Random Happenstance

An example of what was wrong with Morrison's JLA...from Mark Waid.

From JLA #18, "Synchronicity" Written by Mark Waid, pencils by Howard Porter, inks by John Dell.

When I proclaim, "This is what was wrong with Grant Morrison's work on JLA," it's a bit of a misnomer on several ways. Case in point: Morrison's Batman. Like I mentioned yesterday, Morrison played up Batman's planning skills, making him the League's tactical genius. A perfectly fine direction to take the character, except then the next writer takes that a step further; and sometimes that expands the character, sometimes it makes a copy of a copy.

In Batman's case, it was Waid again, in "Tower of Babel," where R'as Al Ghul steals Batman's contingency plans for taking down the rest of the Justice League. That was a pretty good storyline too, but it was a quantum leap forward in regards to Batman's dickery. A couple more generations removed, and you have Batman's plans used against him again in "War Games." A few more, and you get Batman creating OMAC's and then losing control of them. So, it's not necessarily Morrison at fault, but he loaded the gun.

Likewise, it followed that the rest of the Justice League became more and more dependent on Batman's plans, if not his leadership. In this issue, it's not a big step to imagine Green Lantern and Flash freaking out a lot here.