#I just finished 52 and Ralph Dibney is pretty great in that

[thebibliomancer]

50 More Days of Comics! 21/50: Justice League Europe #2 (1989)

“Somebody Up There HATES Us!”

Because every good team book just goes nuts with spinoffs. Except Justice League thinks big. ‘Why have a West Coast branch or one in Detroit when we can have a European branch?’ Even though the Avengers were under a UN charter for a while, the idea of Avengers Europe still just sounds wrong compared to Justice League Europe. I dunno why. It just feels better with the Justice League.

So Justice League Europe. At the time the Justice League of America had become Justice League International and had a somewhat comedic tone. Justice League Europe still had tongue-in-cheek moments but it was more action-oriented than International.

So which Leaguers agreed to move to Paris or maybe which ones managed to insist loudly enough that, yes, they wanted to have the Justice League pay them to live in Paris?

We have Captain Atom leading, the man of a million exploding atomic bombs contained in tinfoil. And also the sort of inspiration for Dr Manhattan.

There’s Elongated Man, unnecessary Plastic Man ripoff (DC forgot they owned him) and world’s greatest detective (because Batman is technically the world’s greatest criminologist). And weirdly a stretchy man with a wife named Sue who was introduced before Fantastic Four.

His wife Sue Dibny taking monitor duty.

The Wally West Flash.

Animal Man, with all the powers of animals and post-modernism. Actually, his life hasn’t been systematically dismantled by Grant Morrison yet.

Power Girl, in that confusing post-Crisis tangle of continuity confusion and going sans boob window to just have a deep collar.

Red Rocket, like a Russian Iron Man except there’s a bunch of them and none of them made their own suits and also the suit looks a lot clunkier. Weird continuity thing: the Rocket Reds were created by Green Lantern Kilowog, a giant pug man from space!

And Metamorpho, a shapeshifting guy made of chemicals (but aren’t we all?) with asymmetrical color design. You remember him, he was one of the Outsiders.

The issue starts with Captain Atom moodily watching a funeral for a Nazi war criminal that showed up on the doorstep of the Justice League Europe, muttered something and then died. And then a big angry mob stormed the JLE HQ for associating with Nazis. But they were maybe hypnotized so Captain Atom suggests conspiracy is afoot.

He’s also just in a mood where he thinks everything is going to go wrong. Leading to a conversation between him JLE bureau chief Catherine Cobert where he names bad thing he’s expecting only for her to go ‘everything is going very well.’

Captain Atom: “I’d drop to my knees and thank god – only I’m sure I’d break my kneecaps.”

He learns that Sue Dibny is going to be on perpetual monitor duty and grudgingly allows it on a trial basis. He has her pull up information on all known Nazi organizations and fringe groups. There are quite a few of them.

Captain Atom: “Unfortunately.”

But he has her cross-reference with meta-human activity and narrows it down to three locations: Dover, England; Frankfurt, West Germany; and Santa Cruz, California USA.

Captain Atom bleeps the team on their bleepers interrupting what they were doing to split up, gang, to investigate the three locations. The best interruption is Metamorpho who was in the middle of watching Three Stooges.

Metamorpho: “They seem so much more profound in French!”

Team Captain Atom and Animal Man take California, since Animal Man already lives there they could just teleport to his house.

Its quite an odd couple pairing these two heroes because Captain Atom is a serious military minded man (with a mullet? Curse you, the nearly 90s!) and Animal Man won’t stop complaining how much he hates teleporting. In fairness, he lost his luggage during a teleportation accident.

When the two arrive at the Aryan Nation compound, they find it has been destroyed, although weirdly there are no bodies or anything.

And then a Viking on horseback named the Wild Huntsman shows up, assumes that they’re Nazis, and tries to beat them up. When they insist that they are not, the Wild Hunstman can’t believe that they’re not just Nazis but lying Nazis! So he sicks a doggo on Captain Atom.

Guy finally just gets fed up and blasts Wild Huntsman. He only meant to stun him but both Wild Huntsman and his horse and his doggo are in a coma

-DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA STING-

Meanwhile, Power Girl and Rocket Red. They also discover that the Nazi meeting place in Frankfurt they were sent to has been destroyed. And is still burning.

Power Girl and Rocket Red have a minor disagreement on whether you should feel bad about Nazis burning alive (with Power Girl on the ‘fuck ‘em’ camp and Rocket Red bemoaning any senseless waste of human life). And then they have a disagreement about whether they should question the authorities about this group’s members.

Power Girl: “Yeah. Right. The German authorities love being questioned about Nazis.”

Rocket Red points out that Russia got its teeth kicked in by the Nazis and Power Girl apologizes for being quite so confrontational. Nazism just gives her the creeps.

AND THEN THEY GET ATTACKED MIDFLIGHT BY A FANCY MAN CALLED RISING SUN

Its just one of those days.

Rocket Red tries to be diplomatic but Rising Sun just keeps calling him a Nazi fascist so Power Girl punches him in the head. AND KNOCKS HIM INTO A COMA!

-DRAMATIC SOAP OPERA STING!-

But she was only using enough force to knock the wind out of him! They decide to taking Rising Sun back to the base.

Finally, Metamorpho, Elongated Man, and the Flash are riding the ferry across the English Channel on their way to investigate the Nazi group out of Dover. Because the teleport tubes are down at the English embassy. Womp womp.

Elongated Man teases Wally about what a sweet kid he used to be but Metamorpho tells youse bums to shut your mugs. They can pass as normal but he can’t and he doesn’t want people gawking at him.

Which is confusing. In the Outsiders, he was able to disguise himself as a normal looking ice cream man.

Ralph and Wally go off to hit the snack bar, leaving Metamorpho to brood and shortly get attacked by a guy calling himself Tuatara who accuses him of being a Nazi. So the JLE don’t even have to be adjacent to a known meeting place to be mistaken for one. The mystery thickens like a bad soup or a good pudding.

Through incompetence (Ralph: “This never would’ve happened to Barry.”) all three heroes end up tackled off the ferry by the seemingly aquatic three-eyed Tuatara.

Metamorpho can’t remember whether he can swim or not but he can turn into a whale and tail whip Tuatara.

The tri-eye fish? guy tries to pull Elongated Man underwater but Elongated Man wraps the case up. Which is a pun. He tied up the dude in his body.

Flash: “Y’know, Ralph – there’s nothing like a good sense of humor – and you’ve got nothing like a good sense of humor.”

Tuatara calls the trio Nazis again and then falls into a coma. Like the other two! Ralph smells a mystery!

And when Ralph smells a mystery he makes his nose twitch like its on a spring. It’s a running gag that everybody thinks its gross. And a running gag also that Ralph insists that his wife think its cute. Even after she told him to his face earlier in the issue that no, not so much.

Ralph, earlier: “Sue thinks it’s adorable!”

Sue, earlier: “That was while we were dating, hon. The adorableness wore off about five years ago…”

Being Ralph is suffering.

Meanwhile, sinister happenings afoot! A villain named Jack O’Lantern is laughing that the Justice League has no idea that he and his partner Owl Woman fed false info into their computer system. Owl Woman looks a lot like Sue Dibny but that’s possibly due to the historic problem comics have with drawing more than one type of woman.

Also Jack O’Lantern isn’t even wearing a pumpkin on his head. Boo, hiss. Go back to costume school!

Also theres a bit from the letters column I want to point out. One of the letters was talking about what the writer thought about each member. “Wonder Woman: I don’t think she’s right for the League. She’s too timid a person! She doesn’t know how to tell jokes! But I guess if we have to have her, then so be it.”

Either this person isn’t actually very familiar with Wonder Woman or DC was a bleak time for her in the pre-90s. The letter writer also calls Power Girl a hussy so grain of salt, yeah?