Justice League of America - Issue 24
Featuring the twin menaces of Kanjar Ro and Descartian mind-body dualism
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!
PREVIOUSLY
It begins, as so many things do, with issue three villain Kanjar Ro devising a plan based around his newfound Descartian mind-body dualism ability to separate beings from their auras. The plan is, as you’d hope, both simple and insane:
escape prison by leaving your body behind
steal the auras of five Justice Leaguers
use said auras as bait
defeat the JLA
steal Earth while they’re distracted
presumably rule the world as an alien king?
Classic Kanjar Ro! This is precisely the kind of lateral thinking that gets you very far in the Silver Age. The only hitch to this otherwise watertight scheme is that Kanjar Ro was imprisoned on the planet Rann, holiday home for famed Earthling jetpack-wielder Adam Strange. The only other hitch? Auras, it turns out, can’t actually do much. They’re mostly just metaphysical residue. Vibes. Mood lighting. So Adam Strange, lounging around on Rann, otherwise minding his own business, stumbles upon the aura situation, shows up on the aura-Earth using hand-woven science, where he briefs the real league on Kanjar Ro’s scheme. They employ the help of embittered Kanjar Ro aura henchman, Kanjar Ro’s aura-less body (!), to find the physical version of the Earth, reunite it with the aura version, and the whole thing wraps up with Kanjar Ro’s body imprisoned alongside his own aural duplicate. So, at least he has company?
Fun With Comics!
MVP
It’s Wonder Woman, who channels the infamous closing segment of equally infamous early-oughts ogle-fest The Man Show, by inexplicably turning a planet’s surface into a trampoline and bouncing up and down to distract Kanjar Ro’s mind-controlled aura version of the Atom. You can take the aura out of the man, but you can’t take the man out of the aura. Or some damn thing.
Top Panel
Oh, aura version of Hal. I reckon even if a beast’s breath wasn’t the colour yellow (which, ‘due to a necessary impurity, Green Lantern rings are powerless against’), the fact that it’s visible at all is a clue that it’s somewhere in which you don’t want to become trapped.
Villain Cryptic Crossword Clue
See issue three
Next Issue: PLANET-DESTROYING ALIEN HITCHHIKERS!