Yep, he’s not crazy. It’s obvious that he’s just talking to Sue, as Ollie suggested he should.
Sure, it sounds like he’s having an actual conversation, but so what? They were married for a long time. He’s just anticipating the answers that she would give. And if that makes him feel a bit better, then so be it.
Some people have wondered if he got drunk on gingold, based on the empty bottles in his waste receptacle. I’m sure that wasn’t Meltzer’s intent, though. The gingold bottles were a way of showing that life goes on for Ralph, and that he intends to continue with the superheroics… unlike Ray, who decided to retreat into his own little microworld.
Um…I don’t remember exactly, but it happened in/around SUPER-TEAM FAMILY* 9-11, give or take. I’ll see if I can dig up the issues. (She went nutz somewhere around ATOM #45 or so, circa 1966, so she was nuts for a decade or so)
*This was during the BATMAN FAMILY, SUPERMAN FAMILY time frame…but what a sucky title!
Just in the interests of accuracy, apparently my memory of these issues hasn’t been completely accurate–it’s been 20+ years since I read 'em, and they sucked to begin with.
Here’s the scoop, and DON’T blame me if it doesn’t make sense, Gerry Conway wrote it and we all know what it means when Conway writes anyone other than Spider-Man, Batman or Daredevil, right?
Backstory: Jean was batshit insane in a few of the later ATOM comics from the '60s (I haven’t dug them out yet), but her insanity there is only kinda related to her insanity in SUPER-TEAM FAMILY. Apparently she went nuts around ATOM #44 or so, and stayed nuts until JLofA #81 when she was sorta cured but was left metally weak. Thus endeth the backstory.
Here we go: In the SUPER-TEAM FAMILY (God, that’s a dumb name for a book), T.O. Morrow (actually it would later turn out that this T.O. Morrow was a clone from a parallel future or some such) and a Living Planet (WHO’S NOT EGO! HONEST! [sub]really![/sub]) kidnap Jean, Iris Allen and Linda Danvers for reasons I don’t remember. This makes Jean go nuts as her ‘nervous breakdown’ come back and she becomes A) Catatonic, B) Crazy, when she’s not catatonic, C) Very destructive (there’s all sorts of side effects when she teleports that make no sense) and D) a teleporter who teleports uncontrollably all over the galaxy and/or parallel worlds.
Eventually she gets back to Earth but is kidnapped (still nuts, and switching between catatonic nuts and screeching while attacking Ray-nuts) by first, the Secret Society of Super Villians and then by Grodd who want to use her residual Living Planet, “psychic waves of mental angush that can DESTROY THE PLANET!” power to ummm…do bad stuff with. Eventually Atom gets rid of the deadly “Mental Aguish Waves that can DESTROY THE PLANET” power and she regains her sanity when a machine that Grodd has her hooked up to explodes.
Two very ironic/creepy twists that would have added a lot to IC and made it much more powerful (if they’d bothered to recap)–1) Atom kills or gravely injures the Living Planet by shrinking into it’s brain. 2) The way that Atom defuses the evil “Mental Angush Waves that…etc”? He shrinks into her brain and wanders around for a while (the inside of her brain looks strangely like the inside of the Vision from Avengers #93)
I mean, imagine the book going more like this:
In the first issue, the patent stuff is discussed, Jean and Ray recount their history (including some relevant points of the above), making sure to have one panel with him inside her brain curing her.
In the end, Jean confesses to Ray that she did it because “Sue was unhappy–Ralph loved his freedom and reveled in being a detective. Sue was afraid that being a father would make Ralph feel tied down. Heh. I knew she was sad! I know what it’s like to be sad and confused and conflicted. So I decided to cure her. Just like you cured me! :D”
Ray: :eek:
Jean: But she died on me. DIED!!! The bitch. And poor Tim’s dad–he’s not unhappy or confused now either. And I didn’t even have to brainwalk to help him! "
Ray: :eek: :eek: :eek:
etc.
Ok, my dialogue is pretty rough, but you get the idea. It’s still better than the “I LOVE LUCY” plot that we ended up with.
Jeez, what a horrible finale. JThunder is right; no way a competent security system, as described in Issue 1, let’s this happen. My security system (which consists of a Medco lock and two ferrets) would have figured this out.
Now, I’m willing to give them Jean enlarging in Ralph and Sue’s place without tripping sensors - they concentrated their efforts on the getting-in, not those suddenly materializing… the DCU has fairly few teleporters, after all.
I’ll even give them bypassing the reference to Jean’s earlier insanity, as it may no longer be in continuity.
[spoiler]Thanks for the recap on the insanity, Fenris. It would have been great if Ray had said “Aw, man. You’re insane again?”
And along with the creepy/ironic parts you mentioned, I notice that Jean was a teleporter. First of all, wtf? Second of all, they could have just used that in IC (some residual evil-planet energy is making her nuts and giving her back a weaker form of her teleportation) and bypassed the whole “Jean can shrink now just because” thing.[/spoiler]
I still want to know how Zan can form an “ice flamethrower.” Wouldn’t he melt himself or something? And Jayna saying “Shape of…Something That Can Slip Past Security Undetected” was a blatant cop-out on the writer’s part.
Others can shrink using Atom’s technology without exploding for short periods. See JLA #42 (right after the Morrison run). Besides, Ray can shrink people with him and they don’t explode so… anyone really know how that works?
Also, The Atom was a member of the Suicide Squad so Jean would have known about Slipknot’s methods by… hmm. Jean just has way too much information.
Plus I can’t believe they retconned a previous sexual relationship between Sue Dibney and Gleek. They’re gonna get a lot of angry letters about that from right-wing organisations with “family” or “values” or “species” in their names.
Just reread the whole series last night in hopes that it would hang together better as a lump.
No such luck. Some random comments, some of which are nitpicky*. (Some come from other people on the net)
Without reverting to “Jean’s craaaaazy”, why was she killing people to get back together with Ray? She divorced him and he’s always wanted to get back together. She didn’t need to revert to murder. That said, how was her plot of dancing around in Sue’s brain (but only hurting her) supposed to make the JLA paranoid about their loved ones? “< gasp > Sue had a STROKE! Jean, I must stay by your side to protect you!”. An interesting villian can be crazy. Or stupid. But not both.
What happened to Jean’s husband (Paul? Peter?) anyway? Isn’t she still married?
Ok, I get why Ralph is carrying on a conversation with his dead wife, but um…why’s Firehawk talking to the dead too? And what’s this about “Daddy, I’m coming home” when Daddy died in Hawkworld about 15 years ago.
And how’d she take off her costume anyway? It’s part of her when she’s in her Firehawk form.
So…the whole “mindwipe” thing had NOTHING to do with the plot? Wouldn’t it have been more interesting if Jean had had her brains scrambled by Zatanna at some point (maybe Sue was Dr. Light’s second victim, but Jean, not being as tough as Sue couldn’t cope) and the mindwipe caused her insanity? The story just didn’t hold together.
The JLA just revealed their identities to each other about 4 year realtime (about JL #50 or so) which would be about 6 months ago DC time. So why does everyone know everyone else’s identity? (And as insanely paranoid as Bruce was when Tim was in Young Justice, why would Atom/Jean even know?). For that matter, how’d Jean know how to get in touch with the Calculator? Batman couldn’t.
Boomer Jr.'s backstory was a) a red herring and b) left unexplained.
Why was Jean carrying a flamethrower anyway, if all she wanted to do was to knock Sue out? “Just in case” doesn’t cut it. Even with an insane person.
They put her in Arkham. ARKAHAM??? Next to the Joker, and Killer Croc and Posion Ivy and… Where she’s free to blab anyone’s ID? Y’know, this coulda been salvageable if the second half of issue 7 was a big debate/discussion about mindwiping Jean. It would have tied the mindwipe subplot in, it woulda tied the braindamaged-Batman subplot in:
Ray: My God. What do we do about Jean now? She knows ALL our identities! We can’t just let her talk.
Hawkman: Easy-we just get Zatanna to lobotomize her like we did to all those other folks.
Batman: < raises eyebrow, Spock-style >
Green Arrow: Ix-nay on the ind-wipe-may. The At-Bay is Istening-Lay!
How did Batman solve the mystery anyway? Divine revelation?
Someone else suggested a FAR better resolution than “Jean was swiping plots from I LOVE LUCY”–Jean, joyriding with Ray’s stuff calls Sue to show off. She forgets to do the “Hold the phone away from your ear” bit that Ray used to do. She shoots out of the phone–and into Sue’s brain. Disoriented, Jean grows, accidentally killing Sue. THEN she decides to make it look like a serial killer is running around to throw suspicion off her.
Really, with all that tech in Sue’s house, isn’t there a call-logger? MY house has a caller-ID that logs calls. “Jean…you were on the phone with Sue at the time of her death. Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”
Batman, of all heroes, should be MOST protective of his ID. Why’s he hanging out at the Wayne’s gravesites in costume and bringing flowers?
What, exactly did Chronos “win”?
Seriously, if Sue becomes the next Spectre, I’m gonna be pissed.
IMO, it fails as a mystery (it was both ham-handed (the “Half your patents” bit) and impossible to solve fairly (How many current readers have read Super-Team Family 11-14…and there was no flashback to let you know that Jean’s insanity has some basis)), it fails as a super-hero story (C’mon. we’re good on the SDMB, but we shouldn’t be better than Batman–we had her as a prime suspect by issue 2. And Batman was stumped for weeks by her? She’s a psychotic bimbo with a flamethrower) and it fails for just reading enjoyment–some of the dialogue was Ed Wood worthy (Batman’s silly “Who benefits” line, Ray’s “Testicles” line, etc.)
In a large part, I put the blame on the editor–a lot of this is stuff that could be cleared up with a line here, a minor art change there and some minor other tweaks. And that’s the editor’s job.
Fenris
*Or are they? This IS supposedta be a murder mystery after all. Th’ details matter.
Because no one remembers Hawkworld but you, and those few who do desperately want to forget.
Oh, definitely not true. Her original costume was destroyed in a fire on the JLA satellite in Crisis, and Firestorm whipped up the new one for her on the spot to cover up her luscious orange :o :o … er, what was I saying?
No, it was just a way to retcon a little tension into the JLA during the “mystery.”
Some members of the JLA already knew each other’s identities. In flashback in IC, Zatanna is shown invoking “.enyaW ecurB tegroF” For instance. The big deal about JLA #50 was looping in Kyle, Plas, Wally, Wonder Woman - people who weren’t in the League in the satellite era (post-Crisis).
As for getting in touch with the Calc - Batman was trying to find him. Getting a message to him would be a lot easier, I think. Heck, offer Boomerang $5 and a bottle of Jack Daniels, before he died, and you’re golden.
Yeah, this was fuzzy. But… assuming the League had exhausted the list of Teleporters (which is a big assumption - because even if they tried, one expects the list to be longer than the one presented, purely based on the magic sorts - why no mystic investigation at the scene?) then Batman’s epiphany revealed to him another possible method of ingress. One which only one person - no, make that two people could probably use. One of whom used to be crazy.
We saw the last call Sue got. It wasn’t from Jean. She was thanking ‘Alfred’ for helping her get the magnifying glass. Even if they saw her phone records, and followed up on them, there may have been no direct Jean link.
Either the game of Risk at Monocle’s place, or he was referring to the later trial of his buddies.
You’re assuming Jean was telling the truth when she said it was an accident. OF COURSE she’s going to tell Ray it was. Just because she said it doesn’t make it true. If you operate from the assumption that she might not be telling the whole truth, these act as evidence that she isn’t.
They’ve served their purpose within the story of IC - misdirection, speculation fodder, and general red herringness.
And why should Owen’s story be explained within IC, rather than whichever book he ends up settled in (presumably Flash - or maybe Robin, given the circumstances of Digger’s death)?
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