Old Justice League Comics

It is interesting to re-read the old Justice League comics that came right after the Crisis in 1985. In light of the villain that has apparently been Maxwell Lord, seeing him in these beginning comics is kind of creepy.

Maxwell Lord is just a plain old human, or so he thought (or led us to believe). He was called a “billionaire industrialist” many times in the comic series.

He helped start the new Justice League and get it its “International” standing. Now the Justice League was like the superhero police force of the countries of the world. He helped start the team by instigating the first little predicament in the United Nations: he hired a handful of terrorists to seize the UN and then have his people come in and save the day. He didn’t tell the terrorists that he didn’t give them the trigger to the bomb.

Then he also set up the little fracas that had Booster Gold prove his worth to the team by defeating the Royal Flush Gang on his own.

By issue #12, the League should have seen more of the impending coming of the villain Maxwell Lord. He had even planned the murder of his boss in his previous company just to seize power. Even though it didn’t quite happen the way he wanted, a real accident while spelunking and not a murder, he seized power and led the company. His building is filled with protective devices. He seems ready for war already.

The Metagene Bomb, or whatever it was exactly called, that went off during the Invasion crossover series and three-issue event in the late 90s was intended by the aliens to eradicate the superpowers of everyone on earth. The groups of aliens that got together were afraid of all the super powers on earth and wanted to extinguish them. It only affected super powers. So why did Maxwell Lord become affected?

It ends up that Maxwell Lord is a metahuman. His power is to influence. He can “nudge” somebody psychically. If he wants the remote control, he can “push” you to get up and get it for him. If he wants a company to sign a really bad contract for them, he can push it into his favor. He’ll make you turn right when you wanted to turn left. He’ll make it seem like it’s all your idea. Maybe he didn’t realize that he had this power, even though he gets a nosebleed whenever he uses it (I have to see when these nosebleeds started—it might be a retcon), he has always used the power, at least in the business world.

Then he started using it for really evil purposes. Somehow, he has figured that the metahumans would be the death of all the regular humans, sort of like humans versus mutants in the Marvel titles. He makes a case in that the metahumans are like gods among men, and anything in their wake gets destroyed.

For years, and I hope DC really goes into detail on this, he has been “nudging” Superman and getting him ready for complete will domination. This is Batman’s worst nightmare, and even if the JLA hated him for creating countermeasures in case this kind of thing ever happened, you can see that his fears are justified. In the middle of the mini-series called The OMAC Project, which was also interrupted by the four-part Sacrifice storyline that ran through the Superman and Wonder Woman titles, Maxwell Lord has made this final takeover of Superman’s will. Maxwell Lord has stolen Batman’s satellite overseer technology and perverted it into a metahuman killing machine. The superheroes are getting close to the culprit. Max plays his final card and “nudges” Superman to fight Wonder Woman with no quarter given. One hell of a fight ensues between two of DC’s most powerful characters. Wonder Woman ropes Lord with her lasso of truth and asks how to get Superman out of the trance. Lord answers the truth and only the truth, “Kill me.” She does so by snapping his neck. It was videotaped and broadcast to a world that is no in dire fear of the metahumans. Wonder Woman seems to have crossed that line that protected humans: no killing.

To see how far the evil went is amazing when you back track it through the Justice League comics. There are tidbits there. One of the writers at DC had said while they didn’t think Lord was a villain, “never once did I trust him.”