In Justice League International #16, a crack team goes undercover on a mission of international espionage.

Maybe "crack team" is a bit of an overstatement, especially when Booster Gold and Blue Beetle are involved.

Page 6 is chock full of references to classic movies in television. Peter Lupus was a bodybuilder and actor in the original Mission: Impossible television series. And Beetle has assumed the identity of George Bailey, famous worldwide as the protagonist character from the classic film It's a Wonderful Life.

Interestingly, Beetle looks less like Wonderful Life actor Jimmy Stewart and more like silent film comedy star Harold Lloyd. I don't think this is an accident.

This often-silly issue explicitly namechecks the comedy duo of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, and unless I am very wrong, that's Oliver Hardy and Stan Laurel (in a fez) watching Booster fumble the luggage in the fifth panel of page 6. Those two were experts in mishandling packages, as hilariously recorded in 1932's The Music Box.

Having Beetle dress as the clock-dangling star of 1923's Safety Last! is a nice nod to the silent era of Hal Roach Studios comedies as much as it is to Clark Kent's famous glasses disguise... which Superman's creators Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster modeled on Harold Lloyd. That's a full circle disguise!

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