“Yesterday’s” Comic> JLA: Year One #5

Does not happen in the book. If anything, the two teams spend more time disagreeing with themselves.

JLA: Year One #5

DC Comics (May, 1998)

“A League Divided”

WRITERS: Mark Waid & Brian Augustyn

PENCILER: Barry Kitson

INKER: Michael Bair

COLORIST: Pat Garrahy

SEPARATIONS: Heroic Age

LETTERER: Ken Lopez

EDITOR: Peter Tomasi

The Brotherhood uses the Locus teleportation guns to graft citizens’s parts onto their protoplasmic army. This brings in the Doom Patrol to investigate but also the Justice League drops by. Earlier, the Coast Guard agent Aquaman befriended was in the JLA’s cave headquarters (without their permission) reading dossiers on members and talking about Locus before avoiding Snapper, while Black Canary makes sure any of her teammates aren’t married after learning her mother had an affair with a married member of the Justice Society. Now their biggest problem is that they’ve had their parts grafted to a protoplasm creature…which is also grafted to the brain of the Brotherhood’s leader, the Brain.

What they got right: It is interesting to see the “growing pains” of the original Justice League and the further strain on their private lives, especially Barry’s. We also get an early team-up with another superteam.

What they got wrong: I don’t know if this miniseries was the debut of the affair but I don’t like the idea. The heroes I grew up with didn’t do things like that, as Black Canary thought. The scene of the attack of the small town the Brotherhood used for the experiment was a bit disturbing, but that’s a personal gripe and not a critical one. It has the desired effect.

Recommendation: I’m still enjoying the miniseries. This is closer to the Mark Waid that used to be worth reading.