The Entire Justice League Can't Stop Him! But Speedy Somehow Can!

In "The Wrong Side," I examine comic book fights that were particularly notable in the wrong side winning (or at least that the fight wasn't won the "right" way). This really isn't a big deal, of course, as it doesn't really matter if the "wrong" person won a fight. But it's fun to talk about! Here are our past editions of the feature.

If you want to suggest a fight for future inclusion in this feature, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com. Don't suggest a fight in the comments!

Reader Scott K. wrote in with this one. This one is especially funny because the original fight (the one Scott wrote in about) was LITERALLY a mistake. However, the fixed version wasn't any better.

First off, as always, first we determine the power level of the people involved in this discussion to set up the fight and on the second page, we look at the fight. The way we check their power levels is usually to see how well they do when they fight Spider-Man, as he is so strong that he beat up Firelord and the X-Men, all by himself! However, Spider-Man has never fought either of the people in this instance, so we'll just have to come up with other ways of showing their respective power levels.

The Shaggy Man made his debut in a trippy story in Justice League of America #45 (by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Giella and Frank Giacoia). The concept of the book is that one half of the League ends up fighting against a nearly unbeatable moon creature while the rest of the league face off against a seemingly LITERALLY unbeatable android monster known as the Shaggy Man, who just grows back any lost body parts and also adapts itself to any novel attack you might use (the modern Superman foe, Doomsday, riffed on that concept, as well). The Flash comes up with a plan, just make the two unbeatable creatures fight each OTHER.

But what to do when the Shaggy Man inevitably defeats the moon creature? And here's where it just gets insane - they have the guy who built the Shaggy Man build ANOTHER Shaggy Man, with the assumption being that they'll just fight each other to a stalemate. FLash digs a deep, deep pit and just leaves them at it. And that's it!

Superman and Green Lantern were absent during the mission, though, so they wonder what would happen if they ever got a shot at these bad guys...

In Justice League of America #104 (by Len Wein and Dicks Dillin and Giordano), Green Lantern's enemy Hector Hammond frees the Shaggy Man and drops him off on the Justice League's satellite (again, everyone is there except for Hal and Superman). Shaggy Man proceeds to kick everyone's ass and then knocks the satellite out of orbit!

Superman shows up and even HE can't stop the Shaggy Man. Luckily, Green Lantern shows up to rescue the satellite from crashing...

So while he's dealing with the satellite, Superman tries his best against Shaggy Man.

It doesn't work. Then the rest of the League shows up and they all take him on...

Now look at that page. Those are a whole lot of powerful people on that page. With their combined might, they could possibly even take out Spider-Man, but even they can't do anything against the Shaggy Man!

So years and years passed and the Shaggy Man returns in Grant Morrison's JLA, only this time General Wade Eiling puts his brain into the Shaggy Man's body and after a shave, he is now known as the General (the issue was guest-drawn by Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong). The other heroes helping the Justice League are the Ultramarine Corps, supersoldiers that Eiling tricked into working for him against the League. Now that they realize Eiling has snapped, they team-up with the league to try to stop him...

As you can see, Morrison is basically buying into the "you can't beat the General, you can only hope to contain him somewhere far, far away from people he can hurt."

The General is rescued for Morrison's final story arc, and in JLA #39 (drawn by Howard Porter and John Dell), he is finally dealt with, as the Watchtower has been brought to the Ghost Zone (basically the Phantom Zone) and Superman and Orion fight the General in the Watchtower. One of Orion's hounds sacrifices itself to knock the General off of the Watchtower and into the Ghost Zone...

So once again, you can't really DEFEAT the General, you can only take him off the field of battle.

Okay, so that's the Shaggy Man/General (same difference in powers).

Here's Speedy. He shoots arrows...

And yet, in Crisis on Infinite Earths #10 (by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and Jerry Ordway), Speedy takes out the Shaggy Man with just an explosives arrow...