"Syndicate Rules Part 2: The Favor Bank"
Writer: Kurt Busiek
Aritsts: Ron Garney(p), Dan Green(i), David Baron(c)
Publisher: DC
The blurb to the next issue of JLA is something of a joke referring to the lack of actual JLA sightings in the book. This is not to say that JLA is aping the Batman books. The Crime Syndicate is psychotic and evil but in no way is Kurt Busiek saying that they are the Justice League of America.
Despite my being in the comic books for the heroes, I could not help find the attention to the revamps of classic JLA villains an absorbing exercise. The Crime Syndicate are rotten to the core, but Busiek doesn't take their criminal acts deadly serious.
A case in point can be seen where Superwoman flash fries an aquatic miniature city, and there's a simultaneous scream of "AIEE!" I mean she's committing mass murder, and yet, you can't really feel that upset about it because she's essentially a really nasty kid with a giant magnifying lens having her way with an ant colony. I was a heck of a lot more disturbed when the villains I knew who had taken over the heroes' bodies in Silver Age threw Kandor to the ground and then proceeded to gleefully step on the inhabitants. One is over the top. The other is rather repulsive.
Busiek also reinforces the Morrison idea that these are the super-beings that this decayed and corrupt anti-matter analog of earth deserves. The rationale of Owlman with regard to chaos is down right intriguing. Flawed but intriguing.
This particular issue further gains interest from its position in continuity. It actually dovetails straight into JLA/Avengers and then continues out of the ramifications from that team-up, which if DC were smart would employ to fix things that have been broken for far too long. Not that they will, but the opportunity is certainly knocking at their doors. Everything could be reset, and Busiek shows this with a surprising shift from the character we expect to see.
Garney seems to be having a ball with the Crime Syndicate. He darkens the hunt in the opening. He in a bad movie way litters the Crime Syndicate transporter with bones of the dead, and he makes Superwoman extremely slinky. Green and Baron also get in on the act. Their entire world is as if a noir film upchucked on it.
Garney portrays the violence perpetuated on Johnny Quick as realistic, but he restrains himself from making the situation too brutal to watch. You wince, but you also grin because you can see the joke. The Crime Syndicate operates as a seriously dysfunctional family with mental and physical abuse issues.
The Crime Syndicate is fun to watch, and the consequences of the JLA/Avengers as promised seem to be affecting at least one title. Busiek plays on several unsavory themes in the story, but he wisely keeps a balance to stop the villains from acting too realistically nasty.
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