JLA Ultramarine Corps (JLA Classified #1-3, Spawn/WildC.A.T.s #1)

 "These "no-nonsense" solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel" - Superman

And so we reach the end of teambook month with a look at a miniseries containing the greatest team ever, the late nineties, early noughties era Justice League America.  The first story in this slim volume I'm looking at particularly because it functions as a prologue to next month where I'll be looking at Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers Of Victory series.  JLA Classified features the Sheeda and Neh-buh-loh who go on to play a significant role in Seven Soldiers, this appearance being a prepemptive strike by them. Fans of Paul Cornell's brilliant Knight and Squire miniseries should also be interested in this as the wonderful Squire, Beryl, gets a starring role here. The trade paperback also contains a bumper length one shot that, in a pleasing Alan Moore-esque "end leads back to the beginning" is a team up starring the WildC.A.T.s and like Spawn/WildC.A.T.s it's really not that brilliant. Although it's definitely better as it doesn't treat the reader like a moron, the art though completely average at least works sequentially and the JLA are far more interesting in their interactions with the WildC.A.T.s (especially since several of the WildC.A.T.s are rip-offs of them) than Spawn was.

JLA CLASSIFIED - This comic starts out with the International Ultramarine Corp's in action.  These are made up of characters created my Grant Morrison for the crossover event DC One Million.  The original core team of four are Warmaker 1, Flow, 4-D and Pulse 8.  They were artifically created to oppose the Justice League, but rebelled and now police the planet from their flying city Superbia.  Other members include Knight and Squire, Goraiko, Jack O'Lantern, Vixen, Olympian, Kid Impala, Tasmanian Devil, Little Mermaid and Fleur-de-Lys.  The main thing that sets them apart from the JLA is their willingness to use extreme violence and kill to deal with difficult situations, making them similar to the Wildstorm superteam The Authority.

Gorilla Grodd in action.

The story begins with the Ultra-Marine Corp battling the forces of Gorilla Grodd - a super intelligent, telepathic ape - in the African city of Kinshasa.  Squire, who is Knight's side-kick fills them in on Grodd, he is number three on the "global most wanted" list. Goraiko, who is a mindless construct controlled by a young Japanese girl manages to take Grodd down, but Warmaker (a disembodied presence inside an armoured suit) thinks there is more to come.

They find a mysterious cube and Grodd tells them he burned Kinshasa to attract their attention.  It's a trap!  Goraiko suddenly sends out an electro-magnetic pulse that takes out Superbia's power.  The cube starts to absorb 4-D to gain a humanoid shape while Squire escapes the crashing Superbia on a flying bike and Grodd smashes Warmaker's armour.

Narration: "Savagery is crowned King.  Civilisations defenders fall."

The action cuts to Batman, Squire contacts him via the Bat-Phone to Batman's Bat-surprise.  When he is filled in on the situation he goes to his "sci-fi" closet to get outfitted to go help.  He tells Alfred the rest of the JLA are off saving someone else's universe. Back with Grodd, he is ranting about using Superia to smash human civilisation. He asks Neh-Buh-Loh what's in it for him.  he responds that he is preparing a way for "my Queen of terror".

The sci-fi closet.  Note the Dalek there.

Back with Beryl, she is blasted off her bike by flying jet powered apes.  Luckily Batman catches her with the small flying saucer he is riding.  He uses a "boom tube" to transport the pair of them to a JLA base near Pluto.  There is the same universe cube that turned into Neh-Buh-Loh, which Batman refers to as the "infant universe."  He believes Squire, whose powers relate to communications can contact the JLA inside it, while he goes and fights Grodd with his robot JLA.

Squire Beryl gets saved by Batman in a flying saucer.  Aren't comics awesome?!

Inside the Infant Universe, which Wonder Woman names as Qwewq, the JLA are watching the super-villain "Black Death" go about his business of being an evil dick.   It seems this universe is devoid of superheroes of it's own.  Then a payphone rings which Black Death answers and says "wrong number".  It was Squire trying to contact the JLA and we cut back to her telling Batman she "had something there."

The action then returns to the Ultra-Marines.  Knight, 4-D, Jack O'Lantern and The Little Mermaid are barricaded in the armory.  They intend to go on the offensive but 4-D has a little Sheeda "spine rider" on the back of his head controlling him, and he makes tumours appear in the Little Mermaid to force the others to give up and they all end up under Sheeda control.

A Sheeda "spine rider".

Batman and the robot JLA attack, but are easily taken out. "That went well" comments Batman sarcastically, and Grodd grabs him saying he always wanted to eat him.  Squire finally gets through again via phone.  The JLA arrest Black Death who says his goal was to waste their time anyway so Grodd could enact his plan.  Superman speaks to Squire and they all Boom Tube their way out of Qwewq, which is about time as Grodd has Batman tied to a spit, all ready for roasting.

The real JLA arrive on the scene and Green Lantern engages 4-D who restores his weakness to yellow.  As he falls Flash creates a vortex that cushions him and sends him flying back up where he punches 4-D out.  Wonder Woman takes on several of the Corp, including Vixen and Tasmanian Devil. Grodd keeps rambling and ranting about the superiority of the gorilla race to Batman, who when Grodd's back is turned, breaks free and kicks Grodd hard in the groin.

Olympian takes down John J'onzz.

Martian Manhunter goes to take on Goraiko but is intercepted by Olympian who uses fire against him, John's only weakness.  Superman meanwhile makes his way to fight Neh-Buh-Loh.  Batman has disabled and tied up Grodd, Batman got free thanks to the help of Warmaker in his disembodied form.  Jack O'Lantern and Knight appear to attack Batman next.

Olympian attacks Aquaman, while Wonder Woman uses her Lasso of Truth to overide Tasmanian Devils mind control and lets him battle his teammates.  Aquaman knocks Olympian out, while Batman does the same to Jack O'Lantern.  Before he can fight Knight, Squire appears and appeals to Knight not to fight Batman.  Knight manages to pull the Spine Rider off the back of his head and crushes it.

But John is too badass to stay down.

Martian Manhunter breaks free of the fire he was trapped in and goes to find Goraiko.  But it has no mind of it's own that he can reach, luckily Aquaman finds it's controller and frees her from the Sheeda.

Superman reaches Neh-Buh-Loh and demands to know what he is.

Neh-Buh-Loh: "The seed of evil Black Death planted bore fruit in me!  I am Neh-Buh-Loh the adult universe of Qwewq".

He doesn't fight Superman, saying he has tested them, then he teleports away saying next time he will be back with his people and the takeover will be less ostentatious.  With the rest of the Ultramarines freed of Sheeda control and the gorilla's imprisoned, Superman scolds the Ultramarines.

Superman: "You were a disaster waiting to happen, Warmaker. 'Superheroes' who don't mind killing to achieve their ends can be dangerous in the wrong hands."

He suggests they all go into the universe of Qwewq and become the heroes that universe needs, which might stop it becoming Neh-Buh-Loh.  They agree and Boom Tube into Qwewq and we'll find out what happened to them in the upcoming Seven Soldiers Of Victory series.

Tune in next month folks to see how they do.

If I have one criticism to make of this mini is that it's very crowded.  An extra issue might have ironed out the leaps the plot takes in places.  But it feels a little churlish to complain when at the very least you're getting value for money with the amount of story crammed into these three issues.  The lighter Batman of this story is much more to my taste than the grim, humourless avenger running about the DCU these days, and Beryl (Squire) is always fantastic. The artwork by Ed McGuiness is particularly praiseworthy, it's a style I really like, ie. heavily cartoon-like with characters given a real weight and heft, as well as good sequential flow making it a pleasure to read.  The Sheeda and Neh-buh-loh are set up as intriguing villains leaving you wanting to know more about them, which was part of this mini's job as a prelude to Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Grant Morrison maxi-series I'll be devoting a whole month to in February.

Pictured: The 90's.

JLA/WILDC.A.T.S - The story starts with Wally West when he was Kid Flash running through the countryside.  Suddenly he is attacked by a cackling maniac in an armoured suit.  He tells Wally it's a 41st Century "telekinetically controlled, super-conducting, liquid polyalloy". He then introduces himself as "Epoch, Lord of Time".  Fortunately Wally is saved by his older self and his JLA compadres.  Epoch disappears saying he'll target another of them in the past.  The Flash notes the weirdness of briefly having his memory in stereo then they return to their time travelling cube-ship, leaving behind a bewildered Kid Flash:

The Flash: "Trust me on this Wally.  It's like kissing: just one of those things that won't make any sense until you're older."

They chase Epoch back and forth through time, foiling each attempt he makes to kill them.  Finally Epoch sends them into the future but keeps the ships time drive in the past. They end up stranded in AD 55, Batman realises the time drive might still be around but buried in the ground, so Green Lantern makes a plough and they dig it up, the other four hold onto Kyle's ring to boost the will that powers it and jump start the time drive. They return to the present (1997, the date of publication), but it's definitely not their right present.

Stuck in the Wildstorm Universe a year before it was cool.

The WildC.A.T.s ( Covert Action Teams) are busy fighting people who's latent gene-active tendencies have been activated by powerful fluctations in the quantum foam (oh Grant...), a disturbance which is coming from outside the universe.  Suddenly the JLA's timeship lands and the JLA come out to see what's happening. To stop the narrative getting too cluttered, the full roster of each team is not present.  There is Superman during his electric blue phase, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash and Green Lantern.  For the WildC.A.T.s there is Majestic, Zealot, Grifter, Void and Maul, part of the post-Alan Moore run line up of the team. 

When two superteams who are unfamiliar with each other meet there is always some fisticuffs over a misunderstanding before the inevitable team-up occurs.  When Majestic rather arrogantly says the following to a curious Superman:

Majestic: "I am Majestros of the Kheran Empire. These are the WildC.A.T.s and if you dare subject me to another electromagnetic scan, I intend to tear your head from your body".

Superman responds by punching him far outside the building they are in.  As Majestic is the WildC.A.T.s Superman rip-off (he was absent from Spawn/WildC.A.T.s I assume simply because he'd have been able to take out even a powered up Spawn easily) there is something quite satisfying about Superman's response to him, even if it does feel a little out of character for him.

Zealot versus Wonder Woman.

So Zealot takes on Wonder Woman, Zealot is also a "homage" to Wonder Woman, a proud warrior brought up and trained in the art of battle by an isolated sisterhood.  She isn't as super strong and resilient as Wondy is and she's also something of a humourless cow.  So all Wonder Woman does in the fight is defend herself while asking Zealot nicely to stop as she isn't really go to be able to hurt her no matter how hard she attacks.

Grifter isn't a direct copy of Batman.  He is the only WildC.A.T member with no superpowers so is alike in that respect, and he is probably the most "badass" of them too, also like Batman.  But he uses guns, which of course is Batman's big no-no, and he's intelligent enough to see just how much Batman outclasses him by the fact Batman managed to disarm him before they even started fighting and he correctly decides not to push his luck.

Flash and Void.

Void and the Flash are similar in that they both move at great speeds, but Void moves by teleporting herself and manages to stay a short step ahead of the Flash as they size each other up and realise they aren't a threat to each other.  This leaves the size changing Maul and Green Lantern battling, although they are definitely nothing alike.  Green Lantern is the only one of the JLA who really throws himself into his match-up and get's harmlessly disabled quite quickly by Maul as a result.

Superman and Majestic sort out their differences off screen, they realise they share a common enemy and finally Zealot calms down which she does out of respect for Wonder Woman's fighting prowess, they then try and work out what their next move should be against their reality messing, time-travelling opponent.

Batman: "We still don't know where we are.  According to the Grifter here this is 1997 but he's never heard of Metropolis, Gotham City or the Justice League."

Grifter: "Great name though guys.  Says what it means and it's not afraid to get laughed at."

Cheeky blighter!  I assume this is Morrison actually poking fun at the supposedly more "realistic" Wildstorm universe characters who are in fact just as silly as those of DC and Marvel.  Anyway, the Justice League set about the monsters that have just arrived.  Majestic is still a bit dubious about their tale of coming from a parallel universe, but Void, who's "thing" is space and time travel says it makes sense with what's been happening.

Void: "This 'Time Lord' they spoke of has disrupted probability so severely on their timewave that the distortions are leaking through to our universe, look!  This chaos will continue to accelerate unless we stop it at source."

Some metaphysical folderol.

They come up with a plan to cross into the JLA's universe to take on Epoch.  Void and Green Lantern both enter "Void-space" a trippy 4D place.  There are beings there who in return for Green Lanterns "concepts" which he doodles with his power ring will help them go back to the DCU.  It works and Void installs the technology into the time drive of the JLA's time machine.  It will make a bridge for them that will last a few hours, the WildC.A.T.s can help them for a short while but will have to return before the bridge decays.

They make it, but in the short time they have been away, Epoch fused with with the ultimate weapon of the 68th century, a self evolving supercomputer.  Now he can't tell where he ends and it begins.  He has used his power to summon troops from the future to subdue Earth, and he intends to convert the Earth into a huge time travelling engine with humans as it's slave population.

The villain "Epoch"

The JLA and WildC.A.T.s spring into action.  Epoch goes into high alert and downloads all the anti-JLA codes he has.  Superman absorbs electricity from the clouds then he and Majestic unleash powerful energy beams at Epoch's protective shield. Meanwhile on the ground Batman and Grifter and Zealot and Wonder Woman fight through the future army of monsters.  Maul grows to a huge size and smashes Epochs weakened protective shield.  Then Superman tells Majestic it's up to his people to finish dealing with Epoch as he has no defences programmed against them.

Void manages to disable the forcefield around Epoch and they hit him with energy beams, bullets and a sword. Before Epoch can overload and destroy Earth the JLA arrive with their time cube which they have programmed to follow a circle in time, a temporal prison.  Epoch screams that the records promised he would be master of the earth and he disappears locked in a timeloop for all eternity.

The WildC.A.T.s save the day.

The JLA and WildC.A.T.s bid each other farewell.  Superman says he and Majestic should meet again and talk some day.  Majestic isn't sure they would have much in common, but he does think Superman should wear a cape.  Batman tells Grifter he doesn't need guns to fight with,  Grifter says he'll still use them, but gives one to Batman as a souveneir and as they disappear back to their home universe he says it was a "pleasure and a privilege working with you Batman."  The story ends with a page showing a totally insane Epoch trapped in the timeloop forever.

And they return the their own universes.

JLA/WildC.A.T.s is a bit of fluff.  It's a fairly bland and flavourless read but has some nice moments sprinkled here and there.  It does throw into sharp relief just how uninspired most of the Wildstorm characters are when placed in a story with the iconic DC characters they emulate.  Grifter comes out of it best, mainly because Morrison writes him as a pseudo Batman type and he gets the pick of the good lines.  The art by Val Semeiks is... uninspired to say the least.  Oh, don't get me wrong, it's not full of confusing splash pages nor sequential fails like Spawn/WildC.A.T.s and the female characters are drawn with respect. But this is another Morrison "cosmic" tale and the art doesn't really capture the spectacular weirdness parts of the script seem to call for. Of course one is left with the question of how the Wildstorm Universe can exist when at this point in the DCU timeline there was one universe and one universe only.  But I pick nits.  Buy JLA Ultramarine Corps for the lovely JLA Classified mini and enjoy JLA/WildC.A.T.s as a decent bit of extra value.

Hitman Book 7: Closing Time (Hitman #51-60, Hitman/Lobo: That Stupid Bastich #1, JLA/Hitman #1-2 and a story from Superman 80-Page Giant #1) PART ONE

"Well I.. I guess this is it." - Sixpack

Tommy Monaghan dies at the end of Hitman.  To be blunt it's no real spoiler or surprise once you've read this far.  He dies doing a heroic thing. He dies to save his best friend from a fate worse than death.  He dies because in many ways Ennis is a supremely moral writer who has often his amoral and immoral characters pay the ultimate price of their life decisions.  He dies in the eight page final arc, "Closing Time" and the JLA/Hitman story actually was written in 2006, five years after the main series came to a close.  However as the JLA story takes place chronologically (apart from it's coda) before the final arc, I've decided to cover it in this post along with all the other issues that aren't "Closing Time" leaving the final post in this look at the Hitman series to concentrate fully on Tommy's final tale.  The other two issues from the main series, tie up the loose ends of Sixpack and the lovably useless Section 8, while the Lobo story feels like a cathartic one for Ennis as he puts the immortal Czarnian through a hilarious humliation conga.  The JLA story appears to tell a tale Ennis was denied by the cancellation of the series, that Tommy was destined to do some special and important, and is set roughly during the Grant Morrison JLA era so has all the big guns still in it, including Superman.

HITMAN/LOBO: THAT STUPID BASTICH - I've looked at Lobo before in the two miniseries collection that established his character fully as a psychopathic alien killer.  I said then that it was a some what prescient parody of what would become the "Image" comics type of murderous anti-hero, but by the 2000, what had been a humourously over the top character lampooing the excesses of the genre had become emblematic of those excesses instead and I think Ennis found that distasteful as he generally likes to explore the effects violence has on his characters lives rather than just being violent for the sake of violence, so in this issue he's using Lobo to represent all that he finds irritating about the popularity of badass killers who never get to feel the repercussions of their bad behaviour.

In this story drawn by Doug Mahnke, the main man comes into Noonan's and starts behaving with his customarily boorish behaviour.  Tommy reads his mind which "wasn't a major undertaking" and to find out his strengths and weaknesses, then Lobo starts bullying Sixpack, so Tommy pours booze all over himself and addresses Lobo as "miss".  This makes Lobo slightly annoyed:

Lobo: "No one question's th' gender o' th'main man an' lives ta tell th' tale!  Whoever yah are, ya hume bastich - consider yerself fragged!"

Tommy blows Lobo's eyes out and leads him out of Noonan's using his alchohol smell to guide Lobo.  As Lobo chases him they cross paths with some gangsters who want to kill Tommy for the bounty still on his head.  A sniper fires at him but hits Lobo instead, making him madder still.  Tommy thinks he might have bitten off more than he can chew getting Lobo angry with him, so while he thinks of a way out of this he leads Lobo to the rest of the gangsters and while Lobo kills them all, he has an idea and phones Sixpack to get Section 8 on the case.

Lobo meets his match.

Tommy then leads Lobo into a building yard where Section 8 take it in turns to assault Lobo, finally Tommy temporarily knocks Lobo out with a wrecking ball and armed with a camera and Bueno Excellente in a wedding dress they set about filming blackmail material with Bueno "marrying" Lobo and er... consumating it as well.  Then for the final touch Dogwelder welds a dog to Lobo's bum.

Later Lobo comes around and rages back to Noonan's, but before he can kill Tommy, Tommy shows him the film and says if he hurts him or anyone involved he'll release copies to everyone in the galaxy.  Lobo reluctantly leaves and Tommy, Sean (this dates to just before Sean died in the main series) and Sixpack celebrate.  This is something of a last hurrah for Section 8, as they don't come out of their next entanglement with more powerful forces very well at all. And even though I quite like Lobo myself, it's still a pretty funny issue overall.

SUPERMAN 80 PAGE GIANT #1 - Before that we get an "imaginary story" published around the time of Superman's appearence in the main Hitman series, the Eisner award winning "Of Thee I Sing" covered in my look at book five. This short story imagines what would happen if Sixpack really had superpowers and what might happen when he and Superman go on patrol together.  Needless to say, hilarity ensues as Superman says they can't fight crime by attacking criminals before they do anything.

Superman: "Haven't you heard of due process? Of constitutional rights? The law?"

Sixpack: "Ain't that for the police?"

Superman: "Well yes, but we still have to observe the same protocols, we do work outside the law techinically speaking but that doesn't just give you the right to just.. just assault whoever you want."

Sixpack and Superman. A titanic team-up!

This falls on deaf ears as Sixpack starts trying to set a prison on fire in the name of preventative justice.  Superman then introduces him to a reformed Doomsday (infamously the creature that killed him in the 90's) and together they stop an old lady being mugged.  Superman then bids Sixpack farewell with the following words:

Superman: "It's been a long, strange night Sixpack.  Okay, one last time. You do not act without proof. You use no more force than neccesary. You give the fellow a chance to repent and do the right thing.  Then.. and only then..."

Sixpack: "... you're clear to go ahead and smash his face to a bloody pulp?"

Superman: "No Sixpack.  You'll be a hero".

Then Sixpack wakes up from his drunken dream on the floor of Noonan's and tries and fails to fly away. Which ends this fun little story of the worlds grubbiest "hero" meeting the Big Blue Boy Scout.

SUPER GUY - The next Hitman story taking place in the main series begins with Tommy and Natt chasing down a naked man.  The nude man reaches around and pulls a machine gun out of his arse and fires back at them. At Injun Peak research centre, Doctor Jacksons is discussing with Doctor Haddock why his lab assisstant took off all his clothes and jumped out of the window.  Haddock says he opened something called "The Tesseract" inside his assisstant, a way of creating infinite space inside one object.  Unfortunately this drove his assisstant insane.

EW.

Back with Tommy and Natt, the nude man is using guns and explosives pulled out of his bum to fend them off.  We then join Sixpack and Section 8 meeting down in the sewers.  Friendly Fire is depressed and tries to tell Sixpack like it is:

Friendly Fire: "We're not superheroes Sixpack!  We're a bunch of deranged bastards! The whole situation is completely and totally insane!"

Sixpack accuses him of defeatism, but Friendly Fire runs down a list of just how useless they are, including accusing Sixpack of alchoholism. He then sees how gutted Sixpack is and apologises but says he was just trying to get them to face reality.

Back with the scientists, Doctor Jackson studies Doctor Haddock's notes and finds something startling.  It seems Haddock signed a pact with some entities known as "The Many Angled Ones" and performed a Satanic ritual on his assisstant to activate the Tesseract. Jackson suddenly realises the nude man should not be killed, but is too late as Tommy manages to blow the assisstant away and suddenly weird toothy shapes appear in the sky.  Down in the sewer, Sixpack thinks this is a job for Section 8.

The Many Angled Ones.

The creatures say they are The Many Angled Ones who were bound to an earthly vessel.  When that vessel was killed they were freed. It is then that Section 8 attack.  They do poorly however and are all killed apart from Sixpack and Bueno Excellente. The scientists arrive to warn Tommy, but realise they are too late.  The Many Angled Ones reward Haddock for bringing them to earth by kiling him which they say is just a taste of what's going to happen to the planet now. Totally out of their depth Tommy and Natt try and blow the Many Angled Ones up.. somehow.  But in the resulting explosion and fire only Sixpack is left standing with a forcefield around him.

Sixpack says it's because he is a superhero. The Many Angled Ones laugh at him for being prepared to sacrifice himself even when the odds against him are so overwhelming. Sixpack says that's what superheroes do. The Many Angled Ones then offer him a deal:

Many Angled One: "Come back with us.  Enter our realm. Try your strength in a battle for your own soul. Win you salvation or damnation. Do this now and we shall spare this world."

Sixpack: "Done"

Farewell Sixpack

And he leaves with them.  Gradually his mates realise he won't be coming back and erect a statue in his memory so people won't forget the sacrifice he made.  But Ennis also shows us a man called Sidney Speck at an AA meeting in New York who might just be a reformed Sixpack, but it's left up to us to decide what his fate might have been.  Ennis is a very humane writer in many ways, giving Sixpack a heroic exit for what was really a one-note joke character for the series and a possible happy ending for him too.  I take the happy ending everytime.

ON THE DARKSIDE - The framing device of this story is Clark Kent telling a story to a journalist who has been trying for two years to get to the bottom of the link between Superman and a "Gotham thug".  Clark tells the journalist he is going to tell him a story he can't print because Superman needs to confess via him.  We then flashback to the era when Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Flash were all Justice League America members. There is a shuttle approaching their base on the moon that wants to touchdown there as it is in trouble.

The Justice League of America

Green Lantern flies out and scans it, then Batman tells him to get away from it, it's dangerous.  Batman then fills everyone in on the Bloodlines incident, the one where interstellar parasites ended up giving random people powers, including Tommy.  It appears that the Bloodlines virus is on the shuttle.  Batman goes to fetch Tommy so they can analyse a living Bloodlines survivor.  Sean, Natt and Ringo are all alive at this point and they are at Noonan's with Tommy, who steps out to take a call and is grabbed by Batman.

Batman: "Go for your guns.  I'll break your arm. If you even look like throwing up, I'll break both."

Tommy: "How about if I just hang here and wet my pants?"

Batman: "That would be fine."

Batman then teleports him and Tommy back up to the JLA moonbase. He introduces himself to Flash and Wonder Woman, then sees Green Lantern and jovially asks him if he remembers their team-up.  Batman is disgusted at hearing about them working together, especially as Green Lantern knew Tommy was a hitman.

Green Lantern: "Dude, it's Gotham you know? Something terrible always happens to me when I go there... Someone spiked my drink, and I don't know what happened - all I remember is this voice going Bueno over and over..."

Oh Garth, what did poor Kyle Rayner do to deserve a night with Bueno Excellente?  You bad, bad man you. Anyway, Batman starts giving a lecture on morality, which is interrupted by Superman walking in and greeting Tommy warmly. Batman flatly tells Superman that Tommy is a killer and Tommy does at least have the good grace to look ashamed in the face of Superman's disappointment.

Superman learns the truth about Tommy

They start analysing Tommy's blood and find that the Bloodlines virus on the shuttle has evolved to become stronger.  Meanwhile Superman talks with Wonder Woman about the circumstances of his meeting with Tommy and how he still believes in what he told him despite Tommy's profession. In the restroom, Tommy takes an opportunity to write "Tommy was here" in felt tip on the wall.  Suddenly the shuttle comes crashing down and takes out most of the room Tommy is in exposing him to the vacuum of space.  Luckily Green Lantern comes and rescues him using his ring much to Tommy's relief.

Superman goes into the shuttle much to Batman's annoyance, then they lose contact with him.  They also find that their powers have somehow been switched off, including Green Lantern's ring.

Wonder Woman:  "If they do get in, we're going to need weapons".

Green Lantern: "Well that's the problem.  We're the weapons and we're not working".

The crew of the NASA probe come walking across the moons surface to the JLA headquarters. Tommy surruptiously gets his guns back while the others prepare to fight hand to hand.  The NASA crew remove their helmets to reveal parasites stuck to their faces and they have a container with more in for the JLA.  Tommy fires on them and they respond with a display of superpowers.  Batman is pissed at Tommy for attacking them as the hosts are still human.  The JLA then pile in and fight them.

Uh-oh...

Batman is quickly taken out and a parasite attached to his head.  Wonder Woman realises that Batman has explosives in his utility belt and they use them to escape with Batman to a safer part of the base.   They can't kill the parasite because if "one dies, two die" mumbles the possessed Batman.  Safe for now under Aquaman's tank they ponder the situation, ie, what's happened to Superman and the fact that if the US government get wind of what has happened they'll nuke the base.

Wonder Woman takes charge, she and Tommy will return to the control room, the others will guard Batman.  Climbing a ladder to get there, the possessed crew throw more alien parasites down at Wonder Woman and Tommy.  She grabs them all and jumps off the ladder telling Tommy to "keep fighting".   At the top, Tommy is faced by a possessed Superman.  But he manages to get through to him and Superman rips the parasite of his face. Superman though is left weak, cold and shivering so Tommy goes into battle the possessed crew alone.  He kills them, then tells one of the leftover parasites to leave Batman or he'll kill the rest of them.  They do so.

Tommy takes down the infected men.

The JLA and Tommy get their powers back and the Flash makes it to the communications screen to tell the goverment to call off the nukes. Batman decides to be a hardass about Tommy's actions, saying killing is not the JLA way.

Tommy: "I ain't no superhero...I'm just some schmuck from the Cauldron an' I did the only thing I could think to do!"

Batman cuffs him and leaves him with two members of Gotham PD, who let Tommy go in lieu of gambling debts. We then return to Clark in the present, and Clark says Tommy took a decision no superhero could make.

Clark: "That's how Tommy saved the JLA...I'm talking about sheer, unadulterated, moral courage."

He says Superman and Tommy never met again, although Superman always felt an injustice had been done and wondered if he could make it up somehow. The reporter says that when he was in Noonan's, Hacken had always said that Tommy said "Superman's Okay by me."

Later Clark is now Superman and he flies up to the moon.  The base was repaired after the shuttle crashed into it but one piece of rubble was left standing.  The section of wall where Tommy wrote, "Tommy was here" on it.  And it's here Superman always comes to "offer a prayer to the Lord for the soul of a killer."

Aw Garth stop plucking my heartstrings man.

And this was the last of Tommy's appearances in the DCU, giving him a fine send off and fulfilling the prophecy Pat had about Tommy being destined to do something special.  if I have one complaint it's the art.  When John McCrea tries to make his art less styalised if tends to come off as rather bland and lifeless compared to how energetic it usually is.  I had the same complaint about his work on The Boys.  But Ennis's script mostly treats the JLA with respect and the ending is just gorgeously melancholy.  Taking this story along with Sixpack's last stand in "Super Guy", the short story in the Superman Special and the humiliation of Lobo it does feel like Garth Ennis, for all his detractors would claim otherwise, really does get what lies at the heart of the appeal of the superhero concept, even if he isn't always enamoured of it in practice.   The fall of Tommy is the only story left now, so I hope you return in a couple of days and find out how it all ends.

Hitman Book 3: Local Heroes (#9-14)

"...All of a sudden I just don't feel like runnin'" - Tommy

Hitman, the story so far.  Acquiring the gifts of telepathy and X-ray vision, hitman Tommy Monaghan has risen to the top of his dubious profession.  He lives in a shady part of Gotham City called The Cauldron and when he isn't out shooting people he hangs out with his friends at a bar called Noonan's.  In the previous book his childhood best friend Pat was brutally tortured to near death by someone looking for Tommy, forcing Tommy to put him out of his misery.  Tommy managed to take out the man who did this but not before being badly wounded himself and losing his relationship with a woman called Wendy when she found out that he really was what he joked about being.  Tommy's adventures take place firmly in the mainstream DCU, he met Batman in the first volume and in this one will meet the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern.  While Ennis obviously has some respect for Batman, this isn't true of Kyle and he's portrayed as about as dim as you can get without crossing the line into open mockery.  With that said then, lets crack on.

LOCAL HEROES - The story begins with Pat's funeral, which is well attended.  It ends with Tommy, Sean, Hcken, Ringo and Natt by the graveside.  They each take a swig of booze and poor the rest on the coffin. Hacken admits that what Pat did before he died, he "never heard of anything as tough as that before".

Meanwhile Detective Tiegel is being questioned over her use of a dead collegue as a bullet shield when taking on a group of armed villains.  She lose her temper and accuses everyone of corruption, she is allowed to keep her job for now.  But later she gets into a fight with the dead guy's old partner and this results in her getting a suspension.  As she goes to confront the Captain she stops and hears her talking to a shady guy from the government who wants to recruit Tommy for something and if he disagrees, the Gotham police force will take him out publically.

Detective Tiegel

Meanwhile at Noonan's, Tommy is telling Sean how his injuries sustained in the last book are affecting him.  He can hardly keep one hand level and using his telepathy has become painful, if he goes too deep he gets a horrible migraine. Truman and his bodyguard Feekle find Tommy in the bar and ask to talk to him.  Tommy agrees but immediately starts needling Feekle about his name. Trueman says his department deals with superheroes.

Truman: "Bright costumes.  Incredible powers.  Battles with the city/country/world at stake.  Bit of soap opera. Public can't get enough of it. Our aim as far as possible is to control them...but what we want to talk to you about is their destruction."

Truman, the little creep.

Tommy says no.  He will not and never will kill a good person.  No matter how much money he is offered.  Truman says it's a shame and he and Feekle leave.  Later Tommy is at Pat's packing up his things, when suddenly the place is surrounded by many armed police.  Using his wits, Tommy manages to take their leader hostage and gets the rest to drop their guns.  He and his hostage get in a car and drive it away, while the locals cheer Tommy for putting one over on the police.

[As an aside, what's absolutely fascinating about this, is that Ennis did in fact reuse this idea of CIA backed superhumans who keep the rest of the superheroes in check with his main protagonists of The Boys.  Although context is everything, the morally upright heroes of the DCU need no shady govermental monitoring so this is an obviously villainous plan that Tommy is offered as becoming part of.  In The Boys the majority of "supes" are venal, corrupted, immoral and murderous and so a group of lets say "anti-heroes" charged with smacking them down when they get too far out of line is one the reader can get behind (I'll be discussing The Boys in April and May of next year, mark your calenders folks).]

Surprise!

Hearing of this, Truman says it's time to go to Plan B.  It might encourage Tommy to change his mind, if not Feekle can deal with him. Still in the car, anothr car piles into the side of it and it turns out to be Tiegel who tells Tommy to get in and then drives away shaking off the rest of the police as they go.  Tiegel says she didn't want the shady guys getting their hands on him as he "a bloodbath waiting to happen."

He takes her to the home she shares with her African-American mother and WW2 veteran grandfather, a German WW2 veteran.  Yes really.  Her deceased dad was a white cop. Tommy turns on the charm with her mother who is delighted Tiegel has bought a man home for once. Later when it's just Tiegel and Tommy talking, she tells him he everything she despises. He says he's choosy about who he shoots.  She says that makes no difference.  He then makes to leave.

Tiegel and Tommy get acquainted.

She asks him to stay and admits she jumped wihout thinking when she rescued him.  He says he's up to his neck in trouble, and just killing Trueman won't help.  Tiegel has an idea, why don't they make his plans public.  That way they can blackmail him and also embarress the Gotham Police colluding with him.  Tommy agrees.  Next day he is chliing on a rooftop thing when suddenly Green Lantern attacks him.

Green Lantern accuses Tommy of being hired by a Crime Syndicate to kill him. They end up in a running battle which ends in an impasse, Green Lantern's fist to Tommy's face, Tommy's gun to Green Lantern's head.  Tommy then proves he would never kill a good guy by withdrawing his gun.  He and Green Lantern go to Noonan's where he and Sixpack have some fun with Kyle over him being a replacement character.

Green Lantern and Tommy fight it out

Green Lantern tells Tommy he was told Tommy was out to get him by an Agent McAllister.  she showed him pictures of Nightfist and said this fate was planned for him.  Tommy laughs at how used Green Lantern must feel, although he admits the police have a lot of reports on him.  Green Lantern reacts with shock when Tommy says he is a hitman, but Tommy tells him to relax and that he only kills bad guys.  Tommy then fills Green Lantern in on Truman's proposed plans to recruit him as a superhero killer.  Green Lantern reluctantly agrees to help him and Tiegel blackmail Truman.

Kyle isn't the brightest bulb in this storyline.

Tommy phones Truman and tells him to meet him outside the Hilton Hotel the next night and perhaps they can do business.  Truman arranges to have Sean Noonan kidnapped to ensure Tommy's good behviour.  This goes badly for the men he sends.

Afterwards he phones Tommy to let him know he is alright.  After Tommy puts the phone down he thinks to himself.

Tommy: "'See you Sean' an' I nearly say uncle Sean by accident... that's nothin' though. Theres been times I nearly called him dad."

Sean deals with his attackers.

The next day, Tiegel takes up a smiping position and attaches a wire to Tommy so they can record what Truman says to him. There are Truman's goons hiding all down the street Tommy's X-Ray vision tells him.  But Green Lantern is their back up for when things kick off.  Tommy then walks out and meets Truman.  Truman tells him that metahumans are humanties greatest threat.  If they realised their potential and started to work together, normal government by the people would be over.  He says Tommy would have access to the highest level of killing technology, and he will rid the world of the "superhuman plague".

Truman: "Under my orders, if I tell you to firebomb the Batmobile, you do it. If I tell you to execute an Amazonian Princess, you do it.  If you find yourself looking down a telescopic sight at Superman and I say kill, you will pin him in the crosshairs and send a muclear bullet directly into his skull".

Tommy battles Feekle.

If Tommy says no again, his friends will be killed and Tommy tortured for life.  Tommy does say no and starts to walk away.  Truman's men begin to attack, but Green Lantern in a ring construct spaceship appears and they surrender to him. Mr. Feekle however, raging about being mocked by Tommy chases him into a shop.  But Tommy blasts him stone dead.

Later Tommy meets with Green Lantern, who says he was not happy working with Tommy but perhaps justice is darker in Gotham.  He keeps talking not noticing Tommy has slipped away leaving him monologuing to himself. Tommy contacts Truman and tells him he has copies of the tape and if anything happens to him or his friend they'll be released to the media.  Truman agrees to leave Tommy alone.. for now.

Oh Boo Hoo, Green Lantern.

Tommy and Tiegel have a chat together where he mentioned she said she would arrest him one day.  She says she's still suspended so can't.  He asks if she would if she wasn't.  She says "almost certainly".  Grinning, Tommy bids her farewell.  The story ends with Tommy at a baseball game.  The Gotham team are the underdogs here, there's been a fix but it will only take the team so far.  Tommy wants a win, not for the bet he put on them but for Pat.  And I assume (knowing nothing about baseball myself) that the team wins when the batsman strikes a home run and Tommy reacts with ecstasy.

ZOMBIE NIGHT AT THE GOTHAM AQUARIUM - There are more dodgy goings on at Injun Peak Research Facility.  One of the scientists has been murdered but managed to write "call Monaghan" in his blood before dying.  Tommy and his friends are relaxing when the call comes through, they met a scientist who tells them that  Doctor Oswald Minett has gone rogue.  He was responsible for Project Wormwood.  He invented a gas that would revive the recently dead, with the hope it had military applications.  But the zombies were uncontrollable and only wanted flesh.  Not one to give up they suspect he's going to try a mass test but not on humans.

When Undead Octopus's Attack!

This gives Tommy the idea that he'll be at the aquarium, which he is.  He starts boiling the water in all the fish tanks until they are all dead and he releases the gas.  At the aquarium Tommy and Natt bump into Ringo who had also been given the contract. Natt is then attacked by a zombie octopus.  They manage to blast it to death.  Then Hacken chainsaws his way in, he just tagged along to see what was happening.  Tommy opens the door and is presented with a whole room full of zombie animals.

Brains?

They start fighting then and Hacken gets bit in the hand by a zombie baby seal that Tommy has to club to get to let go.  Hacken panics that he'll turn into a zombie now he's been bitten and his hand needs cutting off.  Better safe than sorry, Ringo chops it off with the chainsaw.

Natt: "Gotta admit, that guy Hacken is one hardcore dude, you know? Most anybody else would have died of shock straight away."

Hacken: [blasting his severed hand] "Gotta make sure of it. Don't want it coming after me".

Ringo: "Does that seem like a mind remotely susceptible to shock?"

Natt: "Point".

Hacken then deals with some zombie penguins in this awesome panel.

There are no words...

They then start making their way through the aquarium looking for Minett.  On the way they are attacked by a zombie dolphin.

Zombie dolphins FTW

They take it down, but Minett has seen them and drops zombie fish on them. He then confronts armed with a gun.  Tommy asks him if you can become a zombie by being bitten, the scientist says no, you have to be dead and exposed to the Wormwood gas.  Before he can kill them, a zombie shark breaks through it's tank and practically bites Minett in two.  In the rush of water the boys lose their weapons.  Tommy still has his and blasts open the door and the water rushes into the next room.  They jump down into the water and grab their guns and go all out on the zombie animals.  With all of them dead, they leave before the authorities can give them any trouble.

Zombie animals are no match for the Hitmen

The story ends with Tommy contemplating the stack of notes infront of him.  His pay for dealing with the zombies and Minett.

Natt: "What you doin' with your half?"

Tommy: "I'm mailing every cent of it to Greenpeace before I'm too sober to care."

Natt; [wordlessly moves his stack of cash next to Tommy's]

Tommy: "I guess we must be crazy, huh?"

Natt: "Nah.  You're crazy.  I'm just stoopid."

And thus ends probably the funniest Hitman arc of them all and the book overall.

This is a really enjoyable book.  We get to see Tommy use his wits, charm and cunning to get out of mess after mess in the first story.  Tiegel is a nice, fiesty addition to the cast.  Like us the audience she is both attracted to Tommy by his affable personality and sense of loyalty, while being repulsed by the fact he's a hired killer.  Poor Green Lantern gets the piss taken out of him for most of the story, but he does come through and help Tommy out of a tight spot.  It goes without saying that "Zombie Night..." is utterly hilarious with John McCrea's art really shining as it portrays the variety of zombie animals.  Thus endeth Book 3.  The next book sees the return of Etrigan and a villain Tommy already defeated once...