With a heavy heart, I have to announce that the next installment of Deadshot’s Tophat and Other Beginnings is on hiatus. Nobody is more shocked and outraged about this turn of events than former Intercontinental Champion Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat.

I know, Nikita Koloff. I know. But I have a reason. A very good reason.

You may have noticed that I haven’t been writing too many updates lately. I’ve been using my free time to read through the latest Mick Foley autobiography, Hardcore Diaries. I loved his other two autobiographies, but this one left me sour. About as sour as Mick Foley comes across for most of this book. Interesting wrestling anecdotes take a backseat to stories of Mick meeting B-list celebrities, ragging on the President to the point that it gets real old, and telling countless stories about what a great humanitarian Foley is.

There’s something else I’ve been reading. Readers of the site might remember my acquisition of the first three issues of the Marvel WCW comic at the New York Comic Con. I decided that three issues wasn’t good enough. Not for me and not for you. Fortunately, I came across the entire run on eBay. Unfortunately, it means I own two copies of a comic issue featuring El Gigante. God help me.

I forced myself to read the series and it wasn’t easy. The Malibu Street Fighter comic wasn’t all that bad until the end. The Mortal Kombat comic was honestly pretty good in parts. Even Extreme Justice could keep my attention enough that I’d keep going on to see what could possibly be next. World Championship Wrestling, though, hurt. A lot. Once a friend got wind of what I was reading, he told me, “You could be doing literally anything else and it would be a better use of your time.”

But I can’t let you guys down. Deadshot’s Tophat can wait. I’m finishing up my last What If article (finally), but after that, it’s on. Me and the WCW comic. One-on-one. No holds barred. With hermanos barred from ringside.

Prepared to get Stingersized!

Elseworlds can be a mixed bag. Scratch that. Elseworlds can be a mixed bag that’s half eaten. You know when somebody’s picked out most of the good candy from the jar and there’s only three Jolly Ranchers left among a pile of 20-year-old pieces of candy corn? That’s more like what Elseworlds are like.

There are some good ones to be sure. The epics like Kingdom Come, Dark Knight Returns and Red Son count without question. Other good Elseworlds that come to mind include the Justice Riders, where Sheriff Diana Prince goes after railroad baron Maxwell Lord while accompanied by madcap inventor Beetle, godly-quick gunslinger Kid Flash, maverick card player Booster Gold and others. The Secret Society of Superheroes is another obscure story with a great spin, where the Justice League act in the shadows while FBI Agent Bruce Wayne works to exploit them. That story has possibly my favorite incarnation of Batman ever. Then there’s JLA: Destiny, which is only half good. The core of the story is about Jor-El being the sole survivor of Krypton with Thomas Wayne being the one who watched his wife and son being shot down in front of him. Sadly, while everything relating to Jor-El and Mongul (who fills in a Luthor role) is seriously good, the comic is absolutely bogged down by unnecessary characters and subplots.

Most of the rest I can care less about. In the end, you’re just seeing another retelling of Batman’s origin, only he has a mustache or his father was Abraham Lincoln.

The subject of this article is part of a 5th week event known as Legends of the Dead Earth. Information on it is pretty hard to come by, but to the best of my understanding, something screwy happened to Earth, causing its heroes to scatter into alternate realities. So on one hand, it’s a series of Elseworlds while on the other hand, the issues are canon in a sense.

This issue, Justice League America Annual #10, is part of the series. There are really two reasons I find it worth talking about. For one, it’s based on Extreme Justice, which I had just gone over. For two, it’s really out there and moves so fast that you can only scratch your head. Christopher Priest wrote this issue, by the way. So that’s something.

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Before we delve back into the insanity of what passed as a story in Extreme Justice, let’s look at what the various characters were up to when they weren’t baring their teeth and looking in-your-face. Captain Atom and Blue Beetle finally came to an understanding and started to get along. Firestorm ended up getting suspended from the team after his drinking problem got out of control. As for Amazing Man and Maxima, the two of them started to grow towards each other. Though at first, Amazing Man was offended due to the fact that Maxima only seemed to be interested after he powered up from his fight with Monarch’s quantum beasts. Also, there was this…

Maxima admitted that she was still culture-shocked from being on Earth. Almerac was advanced to the point that there was only one race and culture, so she was interested in a world with diversity. Amazing Man decided to start teaching her Earth customs in the form of books, music and television. During their look at TV, Maxima stumbled onto the porn channel, which immediately piqued her interests. Being from a planet that only believed in sex for the process of fertilization, she wasn’t quite prepared for… well, something X-rated.

Ah, fun. I can talk about Maxima and pornography all day, but I got a job to do and that job is discussing the Wonder Twins. Because, you see, I hate myself.

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Before I continue, I should point out that I have read worse comics than Extreme Justice. In actuality, the series wasn’t all bad. For instance, while the situations were idiotic, the characters were fine for the most part. There were some decent relationships like Captain Atom/Blue Beetle, Amazing Man/Maxima and Blue Beetle/Firestorm. In fact, Blue Beetle came out looking all right throughout this whole mess. He got to be his regular jokey self without Martian Manhunter yelling at him for not being serious. Plus he was actually useful in fights and wasn’t relegated to just hang out in the Bug and pilot.

As we last left our heroes, Captain Atom found himself before an unmasked Monarch, who was apparently Nathanial Adam. How could this be? The explanation was that when Adam was blown into the quantum field all those years ago (his origin), a quantum clone was created out of some alloy that escaped back to Earth while the real Nathanial Adam just hung out in space for a millennia, never taking the time to get rid of what had to be the dirtiest, nastiest pair of underwear in the universe.

The original Monarch showed up one day and the two became great friends. Monarch taught Adam much over the years, including the life Captain Atom stole from him. Monarch found a way out of the quantum field eventually and upon his death, sent his armor to Adam. Adam became the new Monarch and escaped. He felt that the original Monarch had the right idea of how to bring world peace, but spoiled it with some bad decisions.

The important thing from that gibberish is this: Captain Atom isn’t the real Nathanial Adam. Oh boy. You know how popular these storylines are. Just ask the many fans of Ben Reilly and Deadpool’s arch-nemesis T-Ray.

Nothing important happened with Monarch for a while, other than a bit where he had some “quantum beasts” attack Extreme Justice before destroying the creatures to make himself look like more of a hero to the on-looking crowd. The only important part to come out of this was Amazing Man absorbing the power of one of the creatures and permanently bulking up from it. That will come into play later.

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(Note: This is another set of articles from the early days of 4th Letter. I always liked these articles, so I figure I’d update and repost them. Plus I have an extra article prepared that goes with it. Enjoy)

As you already know, I really like Booster Gold. Out of interest, I made it my mission to read nearly all of his major comic appearances. At the very least, read through any series that heavily included him. His solo series? Check. The Giffen era of Justice League and the one or two years following? Check. The Superbuddies stories? Check. Infinite Crisis and its bells and whistles? Check. His scattered appearances in Superman, Green Lantern and Flash? Check.

This left one major challenge: I had to read through Extreme Justice.

And I did it. It nearly killed me, but I finished the series. Oh, and what a series it was. The mid-90’s was a dark time for comics and Extreme Justice was no shining beacon among the crap. Before I go into the story, let’s look at the original roster for the team and what brought them here:

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