Who'd Like A Cocktail? #108

This is the grim and gritty future; Power Girl doesn't do hugs

Delayed Cocktail this week as I was away for the weekend with a bunch of writer friends.

• GREEN ARROW #6 - Ollie goes up against the Queen and hears some unconfortable truths about his dad. Maybe now we can move on to finding out more about that forest?
• JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #14 - Captain Atom gets bumped into the future and meets various future versions of current heroes, including a grim and gritty Power Girl (you can tell she's like that as she's dressed in black.) By the end of the issue, Atom's back in the present with the knowledge that Max Lord is planning to kill Wonder Woman which in turn will send the world on the road to the terrible future he's seen.
• JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #45 - anyone remember when this title used to be fun? Flash turns out to be sorta/kinda responsible for the villain du jour and Green Lantern Alan Scott remains paralysed. Wasn't Alan discovered to be composed entirely of the Starheart at some point and thus pretty much non-human/able to survive anything? Ah, it's all gone a bit miserable round here.
• TEEN TITANS #89 - the introduction of the annoying Damian Wayne as the Teen Titans' new Robin seems to be a great idea; he and Ravager are quickly at each others' throats. He's brash and not used to being a team player and messes up his first time out. This should be good.

And what made me smile:

Robin's complete obliviousness!

Who's Who In The JLA/JSA?

Last week's issue of Justice League of America (#48) had a couple of things that kinda threw me off balance when I was reading it. Hopefully long time readers know that I like to be as positive and upbeat about the comics I read as I can - Cthulhu knows there are plenty of comic blogs out there that bitch about things and I've never wanted to do that.

However (you just knew that was coming, didn't you?), like I said, Justice League... #48 had some things that I had to drag out here.

In an attempt to disrupt the Starheart taking over more heroes, Mr Terrific ropes in both Supergirl and Power Girl to help him build a device that will sort things out. It's great that Terrific recognises Power Girl is more than just a fighter - he specifically has her help because of her "scientific abilities" - and her reasoning about not really getting involved in that side of things with the Justice Society rings true. She wants to keep her Power Girl and Karen Starr personas separate. But then James Robinson has her say this:

Charles?! Who the hell is Charles?! The only Charles in the JSA was Charles McNider, the original Dr. Mid-Nite and he's been dead since Zero Hour! Was she confusing McNider with Pieter Cross, the current Dr. Mid-Nite?

Later on in the book, the good guys of both the JLA and the JSA take on Green Lantern Alan Scott who's possessed by the Starheart:

Now I'm not going to go on about the coloured and mini-icon styled caption boxes - others have done that better than I could - but I do need to pick up on something in them.

The captions at the top belong to Hourman, those below (mostly) to his wife, Jesse Quick. Here's what Jesse's say:

It's clearly Jesse's captions because she's got the Liberty Belle logo on the side . . . despite the fact that she's gone back to using the Jesse Quick name but that's almost by-the-by because she refers to her husband, Rick Tyler, as Rex.

Rex Tyler was the original Hourman and is Rick's father!

I'm not suggesting that Jesse and her father-in-law are having an affair that she can't stop thinking about when she's in the middle of a fight alongside her husband. What I am suggesting is that James Robinson (and I'm being charitable here) is obviously confused as to which heroes are currently in the JSA.

This book has three editors listed - Assistant Editor Rex Ogle, Associate Editor Adam Schlagman, and Editor Eddie Berganza. You'd think one of them would have caught these mistakes, surely.