Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Justice League of America #226 - May 1984

sgThe mysterious case of the cult Fiatlux gets even more strange!

The Story: "Hell on Earth" by Joe Cavalieri, Chuck Patton, and Frank McLaughlin. The really gross demon Hellrazer is now free, thanks to the machinations of the malevolently stupid Lord Gravesend.

The JLAers, to their credit, try and take him on like he's Dr. Light or something, but Hellrazer uses his amazing evil powers to conjure up all sorts of creepy monsters to fight them.

Zatanna wakes up in the middle of all this, and tries to cut off Hellrazer's power "at the source", the portal to Perdition, where Hellrazer has been trapped for many centuries.

Hellrazer doesn't take kindly to this, and he wraps a tentacle around Zee, and dragging her back into the portal and his dimension, leaving Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Hawkgirl dumbstruck.

Canary notices the plume of smoke rising from the spot where the portal was is actually some sort of gateway
:
sg
...Green Arrow watches Letterman? Cool.

Back at the satellite, some of the other JLAers have shown up. They use some Thangarian doo-dad to track where the Luciferase went to--all the way to Morocco!

As the JLA follows the trail, we see members of the Israeli Secret Service on their own mission to stop the cult of Fiatlux, who is led here by another baddie, a guy named Lord Arsenic.

The ISS shoot their way through Arsenic's goons, but when they get to Arsenic himself, he dons a gold helmet and blasts many of them into dust!

Flush with evil power, Lord Arsenic kills some of his own men, just for fun, and heads out into the world...

Meanwhile, in the dimension of Perdition, Hellrazer tells Zatanna she is part of his "master plan"...as he drools on her. Ew!

The JLAers catch up to Lord Arsenic, who is now completely transformed into the evil God Set! Luckily Hawkman, Red Tornado, Atom, and the Elongated Man use teamwork to use his own power against him, defeating him.

Back in Perdition, Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Hawkgirl arrive, where they find Zatanna trussed up. They free her, but things are not quite right:
sg
As we see an evil look cross Zatanna's face, the story is to be continued!

Roll Call: Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman, Black Canary, Elongated Man, Red Tornado, Hawkgirl, Zatanna

Notable Moments: Hawkgirl gets a lot to do in this storyline, and I love that last panel with her.

Again, really interesting line-up for this case...all the "later" members, except for Firestorm. Neat-o!

Also interesting is to see old-time JLA inker Frank McLaughlin make a one-issue return to the title he inked for so long!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked this story arc. Basically, I liked how none of the "big guns" were around to "save the day." The JLA as "weak" heroes who need to depend on each other in order to succeed was a GOOD team. Ah, well.

Anonymous said...

My favorite part of the issue was Elongated Man's 'sudden move.'

It's something I have always equated Ralph Dibny with, even after all these years.

Unknown said...

Rob- GA watched Letterman back in his hay day! Suddenly, I like GA a lot more.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...