JEAN, JEAN, THE CRAZY MACHINE

 THIS JUST IN:

Now, THAT is something to talk about!

The last time that anyone heard from Jean Loring, she had been stripped of the power of Eclipso (this was after her failed attempt to seduce the Spectre, but it's really best if we just don't go there right now) and fell to her death in the Atlantic Ocean, where she was eaten by a shark.

Poor, innocent shark; doesn't stand a chance.

And by "last time" I mean "last time we saw her alive".  Naturally we saw her LATER after she was dead in one (or two?) of those "Every Dead Character Comes Back as The Evil Dead" crossover events (probably Blackest Night).  

Jean was one of the few characters substantially DOWNGRADED by becoming a Black Lantern.  I remind you that in her heyday she terrified not merely entire civilizations but ENTIRE PLANETS.

I was very disappointed at the time; it was the first and only confirmation that Jean actually WAS dead. I was expecting (hoping?) that she would just pop up alive someday declaring that she had landed ON the shark, which was thereupon knocked unconscious, and then ate the shark.  

Like that guy in Watchmen nobody remembers,
except Jean would have no remorse at what she had become.

That pretty much put a stake through the character's heart.

Or would have. IF SHE WERE NOT JEAN LORING.

Courtesy of Geoff Johns, who bends DC reality to his will like a steroidal Fifth Dimensional Imp, she has just popped in the pages of Justice Society as if nothing had ever happened.  And by "nothing" I mean her murder of Sue Dibney, in a wholly unpleasant story that every reader would like to pretend never happened.  But Geoff Johns knows that Jean Loring as a deluded, homicidal lunatic is just too darned compelling a character to leave in back issue dustbins. So back she is, no explanation required.  She is back simply because the DCU is more fun WITH her than without her.

The name "Cold Coast" is absolutely perfect.  As is that IMPOSSIBLE view of the moon, chosen to evoke Eclipso, and the fact that all asylums in DC simply have to look Like That.

Say what you will; nobody can encapsulate a character as efficiently as Geoff Johns, who does it here without even SHOWING Jean.

She's being interviewed by neo-Dr. Mid-nite (Beth Chapel), who you'll remember was one of the most notable victims of the earlier Eclipso in the grand, extremely over-the-top Eclipso crossover of 1992.  Like Jean, Beth is back from the dead because, well, that's just how Geoff Johns wants it.

You'd think Dr. Mid-Nite would use a voice recorder, rather than a note pad as if she's the Silver Age Lois Lane, Gal Reporter.

But Jean Loring is still focused only on Ray "The Atom" Palmer.

This panel, you may note, is an homage to her "oh GOD Jean is STILL INSANE" panel in the prestige story-that-will-not-be-named.

You remember Ray Palmer, of course...

The man whose marriage proposal she turned down AT LEAST 56 TIMES BEFORE WE EVEN MET HER. The man she cheated on after they were married and then divorced. Which is not at all consistent with her obsession, but such is crazy.  Who knows why on earth she's so fixated on him.

Oh.
Right.

Dr. Mid-Nite, Junior, stupidly asks her who she's talking to, even though she literally just said his name, and if you are going to interview JEAN LORING, you darned well know who "Ray" is.  

Skipped those electives in Psychiatry, huh, Dr. M?

Jean has a worldview.  And she's committed.

And if there is anyone who deserves to be committed, it's Jean Loring. Dr. Mid-Nite doesn't even HAVE lapels.

So, although Jean is still the wacky deluded gal we've all come to hate and fear, she is ALSO still the Uber-competent person she always was. As a brilliant attorney, she has always had a way with words.

A randomly chosen example.

Not your average prolix barrister, she had a penchant for pithy, piercing remarks.

Pictured: pithy and piercing.

So I SHOULD have been on the look out for her to mark her return to comics with some virtuosic display of dialog. But I was so overwhelmed by her return, that I completely failed to notice this (until loyal and longtime commenter CobraMisfit pointed it out to me):

I still love you, Ray.

That's why I'm waiting for you.

I'm waiting right here.

Yep. Perhaps the most flawless and beautiful COMIC BOOK HAIKU I have ever featured here on Haikuesday.  And Jean made it seem so normal, so natural, I never even noticed.

Your turn, now! What beautiful haiku can YOU compose to celebrate (?!) the return of Jean Loring to comics?