There was a crooked man - Prometheus makes his debut in JLA

Grant Morrison's JLA run restored DC's central superhero team to prominence, mostly due to the threats he would concoct for them to face. In the first ten issues alone you have assaults on Earth by White Martians, Darkseid, and even Heaven itself. Each threat that rears its ugly head requires the strength of all the combined Leaguers, something the "Bwa-ha-ha" era creative teams were never too worried with.

One contribution of Morrison's that really captured my imagination was that of Prometheus, a villain designed to be the "Anti-Batman" and push the League to their limit. His introduction in the New Years Evil: Prometheus special details his life story pretty well: the love child of a Bonnie and Clyde-like couple is orphaned at a young age and uses his parent's underworld contacts to amass the skills and weaponry needed to wage a one man war on the very concept of Justice. His origin takes a turn for the trippy when he journeys to a hidden enclave of monks (not unlike Batman Begins or Iron Fist's origin) and is privy to something called the Ghost Zone. The Zone becomes a secret, trans-dimensional hideout, and the location of his Wayne Manor-equivalent, the Crooked House.

The setup for Prometheus's introduction is pretty brilliant. The JLA has just rejuvenated their roster after temporarily disbanding and they want to make a good first impression with the press, so a contest is held to find one fan with a costume who wants to "join the JLA for a day". The winner is a well-meaning fan going by the handle Retro who finds his identity and costume stolen by Prometheus on the way to meet the League. With a little disguise work and some forced smiling for the cameras, the League's newest enemy is invited aboard their lunar watchtower by the heroes themselves.

The story is continued in issues 16 and 17 of the monthly JLA series. Prometheus quickly ditches his stolen "Retro" costume and hatches his plan, which results in the rookie supervillain taking down nearly the entire League one by one. Issue 16 also acts as the introduction to the League's redesigned watchtower, so Morrison actually has the villain give us a grand tour of the new digs while he destroys it. Trapped aboard a burning lunar base with over a hundred nervous reporters and other civilians, the new JLA is forced to work the kinks out of their new lineup on national television.

Prometheus makes pretty quick work of most of the league; he hijacks Steel's armor with a virus, sends Zuriel to the Ghost Zone, and even knocks Batman for a loop with martial arts moves downloaded directly into his body through his helmet. Him standing before Green Lantern and The Flash with a defeated Batman at his feet acts as the cliffhanger between issues 16 and 17. It's especially effective since Morrison spent most of his run building up Bruce Wayne into what fans now refer to as the "Bat-God" version of the character.

 If not for his humiliating defeat, Prometheus would be the villain equivalent of a Mary Sue. I won't give away what trips him up here, but let's just say it involves a bull whip to the crotch and the intervention of a second surprise visitor to the JLA's press conference. The scene where Prometheus's plan falls apart and he's forced to make idle threats and retreat is beautiful in its simplicity; Morrison shows us in one fell swoop why the JLA will always have the upper hand on obsessive loners like Prometheus and Luthor. There's still the press to be dealt with however, "This looks like a job for the JLA!"

To give you an idea of the frenetic pace Morrison's whole run moved at, the Prometheus encounter is over for exactly three panels before Orion and Big Barda appear from a Boom Tube and the seeds for the next story arc are planted. No lengthy epilogues or baseball picnic issues here true believer, just one fantastic threat after another.

Prometheus never became the huge name villain that I think they were hoping for, but his story does branch off into a few interesting places from the end of issue #17. He returns as a part of Lex Luthor's lastest Injustice League group about two years later, but is once again foiled, this time by Batman and the Huntress. The concept of Prometheus having files and contingencies on each hero would return in the Mark Waid written Tower of Babel story, where Batman is discovered to have employed a similar tactic against his friends in case they ever "go rogue", leading to his temporary expulsion from the team. Prometheus would later return again in the Batman: Gotham Knights series, but the less said about his lackluster appearance there, the better.

I think in the time since then Prometheus has become a b-level villain at best with a really great introduction. There seems to be more potential in the character, especially with his relationship to the realms of the dead via the Ghost Zone, but that aspect of him is hardly mentioned again. In fact, over the course of his next few appearances, Prometheus devolved into little more than a Deathstroke knock-off, which is a shame since he has more in common with the old Batman foe Wrath than any assassin or merc for hire.

I've already gushed about Morrison's work before (see my obsessive love letter to Marvel Boy), so I'll talk about the art here instead. Morrison's regular JLA collaborator Howard Porter only draws #16 of the issues mentioned, while the other two are by Arnie Jorgenson, an artist whose name I don't see around much. His style is a bit more wide-eyed and manga influenced than Porter, but there's a commonality in the inking and both artists penchant for drawing the characters in very exaggerated, almost Kirby-esque poses. I even like his take on the electric blue Superman, something Morrison was saddled with during the first half of his JLA run.

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