
This is Giffen, Jones,
and Mike McKone’s
story about zones
full of dead bones
and a grieving guy who groans
and moans
when the plan he hones
ends worse than Game of Thrones.
The two Justice Leagues are getting together for an “ice cream social” to mix and mingle. It’s healthy and good workplace management from Max and Catherine. So, naturally, it somehow leads to League-adjacent personnel f#cking around with the fabric of time.
( Last time the X-Men had a casual Friday, it gave rise to a version of the Phalanx made out of denim. )
So we set out to determine how Banksy did it – and who he really is. Weeks later, a reporter visited Horenka with a photo lineup of graffiti artists often rumored to be the artist and showed the pictures to locals to see if anyone recognized him. Not long after, we heard that a famous British musician – one of the people often whispered to be Banksy – had been spotted in Kyiv, giving us a theory to pursue.
Reuters interviewed a dozen Banksy-world insiders and experts. None would comment on his identity, but many filled in details about his life and career. We examined photos of the artist, most of which obscured his face but contained critical information. We later unearthed previously undisclosed U.S. court records and police reports.
These included a hand-written confession by the artist to a long-ago misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct – a document that revealed, beyond dispute, Banksy’s true identity.
And in the process, we learned how and why the man behind the name Banksy vanished from the public record more than a decade ago.
Ryan was telling me, "Oh, we're going to do this scene in the Doom crossover book." And I was like, "I don't think Thor would say that." And Thor did kind of say that. And I was like, we have to kill Thor now, we have to kill him. I mean, he was being reborn anyway but now he's got to be reborn. -- Al Ewing
( Read more... )

"I’m so anxious to share this story, which was inspired by politicians wanting to ban sex ed and basics about biology in schools. It got me thinking about how the resulting void of info could be exploited—which, in this case, is done by bullies at a nature camp. And a decade later, their actions come back to haunt them. It’s a bit like Carrie meets Yellowjackets. I’m grateful that Mad Cave gave us total freedom to let the narrative—and the blood—flow.” -- Paula Sevenbergen
( Scans under the cut... )
Last time out, the JLE repaired the dying Starro’s vessel to send him home. It blew up before reaching the stratosphere, and the JLE-ers think they’ve accidentally killed an old League foe just after he mended his ways. Miles away, starfish began to rain on London.

The Leaguers slink back toward their headquarters, still mortified at their apparent failure, unaware that anything more serious might be wrong with London since they left it.
( Imagine sleeping through Brexit. )

Of course, a return to Abnett Guardians also means a return to after-action video logs!
( Read more... )
Happy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

Warning for some humor that could be read as mocking the mentally ill…though I don’t think they’re the real target here.
By now, the Justice League International era had done plenty of traditional superhero yarns like the arcs spotlighting the Crimson Fox, the Extremists, Despero, even General Glory. But it’d also tried lots of non-traditional subjects: moving, repo jobs, feline violence, membership drives, pranks.
So when Starro…the Justice League’s oldest enemy…came back at the end of JLE #25 but was all “Hey, I come in peace,” you really didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
( I did, but only because I read the issues out of order. )

X-Men United, originally solicited as X-Men Arsenal*, is the follow-up to Exceptional X-Men. Same creative team, same core cast, but an altered premise. It's the training book, but with more characters, and now they have a mental plane headquarters named Graymatter Lane.
*Go on, get the football jokes out of your system. It'll feel good.
( Read more... )

Warning for some uncomfortable sexual symbolism. Keith Riffen, Ger-words Jones, bArt Sears.
Giffen’s Justice League plots are never boring, but this story feels extra unhinged, its elements strung together more by Freudian associations than his usual grounded, working-class perspective. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn the production process involved a six-pack of story dice and some of the more stimulating drugs.
( Amphetamines yes, marijuana no. )


