First Issue Madness!!!

Justice League Europe issue 1, April 1998.

Giffen & DeMatteis, Sears & Marcos

Synopsis: Justice League are opening their European office in Paris, there are already transporter tube problems - Animal Man's luggage has been burnt to a crisp, and Captain Atom is a pretty useless leader. The rest of the team arrive: Elonogated Man, Power Girl (who?), Flash, Wonder Woman, Rocket Red (who?), Metamorpho (wtf?)...the plot er, thickens with a shadowy man, an angry mind controlled mob (careful! they are civilians!), a dead nazi in the hall way! Oh no! I can't handle the excitement! I never bought the second issue.

Cultural differences are set out thusly:

"The famous American neurosis!" quips a French removal guy
"The famous American sarcasm!" quips the PA

Adverts:
Nintendo: Bubble Bobble, John Elways Quarterback, Wrestlemania,
Lucky Charms
Campbell's Alaphabet Spaghetti
Morning Funnies Cereal
A Bunch of DC Comics

I had every issue of JLE, bought in a foolish splurge of back issue madness just after getting back into comics one time. SO MUCH RUB.

http://www.technohol.com/new-u/index.asp

- this phrase should be excised from the comics language. No good will come of it.

I now really really want to read some New Universe stuff again. Reading the Star Brand issue summaries on that site...dear oh dear.

But I don't think anyone would hold up Jim Shooter's Star Brand run as among the better parts, though in its way it's a continuaton and refinement of his seminal work on Secret Wars II...

(how curious that Shooter spent the mid 80s on series exploring what one would do if one had the powers of a living God...)

It was also the first comic I bought! 'Cause it had "Europe" in the title and I lived in England.

DP 7, though, yeah -- was it only that title, or the whole line, that advanced in real time? 12 months of issues = 1 year of story time? A conceit that really would be nice to see in more comics.

The Shooter omnipotence fetish should have its own thread if for some crazy reason Secret Wars 2 is reissued as a trade paperback and for some crazier reason we all buy it. Maybe it'll show up in CDR instead, that would be nice. Ish.

I also really loved Justice -- not the early issues so much as the ones right around when they cancelled half the NU titles and tried to tie everything explicitly into Star Brand's plotlines, which resulted in revealing that Justice had been suffering from mega delusions throughout the first year and a half of his title!

Green Lantern (latest series) #1
The Phantom #1 (DC's late 80s 12-issue run, I had the complete run! I think I must have been the only person in the whole world who liked it)
Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (the T & M B./Giffen & Gordon version)
Green Lantern Corps #201 (it read something like "Explosive First Issue" on the cover, even though it clearly wasn't)
Legends of the Dark Knight #1 (day-glo covers seemed like an odd way to launch a new title during the post-FM days, but whatever)
JLA: Classified #1
Man-Bat #1 (from the 70s, I think it only lasted 2 issues, it was one of the first back issues I ever bought, I think I paid about $4 for it in 1988)

Near misses:
Justice League #2 or 3
Green Arrow #2 (the Grell version)
that's it off the top of my head

If only, when the various Image Universes go (will they ever go? Have they passed that date and become - dare i say it - canonical?) they should hand them all over to Ellis or Millar or Morrison or best of all Moore for some horrible down n dirty destruction...

ihttp://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/4199/400/4199_4_01.jpg

Giffen stayed on JLE until the end of his run on JLA, only DeMatteis jumped ship (and he still came back for the odd fill-in or cross-over issue, like the one about the stray cat invading JLE via teleporter technology). It's not terrible (until the Breakdowns pisstake/crossover where everything went shit on purpose), but the point of the second series was to focus less on the sitcom stuff and more on INTERDIMENSIONAL ADVENTURE, just with the same style of dialogue.

I have a Lot To Say about it. It wasn't all good but it's quite forward-looking.