Today, Mikyzptlk and Patrick are discussing Justice League 23.4: Secret Society, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

Mikyzptlk: Villain’s Month has been letting the creators of DC Comics “unleash” its many baddies across the many corners of the DC Universe. Now, “unleash” can mean many things, and it’s clear that the storytellers at DC are having fun with the format. For the most part, the one-shots have been straight-up origin stories. Kind of like the “Zero Month” for the villains. Other one-shots, while still mainly origins, have tried to give us a peek into the current status of the featured villain now that Earth has been taken over. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get from Secret Society, other than a story about the Secret Society, but what I got wasn’t quite that. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but in the end, this issue leaves me feeling just a tad misdirected. 

Alfred Pennyworth… uh, evil Alfred Pennyworth… okay, The Outsider is chasing Owlman who is himself chasing down his sidekick known on Earth 3 as Talon. Oh, did I mention we are on Earth 3? Well, we are. Anyway, Owlman told Talon something about his parents. Apparently that something has to do with the Joker of Earth 3 because Talon is hellbent on finding the guy. By the time Owlman tracks down Talon, he’s not exactly in mint condition. Okay, he’s dead, but I’ll let you figure out how. Owlman finds the Joker, who heroically wishes to destroy the “order” that Owlman has imposed upon Gotham. Owlman kills Joker out of revenge and is then called upon by Ultraman who says some shit is going down. The Outsider then explains that he was able to escape said shit, which resulted in him invading Earth 0 and the creation of the Secret Society. The final revelation is that Owlman still feels guilt over what happened with Talon and hopes to assuage his guilt by recruiting into the Crime Syndicate the closest thing he has to Talon on Earth 0…Nightwing.

Hey look everyone, it’s the Secret Society! They show up (kind of) on page 18 of this issue, which isn’t exactly what I was expecting considering the title of this one-shot. So yeah, initially I felt misled, kind of like that Bizarro issue we covered before. After my initial confusion though, I felt excited at the chance to get to see a story taking place on Earth 3. The concept of evil doppelgangers has always been silly, but it’s been just as much fun too. Once I realized we were getting a prequel tale of The Outsider and Owlman on Earth 3, I must admit I got pretty excited.

Then… well, the issue happened. Okay, okay, it’s not as bad as I make it sound. I genuinely enjoyed some of the elements of this issue, while others left me a bit cold. With that said, let’s talk about what didn’t work for me. The issue begins with a family (oddly, almost intentionally similar to the Waynes) getting mugged by…wait for it…cops!

They are the cops, but they are the one’s doing the mugging! Isn’t that just the wackiest?  I’m sure you can sense my sarcasm even through the vast distance of the internet. Earth 3 is a mirror universe of our own DCU. So, good is bad and bad is good. The concept is simple enough, but come on, is this the best that Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates could come up with to illustrate how things are on Earth 3? I may be judging this too harshly, but the opening scene of this issue just felt too easy for me. Fortunately, there was another reversal element that I enjoyed quite a bit that helped make up for my earlier disappointment. What am I talking about? The heroic Joker of course! Okay, well even this Joker wasn’t perfect, but I’ll get into that.

Aww, sad Joker. Okay, regrouping now: I appreciated the reversal that the two writers came up with on this front. Basically, Thomas Wayne lost his parents and decided to become Owlman in order to instill order in Gotham. Nobody appreciates this order, so Joker is around to bring about chaos. In the end, their battle is exactly as it would be on Earth 0, except order is bad and chaos is good. In other words, it’s the kind of twisted reflection I would expect to see on Earth 3.

Patrick, I thought this issue was decent but I’ve talked about some stuff I didn’t like and some stuff I did mainly because I couldn’t figure out what the hell this issue was supposed to be about. I thought I was going to get a Secret Society story, but ended up getting one about an evil butler and a dead sidekick. I need your help, man. What was the theme supposed to be? Everybody has secrets? Even supervillains can have a heart? Take a look at Earth 3, ain’t it wacky?

Patrick: Super villains have a heart – it’s just on the right side of their bodies.

Have we established that fact yet? Here’s something I recommend everyone do: next week, DC is releasing a deluxe edition of Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s JLA Earth Two. It’s Morrison’s introduction of Crime Syndicate and this evil version of Earth. Morrison resists the comic-booky urge to name it anything so trite as “Earth 3.” In fact, the name of the collection comes from Alexander Luthor calling our Earth “Earth Two.” It’s a hilarious moment, but it’s also insightful as shit. That insightfulness extends even to the abstract – Morrison’s take on ‘reversing good and evil’ is that on this world, evil is destined to succeed and good is destined to fail. It’s an idea exactly as silly as what Johns presents here, but it’s so much more thoughtful, and when the heroes and the Crime Syndicate switch places, its hard for either group to come to terms with the fact that their side isn’t going to win on this new world.

Please accept my apology for spending so much time talking about a different comic. We’re here to discuss Justice League 23.4: Secret Society, right? Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot to hang on to while sussing out this issue. I bring up JLA Earth 2 because a) I think y’all should read it and b) I find that I now have a built-in affinity for Earth-3, so even this confusing mess of an issue feels oddly compelling – for all its faults.

And those faults are legion. Chief among them is lack of clarity. Any time you’re dealing with alternate realities, you’re going to have to reconcile the world you’re presented with with the world you’re familiar with. An example from this issue: Owlman and Alfred talk about Dick Grayson and Talon, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize they are the same character. Obviously, my expectation is that Calvin Rose is Talon and that Dick Grayson is Robin. Even if I were properly doing the SAT analogy test well enough to instantly realize that “Batman is to Robin as Owlman is to Talon,” I still have to reconcile that with what I already know about Court of Owls, GCPD, Joker and Alfred.

As Mik points out above, the baseline reality here is so wacky, that it doesn’t help to make any assumptions about anything. That scene where the cops (one of whom is Harvey Bullock, just to make matters a little more confusing) mug the Wayne-esque family, gets even weirder when the family draws down on the cops and fires back. And here’s the part that makes the least sense: there’s nothing to suggest that this isn’t the Owlman origin story. The next page shows Alfred buzzing through the streets of Gotham in a car, so we’ve had a violent smash-cut to something else, but is it a smash-cut in time or in space? Hey, you’ll never know.

Not helping matters in the slightest is artist Szymon Kudranksi. Kudranski is the king of crafting striking images at the expense of clear storytelling, and is regal pedigree is on startling display here. With nothing but detached, intentionally disorienting voice-over to guide him, much of the burden of storytelling falls to Kudranski. It goes about as well as you might expect.

There’s almost no way to follow this action, and even when you break it down — the chopper fires some kind of missile at Owlman, who dodges and throws a grenade, but is somehow still on-the-ropes — the lack of backgrounds make it impossible to place this is action in space. Plus, I don’t know about you, but my reaction to that last panel is “why is Owlman yelling that they got Owlman?” We’re zoomed in so close on that face that all I can really make out is mouth and cowl.

Even something as simple as the Joker, Owlman and Alfred squaring off is muddled to the point of meaninglessness. Owlman’s momentarily distracted at the sight of Dick Grayson’s body parts wrapped up in Christmas presents (which we just have to take Joker’s word is actually Dick), and Joker’s ready to take advantage of the situation with some… sharp playing cards or something? Then good ol’ shotgun-Alfred comes to the rescue — Johns loves him a good shotgun Alfred, doesn’t he? But rather than kill Joker, an action which seems totally in-line with this universe, Alfred just shoots some fingers off Joker’s hand and then they just sorta forget about him. There’s a page — a whole page — where Alfred blames Owlman for whatever he told Talon to make him seek out Joker (more information we never get), allowing Joker to recover and strike back. It’s ridiculously poor storytelling.

So, Mik, like you, I was happy to be spending some time on Earth 3 – I just wish it made any fucking sense.

For a complete list of what we’re reading, head on over to our Pull List page.  Whenever possible, buy your comics from your local mom and pop comic bookstore.  If you want to rock digital copies, head on over to DC’s website and and download issues there.  There’s no need to pirate, right?