JSA #34

Stealing Thunder Part 2 of 5: Troublestruck

David Goyer and Geoff Johns Writers
Leonard Kirk Penciller
Keith Champagne Inker
John Kalisz Colors
Heroic Age Separations
Ken Lopez Letterer
Morgan Dontanville Assistant Editor
Peter Tomasi Editor

The cover by Rags Morales shows several heroes battling other heroes, led by the new Crimson Avenger duking it out with our very own Impulse. And if the black-and-white effect wasn't enough, the evil grin on Bart's face should be enough to tell you something's not right. I've always enjoyed Morales' work for the most part, and I like what he does with Impulse here. Sadly, Morales did not draw the inside pages, nor do the inside pages show this fight.

Impulse only appears on one panel in this issue, so we're just going to breeze on through this. Long story short, the Ultra-Humanite (an old, body-snatching villain) has somehow taken over Johnny Thunder's body and gained control of his all-powerful genie. Through a series of wishes, the Ultra-Humanite has conquered Earth and enslaved most of its metahumans, using the most powerful of them as his personal guard.

Somehow, someway, there is a small band of heroes that has managed to elude Ultra-Humanite's control for six months — Sandman, Hourman, Crimson Avenger, Power Girl, Captain Marvel, Jakeem Thunder and the villain Icicle. They have developed a way to disable the brain-control chips Ultra-Humanite has placed on all the heroes' necks, and they've decided to first free the collection of telepaths being used to monitor every inch of the globe. However, our heroes find the telepaths being protected by a fairly large gathering of some of Earth's most powerful heroes and villains.

This is a pretty interesting concept. Back in the Golden Age, Johnny Thunder was mostly used as comic relief. But if you stop and think about it, his genie really is tremendously powerful, so it's pretty cool to see what a villain would do with that power. Sadly, I don't think Goyer and Johns sufficiently explained why these particular heroes were able to avoid the Ultra-Humanite and no one else was. At the same time, though, it is kind of fun to have some lesser known heroes basically battle the entire DC Universe. So I'm torn.

Even though Impulse didn't do anything this issue, we will see him do a bit more as we close out this five-part story. But before we do that, next time we need to see what life for Bart is like without Max Mercury in Impulse #84.