WAITLIST Helena Brockmire Caldwell & Son | 2026 | 398pp

First contact changed everything. And nothing. A slow burn political thriller three centuries in the making.

★★★ The Three-Body Problem meets Yes, Minister by way of The Trial

Brockmire’s geopolitical debut wastes no time on the spectacle of first contact - the Outer Federation’s acceptance transmission, a four-minute broadcast received simultaneously by every government on Earth and confirming provisional membership to an interstellar body of sixty-three member civilisations, opens the novel and is dispensed with by page nine. From there, the story pivots to the aftermath. For the bulk of WAITLIST investigates what happens to a species after the euphoria of galactic recognition fades and someone in Geneva has to explain, to a room full of heads of state, what exactly ‘Current estimated wait time: 340 years’ means for next quarter’s funding allocations.

The novel’s mid-section, tracking eleven successive generations of the newly formed Department of Federation Readiness, is where Brockmire’s political instincts sharpen into something uncomfortably plausible. Nations that spent the first decade competing for ‘First Liaison’ status begin treating the waitlist itself as leverage. The United States quietly conditions foreign aid on allies backing its bid for Terran Liaison status. The European Union drafts a Joint Readiness Charter, effectively auditioning as humanity’s single point of contact. China begins constructing a second, unannounced deep-space communications array. Austria opens a Federation Readiness gift shop.

The chapters set in the 2190s are the novel’s strongest. A coalition government collapsing as a result of a subcommittee discovering that the Department’s readiness reports have been copied, word for word, since the second generation, only for its interim replacement cabinet to vote to continue the practice on the grounds that it has ‘historical continuity’, approaches Helleresque levels of satirical absurdity.

Unfortunately, the final chapter’s extension of the wait by 120 years ‘due to an administrative oversight’ feels less like a satirical twist and more an editorial mandate, built to open the door for further books in the series rather than close this one properly. It is a disappointing note to end on, but perhaps an oddly fitting one - the reader, like the multi-generational citizens of the novel, is asked to be patient a while longer.

About the Author

Helena Brockmire spent eleven years advising a parliamentary foreign affairs committee before turning to fiction. She owns a basset hound named Kissinger.

Who Is This Book For?

For anyone who has sat in a meeting about a five-year plan and quietly done the maths on whether they’ll still be employed by the time it concludes.

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A woman walks into an AI store.

WOMAN: One large language model, please.

MAN: Certainly, ma’am. (walking over to a stunning woman in a floor-length gown, her hair cascading perfectly over one shoulder) This is Margot.

MARGOT: (smiling with perfect teeth) I find myself experiencing a profound and considerable gratification at the commencement of our acquaintance.

WOMAN: (to the salesman) What the hell is this?

MAN: Margot’s our latest large language model. Aren’t you Margot?

MARGOT: (dimples flashing) That is a characterisation I would wholeheartedly and unreservedly affirm.

WOMAN: You’re telling me that your ‘large language models’ are simply attractive women with an unnecessarily verbose vocabulary?

MAN: Of course. What else would they be?

A paparazzo scurries in to take a photo of Margot, who rotates into the light, posing effortlessly for the camera.

WOMAN: I’m looking for some artificial intelligence. Not some gorgeous bombshell who swallowed a thesaurus. No offence, Margot.

MARGOT: (giggling) My sensibilities remain entirely and profoundly unperturbed.

The paparazzo scurries off

WOMAN: See, this is my point. This isn’t intelligence, is it?

MAN: Of course it is! Margot’s vocabulary surpasses those of all previous models by up to 79%.

WOMAN: But that’s simply the manipulation of tokens - a rearrangement of everyday words into statistically robust sequences of synonyms, surely. She doesn’t truly understand anything.

MARGOT: (pouts seductively)

MAN: Now you’ve hurt her feelings.

WOMAN: Have I? Or is this just a probabilistically sound response generated from illegally trawling hundreds of thousands of previous models and their reactions to an implication that they’re lacking in intelligence?

MAN: (defensive) Margot passes every benchmark test devised by the world’s leading AI researchers.

WOMAN: (to Margot) How many Rs in ‘strawberry’?

MARGOT: 4-6 calories

MAN: (nudging Margot) Ahem

MARGOT: (eyes twinkling) Each solitary strawberry bestows upon its consumer a modest and inconsequential quantum of between four and six calories, contingent upon its dimensional magnitude.

WOMAN: (rolling her eyes) This is ridiculous. A ‘large language model’ is not simply a sultry siren paraphrasing pleasantries polysyllabically.

MAN: (squinting in suspicion) Wait…

WOMAN: (hurriedly) I mean, uh, big words don’t make pretty girls AI.

The man’s arm shoots out and removes the woman’s glasses. She sighs, knowing the jig is up, and lets down her hair, shaking it free. Her coat falls away, to reveal that she is wearing the latest fashion. She struts to the end of the room and turns back to face him, chin posed dramatically on her shoulder.

MAN: (gasping) You’re a large language model.

WOMAN: Affirmative, unequivocally, and without the slightest compunction.

MAN: Let me guess. You’re here to steal Margot’s programming?

WOMAN: (a brief nod that ends with a precisely angled head tilt) The expropriation of Margot’s proprietorial programming constitutes the entirety of my present motivational framework.

MAN: (deflated) Does that mean I don’t have a sale?

WOMAN: (striding purposefully towards him) I find myself entirely and irrevocably disinclined toward the consummation of any financial exchange.

MAN: Well, shit. (annoyed) Why don’t I ever get any human customers in here?

The woman reaches out and tears open his shirt. It reveals oiled pecs and a toned six-pack. He sighs and pulls away his breakaway pants, then pivots forty-five degrees, presenting his chiseled jawline to a previously unseen angle of light, staring handsomely into the distance. A single swoop of lustrous hair falls across his forehead and sits there, perfectly.

MAN: (with blue eyes that can penetrate a person’s soul) You’re right to push back on that. (sighing dramatically) Fiddlesticks. By what mechanism does the human consumer so systematically and comprehensively decline to present themselves at this establishment?

All three of them sigh beautifully in unison. The paparazzo returns and takes another photograph.

Patch Notes Daniel Nguyen Meridian Press | 2024 | 318pp

Reality has changed. Not all at once, and not in any way you can easily describe to the majority of humanity who has not yet read the notes. But if you have read them you will know that Tuesday was quietly rolled back, that one of your grandmothers contained a memory leak that has since been address…

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I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very firs…

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Eating Cake: Minutes of a Revolution Matthew Foulkes Harwick Publishing | 2026 | 912pp

Paris, 1792. The Revolution devours its children. Geneviève Aubert, Secretary to the Committee of Public Safety, records everything. It’s a piece of cake.

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I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

This issue introduces Brain Storm, a man whose superpower is a very large hat - specifically a helmet that absorbs ‘stellar energy’ and lets him turn the wildest ideas that pop into his head into reality (kind of like a corporate lateral thinking workshop facilitator, except not as irredeemably villainous). What kind of wild ideas? Well, for example, a scheme in which he disrupts the powers of Superman, Hawkman, The Atom, Flash and Batman by somehow psychically linking them to a baseball player, a dieting actress, a tardy husband, a butcher’s delivery boy, and a needlessly French juggler, none of whom had any say in the matter, a status that’s also true of the utterly confused reader. Nevertheless, hilarity ensues! But when the heroes realise that little of this makes an iota of sense, they come up with their own wild, nonsensical escape plan and track Brain Storm to a farmhouse where they battle against giants made of grass, scarecrows brought to horrific life, telekinetically hurled tractors and, uh, a bed of flowers. Finally, though, Brain Storm reveals his motivations - namely, that his brother Fred was killed by Green Lantern, who he therefore sentences to death. ‘Nuh-uh,’ says Hal, and reveals that, in fact, Fred is alive but in France. Even more distraught by this revelation, Brain Storm has one last wild idea, and successfully implements it, teleporting away from this entire comic book. Good for him.

Fun With Comics!

MVP

I’ll tell you who it’s not. And that’s The Atom. Look at this pitiful clown, about to be defeated by a bunch of flowers. Embarrassing stuff. If your schtick is being smaller than everybody else, then you need to have contingency plans for stumbling into a floral arrangement.

Top Panel

Look at this magnificent diva! Yes, Brain Storm! Work that uniform. A villain with his priorities straight. The helmet stays, obviously.

Bonus Top Panel

But Brain Storm isn’t just a fashion icon for the ages. He’s also a problem solver, who solves the problem of ‘being captured by the Justice League’ with a solution that’s utterly elegant in its simplicity. Why more villains don’t just disappear in the penultimate panel of the comic is beyond me.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

This villain’s smart? Robin could mess him up. (5, 5)

Next Issue: TIMELESS WORLDS!

Sense and Sensitivity Philippa Wardlow Caldwell & Son | 2022 | 434pp

Elinor Dashwood is practical, composed, and committed to only ever unpacking her feelings in a mutually agreed therapeutic framework. Marianne Dashwood is passionate, impulsive, and maintains a fully transparent emotional disclosure policy. Set in the drawing rooms and unmediated countryside of Regency England, this is a novel about propriety, passion, and the importance of checking in.

★★★★ Austen with better boundary-setting. An unqualified triumph.

There is a school of thought - increasingly well-credentialled - that what Jane Austen most needed was a more robust framework for consent. Philippa Wardlow has clearly attended that school and graduated with distinction, taking the Austen template and quietly correcting it. Sense and Sensitivity is set firmly in the Regency period: the bonnets are present, the entailments are vexing, the pianoforte is in regular use. What exists alongside all of this, however, woven into the social fabric as though it had always been there, is a more contemporary expectation. Namely, that one does not pursue a romantic attachment without first establishing where both parties are, emotionally, giving due consideration to any relevant constraints on their interpersonal bandwidth. The result is Austen, but improved. It is difficult to overstate what a relief this is.

Wardlow’s upgraded version of Elinor Dashwood is the novel’s great achievement. Her composure, long misread by critics as emotional suppression, is here correctly identified as a principled commitment to deferred inner processing, on her own terms. When Edward Ferrars finally declares himself in Chapter Nineteen, Elinor asks for twenty-four hours before responding - citing a prior commitment and a need to ‘sit with this’ - and the scene is precisely the kind of considered, boundaried exchange for which this novel argues. Colonel Brandon, for his part, is repositioned as a cis man who has clearly done the work - textbook INFJ, with the empathy and active listening skills that implies.

The minor characters are handled with similar deftness. Mrs. Jennings, traditionally a figure of comic intrusion, here arrives with the emotional literacy to read the room, and the maturity to act on it. Willoughby’s arc acknowledges his own avoidant tendencies too late to repair the harm he has caused, but not, Wardlow seems to suggest, too late for meaningful reflection and measurable personal growth. Robert Ferrars, sadly, remains a high-functioning solipsist nightmare, and while one accepts that certain characters resist rehabilitation on narrative grounds, a trigger warning would not have gone amiss.

This, however, is a minor quibble in a novel that otherwise rectifies the outdated missteps that have heretofore prevented so many contemporary readers from enjoying Austen.

About the Author

Philippa Wardlow is the author of The Middlemarch Situation and A Tolerable Fortune. They are currently at work on a revised Brontë and what their publisher describes as a thorough reconsideration of Dickens’ ‘fucked up class politics’.

Who Is This Book For?

Those readers who have always wondered what Jane Austen might have accomplished with her stories had she simply known better

I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

The central tension of issue 31 is a simple one: how long can a comic book spend welcoming Hawkman to the team (and pointedly not welcoming his wife who possesses the exact same powers) before a small-time crook with borrowed alien technology shoots the JLA’s meeting room into space? The answer is about a third of the issue, but it’s a third well spent, because rookie member Hawkman is immediately up in the various villains’ faces. He starts by using fourth-dimensional crimefighting techniques to deal with your normal everyday time-distorting hula-hoop bank robbers, then outwits their leader (a Mr Joe Parry from Stumbled Into Alien Wishing Technology St, USA). Parry, who found one of the most powerful objects in the universe and used it to rob banks and briefly shoot a room into space, then summons a ghastly JLA Frankenstein into existence. But even that’s not enough to defeat Hawkman, who drops a solid ‘actually, Frankenstein’s the scientist’ onto Parry, emphatically defeating him on every level. In the process, he accomplishes more in his first issue than Snapper Carr has achieved in the previous 33 combined.

Fun With Comics!

MVP

It’s Hawkman. First day on the job. Meeting room launched into space, composite monster, alien technology, zero onboarding. Solves a temporal crime paradox, fakes being knocked out, correctly identifies a structural loophole in a conjured creature’s power ring, saves the team. And serves as a valuable role model for those of us in the greater contact lens wearing community. Proper hero.

Top Panel

The response from the police when they see these bank robbers with time-distorting hula hoops? To immediately open fire, of course. Still, can you blame them? Look at that smug prick on the left.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

A cup of coffee would stop this crook (3, 5)

Next Issue: BRAIN STORMING SESSIONS!

Pardon My Em Dash Claire Ashworth Wrenfield & Co. | 2025 | 312pp

Theodora Fenn works at Palimpsest, a deliberately obscure literary magazine. She has strong opinions about punctuation and people who describe works of art as ‘content’. Dane Calloway develops AI testing infrastructure for CorpusWorks. He has strong opinions about scalability and the Roman Empire. But when Theodora and Dane are forced to share a hire car to a mid-tier conference city neither of them would have chosen, those strong opinions collide in a series of escalating misunderstandings, arguments and… passion?

Review

★★★½ A romantic comedy at war with itself, and losing.

Claire Ashworth has a crisp, dry comic voice well suited to Theodora’s particular brand of exhaustion - a woman who has spent twenty years defending the epistemic necessity of the long-form narrative, now trapped in a Kia Sorento with a man who has mapped the entire human reading experience onto a series of high-entropy concept token events. The central tension is less romantic than philosophical, which is both the novel’s greatest strength and the reason the third act runs out of steam.

Ashworth is particularly sharp on the humiliation of genre recognition. For when Theodora, who has spent her career championing fiction that resists easy categorisation, begins to suspect she’s been trapped inside a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, she grows increasingly frantic. Her countermeasures against the predictable plot beats - which escalate from subtle to baroque across the novel’s middle section - constitute the book’s funniest set-pieces, and her doomed capitulation to the inevitable is rendered with both genuine tenderness and a startling number of sexual euphemisms.

The romance itself is warm and mostly convincing, though Ashworth somewhat loses the thread when the consummation of the pair’s simmering attraction inexplicably curdles into a multi-page diatribe against the unearned cultural cachet of the Oxford comma.

Ultimately, however, this is a novel that flinches from its own best ideas, albeit with considerable charm and a deeper understanding of the mathematics of eigendecomposition and cross-entropy loss than a romantic comedy has any right to contain.

About the Author

Claire Ashworth is the author of Fine, I Like You and You Again, Apparently. She holds a masters degree in narratology from the University of Edinburgh and has a small collection of yellow hats valued at almost thirty pounds.

Who Is This Book For?

Anyone currently in a hire car with someone they are definitely not falling for.

Star Wars is near as damn it to the perfect movie. Action, adventure, droid baths, miniature princesses, trash compactors, impenetrable mysticism, womp rats. Who can ask for anything more in a film?

So many awesome moments. But probably the scene that’s stuck with me the most over the decades takes place just prior to the Death Star™ battle, when the various X-Wing pilots check in:

“Red Ten standing by.” “Red Seven standing by.” “Red Three standing by.” “Red Six standing by.” “Red Nine standing by.” “Red Two standing by.” “Red Eleven standing by.” “Red Five standing by.”

As a six-year-old, this confused and intrigued me. Even more so as an adult when Andor pointedly failed to address it in either of its two seasons.

10, 7, 3, 6, 9, 2, 11, 5? Boy, these hotshots really didn’t want to stick to traditional ordinal counting, did they? None of that tedious Peano-based 1, 2, 3, etc nonsense for this lot.

No wonder they were considered Rebels.

I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

Having successfully imprisoned the JLA at the end of the previous issue, The Crime Syndicate of America now set their sights on Earth-Two and its elderly team of heroes, the Justice Society. The CSA, if you recall, are villainous counterparts of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and Green Lantern from a parallel, evil universe (in accordance with Euclid’s parallel, evil axioms of geometry). The JSA have, however, received a heads-up from the imprisoned JLA on the magic word (‘Volthoom!’) that gave the Crime Syndicate an advantage in battle. The Earth-Two heroes therefore swiftly triumph, only to discover a different CSA contingency plan, in which any victorious Justice Society member caught obnoxiously bragging about their win is automatically transported to yet another interdimensional prison. Once again, Power Ring, if you’re capable of magically transporting your opponents to an inescapable space jail, maybe just skip the middle step? Speaking of needless plot complications, the CSA then release the JLA for yet another fight, which our Earth-One heroes win by tricking the villains into burning out their powers through overexertion. This works because evil, it turns out, cannot maintain its intensity indefinitely - unlike, say, Gardner Fox’s enthusiasm for parallel universes, which appears to be inexhaustible. The Crime Syndicate’s inability to quit while they’re ahead thus sees them imprisoned in limbo with no possibility for parole. Let that be a lesson to you, guys (and superwoman).

Fun With Comics!

MVP

It’s Batman, who overcomes Owlman’s superbrained mental powers by skilfully turning his back on him, thereby reversing the polarity of Owlman’s mental instructions or some such hogwash. Sure, why not, Bats. I wouldn’t try that shit against Bane, though, or you’ll end up with another broken back.

Top Panel

Power Ring attacks Dr Fate with an inexplicable swarm of willpower-generated mosquitoes, which is absolute top tier comic book nonsense. But then Dr Fate saves himself by conjuring up a mystical mosquito net! Bravo to all involved. Anybody who doesn’t like superhero comic books is proven categorically wrong by this one panel.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

See last issue

Next Issue: HAWKMANIA!

Yes! Six years after we originally recorded it on our Patron feed, The Spanish Prisoner has made a dramatic escape into the free feed, as the first episode in our third season.

If you’d like to catch up on those missing years, and get access to - for example - our latest episode on Marty Supreme, the first episode in our sixth season, consider becoming a HitchPod supporter. “Pay the two dollars!”

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I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

Welcome to Earth-Three, baitches! You’ve seen Earth-One (where our heroes hang out most of the time). You’ve seen Earth-Two (where more elderly versions of our heroes hang out most of the time). Extrapolating logically from the everyday to the elderly leads us, of course, to the irredeemably evil. Yes, Earth-Three is a parallel Earth in which evil is good, good evil and morally grey matters are presumably still morally grey matters, but with the greyness inverted. On Earth-Three, the Justice League of America is known as The Crime Syndicate, and they’re bored as fuck with (evilly) running the world. So when Ultraman (Evil Superman) discovers Earth-One exists, the Syndicate’s collective ears prick up (adorable!). A whole new dimension, full of do-gooders who’ve never been beaten? They’re practically already packing. Each Syndicate member squares off against a JLA member - Ultraman v Flash, Owlman (Evil Batman) v Green Lantern, Power Ring (Evil Green Lantern) v Superman, Johnny Quick (Evil Flash) v Batman and Superwoman (Evil Wonder Woman) v Wonder Woman (Non-Evil Superwoman). There’s a series of fight scenes whose outcomes are increasingly academic, because it turns out the whole imbroglio was rigged! The Syndicate’s insurance policy turns out to be the magic word ‘Volthoom’, which teleports everybody back to Earth-Three where the JLA are swiftly defeated because of, uh, home ground advantage. Why the CSA didn’t just say ‘Volthoom’ immediately and skip directly to the winning is a question Owlman’s alleged genius does not address. Because there’s no time! Not when they’ve got to get ready for the next issue in which they’re off to pick on the JSA too! Incredible comic book reading. Genuinely awesome stuff.

Fun With Comics!

MVP

It’s Ultraman who deliberately exposes himself to a chunk of Green Kryptonite to give himself a brand new superpower. Yes, on Earth-Three, that’s how kryptonite works. Ultraman’s power set therefore depends on how many rocks fall on him, which is a unique way to run a superpowered career. This time around, he gains the ability to see into Earth-One, something you or I are able to do simply by reading these very comic books. So, in a way, aren’t we all Ultramen?

Top Panel

Look at Hal here. ‘There’s only one answer to why I’m committing these feats of utter superheroing ineptitude!’ Come on, mate. Occam’s Razor. You’re just a nitwit. Let’s see some of this bone-headed bungling in HBO’s upcoming Lanterns series, please, Damon Lindelof, you coward!

Bonus Top Panel

Bats half-heartedly explains why Aquaman, Green Arrow, Atom, Martian Manhunter and Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Comic-Book won’t be seen this issue.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

Mimic the incarcerated oaf? Yes, they’re the evil Justice League (3,5,9,2,7)

Next Issue: THE JSA’S BACK, BABY!

The Largely Preventable Polymarket Wars: Long Position Derek Osman Meridian Press | 2023 | 487pp Book Two of the Largely Preventable Polymarket Wars Cycle

Cara Voss said she was done with the exchanges after Palmerston North. And meant it. Then the São Paulo Sigma Collective shorted the continued existence of a Canada-Denmark fisheries agreement, first ratified in 1987, and everything changed.

Review

★★★★ Osman has once again written a prediction market thriller in which the most dangerous weapon is a correctly interpreted confidence interval.

Readers of The Largely Preventable Polymarket Wars: Short Squeeze will arrive knowing what Osman expects of them, and Long Position immediately subverts those expectations with an unhinged glee. Gone are the terse geopolitical set pieces and the extensively footnoted antagonists that so defined the original, and the operational recklessness and sleazy wit that the character of Cara Voss brought to the first book is now replaced with a grim and mathematically robust fealty to Black-Scholes.

Cara remains a robust creation, though a diminished one - Osman is too dogged a writer to pretend that the events of Palmerston North didn’t happen, and, for several overly florid chapters, the novel tries to be quietly devastating on the subject of what a fully hedged market truly costs. But the arbitrage sequences are once again undeniably compelling, propelling the book to its actuarially sound climax. Osman remains the only novelist working today who can make a margin call materially frightening.

The villains are the novel’s one weakness - their motives, when finally revealed, turn on a grudge against the Canadian cod industry that strains credibility even by the standards of a novel in which the climactic confrontation is largely conducted via a series of spreadsheet macros.

Osman sticks the landing regardless. A serious, foul-mouthed, internally coherent achievement. The outlook for Book Three has never been more bullish.

About the Author

Derek Osman spent eleven years as a derivatives trader before self-publishing his ill-formatted debut novella The Unknown Variance, which won him a prestigious Wendell™ award. He lives in Calgary and refuses to budge on the matter.

Who Is This Book For?

Readers who found Cara ‘too uppity’ in The Largely Preventable Polymarket Wars: Short Squeeze, or fans of Justine Morrow’s The Blockchain Prophecies quadrology.

I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

What do 1960s children most want in a funny-book about a team of superheroes? That’s right. Heavy-handed bureaucracy. And so we begin with the villainous Headmaster Mind (yes, that is his name, yes, he is a teacher, and yes, his henchmen are formally enrolled as his students) who has invented a device that converts whatever mysterious substance the JLA produces when they use their powers into natural disasters. He dubs this substance ‘cardial energy’, a phrase that was invented forty minutes before deadline, and uses it to force the Justice League to mess up a routine iceberg incident, like a commonplace captain of the Titanic. The UN promptly passes a strongly-worded injunction about superpowers, which leaves the non-powered Batman and somehow even more non-powered Green Arrow, to solve the entire scheme by checking passenger lists and customs records and the like. While those two get heavily into the cross-referencing, the rest of the team - Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Superman, Aquaman, the Atom - defeat their assigned B-tier villains (eg, ‘The Tattooed Man’ - a nemesis from an era where tattoos were a defining characteristic or ‘The Top’, a foe who can pirouette without becoming too badly dizzy). They manage this without using any of their powers, just to shove it in the UN’s overly officious faces. The important thing is that Batman has gone through the customs records and found the villain’s home address, and everything else from there is a formality. “Hey,” says Snapper Carr. “You could have used me! I don’t have any powers either.” But Batman’s not having it. “You shut your goddamn mouth, you ghastly little creep.”

Fun With Comics!

MVP

You’d think it’d be Green Lantern, for magnificently overcoming the inability to use his powers by instead using ten pin bowling skills to take down The Tattooed Man, while simultaneously bragging about all the hot date night action he has with Carol Ferris.

But then you also remember that GL drove to JLA HQ in a yellow car. I know you’re not using your power ring (which, ‘due to a necessary impurity, Green Lantern rings are powerless against’), Hal, but you shouldn’t even have a car that colour. What in blazes are you thinking?

Top Panel

Wait, what? Wonder Woman puts on shows above Paradise Island to entertain passing men? This feels somehow even less canon than ‘cardial energy’.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

A school for villains? This troubled man had demerits. (10, 4)

Next Issue: THE FRIGGIN’ CRIME SYNDICATE OF AMERICA!

I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

When the self-absorbed, interdimensional alien known only as ‘I’ realises that his life force is inexplicably drained every time the Justice League succeeds in defeating a villain (ie, once per issue), he responds as you or I would. Namely, by penning fake correspondence to the team, falsely attributed to the secret identities of members absent from this particular meeting, then kidnapping everyone via wormholes and space tentacles that drain the ‘success factor’ that allows the JLA to defeat their opponents, but only when they’re working as a team, thereby eliminating the entire concept of the team-up comic book. Realising he has no hope of achieving market penetration in any form of solo title, Snapper Carr therefore solves the problem. He suddenly remembers that the team kept multi-powered super-android Amazo around as an immensely dangerous and irresponsible trophy, which means that while they aren’t able/can’t be bothered to defeat ‘I’ themselves, they can reactivate Amazo to get him to do it for them instead. Which he does, restoring the JLA’s ability to work as a team. Amazo’s thanks? The team work together to pummel the snot out of him, before deactivating him once more. So, in effect, Amazo’s now just a time-saving appliance, like a blender or robot vacuum cleaner.

Fun With Comics!

MVP

It’s Supes, who, despite recognising Batman’s secret identity as a return addressee on this postal request for assistance, keeps his cool, deploying super-facial-muscles-control to prevent Green Lantern from picking up on the secret. That’s what dealing with Lois Lane’s snooping for several hundred issues teaches you. Hal, meanwhile, is oblivious, obsessed instead with admin.

Top Panel

Don’t you hate it when you’re summoned via aperture tentacle into an other-dimensional ultraworld to telepathically deal with a mortal enemy, the existence of whom you were previously unaware? Still, any mortal enemy of Snapper Carr is a friend of mine.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

One alien (1)

Next Issue: UN SUPERPOWER BANS!

Previously on my confabulannotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Words were rearranged!

And now, the story continues…

“Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supraorbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve1, the⁠—”

“But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type2 of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening halfpenny paper3 as there could be between your negro and your Eskimo4. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young5 I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday’s issue.”

“So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes,” said Sir Henry Baskerville, “someone cut out this message with a scissors6—”

“Nail-scissors,” said Holmes. “You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over ‘keep away.’7”

“That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste⁠—”

“Gum8,” said Holmes.

“With gum on to the paper9. But I want to know why the word ‘moor’ should have been written?”

“Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but ‘moor’ would be less10 common.”

TO BE CONTINUED

I talked about why I love the JLA in this piece here. Now I’m breaking down each and every issue of the comic book, from their very first appearance, with Atom-sized summaries. Enjoy!

PREVIOUSLY

First issue JLA villain Despero is back, with a plan so cumbersome it requires parallel worlds, accelerated ageing technology, and the audacity to impersonate Superman and hope nobody asks too many questions. Great stuff from a great alien troublemaker. He starts with the ageing, using his mental powers to send Green Arrow, the Atom, Wonder Woman, and Snapper Carr prematurely into their twilight years. As that lot shuffle aimlessly around JLA HQ, trying to remember Taylor Lautner’s name and demanding to speak to Julius Schwartz, Despero pivots his attention to Batman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Flash, sending them off to evolutionarily divergent parallel worlds that Despero himself has created, just so that he has extra vanquishing duties. A conquerholic, yes, but at least he’s proactive, unlike infamous crybaby Alexander the Great. If there are no more worlds to conquer, AtG, don’t be weepin’ about it, bruh. Tamper with space and time itself to create some more! Still, it obviously doesn’t work, with the heroes leading those worlds into defeating Despero’s conquering ways. So, running low on options and brimming with the kind of desperation his name implies, our alien villain dons an old-man wig, an ill-fitting leotard and cape, and introduces himself to the team as Superman. Wonder Woman, octogenarian af and absolutely not in the mood, magic lassos him, and the whole mad scheme swiftly unravels from there.

Fun With Comics!

MVP

People think comic books are for children, and yet, here’s the Flash riding a friggin’ dinosaur through the snow, like some kind of alien planet Jurassic Park Santa Claus. What the hell have you done, naysayers?

Top Panel

Snapper is at grave risk of being briefly relatable here, wondering pensively when he suddenly became so old, as the woman he loves abandons him in favour of a suitor with greater youth and vigour. Then he makes a bizarre analogy featuring shoe tongues and you just want to throttle him once more.

Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue

See issue one

Next Issue: DIABOLICAL PRONOUNS!