By Warren Ellis, Jackson Guice, David Baron, Phil Balsman & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0944-5 (TPB/Digital edition)
Once again, we’re saddened by news of the passing of another comics stalwart who died too young and at the height of his powers. Jackson “Butch” Guice was born in Chattanooga Tennessee died on June 27th 1961 and worked in comics for most of his life, beginning on fanzines, small press and independent titles such as The Crusaders, and after making waves on The Micronauts went on to stellar career illustrating the industry’s top titles and characters (including X-Men, X-Factor, Doctor Strange, Captain America, Nick Fury, Winter Soldier, Superman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman, Birds of Prey, Resurrection Man and more), independent hits (like Swords of The Swashbucklers, Badger, Nexus, Chronicles of Corum, Eternal Warrior, Storming Paradise, Ruse, Mandalay, Olympus) with his hyper realistic style particular effective in licensed properties and adaptions like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Wild Cards, Aliens, Terminator and Predator. He died on May 1st 2025.
For a fuller epitaph and gallery of Butch’s astounding ability and variety please check out In Memoriam: Comic Artist Jackson “Butch” Guice.
Butch was very much an in-demand collaborator and switched titles swiftly and often, making finding a book fully focussed on his work rather rare. We will cover more idiosyncratic collections – like Mandalay and Swords of the Swashbucklers – later, but for now let’s revisit a short sharp superhero feast showing him in all his solo glory.
JLA Classified: New Maps of Hell
Here’s a grand, old-fashioned, straightforward, no-strings-attached superhero blockbuster: one any old punter can pick up with no worry over continuity or identification and where good guys and bad guys are clearly defined. That’s due in large part to the fact that nobody really does those anymore, but at least it gives me the opportunity to take another look at a slow burner from 2006, which definitely grows on you with every re-read.
Produced at a time when the Justice League of America was enjoying immense popularity and benefiting from a major reboot courtesy of Grant Morrison, this politically-barbed, end-of-the-world epic starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Oracle and Martian Manhunter first ran in #10-15 of supplemental title JLA Classified (cover-dates September 2005 to February 2006), with gritty futurist scribe Warren Ellis upping the angst-quotient on a hoary old plot whilst illustrator Jackson Guice adds a terrifying veracity to events via his gifts for realism and authenticity.
It begins as Clark Kent and wife Lois Lane stumble onto a dirty little secret. Assorted, and one would assume unconnected, scientists and bean counters at President Lex Luthor’s Lexcorp conglomerate have been committing suicide in large numbers and the intrepid reporters suspect something very nasty is going on…
In Gotham City, Batman learns police and authorities have been turned away from an extremely unconventional crime-scene by Feds and a private security company, and he too starts digging…
In the Bermuda Triangle, a researcher team is invited to the Amazon’s ancient library of knowledge, only to die when the sky-floating island explodes in a horrendous detonation.
Legacy Flash Wally West has terrible dreams of his beloved predecessor Barry Allen (dead and venerated at this juncture) which lead him to a similar catastrophic conflagration, whilst Green Lantern Kyle Rayner ruminates on a primordial legend of the Corps’ origins until a wave of explosions rouse him to action…
In the ruins of each disaster the scattered, hard-pressed heroes find an ancient parchment of alien hieroglyphs, and when Superman recovers another page of the same from the shredded remnants of a plummeting space station, the call goes out to activate the League…
Tasking cyber-savant Oracle and aged Martian sole survivor J’onn J’onzz with uncovering information, the team learn of an antediluvian scourge that had wracked the red planet millions of years past: A God/Devil testing a species’ right to survive and which heralded its coming through a written code. Apparently, Luthor’s scientists have found such writings in remnants of ancient Sumeria and begun deciphering the text…
Mobilising to stop the summoning, our heroes confront Luthor in the White House but are too late. In Las Vegas the bowels of Hell vomit horrors into the streets and as the frantic super squad rush to battle they are snatched up, separated by the malign entity.
It has spent eons traversing the universe testing the worth of intelligent races and individually putting them to their sorest tests. However, the monstrous terror has never faced beings like the JLA before, or a mind like the Batman’s, and soon the horror’s own darkest secret is exposed and its fatal weakness exploited to devastating effect…
With a painted cover gallery by Michael Stribling, this tale offers simple, solid Fights ‘n’ Tights fun gilded with a cynically sly post-modern edge: a sound example of costumed action blockbuster comics at their best.
© 2005, 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.