Scans_Daily

Waaaaay way back in 2010, I'd wrapped up a series on Oracle/Barbara Gordon and her tenure with the Grant Morrison era Justice League (titled the JLA and nicknamed by him the "Pantheon League" for its symbolic resemblance to the Greek/Roman gods, at least early on).

But, at the end of that series, I listed out where I'd missed some key appearances, having not had the relevant issues back when I was manually scanning things from trades. Now that I'm all digital, and going back to transfer my old and broken posts from imageshack to my new hotness at imgur, figured I should assemble a few final posts to cover the rest of Oracle's tenure with the JLA.

First up, the interesting mini JLA/Titans (collected under the trade paperback The Technis Imperative, but it’s usually damn hard to find). It was published in Dec. ’98, about two years after the JLA series got started, and about three months before the relaunched Titans series.

It got a lot of the original Teen Titans back together for their own world crisis, as well as touching on just about anyone else who’d ever been a Titan, though now they’d all gone off to their own things: Robin had been Nightwing for awhile (his second series with the new costume debuting even before JLA), Kid Flash was the new Flash and partnered with the JLA (which becomes a big problem due to mixed allegiances), and a number of the other members had been sidelined and through their own problems over the years in the meantime. One of which is Cyborg…



So, yeah, there’s a big giant VGER-style thing come from the depths of space, and it’s launching probes at Earth, while also knocking out technology all over the place. Baaaaaad business.




So the probes are looking for Titans, but smart enough to recognize people beyond their costumes. Hmm.



Insert your own joke about being on Wally’s butt, folks.





Yup, the VGER thing is going full Unicron now. Also, a rather inconsistent thing throughout Oracle’s tenure: whether or not that J’onn was the sole operator of the telepathic link the JLA had, or there was some wetware tech Oracle and the others could make use of to keep it going after he was inevitably incapacitated. It depended on the writer, really, but that always bothered me.







Slowly but surely it begins to dawn on the “Thinkers” of the team that the invader has an intelligence, and attacking it is causing reaction to probing elements planetside.







All the heroes that have been kidnapped as well those working to avert world crises gather and compare notes. It’s established that Vic Stone, the hero known as Cyborg, who’d once gone with a global tech hivemind called Technis into outer space to try and reacquire his humanity (long story) has now fully assimilated with this planet-sized mass of cobbled-together, intergalactic machinery. The Titans and the JLA are understandably divided on A) dealing with an alien threat to all humanity and B) helping an old friend who is lost and misguided…





RUH-ROH.

So there’s basically an entire issue of the JLA and Titans fighting each other (Kyle Rayner in particular gets near Batman levels of dickery in whining at Wally for being a “traitor” to the League and siding with his old friends; I’ll chalk it up to it being very early in his career and him overacting in the way he thinks he should behave in the situation.) Nightwing and Batman, meanwhile, stand and debate each other on pragmatically sacrificing what remains of Victor Stone for the good of humanity versus finding a solution that both parties can agree too.

Eventually, enough time has passed and background B-plot comes up with some strategy beyond “superheroes punching each other.”







So, moreso than other crossovers, minis and single-issue appearances I’ll be posting in the wrap-up, Oracle got to appear beside all the other blink cameos and still be a significant contributor and do her job beside all the other superheroes. This was actually a very good example of mid-tier Oracle doing her job within the League; not yet thinking 12 steps ahead and calling out orders, but also not just being on the back-burner. Sadly, not every writer in these next couple of years found space for her.





While the focus is split between Beast Boy’s “I know you’re in there somewhere…” fight, I like how this two-page spread gives an example of Babs’ top multitasking skills, and how there wasn’t really anybody before her coordinating efforts like this for the League, JSA, etc. all under one watch.

So the fight and the disasters die down, but the Titans are left somewhat stranded inside the remains of the floating large satellite. The original young heroes are holding hands in micro-gravity when there’s a hull breach.

“Donna…”




Yeah, Cyborg had a solid gold body for awhile. And basically shapeshifted. It was weird.
This little mini folded directly into the relaunch title called Titans, which had a nice little restaurant scene where the older and wiser “sidekicks” discuss just who exactly is in charge of the Justice League these days?



Right on, Lian. Right on.

More to come. For now, sate your hunger by archive binging below.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6


12/48 pages of JLA/Titans #1, 4/48 pages of JLA/Titans #2, 7/48 pages of JLA/Titans #3 2/3 page of Titans #1