Justice League International #1-3

 Justice League International #1-3

Originally released in 1987

Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis

Art by Kevin Maguire

I decided to give a post-Crisis Justice League series a try - it goes by a few different names throughout its run, but "Justice League International" seems to be what stuck.  I'd previously read Justice League Year One by Mark Waid (dealing with the origins of the post-Crisis Justice League, which left out DC's Trinity as founding members and had the team's original line-up consist of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern, Barry Allen as the Flash, and Dinah Lance as Black Canary, along with Aquaman and Martian Manhunter), but this was very different from that book in terms of tone, with Giffen and DeMatteis's writing being more comedic in nature.

Right off the bat, it's clear that Guy is going to cause problems with the rest of the team; the first issue opens on his inner monologue about how he's going to be the one leading the Justice League, when everyone else immediately sees him for what he is - a sexist, jingoistic buffoon who is probably their last choice for a Green Lantern, but they're stuck with him.  He's still an entertaining character, though, as he clashes with about half of the team right off the bat.

The team is a mix of veterans, with Martian Manhunter, Batman, and Black Canary being members of the team since its early days, and newcomers.  It was apparently Doctor Fate's idea to reform the Justice League, but he seems to leave the team almost immediately, which raises the question of why he was included at all.  Mister Miracle feels out of his league, Captain Marvel (a.k.a. Shazam) is eager to help despite Guy dismissing him as being childish or too much of a goody-two-shoes, and Doctor Light (who had just been introduced in Crisis On Infinite Earths roughly a year beforehand) doesn't seem to be a full member, as her signal device was given to her by a mysterious person who isn't connected to the League.  Rounding out the team is Blue Beetle, whose Bug ship serves as the method of transportation for the members who can't fly.

Once the team has assembled, their first mission involves an attempted terrorist attack on the United Nations, which is quickly foiled despite Guy's penchant for ignoring any sort of plan and diving into the action.  Lurking in the background is Maxwell Lord, a sleazy businessman who has an interest in the team.  I know that, at one point, Lord becomes an outright villain with a distrust of superhumans, but here, I'm pretty sure he's just a business man who wants to make money off of the League.  Still, that uncertainty keeps me guessing what his actual motivations and goals are.

The second and third issues involve heroes from another world who seek to rid Earth of all nuclear weapons, after their own world fell victim to destruction via nuclear war.  The members (a witch, an axe-wielding storm god, and a size-shifting man with wings, along with a deceased speedster) seem to be references to various Avengers members (Scarlet Witch, Thor, Ant-Man or the Wasp, and Quicksilver, respectively) - given the existence of the Squadron Supreme, Marvel's Justice League homage, it's presumably intentional.  The story ends on a somewhat ambiguous note, with the Thor equivalent Wandjina having taken on a ton of nuclear radiation to prevent the meltdown of a power plant, and the Justice League are forced to leave Russia before it can be determined if he would survive or not.  Amusingly, there's a reference to a Green Lantern (apparently Guy) having attacked Russia before, and here, he's just as eager to beat up Communists, even when his entire team is telling him to knock it off and focus on stopping the aliens from causing a nuclear war.

The third issue ends with Maxwell Lord arriving at the Justice League headquarters and introducing Booster Gold as their newest member.  The team doesn't know who Maxwell Lord is, and they might not know who Booster is either, so that's unlikely to end well for those two.  Still, Booster must prove his worth to the team, since I know that him and Ted Kord wind up as a comedic duo, and I'm pretty sure that's due to this run on the Justice League.  I've tried reading Justice League comics a few times - the New 52 version of the team was a good introduction but not too deep (it was basically one extremely long fight scene), while the Silver Age comics didn't hold up nearly as well as the Avengers issues from the same time period (in JLA, all of the team members seemed to have the same "voice", more or less, with none of the team seeming to have a distinct or unique personality).  This was much more entertaining, even if the line-up is definitely an unusual one.