan: incite so much hatred and violence that global war erupts and, if that should fail to kill all life, detonate its "anti-sun" core thus destroying the entire galaxy.
As natural disasters and global war erupted around the planet, it was all the JLA and other heroes could do to keep up. Example: When riots spread across Keystone City, Flash and his fellow speedsters raced across two entire cities disarming millions of rioters in seconds and disposing of everything that could be conceivably be used as a weapon. Anything that wasn't bolted down was taken and dumped in the middle of Death Valley, thousands of miles away. Seconds later the rioters realized they had been disarmed and for a moment stood confused… before attacking each other with their bare fists.
Conflicts on Earth escalated and the JLA knew that it had to take the fight to the enemy. Superman and Orion led an attack on Mageddon but Superman was captured and assimilated into the weapon, whilst Orion was badly injured. The War Bringer was just too strong. Hope was realized when Lex Luthor deduced exactly how Mageddon was capable of inciting rage in humanoids, by stimulating the reptilian component of their brain stem. With that, he, Batman, and Steel jerry-rigged a device to not only neutralize the monster's power but stimulate the part of the brain that controlled the metagene. Thus in one fell swoop every man, woman, and child on the planet was granted superpowers.
Wonder Woman rallied and led the newly formed army of metahumans against Mageddon. While thousands of the newly empowered superhumans were killed and Diana herself very nearly so, their attack provided a diversion that allowed the final act to play out. Kyle recovered his ring and, regardless of the war-bringer having bested whole corps of Lanterns created a giant robot for himself and charged against Mageddon. Rookie no longer, Kyle was Green Lantern and matched the biggest threat since Anti-Monitor blow for blow.
Alas it was still not enough. By themselves, Kyle and Mageddon could have fought forever but Earth simply would not have survived. Via a telepathic link with the Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman called out to Superman to free himself from Mageddon's control. She had come to love him and he her and… nobody wants to be on the receiving end when Wonder Woman goes into drill sergeant mode. "Kal, I don't care if it's faced down the entire universe, Mageddon hasn't faced us! You can do this, if anyone can you can… and if you don't I'll convert to Christianity just so I can go to Christian Heaven and beat you senseless!"
Shaken to his senses Superman broke free and destroyed the moon sized gears he had been forced to push. He then crashed his way through miles of mechanical guts all the way to Mageddon's core where he began absorbing the anti-sunlight that powered it. Via the same telepathic link, he had Diana tell Green Lantern and the others to keep up the attack as he drained the war bringer dry. In the end, even though it meant neutralizing every drop of his own unlimited power (at least until the next story!), Superman managed to deactivate Mageddon and, along with the entire Justice League, save the world.
Of course, it didn't end there. Morrison hinted and later writers confirmed that Luthor knew he was being influenced by Mageddon and went with the flow firstly to maintain some control over himself and so he could claim a valid excuse when he attacked JLA base. His helping to save the world (again) caused many people to give him a second look and that combined with turning in all information on the Legion of Doom led to a full pardon. He later claimed that it was gigantic sting operation and it did in fact lead to the greatest round up of super criminals in DC history. In reality it was a cover for more grandiose schemes as seen with he how worked to gain public trust by curing cancer and conducting research for permanent superpowers.
Regardless it was a fine end to Morrison and Waid's combined run and from then on it was Waid's show. At the time, Waid had been serving as one of the chief writers for Superman comics in addition to being Morrison's frequent cowriter for JLA. For someone who grew up reading Elliot S Maggin's Superman stories, being a Superman writer under Maggin's editorship was a dream come true. But 2000 saw Maggin's departure as editor for Superman comics and the installment of Waid as the new editor.
For those who thought Mageddon was wild… a DC Universe with Waid as both Superman editor and the JLA writer meant that things were just going to get a whole lot wilder.
Author's Note: To quote Catwoman in Batman Returns, "Four, five... still alive!" Though perhaps only for a few more chapters. There is still another JLA chapter and an "odds and ends" chapter, and a timeline but there will be a definite end. Considering how slow this goes and how I keep making more chapters that I thought I'd get that might be a long time coming! Look forward to the Babel storyline, the return of the Anti-Montor, and DC vs Marvel next chapter!
Now on to the mailbag and thanks for responding. ;-)
Sir Thames: Always glad for the kind words. :-)
Wolvmbm: I do have something like infinite Crisis planned.
As for Canary, yeah its all one Canary, just older; as for young Canary... I haven't figured that out yet.
Oliver Queen did know about the Golden Age GA. He was deliberately ripping him off!
Hawkman... I'll never understand what DC was thinking in screwing him up. :-$
The Detroit League... I don't know. Reserves maybe?
Everyone else: Love it, hate, please review.
See ya!
