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In the closing pages of ‘Altered Egos’ Superman confronts Batman, demanding the latter reveal his identity to the remaining members of the Justice League. Batman makes his own position perfectly clear. If all the members of the Justice League had known that Batman was in truth Bruce Wayne, they would have had no way to counter the White Martian, the major enemy of this issue.
With this exchange, Mark Waid establishes the scope of his vision for his upcoming run as JLA writer; the League is about the very different views held by its top tier members, and conflict that arises there from. With Superman openness and frankness are a prime concern, with Batman, tactical maneuvering outweighs teammates’ feelings. Although both hold to ideals of justice, their views are diametrically opposed. Artist Mark Pajarillo’s use of a viewscreen and slight changes in viewing angle (with readers’ worms-eye view of Superman heroically emphasizing his rectitude in the first panel, but destabilizing it with a birds-eye view in the next) make a visual argument for the incompatibility of the characters’ views, and the impossibility of readers deciding which view is correct.
With ‘Altered Egos’, Waid showcases his understanding of Grant Morrison’s vision of the Justice League in JLA. Resurrecting the threat of the White Martians, the villains from the opening storyarc of Morrison’s run on JLA, Waid offers readers a reason to trust that he would continue Morrison’s vision. But along with an implied promise to continue Morrison’s work, Waid brings his own storytelling powers to bear on the JLA. The traumatic ‘birth’ of the White Martian mirrors the ‘birth’ of Professor Zoom in Waid’s acclaimed Flash story ‘The Return of Barry Allen’.
With the issue’s final caption reading ‘It’s not about trust, the League has plenty of that’, Waid harkens back to the title of the issue in which he brought Barry Allen back from the dead. Along with that, comes a promise for grand storyarcs yet to come.
