Lord Dornee

 There's an aristocratic air about the Justice League of America, or, at least, its original members.  Batman is a born aristocrat, Wonder Woman is in fact a princess, and Aquaman the king of the sea.  Despite a humble upbringing Superman is certainly heroic royalty.

As he occasionally subtley reminds people.

Green Lantern and Flash are much more down-to-earth types, but as the heads of their own dynasties (the Corps and the Speedsters, respectively), they certainly take precedence among their own peerages. 

I'm ignoring the Martian Manhunter. He's simply WEIRD. Like David S. Pumpkins, he's his own thing.

So, it might surprise you to learn something about the JLA's first non-original member, Green Arrow.

And I cannot stress "non-original" enough, here.

Ollie "Green Arrow" Queen is royalty.  Literally.

World's Finest #46 (June 1950).

That story title actually UNDERsells it.  He is not just a noble; he's a PEER. Oliver is a Scottish EARL. He wouldn't be called "Sir"; that's for lowlier types, like Knights.  He is literally "Oliver, Lord Dornee."  

"M'Lord / Your Lordship", if you're nasty.

Let's find out why.

At this point, the Ace Archers have moved out of their downtown penthouse into a nondescript suburban mansion, probably so's Ollie can use the Arrowcar's catapult more freely, 'cuz he LOVES that catapult.

Their new suburban digs are pretty low security, because during their absence Herr Falkenstein just walked in started playing the bagpipes for god knows how long and for ZERO REASON WHATEVER, other than "well, that's what Scottish people DO, after all."

"I've crossed the ocean coz I wa'na' cerrrtain ye knew how to use the tellyphone. bein' a Queen, 'n' all..  Not known for their hereditary brains, y'know."

Mister MacExposition, by the way, gets no name and is never seen again. He is there, in person, in the house, SOLEY to give Ollie an excuse to use the catapult.  I mean, it's not like Ollie and Roy could just come in the back door, now is it?

Golden Age storytelling being as efficient as it is, Ollie's in "Lochmeed", Scotland, in the very next panel, where we learn an important commonality that the Scottish have with us.

Like us Americans, they ALSO hate Ollie Queen.

Just FYI, there is no real-world "Lochmeed" or Earldom of Dornee, although it's probably patterned after the real-word earldom of "Dundee".  I almost wished they'd used Dundee, which would mean that Ollie's middle name would certainly be "Scrymgeour-Wedderburn" and I can think of no character who deserves that fate more.

That's actually a pretty witty comment, especially coming from Green Arrow.

Ollie, in his guise as Green Arrow, immediately tries to settle an ancient feud with the rival MacBride clan with (what else?) an archery contest.

Even for a Green Arrow story, I find this incident surpassingly stupid.

Having quelled an ancient rivalry that's been burning for centuries in only four panels, Ollie settles in to doing his best "King Ralph" imitation as an American goober who suddenly inherits a title.

Shut up, Ollie. As previously established, you already live in a goddam mansion big enough to hide the Arrowcar, which has its own zip code (or would, if zip codes existed at the time).

In fact, Ollie makes himself at home right away.

Oliver, Lord Dorky.

Oliver makes a highly unwarranted deduction.

Not about a lurker in the armor. I mean, that this is a job for Green Arrow.  This is a job for an actual detective.  

To wit:

"How DID Green Arrow die?"
"He was parboiled while climbing the walls of his own castle."
"Yeah; that sounds about right."

I guess we now know why Ollie likes to use the catapult so much. The bad guys should have hired Bull's-Eye; HE would have had the foresight to have a bag of rocks on hand. Anyway, once inside, even though Ollie notices he can't hear the clanking running of the suits or armor anymore, he fails to make any useful deduction from this... like the fact that they have stopped moving.

Ollie is SO bad at detective work, you can get the drop on him while wearing a suit of armor.

Since offing Green Arrow isn't really high on anyone's list of potential accomplishments, they just weight him down and dump him in a trash hole.

I would comment how surprisingly frequently people try to drown Green Arrow... but it's not really all that surprising.

Ollie, who at this point has not yet invented the Huffer, er, I mean, Aqua-Lung Arrow, saves himself with a discarded bagpipe, because, if there is anything the Golden Age teaches us, it is that thematic situations and deathtraps demand thematic solutions.

And the lesson here (which Ollie surely will not learn)?
ALWAYS WAIT FOR ROY.

QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM.

Obviously, we are supposed to think that the armored assailant has been a secretly still aggrieved MacBride, but in reality ...

The Butler did it.

It makes less sense than a Scooby-Doo episode, but since Ollie's out of panels the story's got to wrap up so he can get back to Star City (which surely is falling apart without him).  Ollie gives the castle away so that the writers can forget all about it going forward and...

it turns out Ollie was BSing his deduction that the butler did it and the butler was the only possible suspect all along.  Ladies and gentlemen: Oliver, Lord Dornee!

JSA #1 (again)

As mad as I was (am) about Geoff Johns' embarrassingly self-indulgent and anticlimactic end to his run on Justice Society of America (really more of a saunter than a run), I am still quite intrigued by the forthcoming "JSA" series by Jeff Lemire (a name I recognize but have no pre-exiting opinions of).  

I know only that he wrote "Sweet Tooth" and saved Green Arrow from Ann Nocenti, so I'm just going to picture him as an adult Golden Age Speedy, since he had to save Ollie.

The Justice LEAGUE is easy to write.

Although writing FOR the Justice League can certainly be a challenge.

All you have to do is put DC's six most iconic heroes (plus one more that DC is trying to pretend is iconic) at a table and boom there's the Justice League. The Justice League has always been about simply seeing DC's biggest heroes interact and work together.

The Justice Society is a more complicated manner.  You have to balance past and present, tradition with modernity, legacy with innovation.  And unlike the JLA, the JSA is not and never has been composed of pre-sold commodities.  It's not a "super-group" of icons, it's an ensemble piece. It's a many-bodied problem, more akin to the Legion of Super-Heroes, where the whole must be greater than the sum of the parts in order to justify its existence.  This is something that Lemire seems to understand, based on a recent interview:

“For me, it was about taking everything I love from past runs — whether it’s Infinity Inc., All-Star Squadron, or Geoff Johns’ era — and making it important again while keeping it accessible and modern,” he explains. The challenge, then, is making the JSA resonate with today’s readers while honoring its long history.

“I stopped thinking of them as superhero team books and started thinking of them more as ensemble dramas,” he explained, focusing on developing characters over time rather than trying to feature everyone in every issue.

"For fans wondering what sets the JSA apart from the Justice League, Lemire offers a clear answer: it’s all about legacy and generational storytelling.

"The JSA is unique in that its members span multiple generations, giving the team a rich sense of history that other superhero groups lack. For Lemire, the heart of the JSA lies in two characters: Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. Jay, the original Flash, serves as the team’s heart, while Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, acts as its head and leader."

Now, I have read the first issue.  I cannot think of a less interesting threat for the JSA to be dealing with than Kobra;

I still can't believe that trite, pedestrian cult leader Kobra (with his ridiculous twin brother trope) was inspired by DR. EFFING PHIBES, which was Vincent Price at his most batshit, but such is Jack Kirby.

and I can't think of anything more off-the-rack than the children of JSA leader Alan Scott's children, Dark Hard-Nose Obsidian in conflict with Bright Idealistic Jade, over the direction of the JSA;

Do you think DC even remembers Todd is gay?  I remember. Often.

but...

we learn already in the first issue that neither one of the two conflicts that we see are actually TRUE, don't we?  And that the really threat, the real source of both conflict is...

Okay. THAT's a different story.  One I am ready to follow....

In a Nutshell

 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Marvel Comics.

I cried today

I cried today because of a comic book.

It wasn't a sad comic book. It was simply so beautiful. So beautiful that it made me cry.

It was Batman & Robin: Year One, title by writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee.  

I couldn't believe a "Batman and Robin: Year One" hadn't been done before, but... this is it, now, apparently.

At first glance, you might just lump it in with the Mazzuchelli style (the one "Batman: Year One" was drawn in. Thick lines, with a vague air of Madison Avenue-era ad art.

But it's much better than that. A little more on that later.

Both the writing and the art do a great job of (SUBTLY) referencing the Batman '66 television series.  For example in the cover art above, you can see references to the show's opening credits in the villains they are fighting.

See for yourself.

Dick Grayson chaffing at some obscure study at home, then being reminded how important studying (Egyptology, leaf structures, bird songs, etc.) was for proper education. With a slight change in dialog this is nearly a scene from the show.

Then a Death-Trap Escape complete with "follow my movements exactly", which could have come straight from the show.

That was a LOT easier than the killer player-piano roll machine.

Add to that a nearly pitch-perfect version of Two-Face

which references the essential irony that he is both extremely predictable in some ways and extremely unpredictable in others.  Nowadays, a good characterization of Two-Face is so rare as to bring tears to my eyes all by itself.

There's even an old school mystery of the type we seldom get in stories about the World's Greatest Detective: Two-Face has stolen a FILE from Commissioner Gordon and neither Gordon NOR Two-Face will tell Batman what's in it.  

Batman is puzzled by the villain's apparent uncharacteristic diversion  from the "two" motif in this crime.  

My bet is that the file is Gordon's deductions on Batman's DOUBLE identity.

All this is very Silver/Golden age.  But wisely there are certainly nods to modern sensibility, such as Gordon balking at the "kid sidekick" and Robin being confounded by the supercriminals who don't simply kill you on sight.  The whole issue is a truly timeless story, using lots of very traditional elements of Batman history that most modern writers would be scared to death of attempting.  It's the kind of thing that, currently, only Mark Waid can pull off.

Well, Sholly Fisch could.  
Because there's nothing Sholly Fisch can't pull off.

All this storytelling is ideal for a long-time fan like me and Chris Samnee's ability to draw in essentially an abstract, Golden Age style, but through a modern lens is the perfect complement.  This, though, is the panel where it really hit me what I was seeing:

At first, it might seem unremarkable to you. I mean, there's little action, no dialog, no interactions, no captions.

But I just keep staring at.  Maybe five minutes. Then I realized I was crying.

Because it's perfect Golden Age composition, where the art tells the story.  The Batmobile, unassuming, is headed for a conflict with THAT MAN, who is high above, but in a direct line across from its path, from our view.  And colored with meaningful and tasteful contrast.  

Let's put this in some context.

This is Golden Age art.  It is a study in economy and contrasts.

This is modern comic book art.  It tends toward photorealistic and maximalism.

Don't get me wrong; these are both "good art".  But the modern art impresses me with its technical proficiency while the classic art moves me, emotionally and intellectually with its skill at choosing the right art for the storytelling at hand. It is art that is there for the story, not for itself. That, to me, is the appropriate role of art in this medium.  And seeing Chris Samnee's work in Batman and Robin: Year One made me realize that it was NOT a lost art, as I had feared.

The relief that gave me was worth more than a tear or two.  Thank you, Chris Samnee.