The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 753: Justice League of America #200

A lazy Sunday morning in bed reading an oversized Justice League comic and having a bowl of cereal. While outside, it looks like it might actually be Spring (I fool myself, but sometimes we have to).

Today's comic follows in that long tradition of comics about superheroes fighting superheroes. I'm not sure where this particular subgenre comes from. Sometimes I think that it has a lot to do with why diverse religions have battled one another over the course of human history. We place our faith in something and can't possibly understand how someone else could place something so important and vital in something different. Everyone has a favourite superhero, one that we place our faith in, so it's natural (?) to want to know who'd come out on top. My god is stronger than your god, I suppose.

On the other hand, it might just come from the idea that we want to see the cool characters duking it out with one another. Yeah, when they fight a villain, it's cool. But villains, by their nature in these kinds of comics, will always lose. If it's heroes fighting one another, who's the villain? Who's going to lose? Such contests offer a bit more suspense.

That aside, this was a fairly standard early 80s DC comic. The artists jam on the issue was pretty sweet, bringing together some of the truly great DC artists of the last few decades. It was also a nice hearkening back to the original JLA case from The Brave and the Bold, though how it would fit in with Mark Waid's retcon in JLA:Year One, I'm not sure. Though I'm fairly certain that's not canon anymore anyway. Well, given DC's propensity for multiverses, it's canon somewhere, I'm sure.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 372: A1 #3, 1990

Our last little look, for now, at the short comics writing of Grant Morrison ends with quite a long book. A1 features some really, truly wonderful, weird, and generally excellent stories. It's a who's who of luminaries in the comics industry of the early 90s, with Morrison's presence being accentuated by Alan Moore, Brian Bolland (who writes and draws a story, in poetry, as well as providing that amazing cover), Philip Bond, Steve Parkhouse, Glenn Fabry, John Bolton, and Moebius. The stories are all weird (except Bond's, which is just kind of lovely), so Morrison's "The House of Heart's Desire" is in good company. I always get this story mixed up with his prose piece "The Room Where Love Lived," but that's only because they're works I'm less familiar with.

What more can I say? The real importance of this story comes in one panel, midway through the piece. The protagonist, with a door strapped to his back, has just come through a stinking forest, and is making his way toward a city of ghosts. The sign that points the way has a single word upon it: Barbelith. I'll point out that this comic is from about four years before Morrison's The Invisibles saw the light of day, and made the word Barbelith so very important for those of us who delved into the Supercontext.

Back to random craziness from the collection tomorrow. See you then!