Justice League of America - Issue 19
Featuring the twin menaces of super-powered doppelgängers and poor legal advice
The Justice League (aka the Justice League of America, aka the JLA, aka Justice League International, aka Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)) is a collection of the DC Universe's greatest heroes (and also Green Arrow).
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!
This issue begins with our heroes confronting doppelgängers of themselves. Not just ordinary doppelgängers, either, but slightly stronger doppelgängers - doppelströngers, if you will. The doppelströngers therefore swiftly defeat each of their JLA counterparts, before embarking on a crime spree, which leads to warrants being issued for the Justice League’s arrest (this exact same thing happened to Winona Ryder!). The team immediately surrenders to the pigs, and on the advice of their dimwitted lawyer, Jean ‘Atom’s Girlfriend’ Loring, plead ‘not guilty, but we can’t prove it, so exile us to space anyway’ (again, just like Winona). Once in the safety of a rocket ship, and away from Jean’s slipshod legal advice, the JLA swiftly finds a loophole to their sentence and return to Earth in their secret identities! They once again confront their doppelströngers, who they swiftly defeat, although not swiftly enough to save readers from a rambling six-panel monologue from issue 5’s Doctor Destiny, in which he (eventually) reveals the doppelströngers to somehow be dream creations he summoned forth from his prison cell!
Fun With Comics!
MVP
It’s The Atom, who recovers from some quite startling Atomsplaining three panels earlier to employ the time-honoured technique of shrinking so small he can manipulate the synapses in his opponent’s brains, converting them all into blithering, brain-damaged morons! Ha ha ha! Take that, you dumb dream creatures! (I also particularly like Clark’s dickery here - ‘look, these guys have no bodily control, whatsoever - we can easily beat them up now!’)
Top Panel
Don’t you hate it, ladies, when you’re riding the wind currents, investigating a recent crime wave and another woman shows up in the exact same outfit? And body? So awkward.
Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue
See issue 5!
