Hello, and welcome back for another look inside my brain. I had originally
planned to do a continuation of last month's ARTISTIC LICENSE, but inspiration hit me
in the form of an article in the Comics Buyer's Guide (#1318 Feb. 19, 1999). Gary
St.Lawrence's article on page eight, "Morrison takes on the Earth-3 Crime Syndicate" reminded me
of a group of my favorite underused villains of the Silver Age, the evil twins of the
Justice League of America, the Crime Syndicate of America.
First appearing in JLA #29 (Aug 64), during that year's annual (the second one,
if my memory serves) JLA/JSA cross-over, an annual event that I, for one, miss greatly.
The Crime Syndicate of America originates on an alternate Earth, known as Earth-3, where
history took some bizarre turns, England winning the War for Independence against
the motherland, the United States, for one. Years later, the Lex Luthor of Earth-3 was
introduced as that world's sole superhero, another twist.
The actual identities of the Crime Syndicate have never before been revealed,
perhaps that is something Grant Morrison will fill in for us, but it is apparent that
there are some similarities in origins for Ultraman, Earth-3's counterpart to Superman,
and Superwoman, the evil version of Wonder Woman. I say this because Ultraman, unlike
Superman, is empowered by Kryptonite, rather than being weakened. Superwoman
bears a passing resemblance the her well-known counterpart, and the article describes
her as "the Amazonian Princess bent on sowing he seeds of destruction in man's world",
though I don't recall ever seeing a mention of her actual Amazonian origins, she
does carry a conspicuous glowing lariat.
This is a fairly faithful reproduction of the panel used to introduce the Crime
Syndicate, right down to the pointy head-piece on Johnny Quick and the "perv" look for
Owl Man.
As for the others, what we can see of their faces, Johnny Quick and Power Ring
could be evil twins of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, or they could be anybody, no one
ever went into that kind of detail with the characters. And Owl Man couldn't possibly
be any version of Bruce Wayne. Owl Man always had the look of a flasher, to me, the kind of
guy who, if you saw him hanging around a schoolyard, would prompt you to call the
police at the earliest opportunity. His gimmick is that of a less physical Batman-type,
with some kind of hypnotic ability thrown in. Johnny Quick seems to duplicate the
powers of the Flash, rather than his namesake. Power Ring bears a magic ring which
duplicates Green Lantern's powers, but seems to have no known weakness, unlike that of
the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, whose ring was unable to effect anything made of
wood, and the Justice League's Green Lantern, Hal Jordan's ring, like all members of
the Green Lantern Corps, was unable to effect anything colored yellow.
The Crime Syndicate came into conflict with the Justice League of America and
the Justice Society of America during their annual cross-over, a time when the heroes
got together in a kind of family reunion that always seemed to lead to some kind of
"crisis". Ultraman discovered the existence of other parallel Earths when he was exposed to a
Kryptonite meteor that gave him the power to see across the dimensional barrier between
the worlds (at this time, the JLA resided on Earth-1, the JSA on Earth-2, everything
changed in DC Comics' legendary Crisis on Infinite Earths, and all the surviving
worlds were combined into one, Earth-3 did not survive the first issue of the limited
series).
Knowing that his partners in the Crime Syndicate were growing bored for lack of
any adequate challenge for their powers, he told them of his discovery and they began
to plot to invade the two "neighboring" Earths.
Needless to say, they were not successful. The combined JLA and JSA imprisoned
the Earth-3 villains in an interdimensional void and left them there in a cage created
by Hal Jordan's power ring.
As much as I liked these characters, I have to say, I hated their costumes. The
original artist, Mike Sekowsky, while an adequate artist and an excellent storyteller,
was no great designer. Granted, they were meant to be throwaway characters, of a sort,
but one thing is always true in comics, the bad guys WILL return. It may not be
literally true, but it's the way to bet.
Now, I've been drawing for years, now, and periodically, I would redesign the
Crime Syndicate costumes to suit me. A couple of years ago, I did this using modern
"Image" style characters as the models to build them on.
Truest to the original design, all I did was modify the lightning, from the
classical stylized lightning, to the more random "jagged" look. Oh, and took the point
off the headgear, that looked dumb to me.
For the evil Wonder Woman, I dressed Superwoman up in the style of Zealot, from
Wildstorm's WildCATs, complete with sword and gun, as well as the traditional lasso.
And don't forget the killer stilletto heels!
