Although those my age may shiver at the thought of reviewing a comic from the early 2000’s as an “oldie,” it’s been 15 years since “JLA: Classified” introduced us to the Super Buddies in “I Can’t Believe it’s Not the Justice League.” While “Justice League International” became more and more of a comedy over time from the way the characters’ personalities meshed and interacted, “I Can’t Believe it’s Not the Justice League” never tries to take itself seriously. Is this to the comic’s betterment or detriment? Let’s take a look back and see.
Written by Keith Giffen & J.M. DeMatteis
Illustrated by Kevin Maguire
Colored by David Baron
Lettered by Bob LappanI can’t believe it’s not the Justice League… but you will when the Super Buddies finally open for business – complete with their own theme song. But things hit a sour note when a former foe – Blackguard – opens a sports bar next door to their new “headquarters” in the strip mall downtown! Worse, Blackguard has a partner, the Buddies’ old pal Guy Gardner!
Things go from worse to worser when Booster Gold accidentally consigns half the team to Hell for all eternity. The rest mount a rescue mission, but just being a Super Buddy may not be enough to deal with demons, monsters and zombies.. and a dead teammate resurrected!
“I Can’t Believe it’s Not the Justice League” brings together several members of the Justice League International, most notable Fire, Elongated Man, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. While they’re still working with Maxwell Lord (seen here before his turn to evil), they’re now a team known as the Super Buddies. Goofy? Yes. But intentionally so.
In fact, the entire comic is intentionally goofy. Character traits are turned up to 11, making everyone goofier, dumber, angrier, and wittier. Sometimes this can make the characters more entertaining, while other times making them more irritating.
For instance, Ralph Dibny gets it into his head that Sue is irate because she’s pregnant, then continues to go on celebrating that in spite of every insistence that she’s not. You’d think a man who’s as much a detective as a super hero would perhaps want to find more solid evidence than “She’s not herself today,” but no. That’s basically all his character amounts to for the entire comic, so we can mark that one off as a loss.
On the other hand, this gives us the standout character of the series, and one who’s not even a superhero: L-Ron the robot. While primarily acting as an assistant to the Super Buddies, he gets some of the best one-liners, comebacks, and snarky asides the book has to offer. From lamenting over his tragic lack of a death ray to complimenting Guy Gardner on his Judy Garland impression, the little robot makes the comedy work.
I must also take a moment to comment on one of my all-time favorite DC characters: Booster Gold. At this point in the series, he’s at his most self-centered and goofy. A running gag is about how he married an older woman for her money, which I think we can all agree is decidedly un-heroic. He also takes more insults than anyone else in the team for being a goof, for being stupid, and for being the one who’s mistake kicks off the main conflict. But he also gets a nice chance to shine at the end, where he admits he primarily plays the fool more than he is one and serves a major role in the team’s victory. As a Booster fan, I’ll say it evens out in the end.
The rest of the comedy comes at a rapid-fire pace. As this comes through the dialogue more often than the visual humor, it does mean that nearly every page is filled with speech bubbles. While the comic uses the size, shape, and number of panels to a great variety (everywhere from two-page spreads to 15-panel pages) they’re so often filled with dialogue that the speech bubbles fill half the page.
With that said, there are some moments that make good use of silence and comedic timing. For instance, there’s four panels of Guy Gardner getting up, brushing himself off, and not noticing there’s a large bar dart sticking out of his shoulder that uses the equal spacing of the panels and lack of dialogue to deliver the humor nicely. The page leading up to Guy’s reveal is equally well done, using five horizontal panels to slowly build up to it. Each one has the characters in the same positions, but their expressions growing more and more terrified as each one contributes to the exclamation of “Oh my god.”
Continued belowWhile the dialogue may be nonstop, there is still some good banter there. The friendship between Booster Gold and Blue Beetle comes through nicely between the insults, and Fire takes on a mentor-like role with Mary Marvel. We also get some nice bits of comedy from outside characters and running jokes, like the various members of the Super Buddies questioning whether or not they actually get paid.
At this point, we’ve talked a lot about how the characters work and whether or not the comedy lands, but not much about the plot. Well, for the first half of the book, there isn’t really much of it. The early chapters set up the characters, their dynamics, and their inter-personal conflicts. There’s not actually much done in the way of super-heroics.
The story itself kicks into gear when the Super Buddies get sent to hell… entirely by accident, as Booster messes with one of Dr. Fate’s artifacts. Here, Keith Giffen gets to exercise his poetic side with Etrigan, as well as propose some theological discussions. While the story and main gag comes from the Super Buddies being forced to work in an infernal fast food restaurant, there’s still actually a good bit of character work thrown in there. The pure and almost naive Mary Marvel has to consider her faith as she’s trapped in hell through no fault of her own, whereas Fire and Guy get the lion’s share of emotional moments when they find Ice in there.
This actually transitions well into some actually hard-hitting moments. We get to see a softer side to Guy Gardner and feel for the whole team as they struggle to undertake the “Orpheus Protocol” to get Ice back from the underworld. The end result makes full use of the artwork to drive home the emotion with minimal dialogue, which is all the more impactful considering how nonstop the dialogue normally is.
Speaking of the art, Kevin Maguire does a fantastic job with the character work. Everyone is extremely expressive, but not quite to the point of exaggeration. This helps establish the voices, physical comedy, emotion of the moment, and character insights very nicely. Of course, this only applies to medium or close-up views of the characters; they tend to just get dots for faces when they’re in the background, but that’s rare enough to not be an issue.
Given how many panels the comic can fit into a single page, it feels like Maguire must have been working overtime on some of them. But the quality doesn’t diminish, whether the characters are serving burgers in hell or fighting the alternate universe versions of themselves from what is apparently the strip club universe.
We get a nice variety of demonic designs when the characters are in hell, and it feels like the art team must have had fun drawing S&M versions of Captain and Mary Marvel. David Baron’s color work suits the comic well, making everything pop cleanly. While the scenes set in hell make use of plenty of shades of red, the glow of hellfire also provides nice lighting to keep characters properly illuminated.
All in all, “I Can’t Believe it’s Not the Justice League” is not the characters at their best. They’re not exactly heroic, and they don’t exactly carry out great deeds or save the day. In fact, they mostly just argue. A lot. In fact, knowing what happens to many of these characters within the next few years can make it a little more painful in retrospect; seeing Max Lord and Blue Beetle laugh about Booster Gold being annoying is a stark contrast to the infamous “Go to hell, Max” scene that awaits in their futures. Yet in spite of all of that, it was fun. It still fit in some good character moments, nice emotion, and with all the jokes they fire per page, at least a few of them hit. While I wouldn’t consider it the finest moments of the team, it’s still enjoyable enough if you don’t try to take it seriously.
