This one’s a little more difficult to describe.
Like Atari Force, this was about a ‘second generation’ team and, in this case, they were the children of superheroes.
Specifically, the Justice Society of America.
The JSA predated the Justice League in the DC Universe. You may know heroes like The Flash and The Green Lantern, but you probably know the modern versions of them – the JSA was made up of the originals.
The Flash was a guy named Jay Garrick – he wore a long sleeve, red shirt with a yellow lightning bolt down the front and a silver metal hat with wings on it – like Mercury, messenger for the Gods. The Green Lantern was a fella by the name of Alan Scott. He wore a long cape and did have a ring which he charged on a green lantern but the power he gained from it was mystical, not something fashioned by the Guardians on OA.
Anyway, that should give you a little taste of what they were all about – characters you might know like Hawkman and The Atom, only with a Silver Age spin on em. Infinity Inc is about their kids.
When they apply for and are denied admission into the JSA, the Star Spangled Kid decides to quit the JSA and start a new group with the rejects. Called ‘Infinity Inc.’, the group is made up of the Star Spangled Kid, Silver Scarab, Fury, Northwind, Nuklon, Jade, Obsidian, Power Girl, The Huntress and Brainwave, Jr.
I liked this because we hadn’t really seen stuff about the kids of superheroes – or, at least, I hadn’t. This was before Franklin Reed was born or Scott and Jean had kids in that other dimension whatsit over in X-Men.
This was about kids having to live in the shadow of their parents, a theme that touches everyone at some point. But in this case, their parents were superheroes – they saved the world over and over – how do you compete with that? Especially when the very group your parents made famous, the JSA, turned you down?
The book didn’t last long – seems to be a recurring theme with the ones I like. The big storylines were: the Crisis on Infinitive Earths – a big marketing thing by DC to sell lots of books and tie up all the inconsistencies in their universe (like Alan Scott as a ‘mystical’ Green Lantern). Basically they used the theory of the multiverse, multiple dimensions for every possible outcome of any decision made, to explain why there were all these disparate versions of the ‘same’ superhero. In the Crisis, the different Earths collapsed and became a single universe. But for it to work, the JSA had to be locked away in it’s own little dimensional bubble for all time, leaving the Infinity Inc. heroes without their parents.
They had to deal with the fact that they remembered people who didn’t exist anymore – their parents. Not an easy thing to deal with.
The second major story for them was one of their own turning evil and trying to do the Big Bad stuff on the world. The Star Spangled Kid, by this time redubbed ‘Skyman’, is killed at the start and Hector Hall, son of the original Hawkman and Hawkgirl who had become the Silver Scarab, was set down his path to fulfill an ancient curse: The curse of Seketh, the Ancient Egyptian God of Death, prophesied the combination of the Silver Scarab and the Eye of Ra, which would practically mean the end of the world.
So all of that adds up to: Much Drama and heartache for all.
My favorite characters were Jade and Mr. Bones.
Jade was the daughter of Alan Scott, the Green Lantern. His mystical GL powers were inherited by her, only she didn’t need a lantern or a ring – it was just a part of her. Her twin brother, Obsidian, also inherited some powers from dad and is one of the few homosexual characters (or bisexual I suppose since he had a girlfriend once or twice) to emerge from the comics in the last ten or so years.
Mr. Bones was a genetic experiment – his skin (and internal organs, blood, etc.) are transparent – hence the name. He smokes too much and has a cyanide touch that’ll kill you dead (see ‘Skyman’ above). He had a bit of a Rogue (X-Men) vibe about him in that he couldn’t ever be touched – not unless the person touching him wanted to die.
Anyway – this was another of of my favorites and I wanted to share a bit about it. It was short lived and I know that some of the characters did go onto have bit parts in other books, but it’s just not the same.
As an interesting side note, this was one of the first books I owned that had artwork by mister Todd McFarlane (Web of Spider-Man, Spawn) in it.
~P
