scans_daily | JLA #5 Preview - The fate of Catwoman

The CBR preview of the new JLA #5 has something of a spoiler to it, inasmuch as it reveals (or at least very, very stronly hints at what happened to Selina at the end of last issue.

But before that, a fun little moment as ARGUS approachs Simon Baz to be their Green Lantern.
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How... reassuring to see that the ARGUS agent has all the sensitivity toa First Contact situation that one might hope for. ... You just did the equivalent of calling a man you've never met before a chimpanzee! Whatever else s/he is Bd'G, s/he is a sentient alien with a freaking power ring and they are floating right there in front of you.

Meanwhile, whilst Catwoman lies dead at his feet, the weird looking leader of the Society is talking things over with his colleagues; Copperhead, Signalman and Blockbuster (Who the pale guy is is still unconfirmed, but I rather like the idea that he's Alfred from Earth 3 as the Outsider (Though Alfred as the original Outsider WAS a villain, so I'd have thought that made him a hero on Earth-3... or something)

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Looks pretty obvious to me who this "Selina" has REALLY been (Red eyed shapeshifter linked to the JLA? Tough one, no? :) ), and I suspect things are about to get a lot less certain for the villains of the piece.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Point of order: Agent Fed has met B'dg before.

Oh, great, the super rapist is back. Maybe they can find some way to make him not a joke in this continuity, because they sure never found a way in any other one.

From what I've heard DC's moving away from the hole rapist angle, the "new" Doctor Light is apparently a family man and a decent dude.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2013/06/12/justice-league-identity-crisis-doctor-light-dc/

It's a bit of an abrupt change, but changing shit like Identity Crisis is exactly the kind of thing that DC should be doing with their reboot.

That is a terrible type-o.

That was my immediate thought.

So Doctor Light is a good guy?

Why not just go with Kimiyo Hoshi then?

Because she's a woman and Japanese. That's too much diversity.

You can only be one thing! You can be Japanese, or a woman, but not both! That just strains credulity.

Isn't Katana Japanese and a woman?

Well, that's the problem. Can't have two characters from the same ethnicity/gender pool -- it spoils the whole tokenism thing. Also, readers will get all confused and never remember which is which... *eyeroll*

"It's unrealistic! It stretches credibility!"

Or possibly a villain who has goals that brings him into conflict with the heroes, but is not a horrible person outside of that. Maybe someone wants to rob wealth, or wants to steal tech to conduct some radical light-based experiments, or what have you.

I like villains like that.

To this day I'm still not sure why Identity Crisis needed rape. Identity Crisis was disturbing enough, since it was essentially a "Women in Refrigerators" story. Heck, the rape was ultimately a red herring. It was just there for shock value. If it was meant to make Doctor Light a credible villain, it failed. He was still a joke, just in a different and nastier way.

I'm sure that's why Meltzer would state the red herring of Doctor Light WAS there, like an episode of say, House where they initially think they've diagnosed the condition correctly and then - naturally - something else happens that says 'oh hey, this is actually worse'. Granted, I don't like Identity Crisis at all, but that is pretty much the purpose of Light being the red herring - there's just no need for it to be rape; He could have just gotten onto the satellite and found Sue, gotten caught before he could have done anything, and STILL seemingly have had cause for murdering Sue in the present day.

But, yeah. It turned him into an even worse joke than before, because the joke wasn't even funny.

One point of Light as a rapist imo was some motive of giving the Silver/Bronze Age DC heroes some sort of enhanced credibility. DC had a shit reputation of the pre Crisis days as being kind of a joke so I figure rapey mclight was Meltzer trying to show that "SEE! SEE! THEY FOUGHT COMPLETE MONSTERS IN THE PAST JUST LIKE THEY WILL IN THE FUTURE!! THE RISKS WERE JUST AS HIGH!!!"

Plus the other the Leagues shock at Light's rape is what really motivates the lobotomy (kind of a skeevy use of rape as a plot device in retrospect). So Meltzer I guess felt that he had to show and prove to the reader the REAL RISKS AND CONSEQUENCES of supervillains knowing who you are, your loved ones, and where you live. Just telling us and years of understanding/indulging in the trope as comic readers wasnt enough I guess.

And what killed me about that is that Dr Light didn't have to know who Sue Dibny is or where she lived to do that. He just went to te watchtower and there she was. Not only was it a shitty move for all those other reasons, but it didn't even establish what he wanted it to.

I didn't mind it in the days when Light was something of a joke, he was a brilliant scientist who just happened to be a fairly crap super-villain. Not that he wasn't dangerous, just never particularly good at planning things through.

He started strong (if fighting the Silver Age Atom using a "Lethal Light Bulb" can be said to be "starting strong"), recruited the Fearsome Five via a small ad in the Underworld Gazette, but ended up kicked out by them when they realised they did better without him, and he ended up being defeated by, amongst others, a newly formed "Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys" on their first time out, and Robin with a concealed sleeping gas capsule.

And lasted all of ten seconds of a fight on Apokolipz. Seven of those seconds were him falling to the ground after being shot so many times he could double as a screen door.

Man, I miss the good Suicide Squad series. (Good as in quality not the morality of its members.)

Agent Fed, the Major Major of the DCnU.

The preview just makes me sadder that Baz couldn't keep a solo title, but Larfleeze gets one.

I'm going with theory that the Society's leader is the outsider and he's a combination of either the Alfred version or the Outsider from Flashpoint.

I'm definitely much more interested in Baz now that DC isn't just treating him as a token minority/publicity stunt.

And even though this story looks pretty uninteresting I'd be happy if DC brought back the Flashpoint Outsider, he was one of the better ideas to show up during that event.

-I'm definitely much more interested in Baz now that DC isn't just treating him as a token minority/publicity stunt.
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A lot of characters are like that. Come out weak during the hype, improve a lot once it's passed.

What has me really curious (besides DC opting to not utilize the other Dr. Light who already was a decent person with a family and a WoC to instead dramtically change a man who by all rights is more toxic than Cass Cain ever was) is what Lobdell will do about the Dr. Light story that was being mentioned in TT solicitations. There, the Dr. Light looked like Arthur Light but scarred, killed a young boy for his light powers, and was supposedly going to go after Solstice. Multiple Dr. Lights or another last minute rename?

Called it!

JLA #5 Preview - The fate of Catwoman

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