Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #54: Gypsy

When you look this good, you don’t want to be invisible.

The Justice League has been DC’s all-star team from its earliest founding.  That is, unless you’re aware that the original purpose was to give exposure to the company’s lesser-known heroes, which would be why Superman and Batman only made sporadic appearances in the early missions because they were too busy to actually attend missions and meetings.

Some days I wish I could use that excuse to get out of meetings.

But, you know, in retrospect, the League was the all-star team.  Then, around 1984 or so, Aquaman told the big names to take a hike if they were too busy to help and recruited some new heroes to fill the ranks for a period while operating out of Detroit.  Those new recruits included Gypsy.

Slightly Misplaced Comic Book Heroes Case File #41: Rocket Red

 

When the Justice League was funny, it was supposed to be tied to the United Nations.  That meant it actually had to have some foreign members instead of the usual collection of Americans.  Oh yeah, some of those Americans were aliens, and Aquaman probably had duel citizenship with Atlantis at the time, but when the closest you can come to a foreign member is Wonder Woman from Paradise Island, then you need to try a little harder and maybe pull out a good guy from a real country instead of a fictional one.

So, yeah, we got ourselves a Russian hero in Rocket Red.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Convergence: Week Eight

I’ll admit I ran out of steam and interest with the release of Convergence #8.  It took me awhile to get around to completing my reading of the tie-ins, and it didn’t help they were some of the weaker tie-ins of the bunch.  Plus Secret Wars was full steam ahead over at Marvel and I was excited to move onto that.  As such, this final post on DC’s big early summer event got lost in the shuffle.

But since I am contractually obligated to finish these posts, I’ll make a very late attempt to clue things up after the break.

Be sure to catch up on all the Convergence happenings with coverage of:

Week One: Part One, Part Two
Week Two: Part One, Part Two
Week Three:Part One, Part Two
Week Four:Part One, Part Two
Week Five: Part One, Part Two
Week Six: Part One, Part Two
Week Seven: Part One, Part Two

Read on for Week Eight spoilers after the break for Convergence #8, Convergence Action Comics #2, Convergence Detective Comics #2, Convergence Blue Beetle #2, Convergence Booster Gold #2, Convergence Crime Syndicate #2, Convergence Infinity Inc #2, Convergence Justice Society Of America #2, Convergence Plastic Man And The Freedom Fighters #2, Convergence Shazam #2 and Convergence World’s Finest Comics #2.

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Convergence: Week Six Part Two

There’s a lot of deaths this week, but not of Watson’s main man!

Convergence clues up five more pre-Zero Hour/Wildstorm/Kingdom Come crossovers that will likely have little significance to the event as a whole.  There are quite a number of deaths in these issues.  I’m starting to suspect that Battleworld Telos is going to end up sticking around the main DCU with all those cities intact, so maybe those deaths will have meaning in the near future.  (As I write this, Convergence #8 has not been released yet.  But once you’re reading this it will have been and you will know the fate of Telos and it’s inhabitants.)

Be sure to catch up on all the Convergence happenings with coverage of:

Week One: Part One, Part Two
Week Two: Part One, Part Two
Week Three:Part One, Part Two
Week Four:Part One, Part Two
Week Five: Part One, Part Two
Week Six: Part One

Read on for Week Six spoilers after the break for Convergence Aquaman #2, Convergence Catwoman #2, Convergence Green Arrow #2, Convergence Justice League International #2 and Convergence Suicide Squad #2. 

Jimmy Attempts To Read All Of Convergence: Week Four Part One

It’s nice to see Convergence actually take itself a bit seriously this week and not just seem like the old Marvel “Assistants Editor’s Month” where it was just a free for all with no care or consequences.  They even make attempts to address recent events in the DCU and incorporate them.  Particularly interesting because they involve the former New 52, which to this point, outside of Superman’s appearance in issue #0 and the small Superman: Doomed tie-in, has been kept at a distance.

Be sure to catch up on all the Convergence happenings with coverage of:

Week One: Part One, Part Two

Week Two: Part One, Part Two

Week Three:Part One, Part Two

Read on for Week Four spoilers after break for Convergence #4, Convergence Booster Gold #1, Convergence Blue Beetle #1, Convergence Detective Comics #1, Convergence Action Comics #1 and Convergence Shazam #1.

The Really Messed Up History Of The Blue Beetle

Yeah, all these guys were the Blue Beetle.

A number of superhero names have complicated backstories.  The Green Lantern, for example, was originally Alan Scott, and his ring worked against anything except for wood.  Later the ring would pass to Hal Jordan, and be less magical but more science fiction, and work against anything except the color yellow.  That weakness would be eliminated later on, but to start, you could stop the Green Lantern with either a stick or a primary color depending on which one it was.

That’s nothing compared to the Blue Beetle.

Comics Watson Actually Liked

It is often said on the Gabbing Geek podcast (listen to it!) that I don’t read comics.  Well I did once.  So in talking to my buddy Phil Ray the other day, he asked me to write a post on my ten favorite Trade Paperbacks ever (“other than Watchmen, of course”). I would tell him writing for a website is not like being a DJ at da club because we don’t take requests, but he did introduce me to my ex-wife (thanks,jerk) so here we go…