I believe there's a new edition of Cosmic Odyssey coming out soon. It may even be a hardcover...?

I'm going to get it anyway and thanks for this recap here and I do understand what you are conveying here.

Secret Origins #33-35



I don't intend to do a thorough review of these stories as they are, for the most part, not pertinent to JLI continuity. Most of these stories were not written by Giffen or DeMatteis, nor overseen by Helfer, and there are several continuity issues to be found within (in #35, for example, Black Canary is still an active member of the team).

Still, the value in some of these origins is that it finally gave Giffen a backdrop from which to pull while writing these otherwise blank-template characters who had familiar mannerisms but generally lacked identities and personal histories. We already saw, for example, how Giffen began making use of J'onn J'onzz's invisibility in JLI #20 right after it was brought up in Secret Origins #32. Prior to that, he didn't seem to be aware J'onn had such an ability. Thus, some of these origin stories just might provide similar fodder for future JLI adventures.

As a point of clarification, Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner had already been covered in Secret Origins by this point (#2 and #7), and Batman's origin was being saved for the forthcoming Secret Origins tpb. Thus, all three are omitted from these stories and that otherwise awesome combined cover.


The Quick Overview

Completely new origins: Green Flame (Waid acknowledges a previous origin existed and is completely replaced here), Ice Maiden, G'Nort

Retold origins: Mister Miracle, Captain Atom, Rocket Red (focuses on the program in general more than the character), Booster Gold, Martian Manhunter, Maxwell Lord



Most of these really weren't very good at all, but here's What Was Memorable

- Mister Miracle: I'm no Fourth World expert, but this may have been the first time we learned about Oberon's childhood (he watched his family burn to death, joined a circus, and was soon informally adopted by the first Mister Miracle)

- Green Flame: Beatriz Bonilla DaCosta. Used to be a Brazilian spy. Got her powers from a scientific explosion. Made a serious enemy of Brazilian billionaire Dom Diablo on two separate occasions. Makes her secret identity public in this story.

- Ice Maiden: Tora Olafsdotter. From a race of ice-magic wielding Norwegians that broke contact with civilization generations ago. Presumably, they (including her angry/controlling father) are still out there and will pop up again.

- Captain Atom: representing the Post-Crisis origin in which the entire Silver Age continuity is now a fiction concocted by the US government. Captain Atom was now a treasonous soldier in the 1960s who participated in an experiment in order to redeem himself and was inadvertently shot forward in time to 1989 as a byproduct.

- Rocket Red: The only origin I was actually curious to read, as Dmitri has mentioned he's a normal guy with a family, but none of that gets presented here. Instead, it's a weird talking heads piece in which Gorbachev is presented as being a noble revolutionary, fighting against his own government to save the USSR, the Rocket Reds being his ultimate tool to achieve this goal. Weird tone to strike, especially as the US government is presented as super shady in the Captain Atom story in that same issue.

- G'Nort: Gnort Esplanade Gneesmacher. Giffen doesn't manage to make him any funnier this time around, but artist Stephen DeStefano makes the interesting choice to present Gnort's homeworld and people as looking like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. Kind of awesome, from a visual standpoint.

- Booster Gold: If you look closely, one of the pieces of JLI merchandise Booster is trying to hock is a record entitled "Guy Gardner Sings Christmas Carols." By God, I want that album. No attempt is ever made to explain why Skeets is never around in the JLI title. Mark Waid explains in the letters page that the original concept was that Booster was a security guard at the Superman Museum and, thus, had a closer tie to the character, but that Byrne's revisions to the franchise changed all that.

- Martian Manhunter and Maxwell Lord's origins contribute absolutely nothing new to our understanding of either character.

The Captain Atom origin is a retelling of the origin in this issue...



from the post-Legends relaunch of Captain Atom. Cary Bates writes both. So it is a heavily revised origin, but the revision isn't new here, the revisions were already in place.

-M

I read it for the first 6 months or so before I had to cut back on a lot of books because I was leaving for university, and enjoyed it a lot at first, but less so as it continued on. I am not sure I made it to issue 12, and know I read nothing of the series after I dropped it.

-M

Justice League International #21



"Apokolips...Wow!"

plot/breakdowns: Keith Giffen
script: J.M. DeMatteis
pencils: Ty Templeton
inks: Joe Rubenstein
letters: Bob Lappan
colors: Gene D'Angelo
editor: Andrew Helfer

grade: B-

The culmination of the search for Mister Miracle has no shortage of the usual banter and laughter:







and Giffen and DeMatteis even manage to create what might well be comicdom's first multi-panel monologue by a gaseous form:



but the larger charm of the issue is in mercilessly reminding us, once again, that these guys are NOT effective heroes:



They charge into a battle on Apokolips, suddenly realizing they have no understanding of the situation, little understanding of what's been happening with one another, and absolutely no plan to speak of.

And, while Oberon's unintentional run-in with Darkseid has got to be the funniest moment of the issue:



(note: Darkseid is reading Mein Kampf)

it also sets up the larger humbling experience of the story. One might expect our heroes to battle Darkseid and lose, or win but fail to rescue Mister Miracle, but the sad, more deserved, and yet less expected outcome is that Darkseid just doesn't care...at all. He doesn't care about Mister Miracle, and he doesn't care about the Justice League or the Syndicate they are fighting. He tells them all to get off his lawn and, shaking in fear, they do just that.

Total humiliation.


Of course, while the entire fun of this series is seeing just how Anti our heroes can get, I do find myself asking why they're this bad at super-heroing. I mean, how is Batman giving them this much of his time, barking orders at them and punching Guy Gardner into line, yet not ever demanding they do any kind of training? How can the same guy who put (at the time) two children through brutal training regimens before he'd ever let them don a costume just shrug at this level of ineptitude, muttering under his breath but allowing it to continue? Granted, he relinquished leadership of the team, but still...

I suppose the answer is that a well honed team isn't as funny.



Fun issue as always, but the subtle depth that used to be there as well is now lacking. This team's total ineptitude doesn't make any sense by this point, and as no deeper themes or emotions are being explored, it's just a comic book version of Dude, Where's My Car? issue after issue. In short, just ahead of the franchise's big expansion into two titles, I'm beginning to wonder if it's lost its touch.


Minor Details:

- Though there at the end of last issue and referenced in this one, we never once see or hear G'Nort this time around. Maybe Giffen has finally gotten the message that fans can't stand him.

- The robot L-Ron speaks with aboard Lord Manga's vessel is K-Dikk. I guess he serves in a lower rank because, while arguably more influential a writer, he never inspired a self-serving cult. Oh well.



Plot synopsis: The recombined JLI attempt to spring into action against the Parademons defending Granny Goodness' orphanage, Lobo attempts to enact his contract against Barda, Oberan accidentally runs into Darkseid while strategically running away, and Darkseid calls the entire battle off after having been brought up to speed by Oberan, explaining that he has no interest in Mister Miracle and demands that everyone leaves (which they do).

That's...terrifying.