Wednesday, July 20, 2011

JLA #98 (Early August, 2004)



At Castle Crucifer, Vortex was branded a traitor by an attacking vampire, who tore his blue face mask off. The sight underneath sent the vampire cowering in despair, declared incurably mad by Vortex, then executed. "...No witnesses."

Themyscira. The Amazons managed to take Wonder Woman from death's door to a speedy recovery, but not a complete one. Diana was already up and donning her armor, which proved upsetting to her sisters. "Charon's boat still waits below, to carry your shade to the domain of Hades." Diana insisted that the fate of the world was on the line, that she had to warn her team about Superman and-- oops! Wounds reopened. Too bad she wasn't conscious in her hospital room to tell the JLA everything they needed to know, or that the team didn't have a resident telepath, nor the Amazons any sophisticated communications equipment. What a stupid story.

Barnes, Saskatchewan. Crucifer drained a host of human life energy, directed it into a small group of metahumans under his control, and laid the leftover mound of bodies in the shape of a Times New Roman font X in a football field. Apparently, ancient vampires hunted humanity for sport and meat, "Until we faced the Amazons. And found ourselves banished to a realm of unending torment." The banished Tenth Circle vampires merged with the metahuman hosts, just as the JLA arrived to quip on the grounds of a mass murder. Nice.

"Convergence," part five of "The Tenth Circle," can be blamed on the famous X-Men creative team of John Byrne and Chris Claremont, but leave inker Jerry Ordway alone. He was just following orders, and the book at least looked good most of the time through his efforts.

The Tenth Circle

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