After Today, No-One Can Deny [SPOILER] Should Be a Justice League Mainstay

Warning: Spoilers for Jenny Sparks #3!One DC Comics hero has earned their place among the very best of the Justice League. While the League has been a staple of the DC Universe for 64 years, the group has been put on hiatus by DC since the conclusion of Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, only recently returning. As Justice League Unlimited approaches, the JLA is growing bigger than ever, leaving room for one particular hero’s inclusion: Jenny Sparks.

Jenny Sparks #3 by Tom King, Jeff Spokes, and Clayton Cowles sees the title character helping the League combat a former Leaguer turned villain, Captain Atom, who has turned evil after developing a god complex. However, Sparks is just as critical of the League themselves, suggesting they don’t realize they’re developing god complexes of their own.

However, Jenny Sparks isn’t so much condemning the Justice League as heroes as she is holding them accountable. She’s providing a voice of reason that is much needed in the League in the midst of their revival.

Who is Jenny Sparks in DC’s New Universe?

The Authority’s Leader, Explained

To best understand Jenny Sparks’ potential role with the Justice League, readers must first understand Jenny’s role in the overall DC Universe. The character first debuts in 1996 within the panels of StormWatch #37 by Warren Ellis, Tom Raney, Randy Elliott, Gina Going, and Bill O’Neil, which existed in the WildStorm Universe before Flashpoint destroyed it. Before its more recent revival, Jenny Sparks and DC’s WildStorm imprint content existed solely outside of the DC Universe. Still, more recently, characters like Jenny have been incorporated into the main canon DC Universe.

This has primed Jenny Sparks to be interconnected with the Justice League, even recontextualizing DC lore to make her a former lover of Superman. She does so carrying credentials of her own, along with her origin story. She was born in 1900 era England to immense wealth, only to be left broke upon the death of her parents on the Titanic in 1912 and the subsequent theft of their fortunes left behind. Afterward, she started manifesting powers, allowing her to produce electricity from her fingertips. In addition, she’s stopped aging and has acquired a century’s lifespan.

As The Spirit of the 20th Century, she died at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999, only to be miraculously resurrected on September 11, 2001. Her resurrection is detailed in Jenny Sparks #2, where it appears as if it was her own powers that brought her back to life mere moments as the Twin Towers were falling. In between all of this, before her death, her time spent as a British Army Intelligence Colonel and saving the lives of heroes like Apollo and Midnighter earned her the opportunity to join StormWatch Black.

She’d initially decline the opportunity, but upon further convincing from its main figurehead, Henry Bendix, Jenny Sparks joins StormWatch. In due time, she ends up becoming the leader for the team. This eventually sets Jenny Sparks up to become one of the founding members of The Authority, a team that changed comics forever. With Jenny being asserted as one of the most powerful Authority members, she now stands side-by-side with some of DC’s most prominent members of the Justice League, only she has a different perspective on the authority that comes with being a superhero than the League may have.

Jenny Sparks

As a series, Jenny Sparks concerns herself in an S-level superhuman threat in the former Justice League member Captain Atom. As someone even more powerful than Superman, the ex-hero insinuates he wants to take siege of the city and its populace for himself. He starts by taking a horde of hostages in a bar, promising to release them on the condition that his three needs are met: to become a god, his family returned to him from the past, and a ham sandwich.

Sparks finds herself collaborating with the Justice League to stop Captain Atom and rescue the hostages. More specifically, she watches as the Justice League tries to think of a game plan and attempts a failed rescue mission with The Flash (someone Captain Atom doesn’t respect), all while Sparks begs someone to spark her cigarette. As the JLA plans their attack on Atom, Jenny criticizes them for not focusing on helping someone. Further irritated, she points out that the Justice League is abusing their authority as superheroes by acting like gods, not unlike Captain Atom.

Our Take on Jenny Sparks’ New Role in The DC Universe

She Grounds the Justice League Like Few Others Can

In contrast to the Justice League being a group that specializes in global and intergalactic threats, Jenny Sparks is something of a street hero. She’s not necessarily a street-level hero in that she specializes in local crime, but she is a street hero in that she literally walks the streets. She walks among the people, sparks their cigarettes, eats their food, etc. She doesn’t hail from a Watchtower from up above, like a god. Jenny Sparks is literally and figuratively grounded, and in her head, she exists to keep the Justice League grounded in the same sense.

In Jenny Sparks #1, she declares, “I’m not a superhero, I’m the ****** who keeps them in line.” She takes her assertion a step further while battling Captain Atom in the same issue, outright telling the former Justice League member that, “The Powers That Be have granted me the pleasure of keeping you people from making @$@$ out of yourselves.” Whether it be because of the responsibility of her powers or perhaps making sense of her second chance at life via resurrection, Jenny Sparks makes it her duty to keep other heroes in line, namely the Justice League.

This contextualizes her conversation with the Justice League in a new context. By holding the Justice League accountable for their sense of hubris and lack of self-awareness about it, she’s trying to prevent them from becoming as monstrous as Captain Atom, someone whose hubris was developed purely because of his lack of self-awareness. She’s not criticizing them to be mean, but to help them see the error of their ways before they make a similar error in judgment to Captain Atom’s.

It’s a unique role for a character like Jenny Sparks, especially one who doesn’t see herself as being a superhero like her Justice League peers. It’s all the more reason why she not only needs to continue aligning herself with the Justice League, but why her presence with the team is so needed. The Justice League are in the middle of a rebranding and a return right now, but it could all go haywire if they don’t recognize the flaws in how they approach people and missions. Jenny Sparks could be the glue that keeps the Justice League together and stable.

Jenny Sparks #3 is on sale now from DC Comics