Batman teamed with Nightwing and Oracle to pursue the case, while other super intelligent gorillas that questioned Grimm's loyalties tailed him, and local mob boss Roland Desmond hired Lady Vic to help him pursue other intentions toward Grimm-- likely involving his massive simian heart. The matter resolved with Grimm's cargo ship sunk and ther gorilla in Blockbuster's clutches, in a story by Chuck Dixon, Graham Nolan, & Mark Pennington.
Batman continued, "Meanwhile, Atlantis is attacked by the gorilla sub The Kong under Admiral Trafalgo-- in an attempt to steal a mystic crystal called The Eye of Poseidon to power their morphic resonance array." The Martian Manhunter had determined this through a mental scan, and sent "Aqua-Ape" to rout the gorilla forces. Several of the Sea-Monkey King's confidants, like Tempest and Vulko, where transformed into gorillas loyal to Trafalgo, forcing The Prime Ape of the Seven Seas into combat. Unaffected heroines Mera and Dolphin helped steer Tempest and occasionally Aquaman back toward the side of humanity. Eventually, Aquaman overloaded the Eye of Poseidon, not only restoring the Atlanteans' humanity, but even causing members of the ape forces to go human. The Kong retreated, but Aquaman pursued, in a story by John Ostrander, Mark Bright, & Dick Giordano. Batman quotes written by Len Kaminski.
JLApe: Gorilla Warfare
Bio Booster Armor Batman got the captured Lex Luthor to admit that he had agreed to work with Brainiac because the alien was going to take the "lazy... sick... undisciplined... lowest common denominator" of humanity who wanted a "free lunch" off in the seven cities governed by legionnaires of doom away to outer space, leaving Luthor to shape an Earth made up solely of rugged exceptionalists unencumbered by the non-producers; basically outing him as the third Koch brother. Batman pointed out to one of the smartest men ever that Brainiac was always going to nuke whatever was left on Earth when he was done with it. Whatever your politics, shrill is shrill. Batman also threatened to murder Luthor if he didn't cooperate, with Lex even saying "You don't have to tell me, Grodd. I know he's not bluffing. Ross and company had an odd fixation on a brutal Batman unseen in popular media, even more incongruent within the context of a "mature" take on the Super Friends. Superman would truly turn a blind eye to that?
In Scarecrow's city, Zatanna teleported the Marvel Family to Toyman's city so that they could evacuate the children, which I thought was Superman's job, but he instead smashed into Scarecrow's city after beating the Toyman, so he could work longer, so he could earn more, so he could do more coke. Superman was needed there to... hear from Red Tornado that Brainiac had switched his consciousness to a robot body in another city, and from Zatanna that Black Manta had teleported away, so that he could deduce that Arthur Junior was now with Black Manta. Gee, Aquaman could never have put that together on his own. Oh, and he ordered all the super-heroes to keep evacuating Brainiac's cities, because dur.
Elongated Man was part of Supergirl's strike team against Poison Ivy's city, which also included Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Metamorpho. The Maid of Might had a "toad struck by lightning" level dumb exchange before knocking out Ivy so easily you'd wonder why the whole scene wasn't brushed off as a single captioned panel.
Aquaman alone went to Black Manta's city, because drama. Manta threatened to murder Arthur Junior most heinously, so Aquaman surrendered to a beating at the hands of Black's blacks. The Sea King had learned that Brainiac had given Manta the ability to "enslave" his African-American men through technology in his costume, which Aquaman wrecked. The men were no longer agreeable toward very late term abortions and/or being subjugated by one of their own, but they were all for unsubtle sub-text wherein they're emancipated by a white authority figure. Then the blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian royalty dressed in golden armor beat Manta like a... like a, um... red-headed step-president of the United States with a much disputed birth record? "I live beneath the sea. I rule and live in a kingdom surrounded by pressures beyond any human ability to measure. What chance did you ever have against me?" Yeah Aquaman, let's have a monologue about your innate superiority to Black. No mixed signals there.
After having helped the Manhunter and Grodd halt a global nuclear strike, Lex Luthor teleported himself to Brainiac's current location, where he revealed that he had always known the android would betray him. "You're an alien... Partner? As if such a thing were possible between us. I wanted you to know, when mankind does not die this day, that it was because of me." Luthor halted Brainiac's body hopping, preventing him from collecting his "heir" from Manta, and instead forced him to flee to his orbiting spaceship. "Get the hell off my planet!" Zatanna and her crew arrived in time to recapture Luthor and continue their pursuit of Brainic. Unfortunately, the Coluan's ship was miniaturized, stranding Zatanna in the vacuum of space. Superman froze the tiny ship in place with super breath (isn't space already pretty cold, and I guess the moisture was pure super spit?) then wrapped Zee in his cape to protect her from reentry and flew down to Earth. Zee still required CPR, administered across a 12-panel grid page. Zee finally coughed and said "Sknaht... I mean... thanks."
The Riddler was sent back to Arkham Asylum, where he was taunted by the similarly returned Joker. Aquaman kicked it with his reunited and fully restored family in Atlantis. Elongated Man proved his worth by serving duties usually reserved for inanimate objects by assisting in the loading and unloading of passengers from the cities of evil. Zatanna was neither barefoot nor pregnant, so she was unseen and unheard until the next time the League needed a magical teleport tube or a damsel in distress. Batman brooded. Our two year, twelve issue, international nightmare was over. "Chapter Twelve" was plotted and painted by Alex Ross. The script was provided by Jim Krueger, and the penciled layouts by Doug Braithwaite.
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The Joker continued to blow up parts of the synthetic cities. "It's my party now! But don't act surprised I showed up. You should have expected me to crash. You really should. You're a regular Brainiac." Meanwhile, as villains from the Legion of Doom were teleporting to other cities, Poison Ivy asked Brainiac sarcastically if everything was still going according to his plan. "Yes."
At the big battle between the Super Friends and the Legion of Doom, Action Stealth Armor Batman™ (from Mattel®) fired real working phosphorous projectile pellets at Solomon Grundy. Meanwhile, Green Lantern John Stewart destroyed the nanite worms that were mind-controlling errbody while simultaneously liberating the non-powered supporting casts previously held hostage by teen super-heroes. This allowed the reunion of Batman Family members Batgirl, Robin and Commissioner Gordon. Zatanna had nothing but her white cloak and the company of Captain Marvel, who would oddly start wearing a white cloak himself in mainstream comics around this time. Conquering, err, saboteurs Black Canary and Green Arrow helped support a clearly weary Elongated Man as Sue Dibny and Martian Manhunter looked on. Plastic Man even gave Ralph a pat on the back, a too subtle not-quite-pay-off for the page devoted to Ralph giving Plas grief issues ago. Aqualad lingered alone from a remove. Zatanna teleported all the civilians to the Fortress of Solitude while the heroes prepared to deal with the escaped bad guys.
Aquaman followed Brainiac and son to Toyman's city, and despite a considerable lead, the Justice League caught up with him inside five panels. They would be needed, as thousands of Brainiac and Arthur Junior robot duplicates swarmed the streets. Beyond the dumbfounding specificity, there's a stupefying two-page spread of the heroes destroying all the robots savagely, relying on Superman's x-ray vision to determine that none of them were the real deal. But say, the Ductile Detective and the Pliable Paladin had a friendly team-up in the midst of it!
Zatanna contacted Superman. "I know if anyone can hear me, it's you. Brainiac- the signal I've been following for him, it's gone. And I can't find a trace of Aquaman's son in the city anymore, either. There are people here, children we need to save in addition to Aquaman's son." Superman stayed in Toyman's domain, while Zatanna magicked other heroes to Scarecrow's bleak Transylvanian-style fake city. The citizens of that plane were mind-controlled and sent against the heroes. "You only need to ask yourself how you are going to save them. How will you fight back when your every defensive blow will crush a soul. Break an arm? Make a cripple? We are legion! Green Lantern then showed up to fix that, then Scarecrow unleashed fear gas to make folks kill one another. Why Lantern didn't just fix that too, I assure you I don't know.
"Chapter Eleven" was plotted and painted by Alex Ross. The script was provided by Jim Krueger, and the penciled layouts by Doug Braithwaite. Zatanna is little seen, but she seems to have the extraordinary power to fix continuity errors through patches in the script whenever needed. Since when does Zee track electronic signals and act as a message relay center? Yeesh!
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Meanwhile, Batman knocked Riddler and Poison Ivy around in his "Beyond" looking red and black armor. Martian Manhunter preoccupied himself with Gorilla Grodd and Giganta. Zatanna secretly teleported Green Arrow and Black Canary to a sewer, then returned to the battle before she could be missed. Members of the Metal Men pretended to act as protective armor for the two missing heroes, while in fact working independently to conceal their absence. Still, the ruse was eventually detected, and Clayface dispatched to stop the duo. In a moment the creators failed to establish beforehand, Elongated Man (wearing a sort of Shadow Thief/ninja alternate costume) turned out to have been pretending to be Ollie's "shadow" in near light-less tunnel. "I want to see Plastic Man do this." Elongated Man encapsulated Clayface, who continued to writhe and press within. The Emerald Archer thought to himself "Ralph's wife isn't even one of those that were taken. He's here for us... Some look at Ralph as a joke. Next time anyone says anything about him, I'll tell them of this moment..." Elongated Man cried that Clayface was chewing on his insides, and that there was only so much pain and stress he could take. Ollie called out, "You're a helluva Leaguer, Ralph." Queen went on to locate the kidnapped supporting casts of the various heroes, and smuggled a power ring to John Stewart...
"Chapter Ten" was plotted and painted by Alex Ross. The script was provided by Jim Krueger, and the penciled layouts by Doug Braithwaite. I'm guessing Ross and company thought they'd crafted the Elongated Man redemptive moment that would be praised by Wizard Magazine for years to come. Instead, it established that he was still motivated by his ego to go up against a second rate Batman villain and whine about it all being too much for him within the span of a few panels. Plastic Man gets a lot more done in subsequent issues, a reminder of what Ralph tried to keep from getting accomplished because of his stupid pride, and then throws a spotlight at his minimal competence for unflattering measure. They had better luck inspiring Geoff Johns' very popular "Have Trident, Will Skewer" take on Aquaman, but despite this being out of continuity, the guys he stabbed regenerate like video game players without a scratch on them in later issues. The Aqualobotomy subplot dragged on unbelievably, but "a Brainiac ate my baby" does its best to match it for incredulity. Mad props for giving Aquaman his big moment in the series while wearing a lame all-green armor that renders him virtually unrecognizable, by the way.
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