JLA (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “War of the Worlds”

* Part 3 of 4 of the New World Order storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: JLA (Vol. 1), Issue #3 – “War of the Worlds”! In the previous installment, the entire Justice League fights the entire Hyperclan and the entire Justice League dies. They die! They all die! Hyperclan wins again!

Well, all are dead except for Superman. Surely he will cobble together a new Justice League out of dismembered old Justice League body parts. Want a Wonder Lantern? Flash Woman? Aquabat? It’s all here, baby.

JLA (Vol. 1), Issue #3 [March, 1997]
Written by: Grant Morrison

They’ve got Superman hooked up to a very uncomfortable-looking metal reclining chair. They’ve got a chunk of green Kryptonite in a glass orb hovering three above Superman’s head. “Oh, Superman…” mocks Protex. “All those people you’ve saved over the years: where are they now? No one is coming. No one cares. You are alone at the end of the world. Completely alone.”

Alone like a fox! Superman isn’t going to take this lying down with Kryptonite in his midst! …oh, wait.

Batman is still alive! He managed to not get blown up by a heat-seeking missile somehow, which is crazy impossible but fuck it, right? “The Hyperclan thinks I’m dead,” he thinks. “That gives me an edge.”

You couldn’t even shave a beard with that edge, sir.

Batman penetrates the Hyperclan’s space stronghold by bashing through the window crotch-first. How and why Batman doesn’t get destroyed by the harsh vacuum of space is anybody’s guess, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is that he’s getting surrounded by sentry jellyfish… (?)

Meanwhile, the Flash is also not dead. He’s getting chased by ZüM, who may actually be faster! Flash is ahead, but ZüM is gaining on him micrometers at a time! Then he suddenly speeds ahead and starts throwing bricks behind him at Flash. “From what we can figure, all of these guys have powers in the Superman class and then some!” Flash thinks as he dodges fuckin’ bricks to the head. “If I don’t start thinking the way he does, I’m in trouble.”

This ain’t school, son. Though you ART better WORKSHOP some ideas or else you’ll get a little chin MUSIC with the PHYSICS of the situation!

Flash moves toward light speed as he barrels around town narrowly killing any and all civilians. “The speed field beginning to form around me;” he says like a Big Bang Theory character. “A flowing world of mystery. Silver, morphing, hyperdimensional gels. Speed heaven, the source of my power.” It’s like, what the fuck are you even talking about? What is all this pseudoscience?

Flash successfully “uses his science” (aka. runs faster) to catch up with ZüM. With all that momentum, one punch in the jaw should take him out! And it sure does! Flash punches ZüM so hard that he flies seven miles per second, eventually landing in the middle of what looks like the Sahara Desert, creating an enormous crater at the impact site. Yeah, baby.

Who else is still alive? Green Lantern! He’s in the Gobi Desert where he’s getting choked to death by a Captain America knockoff with a lasso. “What is it with supervillains nowadays?” he thinks as the oxygen stops flooding his brain. “What happened to crazy jewel heists and dumb traps? Now they murder your girlfriend and stuff her in the fridge for kicks.”

Knockoff Cap yells to his robot companion that the color yellow is the Green Lantern’s weakness, so his robot companion turns yellow. Badabing badaboom. But, thankfully, it’s plot hole time! Those were the old rings! Kyle Rayner has one of them new rings where yellow doesn’t work! Bwahahaha!

He creates a projection of an identical robot copy and punches the real robot to fuckin’ Saturn. My hero! *swoon*

A crowd of civilians gathers to turn against Green Lantern for harming their precious, precious Hyperclan members. Boo Justice League! They smell like farts and we’re going to kill them, right? Well, Green Lantern gets so distracted by the crowd that he doesn’t see Knockoff Cap’s shield spinning toward his face at 4,700 mph…

…Flash saves him though, like he always does. Then he whips the shield back before Flash and Green Lantern skip off into the night.

Ha, Cindy Crawford. How very ‘90s of you, comic book!

“These guys are gonna recover pretty soon,” Flash says to Green Lantern. “Knocking them down’s one thing, but I get the feeling they won’t stay there long.” But Green Lantern is feeling pumped and ready to fuck more Hyperclan ass! I mean, “kick”. “Kick” is what I meant.

The duo infiltrates the Gobi Desert base and finds the monitor room. They find footage of Superman getting tortured by Protex with a news bite indicating that they’ll cover Superman’s trial and execution for the Justice League’s crimes against the Earth! Green Lantern is beside himself with exasperation and incontinence! “Look, I say we just trash this place and then make sure the others are okay,” he says while Flash attempts to get some info out of the room. He finds a large orb with an image of the Earth on it and the positions of the Hyperclan’s orbital transmitters. Flash discovers that they aren’t hidden in space; they’re hidden in hyperspace! Doy! That’s why they couldn’t detect them!

Green Lantern catches on quickly. He realizes that this is how those bad guys seemed to come out of nowhere either an issue ago or two issues ago, I forget. Anyway, what if there are dozens more bad guys waiting to come out of these orbital transmitters? What if there are fleets upon fleets? It’s not looking good, that’s for damn sure. Maybe they should call it a day and play some Crash Bandicoot at home.

They should have left a minute earlier, because Knockoff Cap and his Large Robot Buddy showed up to kick some ass again. We’ll leave them to it.

The Hyperclan at one of their bases discovers through their console that five defense drones have been neutralized on the upper levels. What if Batman is still alive and also on the base and also upstairs and also ruining everything?

Batman?! Ha! You mean the dude with rabies? What’s he going to do, get stuck in your hair? Stupid Batman.

Protex tells A-Mortal that if Batman did survive, then cripple him and bring him back. He’s going to make him and Superman kiss. A-Mortal breaks through the upper levels in search of the ever-elusive Batman. “I know you’re here, Batman. I can taste your pheromones,” he says disgustingly. “I can see through walls. Don’t waste our time.”

Batman is trying to hide rather clumsily. He stuffed himself in a corner where more than half of him is exposed by light. How will he turn the tables? We’ll have to see in a minute, because Wonder Woman is also still alive and Protex fits a snug fishbowl over her head. “It seems almost a shame to destroy this one…” Protex says, probably because she’s the one with the vagina. The Hyperclan White Lady, whatever her name is, gets itchy and nervous that A-Mortal hasn’t reported back. Has the Batman clobbered his butthole? They all start scrambling to look for A-Mortal, and they find him on the upper floors unconscious and hanging by his waist on a pole with a note taped to his chest: “I KNOW YOUR SECRET!”

THE TOILETS ARE BACKED UP AGAIN!

Meanwhile, Batman gets surrounded by three Hyperclan goons. “Any last words?” says the bald lady with 5,000 eyebrow piercings. And yeah, Batman’s got a few.

“Super-strength, flight, invulnerability, shape-changing, mind-control: you’re Martians, aren’t you? And when you brought down my aircraft you didn’t dare search the wreckage because of the one thing which robs your people of your powers.”

Batman smiles devilishly as he holds up a box of matches. “Fire.”

He strikes a match while the Bald Hyperclan Lady begins to panic ever so subtly. The place happens to be doused in gasoline, and after Batman happened to somehow figure out that the Hyperclan can be destroyed by fire, Batman happens to flick the match onto the floor, which happens to ignite. “SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING! DO SOMETHING!” Knockoff Cap yells as he’s engulfed in flames.

Batman strokes his chin.

Protex is still yelling about Batman being useless and stupid and mortal and smelly. How can he beat a clan of superbeings?? Of hyperbeings?? It don’t make no goddamn sense!

“Your puh-plans… are… falling apart… Protex,” Superman pants with labored breathing. Protex has an ace up his sleeve. “ACTIVATE THE FLOWER OF WRATH! KILL THE HUMANS!”

Invaders appear out of the orbital transmitters. Seventy more Hyperclan members ready to level all of Earth’s major cities! “WE WIN! WE WIN!” Protex yells maniacally.