Line #102 ComicBook/JusticeLeagueGenerationLost


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/59d65f31_0550_4aa4_bf41_31e62d6095b6.jpeg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:"I thought you should be a team again. The world '''needs''' you."[[note]]-Maxwell Lord[[/note]]]]
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4	''Justice League: Generation Lost'' was a 2010 limited series primarily written by Creator/JuddWinick and Creator/KeithGiffen, with art by a variety of artists. It was part of ''ComicBook/BrightestDay''.
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6	The plot centers around the return of Maxwell Lord, erstwhile sponsor of the ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueInternational'', murderer of [[ComicBook/BlueBeetle Ted Kord]], and the mastermind behind the OMAC project. Brought back by the [[ComicBook/BrightestDay White Light Entity]] with the task of preventing Magog from inciting the events of ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'', Lord uses his powers to erase his existence from the memories and records of everyone on earth.
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8	He mostly succeeds, but four heroes from the former J.L.I. remember him: [[Characters/JusticeLeagueOfAmericaJusticeLeagueInternational Captain Atom, Booster Gold, Fire, and Ice]]. They soon realize that Lord is willing to sacrifice his alleged friends and innocent civilians in pursuit of his goals, but with him actively working to discredit them, they have to fight not only against the forces of darkness, but their own friends and allies. They team up with legacy characters ComicBook/BlueBeetle and Rocket Red. But are they foiling Max's plans? Or playing right into his hands?
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10	----
11	!!Justice League: Generation Lost contains examples of
12	* AfterTheEnd: Captain Atom is sent into a FuturePrimitive world caused by Max Lord's present-day villainy. It's a pretty grim place, with a third of the world's population dead, another third turned into [=OMACs=], and the last third ravaged by famine and disease. ComicBook/{{Superman}} is helpless to do anything about any of this, since he has spent the last fifty years locked in perpetual battle with an invasion force of [[ComicBook/GreenLantern Green Lanterns]]. Oh, and a giant chunk has been blown out of the moon, leading it to hang in pieces in the night sky.
13	* AirVentPassageway: Subverted.
14	-->'''Booster:''' You want to break into Checkmate. (...) Crawl through the ventilation shafts and such.
15	-->'''Fire:''' Well, all the ventilation shafts have sensors and high-end razor wire every four feet so not like that, but yeah.
16	* ApocalypseHow: Via either a metahuman war similar to ComicBook/KingdomCome, or [[HeWhoFightsMonsters Maxwell Lord's attempts to prevent it]].
17	* AscendedFanboy: Gavril is extremely excited about joining the Justice League and meeting Batman.
18	* BadFuture: Two of them hang heavily over the book -- the first is none other than the ComicBook/KingdomCome future, which Max Lord has been tasked by the White Lantern Entity to prevent by murdering Magog. The second Bad Future is one caused by Max's own hand, which Captain Atom is sent to twice. Ironically, it is categorically in every way a ''worse'' future to the ''Kingdom Come'' one.
19	* BigBad: Maxwell Lord plays this role throughout the whole of the book.
20	* BlasphemousBoast: Max
21	-->'''Tora''': You’re not ''God'', Max!\
22	'''Max''': Tora...I can literally control people, I wiped my existence from the memories of everyone on Earth and, oh yeah, I came back from the dead. I'm not saying I'm God...but I am certainly giving the big guy a run for his money, aren't I?
23	* BlindIdiotTranslation: Varik has a pretty good grasp on English, but edges into this when he tries for idioms and phrases. Usually, he just mixes up the word order. Examples include "bump fist", "right as Maine", and "egg crumbs" (bread crumbs).
24	* BrokenBird: At first, Ice still struggles with the trauma of having been dead and then resurrected, barely able to bring herself to join the mission and then nearly begging to quit. She eventually decides to stay and fight on for Fire and all their friends.
25	* BullyingADragon: Max keeps taunting [[spoiler:Jaime even after Jaime escapes. To be specific: he goads a 17-year-old with limited control over extremely powerful and sentient armor which the kid has to talk into taking non-lethal options.]] He also just ''can't stop himself'' from going after [[spoiler:Franchise/WonderWoman]] again, even though the last time he tried that literally ended with his death.
26	* CallBack: Max [[spoiler: seemingly kills Jaime with a shot to the head, the same way he killed his predecessor. Throughout his imprisonment of Jaime, they both make call backs both verbally and artistically to the story in which Ted Kord died.]]
27	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: The Metal Men are abducted by Max Lord, except Copper, who is completely forgotten. Given Copper's [[ButtMonkey treatment]], this is entirely in-character for her.
28	* CombiningMecha: The Metal Men form into one of these (which is a clever callback to ''Kingdom Come'' as the combined being, Alloy, actually debuted in that series).
29	* ControlFreak: Max Lord is so much this that even ''his own mother'' declares his emergent mind control to be a case of PersonalityPowers when he first discovers it in a flashback. And while she is a MyBelovedSmother through and through, she's right on the money, as the run makes clear in multiple instances.
30	* CrossThrough: With the main ComicBook/BrightestDay title, and then with ''Wonder Woman'', and [[Comicbook/WonderWomanOdyssey her concurrent arc]] by J. Michael Straczynski.
31	* DeliriousMisidentification: Maxwell uses this trick frequently. Many of his plans hinge on tricking people into attacking others whose image he distorts.
32	* DistressedDude: It turns out that Max didn't have the Omac's attack the Reyes household just to pull Jaime into the JLI. His intent was to capture him alive, and he successfully does so in issue #16.
33	* DontMakeMeDestroyYou: Maxwell asks this of the reformed JLI. They don't agree.
34	* TheDragon: Dr. Anthony Ivo, who is both this ''and'' the EvilGenius in Max's corner.
35	* EleventhHourRanger: Wonder Woman, who joins in the last few issues.
36	* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Captain Atom gets sent to both this and a world AfterTheEnd when he absorbs huge amounts of energy.
37	* EvilGloating: When Max has Jaime captured he spends a lot of time waxing about his plan, how everything is going according to it, and calling Jaime stereotypical Latin nicknames like Hombre.
38	* EvilIsPetty: While Max Lord talks a big game about being a WellIntentionedExtremist, his EvilPlan at the end amounts to nothing more than petty revenge on Wonder Woman. He even admits this himself.
39	-->'''Booster''': What I can't "understand" is how building a 20-foot tall OMAC to murder Wonder Woman fits into your master plan!\
40	'''Max''': It doesn't. She flicked her wrists and snapped my neck in front of the whole damn world. She ''killed me''. Now she's gonna die while half a billion people watch from the cheap seats! This is just simple, petty do-dah revenge.
41	* FauxAffablyEvil: Max refers to the Generation Lost team as his friends, and chats amiably with Jaime as he tortures him.
42	* FightingYourFriend: ComicBook/PowerGirl vs. Captain Atom and the JLI. [[spoiler:Max Lord causes her to hallucinate that her old friends are Franchise/{{Superman}}, ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}, Franchise/{{Batman}}, [[Franchise/GreenLantern Hal Jordan]] and ComicBook/{{Starfire}} turned evil.]]
43	* {{Flanderization}}: Magog's jerkass tendencies get dialed up every time he appears, though at least part of this seems to be [[CharmPerson Max Lord's influence]] at work on him.
44	* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Max Lord is indulging in his EvilGloating monologue to Jaime, he specifically mentions that his collective mind-wiping of everyone on Earth is a "one-time deal" that he could not pull off again because "my big ol' brain can only open the flood gates so many times before it starts to take on water." This little bit of exposition is set up to explain why [[spoiler:Max does not simply re-erase the world's memories of himself after being forced to restore them by Captain Atom in the final issue]].
45	* FourPhilosophyEnsemble: with the first four
46	** The Cynic/the Realist: Fire and Captain Atom swap these two between them
47	** The Optimist: Booster Gold
48	** The Apathetic/the Conflicted: Ice
49	* FourTemperamentEnsemble:
50	** Sanguine: Booster
51	** Choleric: Bea
52	** Melancholic: Atom
53	** Phlegmatic: Tora
54	* FreudianExcuse: Max is given a retroactive excuse as his past is revealed. [[spoiler:Apparently his father was murdered by CorruptCorporateExecutive types when he was in his teens and his MyBelovedSmother was killed along with millions in the destruction of Coast City, explaining his paranoia and distrust of metahumans]].
55	* FuturePrimitive: Captain Atom is thrown into a distant BadFuture, but he initially thinks that it's the mid 1800s from the lifestyle everyone lives.
56	* HeelFaceDoorSlam: Captain Atom snaps Magog out of Max Lord's mind control and implores him to help the team, but Max Lord shows up and forces him to kill himself before this can happen.
57	* HeroWithBadPublicity: Deliberately invoked and exploited by Max Lord, who in addition to making the world forget he existed has also modified their memories of the JLI, making them believe that Blue Beetle killed himself, that Captain Atom is a dangerous loose cannon, and that the other members are generally incompetent and untrustworthy.
58	* HeroicBSOD: Booster goes through this after Jaime [[spoiler:seemingly dies.]]
59	* HopeSpot: Now and then in early issues, it looks like someone is remembering Lord or at least finds something suspicious. Then the mindwipe clamps down again and they completely forget it.
60	* {{Irony}}: As Max is looking to hunt down and kill Wonder Woman, all traces of her existence vanish from near-everyone's memories, which is nothing to do with him. He acknowledges the irony, and that he ''hates'' irony.
61	* {{Hypocrite}}: Max justifies his actions as a necessity to save humanity from metahumanity yet is both a metahuman himself who readily admits he's killed thousands out of revenge against Wonder Woman all the while boasting he's human unlike them to one of two people on the JLI without any inherent powers.
62	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Max Lord ultimately escapes at the end, and is shown in the epilogue as having posted a video on the Internet telling the world a self-serving version of what went down at Chicago. He accepts no responsibility for what happened, laying all the blame down on Magog, and claims to just be a "regular guy" who has taken it upon himself to [[WhoWatchesTheWatchmen watch the watchmen]] of the world]].
63	* TheKnightsWhoSaySquee: Gavril hates all examples of Western influence on Russian, but he ''adores'' the Justice League and is happy to be there, whether it makes him a hypocrite or not.
64	-->'''Gavril:''' Hypocrite on Justice League!
65	* KickTheDog: For someone who claims to avoid the pitfalls of a traditional supervillain, Max Lord is quite fond of this, particularly when he captures [[spoiler:Jaime]].
66	** He chats amiably with [[spoiler:Jaime]] as he hurts him, cheerfully telling him that he should really just count himself lucky not to be with his team
67	** He shoots [[spoiler:Jaime]] in the exact same way he shot Ted Kord, down to the panel style, in front of his teammates.
68	* KilledOffForReal: Magog is giving a pretty graphic and brutal death to appease fans, who were flooding the Internet at the time screaming for his head.
69	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Maxwell Lord [[spoiler:erases all memories and proof of his existence from everyone in the world (excepting Booster, Bea, Tora, and Adam).]]
70	* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: While talking to the team early on, Max notes he's leaving Green Lanterns out of the reunion tour because "[[ComicBook/BlackestNight I think we've had]] [[ComicBook/BrightestDay enough of Lanterns by now]]".
71	* LegacyCharacter: Gavril, who takes the name and wears the armor of the original Red Rocket.
72	* LotusEaterMachine: The Metal Men are put inside one while in Max's care.
73	* TheManBehindTheMan: Max is hiding out in what's left of Checkmate and [[spoiler:is revealed to literally be behind Checkmate's current Black King, who was actually one of his [=OMACs=] the whole time]].
74	* MoreThanMindControl: On panel Max Lord's meta ability is titled as "Extreme Mind Control" but in practice it is this, as it is both more and less than straight up MindControl. He primarily uses it for PeoplePuppets shenanigans and has some limited CharmPerson abilities, but is not capable of absolutely controlling a person.
75	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: A common reaction by those Max has tricked into attacking their friends or innocents (including Captain Atom, Fire, Magog, and Power Girl).
76	* NeverSuicide: In the new version of events, Ted Kord allegedly committed suicide.
77	* NoHoldsBarredBeatdown: early in the series, from Max, to Booster, with a piece of pipe.
78	* NotMeThisTime: When they realize that everyone else in the world has forgotten Wonder Woman exists, Booster, Fire, Ice and Captain Atom assume it's because of Max. Max, in turn, accuses them of doing something to hide Wonder Woman from him. Neither group realizes this memory wipe is due to something else.
79	* NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist: Max is a Type 2: He claims that his ends are good (wanting the superhero community to be policed by a higher authority -- namely him) and he clearly ''believes'' that he is not a "black hat", but his insistence that [[ItsAllAboutMe he alone]] be the watcher of the watchmen blinds him to the reality that all he's really doing is chasing control for his own self-satisfaction (fitting for a ControlFreak character like him).
80	* NothingPersonal: Max tells Jaime while he's captured that it's "just business".
81	* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: [[spoiler:When Jaime wakes up from his seeming death, Captain Atom, who Jaime hasn't even seen ''smile'' before, is laughing. Jaime is extremely confused, since he didn't realize that they thought he died.]]
82	** In a tie-in issue with ''Power Girl'', what finally gets Dick Grayson to realize Ted Kord was murdered? Batman pointing out how Dick is going to any explanation, no matter how unlikely, to excuse the obvious inconsistencies of Ted's "suicide" with Dick realizing that's against all his training and experience.
83	* OriginalGeneration: OMAC Prime, Max's ultimate weapon, is this. He's basically a fusion of Max's [=OMACs=] and the classic Justice League villain Amazo.
84	* PeoplePuppets: Maxwell mainly uses his power to control bodies, not minds (or voices). He can [[CharmPerson influence]] people to a degree, though.
85	* PopularityPower: Though Batman is initially affected by Max Lord's mindwipe like everyone else, he is apparently Badass enough to break out of it well before anyone else does. Later, he has the balls to climb up on a roof and ''tell'' the White Lantern Entity that [[StaringDownCthulhu they need to have a talk about Max Lord]]. [[spoiler:Bats later joins the team proper alongside Power Girl, but is conveniently sidelined from the final battle]].
86	* PowerCreepPowerSeep: Captain Atom, often a victim of the Seep side of the scale, sees his power levels restored to their original [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Dr. Manhattan]] levels in this story. Nothing, not Max Lord, not Magog, not even OMAC Prime, is a threat to him.
87	-->'''Captain Atom''': (while thrashing OMAC Prime) I am not like the rest of them! I am not human! I AM A LIVING BOMB!
88	* PowerCopying: OMAC Prime can do this just like Amazo (which makes sense as Dr. Ivo built both of them).
89	* PowerIncontinence: Though Captain Atom's powers put him in a class of his own compared to everyone else, they also have the side effect of launching him through time if he absorbs too much power at once. He'll eventually snap back to his time, though.
90	* PlayingWithPuppets: Some of Maxwell's uses of his powers fall into this. There are usually more practical ways to handle people. Justified in that he allegedly doesn't want to seriously hurt the J.L.I.
91	* PlayingWithSyringes: Max holds up a large, glowing-red syringe directly before a scene cut, with the implication that he somehow uses it on Jaime.
92	* PsychicAssistedSuicide: Maxwell forces Magog [[AteHisGun to do this]].
93	* PsychicNosebleed: Max gets a bloody nose whenever he uses his powers. In order to make the world forget him, he has to perform a blood transfusion to prevent bleeding out or hemorrhaging. Though oddly enough, [[spoiler:he doesn't have to do it again at the end when he is forced to restore the memories of everyone in the world]].
94	* QuitYourWhining: Booster calls Atom out with this after Atom declares that he will kill Max for the fiasco in Chicago. Booster tells him that they'll go about it the right way (although said "right way" involves beating the crap out of Max).
95	* {{Retcon}}:
96	** Tora's history is infamously retconned. Originally the princess of an isolated tribe of magic-wielding Norsemen, that was retconned into a lie, with her ''real'' parentage apparently being a tribe of UsefulNotes/{{Romani}} (of the stereotypical thieving variety, no less).
97	** Less controversially, the previous retcon that Max has always hated metahumans and deliberately made the JLI into a joke gets partially de-retconned, with him insisting he was genuinely fond of the team, and an explanation that his hatred of metahumans solidified ''after'' he was no longer their sponsor.
98	* RevengeBeforeReason: Maxwell risks detection after giving the entire world LaserGuidedAmnesia by [[spoiler:activating a giant army of OMACs to kill Wonder Woman in revenge for her killing him]].
99	* RoguishRomani: In an issue, Ice suddenly has been retconned to be a member of a Scandinavian Romani offshoot that is all con men and thieves except for her immediate family, who fled the lifestyle to prevent her grandfather from using her ice powers for robbery. This flatly contradicts everything we know about Ice's past, including previous appearances of the immediate family.
100	* SensoryOverload: In order to break Power Girl free from Lord's mind-control, Red Rocket fires her sonic blasters at her. The intense pain is enough to disrupt her brainwashing and allow Captain Atom to reach her out.
101	* SeparatedByTheWall: The JLI is separated from [[spoiler:Jaime and Max]] while Max [[spoiler: shoots Jaime in the head.]]
102	* ShoutOut: Captain Atom can no longer turn back to human, and is feeling increasingly detached from humanity. [[ComicBook/{{Watchmen}} Can't imagine where they got that idea.]]
103	* SixthRanger: Gavril, then Batman and Power Girl when they learn what's going on.
104	* SleevesAreForWimps: The new costume Ice started wearing halfway through when her second one was ruined after unintentionally going into overdrive doesn't have any.
105	* SmugSnake: Max, while a ''very'' high functioning one of these who has moments of reaching loftier heights, is ultimately revealed at the end to be one of these.
106	* SpiritualSuccessor: Of a sort to ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'', as it both references several elements of that tale (Magog, Alloy, the meta war) and definitively closes the possibility of it ever happening in the "regular" timeline.
107	* StrappedToAnOperatingTable: Jaime, after he is [[spoiler:captured by Maxwell Lord]]
108	* SuperPoweredEvilSide: Although it is not evil so much as uncontrolled, Tora seems to think of it as such, since it comes with a load of bad repressed memories.
109	* TermsOfEndangerment: Max Lord calls Jaime "hombre" and "chico" while torturing him, echoing his sarcastic way of referring to Wonder Woman as "Princess" right up to the moment she snapped his neck. [[spoiler:Like Wondy, Jamie has the last laugh in the end]].
110	* TookALevelInBadass: Tora. See SuperPoweredEvilSide
111	* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Magog is this twice over, first by being the apparent cause of the ''Kingdom Come'' future (even though the actual ForWantOfANail moment of that series was ComicBook/TheJoker murdering Lois Lane) and then by unwittingly destroying a good chunk of downtown Chicago when his lance explodes after Max forces him to kill himself.
112	** Max Lord is a quasi-witting Instigator. Unlike Magog, he knows full well what he is doing, but he is trying to bring about a metahuman free age on Earth. Instead, his actions are shown to cause a BadFuture that sets the human race back centuries.
113	* UnwittingPawn: Magog again. He thinks he's hunting down the dangerous renegade Captain Atom on the orders of the US military, when he's actually being played like a fiddle by the man who means to kill him.
114	* VillainBeatingArtifact: [[spoiler:Jaime's scarab is what ultimately allows the Generation Lost team to take down OMAC Prime, as after [[MegaManning absorbing its power]] Prime because vulnerable to it.]]
115	* VillainousBreakdown: Though Max keeps a pretty cool head through most of the series, he does have a pretty bad breakdown in issue 15 after finding out that [[spoiler:no-one knows who Wonder Woman is but him]].
116	* WhamShot: After a quantum explosion, Captain Atom finds himself in a rural area with no technology and assumes he's been sent back in time to the Old West. Just as he's settling in at night, he looks up...and sees the moon broken in half. This leads him to realize he's actually in a BadFuture.
117	* WhatTheHellHero: Power Girl to Captain Atom after the disaster in Chicago.
118	* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Captain Atom angsts about this, as his winning the SuperpowerLottery has caused him to be CursedWithAwesome and outlive everyone he'll ever care about (which admittedly is not so awesome).
119	* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler:In addition to indirectly killing thousands of civilians, including children, in his plans, Max directly tortures 17-year-old Jaime Reyes and shoots him in the head.]]

Context ComicBook / JusticeLeagueGenerationLost