JLX Unleashed #1
“The Unextinguishable Flame”
Writer: Priest
Penciler: Oscar Jimenez
Inker: Hanibal Rodriguez
Letters: Ken Lopez
Colorist: Patricia Mulvihill
Editor: Ruben Diaz
Cover: Jimenez and Rodriguez
Published by: DC
Released: April 2, 1997
The time between Amalgam releases has not been kind to the JLX.
A member of the mutant team spun off from the no-title-of-their-own Judgment League Avengers doesn't even appear until page 6, when Wonder Woman – the Storm/Wonder Woman amalgam from “Amazon” – goes to spring them from prison. Why does she need to do that? Well, the JLA, JLA West and JLA International have had their butts handed to them by Fin Fang Flame, a fiery amalgam of Fin Fang Foom* and... I dunno, somebody from DC.
He was conjured by the Hellfire League of Injustice, which sounds like someone trying to win the Eisner for Name More Obviously Villainous than Brotherhood of Evil Mutants but is probably just a combination of the Hellfire Club and Injustice League. Its inner circle consists of Savage Shaw (Vandal Savage + Sebastian Shaw), Mistress Maxima (Maxima + based on her clothing, or lack thereof, Emma Frost?), Dark Firebird (Dark Phoenix + Fire) and Lord Maxwell (Maxwell Lord + Cameron Hodge). None of them appear for long as the dragon flash fries them but still appears ready to carry out the mission for which they summoned him: exterminating metamutants.
His wrecking of the JLA happened off-panel because, remember kids, this was the '90s and no one cared about the non-mutant superheroes. OK, that's not true, some people did, including a good friend of mine who was an Iron Man fan before Robert Downey Jr. ever talked a mile a minute and put on armor. But the conventional wisdom back then was “X sells.”
Wonder Woman suggests to Super Soldier that they free the JLX to take on the dragon. While he's sympathetic, he believes they must uphold the law. Something about their leader, Mr. X (Martian Manhunter + Professor X, with dashes of Bishop and Skrulls thrown in), due to be extradited back to the Kree homeworld for a trial and a delightful government initiative called the Armageddon Agenda, which I presume is a reference to two semi-classic crossovers I never got around to reading, DC's Armageddon and Marvel's X-Tinction Agenda.
After Triple F attacks again, Wonder Woman heads to the prison, where Mr. X calls her Amazon and gives us a rundown on the team we met in JLX #1. Will Magnus and his Sentinels used the Armageddon Agenda to attack mutants relentlessly. Mariner was exiled from Atlantis, Mercury escaped to the future, and Wraith disappeared with the help of the Shadow Guild. As we learned in the opening, Firebird went over to the dark side. The rest of the team is imprisoned, including Apollo, who is catatonic.
After a brief interlude of Bruce Wayne, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.,** unsuccessfully trying to tackle the dragon, we see Mr. X free a new face, Apollo's brother Chaos (Havok + … maybe... Dr. Light?). The revamped team hurtles toward a showdown with the dragon in their wavecruiser, with Wonder Woman joined by Nightcreeper (Nightcrawler + Creeper), Runaway (Rogue + Gypsy), Mr. X, Chaos, unresponsive Apollo and a new (to us, anyway) member, Iceberg, who looks like a mix between Ice and Iceman.
When Chaos starts building up too much power, Nightcreeper literally kicks him out of the vessel, because he's pretty sure the kid can fly. The rest of the team goes to execute their plan to remove a techno-seed, the dragon's power source, from the inside with the help of Nightcreeper's teleportation and Iceberg's freezing powers.
The letters page fills in a few more blanks, making reference to the Dark Firebird Contract and referencing other unseen amalgams like Kitty Sandsmark, aka Wondercat (Kitty Pryde + Wonder Girl) and Sunfirestorm (you don't need a breakdown on that one, right?). It's another excellent use of the letters page to build the world of Amalgam as well the world where its comics are regularly published.
The story moved quickly and certainly felt like an X-Men tale with elements of DC mixed in, complete with an organic changing of the guard. There were some apparent continuity mismatches with the previous story, but it's not even No Prize-worthy to presume most, if not all of that, can be explained as things that happened in the non-existent JLX #s 2-12 that preceded this “relaunch.” I will always be a Priest fan after his watershed work on Black Panther, but this is more straightforward superhero than some of his later work. Don't get me wrong; I like straightforward superhero. It's fun, but nothing much stands out.
I like Jimenez's art, although sometimes the composition feels a little off or unclear. As always, it's way beyond anything I could do; I'm just saying it was a bit hard to follow in places.
Best Amalgam: My previous favorites from Amazon and JLX – Wonder Woman and Mr. X remain at the top of the list here. Not that any of the new additions were bad, but none really clicked with me. That's a personal problem, but I am making up the criteria for these so-called awards, so, what can I say?
Most Confusing Amalgam: I've got to go with Chaos, because even after I looked him up on the Marvel Universe Appendix Amalgam index, I don't know who he's made of. I mean, they say the DC half is Spitfire, who is the Ray's brother. I've always wanted to read Priest's run on the Ray; maybe if I had, I would have recognized him.
The index also confirms that Iceberg is Iceman and Ice, which is logical and obvious. I had to go over to Fandom to find out Fin Fang Flame is a mix of Fin Fang Foom and Brimstone, who I at least have heard of, and I can kind of see it. I was confident on Mistress Maxima, but it turns out her Marvel half, according to Fandom, and Comic Vine, was the Black Queen.
* - Gotta love classic Marvel monster names.
** - Guess he didn't die at the end of his solo issue. Or, this being comics, he came back.
Comments
Post a Comment
No profanity, no bullying, no harassment. Feel free to disagree, but do it respectfully and politely.