"A Plague of Monsters" Justice League Vol 1 No 174 January 1980

• Black Lightining!
• Crazy villian scheme
• Letter's Page

6/10 Lightning Bolts

This issues is more or less a part 2 of the League's attempt to recruit the new super hero Black Lightning into the group and it continues the issue's big bad evil guy's would-be origin story. The story opens with Barnabas Boulton, aka The Regulator unleashing his evil plan and extracting his revenge against his former boss as Star Labs who had him recently committed. Barnabas can control rats with a helmet a la Ant-Man. Since rats alone suck as a real threat, and since just sticking it to your boss and wife for locking you in the asylum is not a great long term plan. The Regulator makes use of Star Labs mutation chamber and levels up a big ol' pile of rats. Then he launches into his plan which goes a long way to explaining why he was getting forced psychiatric help in the first place.

Gerry Conway presages the attitude of the modern online politics poster by half a generation

Meanwhile back at the Hall of Justice...

Green Arrow is pissed! Seems he is the one who nominated Black Lightning for the league, but Superman, Green Lantern, and Flash ham-handed the whole thing. Kind of no surprise there, those three are all have super square powers and no doubt acted like asses. Supes already acted like a jerk to Jon Stewart when they first met back in JLA 110, and you know a space cop and an actual cop probably came off poorly talking to the only black superhero they have met before. Ollie decides to pitch membership in person this time to correct the social blundering of his fellow heroes. 

This is maybe the biggest moment in the book to me. It's culturally poignant, and sadly despite being written in 1979 (Jan 1980 cover date) still relevant now. Ollie tells Supes off, by pointing out that intentions aren't enough to be an ally, action is what matters. Speaking of allies two Leaguers volunteer to keep an eye on Ollie lest he do anything rash (like talk to the black guy?). Elongated Man & Zatanna hop in the teleporter to Suicide Slums. It's too bad Conway doesn't give us a thought balloon for Green Arrow when he finds these two rookies have decided to come with on the mission uninvited. 

The trio arrives in Metropolis and doesn't have to wait long for the action. A distress call from Star Labs sounds like a good place to find the local hero at large. There is a really nice interlude with Black Lightning that give some nice insight into the character, and contains some good symbolism about being a black hero, but don't take my word for it check out Osvaldo Oyola's much more intellectual and better written blog on the subject.

Join the League and get shamed for taking vacay or sick days

Ollie and rookies are quickly overwhelmed by monsters at Star Labs which leads to a really weird interlude. For some reason Conway includes a bunch of Leaguers who won't be responding to the distress call for a number of reasons. It feels like he is shaming them a little bit or I don't even know what, humanizing them is probably his intention and also just making Dillin & McLaughlin draw more heroes. It breaks up the flow and just comes off as a non-sequitor, but comics.

the one time it's ok to be "that guy"

We do finally get some Black Lightining in action shots. Conway doesn't Sweet Christmas up the dialogue too much, but he does add some slang/jive to it. It could be argued that this is Jefferson Pierce using his unapologetically black voice. Powerful in costume he no longer fears being himself or conforming to the standards of the white majority. Notably Green Arrow also drops his "g" on "ing" words in this issue showing that in action and speech he is umm, down. I guess the kids still say that. Green Arrow only drops the lingo some of the time though, so it could be he is putting on a false mask too.

Briefly the League and BL are together, now with Bats and Wonder Woman adding some muscle to the crew. They get some info dumped on them about the Star Labs Genetic Research Project, which has recently caused other monstrosities to attack the city, big ups to Wonder Woman for pointing out the WTF??!!? this project has been a cluster in the past and is now the cause of this disaster, c'mon Star Labs do better. Anyway Black Lightning takes off on his own to confront Regulator, while the rest of the League do damage control.

Wonder Woman, notably is tasked with keeping the mutant rat hordes from spreading outside the slums. She uses her lasso to pull down a crumbling apartment building to block the creatures path across a bridge. This scene is strange for comic book reasons, the building is conveniently empty, close to the bridge, and the rat creatures apparently can't climb or something. Anyway she destroys a building and blocks a major access road. Hey, you gotta do stuff in emergencies there's no time for major forethought.

We catch Black Lightning as he catches Regulator in the most precarious and comic book villan of perches, atop a factory smokestack. There is a brief struggle before Black Lighting confronts the enemy with the old, your revolution is harming the people you hope to save speech. I'm not sure I understand the exact action next, but it appears Regulator squirms realizing he needs to correct his mistake, but instead falls down the smokestack, no one could have seen this coming.

That last panel is so dope I might blow it up and put it on a tee shirt

Normally this type of inadvertent death of the antagonist would have lead to much angst, but not here. Black Lightning gets all fired up and then is like whatever. No big deal for the guy who protects a neighborhood with a worse name than Crime Alley. This all part of his reality, we don't have the right to judge him here.

Anyway the mutant rats get rounded up, and packed into some big ole concrete containers so they can be un-mutated and returned to nature. Oh wait no that's not the plan at all. They are sealed in an hurled to "the outer reaches of the solar system." That, friends, is how you take care of vermin. Also Princess Diana does not play.

Both of these endings left me wondering about the fate of the baddies. In the case of Regulator, it seems pretty final. The flames leap up and its pretty likely he is dead (there is not a single other appearance of Barnabas Boulton or Regulator in any of the subsequent DC Universes). The rat though are on an elliptical orbit so while they will probably die up there they will def be coming back toward earth one day, and this being comics you can bet they will be ten times worse of a threat when the do. I don't know it seems like a poorly thought out plan again here.


At last the heroes get sometime to do what they came here for, recruit Black Lightning to the Justice League. Green Arrow finally gets to ask and again BL turns the league down. Ok, fine I guess, he has his "I'm a loner" reasons, sure. The good part here is there is no bargaining, shaming, or pleading by Ollie. Black Lightning says his peace and Green Arrow lets it go, very adult. It does lead to the most trill moment of the issue, which only would have been cooler if GA had just said "Bet."



Oh and that property damage that the League did fighting the crime bads, yeah that can wait because we're having moment here. Why is The Man always harshing everything out. Thank you Wonder Woman for letting him know. Unless maybe navy suit wants an elliptical trip to the outer reaches of the solar system.

Lastly we have a letter page!!!! Hooray!!! One of my fave things to do with old comics is to "Where are they now," letter writers. This issue does not disappoint. We get 7 letters in the double spread column this issue. Daniel S. Lee of San Jose draws a blank for me. It might be a dentist out there but I couldn't pin anything down specific on him. Brian Chafin of  Floyd Virginia also comes up blank. I did find a Brian Chafin who asks questions at public meetings of VA governemnt, and I'd bet that is probably him but can't be positive.

Ted P. Skimmer who it turns out is a fake, a big fat phony. Back in the day, they sometimes had staff make up letters to fill the space, ever wonder how some of them could be spot on with future story requests? Well, now you know. Ted Skimmer is a nom de guerre of Bob Rosakis.

Gordon Smith of Middlesex is also a blank on my search, but Sal Casente is no doubt Salvadore Casente, big time lawyer. He wrote his letter some time in his freshmen or sophmore year of high school and  it is about the courtroom and legality of superheroes. Casente goes on to graduate with honors from Harvard Law so he clearly knew what he was into for sometime.

Joseph Fabiszak is very likely now a CPA in the Baltimore ex-urbs. His question/comment about characters on the cover, but no being in that issue as a way to boost sales isn't entirely unrelated to his pedantic career.

Lastly we have Dave Elya of Cheboygan, Michigan. I didn't find Dave, but I did find someone who found Dave's hand drawn comics! Definitely worth checking this blog post out from ispeakcomics. Dave also was living the dream running a comic shop himself, God bless him, but a fire next door put him out of business. Sorry, Dave.

Overall the issue is just ok. It's better than average because of the Black Lightning appearance and the double letter page, but the art is inconsistent and the bad guy is pretty whack. I can't go higher then a 6 out of 10 and even that is a little generous.

Mid Terms in Missouri

Stump Speaking by George Caleb Bingham

Tonight I'll be covering our president as part of his whirlwind campaign tour before the 2018 midterm elections. My coverage will be in Cape Girardeau, MO. This is the last of three stops of the septuagenarian Commander in Chief, and one of dozens made in the weeks before the polls close.



Cape Girardeau is large town, that is passed it's prime by some hundred years now. The cape, of the towns name, was a bluff of rocks that outcropped along the river banks. That prominent feature was completely annihilated by railroad construction.

The earliest recorded European settlers were french trappers who set up a temporary trading fort here. Later French and Indians who would stunningly side against the Americans in the Revolutionary War established a more permanent settlement here, after being granted rights from the Spanish who had acquired the territory after the Seven Years War ended. At the time of Louis & Clark's visit here at the beginning of their expedition the town was run by Louis Lorimier, a horse racing British sympathizing Frenchman, who had married a Shawnee woman and who had seen his settlement attacked and burned by Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark, some thirty years before while attempting to exterminate indian encampments there. During the visit William Clark stayed upriver with the  crew while Lewis travelled to meet Lorimier alone

Cape Girardeau's real heyday would come mid-century 1800's as a way stop for travel between St Louis and Memphis. Mills and shipbuilders no doubt did good business in the town, but there was not even a bridge to span the river in town until 1928. Some called the town the City of Roses for the many rose gardens cultivated publicly and privately around the town particularly along Spanish Avenue. Today a few rose gardens are still maintained around town.  My guess is farmers and millers in the area used Cape Girardeau as the closest port to get their goods to the larger cities up and down the river. At one time the city boasted an impressive opera house, accounting for the time period that is sort of like saying your town has a movie theater in it.

As the interstate highway system rapidly outstripped the river barges in speed and efficiency for moving goods, and as the frontier expanded from the Mississippi River westward the town here began declining and has not looked back. In it's waning days of prominence, post-Civil War, the forward thinking town leaders succeeded in establishing a state funded university in Cape Girardeau. Southeast Missouri State University is now the fourth largest employer in the area, behind several healthcare providers and Proctor & Gamble plant which makes Pampers diapers and Bounty Paper towels at their local plant. A former president of Southeast Missouri State University, William Duncan Vandiver, is famous for saying, "I'm from Missouri, you have to show me." This is of course where the state's Show Me motto comes.

The town is pretty enough. The old city slopes down the hill toward the river. It was a good enough spot to establish a town, as the flood plain on this side is naturally abutted by the hills. Lately floods have gotten more frequent though and the old levee wall has been dangerously close to being topped in 2016, and generally floods have been far more frequent in the past thirty years than ever before.

When Trump comes to speak tonight he will be stumping for Josh Hawley, the Missouri Attorney General. The Stanford graduate and former Londoner, led his state to sue the Federal Government to stop Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), he has also been vocal in his support for separating children of immigrants coming to America from their parents at the time of their crossing. He is very much a Trump ally and supporter.

The painting above was done by a Missouri politician, George Caleb Bingham, and depicts how stumps of his era worked. The painter is actually in his scene, the man seated on the platform directly behind the speaker, he is dutifully scribing notes to counter-point during his upcoming turn at the podium. It's a by-gone era being shown where both candidates would take the same stage at the same time to address the voting public. Bingham believed very mightily in democracy, and the republic. He believed it could be hard work to keep up with the candidates and their views, but it was hard work that the American people were up to doing, and must do in order to maintain their freedoms.

 Certainly the people in the audience will feel the gravity of the election they are going to participate in, and understand the importance of their vote. I am not sure that they will appreciate that where they live is a place founded by people many different cultures who held many different beliefs and because of those differences, not in spite of or ignorant of, those differences they made a place to live where they and their future generations could prosper. The ideals of those bygone men included some despicable views on race and gender, and those concepts should be thrown to the side by right thinking people. At the same time, those men knew the importance of staying progressive in their stewardship of the local economy and environment. I am less sure that the audience tonight will be as thoughtful when recollecting those olden-times.

Inauguration Day 2017: My View

I attended my third inauguration Friday. The day was warm, for January, but overcast and a light rain fell off and on throughout the day, though mostly off. It did notably rain just as President Trump began to speak. The crowd was not large, and I saw many protesters, which I document here. The protesters slowed the attendees from entering the gates. Whether or not you agree with the attendees or the protesters it is great to see people active in democracy, even if that activity is as small as bearing witness to the swearing in of a new President. Most of these pics are from Third & D St NW around the Blue Gate.

Internet Sensation Sikh Captain America

The Captain with the PG version of their sign

As noted elsewhere I love Captain America, so no surprise that I found two Caps in the crowd. Sikh Captain America has been a mainstay at large political events this election cycle. I saw him in Cleveland at the RNC and he has made the rounds at other events too. I also found this more anarchist leaning Captian. Who modeled his costume off of the briefly worn design when Captain America was replaced by a mentally unstable but easily manipulated stooge, appropriate.



The highlight of my news gathering was somewhat accidental. While taking a break from shooting near a group of rather vocal jeering protesters, a Trump supporter started verbally mixing it up. Out of growing frustration he threw his Trump signature red "Make America Great Again" hat at the protesting group. Around this time I figured I should stop resting and get back to shooting, so I rolled camera on the protesters in time to see them light the hat on fire. It went up pretty quickly.

There was lots of chanting and good activism. I had left before the black bloc took to the streets across town. In all not a terrible day, though it was lackluster compared to the two Obama inaugurations. The speech was a particular let down. It was not at all about unity and painted a ridiculously bleak picture of the country. I found it insulting really, from the anti-Washington nonsense to the grime portrait of America as a whole. It was not forward looking or optimistic, and feeds directly into the same tired narrative that things are horribly wrong. To quote our new president, "Sad."

Firing everyone including no longer relevant for twenty years Rosie O'Donnell 

Inauguration Day 2017: Making Everything Great

Today is the big day. President Elect Donald Trump become our 45th President, at our 58th Presidential Inauguration. Personally I'm still a little shocked that it is happening, but it is happening and we will have at least four years of President Trump. For the sake of my country, I wish him the best. He has a singular mandate to produce working and middle class jobs that offer upward mobility for Americans, but beyond that I 'm not sure what he should do. 

Certainly a Republican controlled House, Senate, Executive, and Court (in theory) will make some drastic changes to taxes for the wealthy, reducing most regulations on industry, and scale back on federal government spending. The hole produced by less federal money will be given to lowest bidder, lowest quality, least accountability private companies. 

I'll always be an American, I'll always love the idea of America as embodied by my favorite comic hero, Captain America. While I want my country to do well, it doesn't mean I have to like the president so here is what I think my hero would do to the man who has no heroes, and a great Bronze age What If cover. 

Golden Showers

Now more appropriate than ever. Thanks Mutant  Thanks Atomic Books