Justice League International Annual

I decided to pull the bandaid off and just read this thing.

SPOILERS AHEAD


Remember Countdown to Infinite Crisis and how most of it outside the Booster and Ted bits were forced as all hell? How all the other heroes except Wonder Woman were assholes and the boys were written as overly pathetic second string heroes that no one respected? How Booster stole money from his best friend, ditched him to focus on himself before reconsidering? How they were known as the ones that “cried wolf” a lot even though they never did that before? In other words’ traits that sound suspiciously like Geoff Johns’ writing. Yeah I’m sure that Dan Didio is to blame for a few bad moments in this but I’m not familiar with his writing. Johns is known for making heroes look like crap for the sake of the story he wants to tell. Sure he has some good books but these traits still slip in. This smacks me with a number of things that doesn’t work. So here are the things that confused me or ignore what happened in the actual series.

One: Booster lying to his team? This is just straight up bullshit that flies right in the face of everything Jurgens has done on the JLI title. Booster takes his job as leader seriously and knows how important it is since lives are on the line. He needs his teammates to trust him and can’t keep that trust if he undermines them. There’s no reason for him to lie since he already had these people support him (including Guy) and outright telling him they want him to keep leading them since they believe in him. Regardless why the hell would Booster lie? What could he possibly get out of it?

Two: Why isn’t the main Justice League helping? Not only has Batman offered every type of support he could for the team (except staying) they worked with Batwing and Nightwing. That alone should give them all the help they need even if Johns likes to pretend that Jurgens run never happened to keep Batman acting like an elitist. According to the first blurb this hostage situation has been going on for four days. In all that time the other league never decides to do anything about it? Are we to believe that their really so snobby that their endanger lives just because they think the JLI are beneath them?

Three: Why do they need to wait for the U.N. to decide anything? The JLI broke away from the U.N. and chose to work on their own. The main thing Booster cares about, at least in regards to this JLI, was saving lives. He wasn’t obsessed with getting everything perfect. In fact he turned out to be a man that wouldn't be the stooge the U.N. was looking for. Also if the team was still with the U.N. they wouldn’t want the JLI to be around the other league anyway since they distrust them. Booster already expanded the team by accepting OMAC, a member the U.N. would never approve of. Nor would they approve of new heroes or unknowns. Do we need anymore proof that the editors royally screw over this title? It doesn’t seem like anyone on this book bothered to even skim Jurgens run. It’s more shocking because OMAC was Didios’ book, shouldn’t he know what happened with the character?


Four: Batwings’ still on the team? Because he said he wasn’t staying. And we’re to believe that no one would come to help them despite Batwings’ connections to Batman? It’s already stretching credibility with them ignoring the respect Booster and Batman share but this is lazy. It was nice to see Batwing considers Booster a good man as he didn’t like him when they first met. I’ll take any silver lining I can get.


Five: Is that the Hall of Justice? You know, the building that got blown up during the first arc? Batman told them they had new digs, while the last issue mentioned them appearing here the art reminds me of the Hall.

Six: What’s Guys’ deal? Why was Guy complaining in the first place? Yeah he doesn’t like being lied to but Booster, the leader, is telling them to go ahead and save lives. It’s the same thing Guy says he was going to do in the first place. If he still thought so little of Booster he wouldn’t have stayed as long as he did. Tora isn’t on the current team so he doesn’t have much of an excuse. In the first issue he left because Booster was the leader and was pissed that he wasn’t in the big league. He stayed because he was needed, yes, but he learned to respect the whole team. Yea for Guy seeing he shares traits with Booster but boo on the backpedaling.


Seven: Because Booster is ALWAYS in it for the glory? I thought the whole point of not rebooting Booster back to the start of his origin was to have him where he was doing these things for the right reason. Batman has said as much (or at least he did when Jurgens was writing him) but blam! Sudden character regression. Hell no. If anyone should still have their character growth from the previous timeline it should be the time traveler. And you know, the fact that none of this was even hinted at during Jurgens run outside the fact Booster did commercials.


Eight: Are they implying that General August in Irons likes Godiva? They were buddies but she made it very clear that Booster was the only one she was interested in. Also this is the same guy that demanded she get respect when some idiot called her a bimbo. He’s just standing there when she demands her ex remove his hand? Granted I’d like her to move the creepy guy herself but points for at least telling him to back off.

Nine: Does the fact that Jaime is there asking for help confuse anyone else? Because I was under the impression the scarab was stopping him from revealing their bond or seeking help. I know it stopped him from telling his friends and family. And after BB #11 he’s okay being on that team with Booster? He didn’t even research who was on the team? His “why do bad things still happen if you know the future” bit sounds incredibly naive to boot. Bad things would happen regardless. Edit: Apparently the first part was explained but still think about it. Johns/Didio match up the BB series better than the actual JLI series.

Ten: No one set up anything in place in case OMAC lost control? Really? The guy that’s more powerful than most if not all the other members? The one that has a history of being controlled? Hell, I’m blaming this one on Batman because at least we know he prepares for such things and is kind of responsible anyway.

Eleven: Isn’t the “armor” GAII skin? I don’t know his powers that well but I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.

Twelve: Skeets isn’t a robot anymore? But a program to get rid of viruses? Um no, it was said in JLI that Skeets was still a robot in command of “the Booster cave.” But thanks for the crappy footnote of a reboot for the character.

Thirteen: Who’s filming the kiss? Brother Eye?

Fourteen: Umm, time is broken? How did Kevin Kho turn back if Booster was erased? Because even Batman couldn’t figure out how to help him. How do they even know about Booster if he was erased?!

Fifteen: JLI just falls apart with no one looking for BB or Booster? Yeah their recalling Booster doesn’t make sense but his team cared for him. They just go home instead of looking for him?

Boosters’ uniform is interesting. “Advanced Research Group United Superhumans.” A.R.G.U.S? I wasn’t familiar with it but apparently that’s the group Steve Trevor set up. I hope their not going to go that direction or imply that Rip works for him too.

The “join me or die” part sounds just like a Max from CTIC.

Like Barry Allen messing with the timeline this doesn't endear me to Clark/Diana.

Johns really loves his tropes, once again he refers to the JLI as the lesser league. It’s pretty much a cliche that I was waiting to show up once the other CTIC like bits popped up. The “weak” team gets screwed over just to prop up Johns other projects. To show how “important” this event is. Booster gets erased and likely Rip too (although it wouldn’t surprise me if they make Rip a bad guy in this ‘verse.) If Rips’ still Boosters’ son then everything else should have collapsed when Booster disappeared. It undermines everything the second Booster Gold series did to just shrug off that importance. But no the “real” heroes are going to take care of this now. Even if Booster returns this unneeded book still happened. The JLI were cast aside just for this. It wasn’t worth it.