FORGOTTEN FOES : A DAD

The annual tradition of the interdimensional team up between the Justice League of Earth-1 and the Justice Society of Earth-2 possesses a long and storied history of great value to the legacies of both teams. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the spectacle in these stories was always great – villains from two Earths, villains from an evil Earth, evil duplicates, heroes lost in time, wars fought against Darkseid and invisible killers and time-travelling despots. It’s all good stuff.

Something is wrong, indeed - someone's been farting up the Justice League Satellite.

So why exactly it all ended on the combined might of two worlds fighting a middle-aged man with a head of hair like a Madball, it’s hard to say.

Scientist Joshua Champion’s studies into the mysteries of alternate realities sees him plucked from his laboratory and shoved unceremoniously into a nether-realm where he’s taken over by a hot green mess of an extra-dimensional dictator known as The Commander. Armed with the nearly limitless power of the Commander, Joshua – who powers are in fact so vaguely defined that he’s practically omnipotent -  becomes a powerful threat to the safety of two entire universes! The whole things, too, not just little bits of universes here and there, like a Popeye’s chicken on one world and a cider stall by the highway on another – THE WHOLE THING!

Superman is, for the first time is his life, THIS
CLOSE to slapping a minor into the sun.

This summons the champions of both Earths 1 and 2 to stop The Commander and his human meat puppet, but the most powerful living beings in two universes don’t have to do it alone, thank goodness.  They’ve also got Joshua Champion’s sitcom family!

Ian Champion is Joshua’s rebellious teenage son, and you can tell because he’s got a leather jacket, a shock of hair covering one eye, and he keeps sass-mouthing Superman.  Tweener Victoria Champion is the scientist’s younger daughter, and she injects this barker of a story with one of the few moments of genuine tension when she catches her lips in her braces. I swan. Victoria’s role is to nag Ian into spontaneous emasculation, constantly berating her brother like “Oh, aren’t you worried about daddy, what about daddy, Ian you don’t mean you don’t care about daddy,” blah blah blah, I’m on Ian’s side.

The siblings are unattended by parental supervision, but are cuddled under the protective wing of their aunt Meredith Champion, who dresses like if Laura Ingalls Wilder hadn’t gotten done up so slutty. As for Meredith’s personality, I don’t recall if she had one. Check to see if it maybe rolled under your chair.

Ultimately, the Justice League and Justice Society manage to separate the Commander from Joshua Champion, but leave the bedeviled dad with the powers he shares with his family. In a puff of smoke, they all disappear to explore the multiverse, which has been destroyed so many times that I’m sure they must be dead by now, luckily.

Oh yeah, and at one point they passed some actual
villains but just ignored them and kept fighting the
cast of Family Ties ...