Justice League United #5 - Setting the Stage for the Infinitus Saga

Released October 8, 2014
DC Comics, Color
30 Pages

The Midayo and the Whitago

Jeff Lemire - Writer
Timothy Green II - Penciller
Joe Silver - Inker
Jeremy Cox - Colorist
Travis Lanham - Letterer
Ameded Turturro - Asst. Editor
Brian Cunningham - Group Editor

Synopsis

NOTE - this comic is NOT in the JLU Omni covering the Infinitus Saga, but it does lead into it and sets the stage for what we see, so I did want to include this as a bonus of sorts.

Our comic begins with a synopsis of the events of the JLU series up to this point from Martian Manhunter. The JLU (Stargirl, Green Arrow, Animal Man, Adam Strange and Martian Manhunter), discover an alien plot centered around a child named Ultra. On the planet Rann, Adam Strange and Supergirl join in the fight, leading to the sacrifice of Hawkman to save Rann and Martian Manhunter taking Ultra under his care.

The team is back on Earth and there is discussion with Miiyabin (the Equinox we saw from Future State) and someone named Heather around the mythical Whitago - basically a Yeti - when Hawkman's beacon goes off and the team decides to track it down. Sardath and Adam Strange suddenly call in from Rann saying that they've been tracking it too and can technobabble their way to that star system via Stargirl's staff & the Zeta beam. Stargirl, Supergirl, Animal Man and Green Arrow promptly vanish.  Allana, aka Adam's girlfriend who is on Earth while Adam is on Rann due to some other strangeness, is assigned the task of escorting Miiyabin and Heather back to Canada. (Can I come with?) 

Supergirl's team appears in a space station in the Polaris system, and it looks rough and run down. They enter a seedy bar full of bounty hunters. 

In Canada, Alanna delivers Miiyabin to her home. She transforms into her super-self using the phrase "Keewahtin" and asks the truth from her Grandmother. Together they say the word and are transported into another dimension where their power comes from, power based on the pillars of the Cree life, used so that they may be protectors of their people and land. The Whitago is a creature based on the opposite pillars of dark forces that can infect the good.  This is what happened to Miiyabin's father - he became the Whitago. 

Alanna and Miiyabin leave to find the Whitago. Approaching an old NATO base, the Whitago jumps Alanna and is about to kill her when Miiyabin addresses the Whitago as "daddy."  She drives the darkness out of the Whitago and he transforms back into his human self. She accepts her role as Midayo as he fades away from this world, but she sees him with their ancestors in a vision. Alanna and Miiyabin discuss if they were fated to become super heroes and fly off into the night. 

Back at the JLU bunker, Martian Manhunter is astonished to find that Ultra can communicate in English. Ultra warns that time is broken and someone is coming to hurt Ultra.

Just at that moment, the ceiling collapses and Mon-El appears, saying that he's come from the future to destroy Ultra or the Legion of Super Heroes will die!

Commentary

I feel like I had to include this just to show the lead in to the main Infinitus Saga story, as it is the second chapter of the trade, even though it has one Legionnaire and then, only on the last panel. Since this appears to set up the conflict of the main saga, it felt right to include this and the earlier Future's End issue into the mix, despite all the other plot threads.

At the end of the day, this issue is really the origin story of Equinox, or at least the story of how she received her powers, and this is correctly where the good part of this story was for me. The first act, which consisted of backstory and the JLU shuffling people around, wasn't very interesting to me, mostly because we didn't see the principals really DO anything. Animal Man, Green Arrow, Stargirl and Supergirl basically stand around and quip, then get transported into space to be left on a cliffhanger of sorts.  OK.  

But I'm a sucker for stories that relay cultural ideas, and this was no exception, although I think that Lemire was playing fast and loose with the mythology (I *think* the Whitago is actually supposed to be a Windigo, for example). This aspect of it, and the ultimate confrontation was satisfying to me because I wanted to understand more about Miiyabin herself. 

The problem was that a lot of this was extremely unoriginal.  I felt like I was seeing a mashup of Black Panther and Shazam from an origin perspective, and this led to a fairly predictable resolution, although I didn't understand why the father ended up dying instead of just being returned to a powerless human. Also, as a current reader of the Adam Strange Silver Age Omni, I'm really confused with what is going on with the more modern Adam and Alanna, as well as their designs, however it is great to see Alanna being in a position of agency versus her Silver Age damsel.  

Art was passing.  The Green/Silver art team told the story well enough, but the bodies and faces were a bit too angular for my tastes, although that could have been a function of the ink.  Another thing that didn't set with me - and this is certainly a "me" problem - was that the uniforms of this era didn't align with what I remembered. It was a strange (pardon the pun) art choice to pair Alanna with Equinox, as they have the same color scheme in their costumes. All that said, Mon-El looked great in his updated retro uniform, and that splash page was very well drawn.

Side note - this issue digitally has 30 pages, the last 6 or so are house ads for the Future's End series.

But for an origin story, it was fine.  Bring on the Legion!

Grade: B-  I probably enjoyed this more than I should have.