I’ve always loved super-team comics. The Fantastic Four and X-Men might be teams first and individual superheroes second (unlike The Justice League and The Avengers), but they taught me as a teenager just how good comics can be when writers get the chance to play around with multiple powers and personalities. When starting RetroSmack, I based a lot of my DC and Marvel comic selections on which characters make up the two main super-teams. For The Avengers, my list for next year (I’ll cover two years of Marvel in 1978) will unquestionably include Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Iron Man. For The Justice League, it meant the main comics for Batman, Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman were all on the list before I even started looking at what other decent comics came out in 1977. So now I’ve read all the entrées, it’s time for the main course…
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I’ve covered all the major character’s titles, so now it’s time for the Justice League of America!
The Justice League of America both has and hasn’t always been called The Justice League of America. If that comment is confusing to you, then you might not be aware of how the DC Multiverse works. You see, back in the Golden Age of Comics (1940 to be precise), editor Sheldon Mayer and writer Gardner Fox created The Justice Society of America in All Star Comics #3. This was the very first superhero team in comic book history, and initially included the Spectre, the Sandman, the Atom, the Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman. The first issue featured introductions for each selected member, while the second saw them go out on their first case as a team. Interestingly, there was a JSA rule at this early stage stating that members of the team would have to leave as soon as the character was given their own comic title. It’s for this reason that the Flash departed after just a few issues, and Green Lantern followed shortly afterwards. This is also the reason why Batman and Superman got involved with the JSA, but were only considered honorary members. This rule was slightly broken when Wonder Woman appeared from issue #8, despite already having her own title, but she was limited to taking the role of JSA secretary. All Star Comics were popular in the early forties, but went out of favour (along with the rest of the superhero comic industry) towards the end of the decade, winding up with issue #57 in 1951.
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All Star Comics #3: It all started here.
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Yeah, sorry guys, I’ve got my own title now, so I guess I’m going to be a bit busy with that from now on. It’s been swell though.
Enter the Silver Age of Comics, which was kicked off by the reintroduction of the Flash in Showcase #4 (1956). Many of the earlier DC heroes were relaunched, while others had managed to hang on during the tougher years (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman for example). In 1960 editor Julius Schwartz decided that another super-team was needed, so asked Gardner Fox to work his magic a second time. Fox created the Justice League of America, introducing the team in The Brave and the Bold #28 (they were given their own title three months later). The Justice League differed from the Justice Society in a couple of major ways. Firstly, there was no restriction on who could become a member of the team. The original line-up shows this very clearly, being made up of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter (all but Aquaman and Martian Manhunter had their own comic title at the time). The other major difference was that its members were not actually the same heroes that had been involved with the JSA. The introduction of the DC Multiverse in The Flash #123 (1961) informed readers that the superheroes of the forties and fifties existed on Earth Two, whereas the ones in the sixties and beyond existed on Earth One. This revelation not only meant that the Flash of the forties and fifties was not the same Flash as seen in the relaunched series, it also created the possibility that both Flash’s could actually meet each other if one were to cross dimensions (which is what occurred in #123).
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The Brave and the Bold #28: It all started again here.
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Justice League of America #21: The JLA summon the JSA for the first time….I think.
Image Credit: iFanboy
Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky brought The Justice League of America to appreciative fans for close to a decade, with both of them departing between #63 and #65 in 1968. During their reign, important villains were introduced, such as Doctor Light, and the JLA even teamed up with the JSA on more than one occasion. The replacements for Fox and Sekowsky were writer Denny O’Neil and artist Dick Dillin, with the latter illustrating JLA for the next 120 issues! O’Neil’s stay was somewhat shorter, but he would make his mark by removing Wonder Woman from the team in #69 and then Martian Manhunter in #71. He was also responsible for bringing Black Canary from Earth Two to Earth One to join the team, and for the creation of the Justice League satellite headquarters, which orbits the Earth. The only other writer prior to 1977 that demands a mention is Martin Pasko. Since he was writing both the Justice League and Wonder Woman comics in 1976, Pasko devised a way for Wonder Woman to rejoin the team. The Amazonian was forced to pass twelve trials to prove her worthiness to be readmitted, with each one monitored by a different member of the League.
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Wonder Woman #219: I just missed out on the 12 trials Wonder Woman faced to gain entry back in the League. It sounds interesting.
All of this of course brings me to the point I jumped onboard the series, which was issue #138. This was the first of a two part story written by Cary Bates. I knew Bates well by this point due to his gimmicky style that I thought worked so well for The Flash but much less so for Superman. It was a mixed result for this Justice League two-parter that involved Adam Strange randomly flicking between the present and the 73rd century. On the one hand, the writer’s clever unpredictability is perfectly suited to a team comic, as there are so many moving parts, but on the other hand, his constant refusal to even attempt to obey scientific or storytelling laws grated on me a bit once again. How’s this for a line? “Of course! That’s it Adam! When an immaterial JLAer sees one of us in imminent danger – he snaps back to normal in order to help!” Yeah, why didn’t I think of that Cary!? It’s so obvious! After this mixed entrée, I was a bit concerned to see that the remaining issues for the year were all giant issues. By giant, I mean they each contained over 30 pages of story as opposed to the standard 18. Each of these suckers was going to take me over half an hour to read and assess properly, so I’d damn well want to enjoy them.
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Justice League of America issues #138 to #149: I ended up reading #150 too, as it carried on from #149.
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Bates loves to mess with reality, bringing in unseen particles and dimensional influences whenever possible.
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You have to love his solution to a fake Green Lantern though. Throw a yellow rock at him!
And then Steve Englehart came to the rescue! I was thrilled to see that he was the writer for the remainder of the year, as his work on Detective Comics was pretty damn awesome. I could really see how his style, which is to focus on character development as much as action, and his love for reintroducing rarely seen villains, would work tremendously well with a large team of players, especially with a longer format to work with. Boy did he produce the goods! Not only did Englehart bring real human emotions to the fore, such as insecurities and egos, he managed to do it while adding more and more characters to proceedings as he went. His eleven issue run kicked off with what seemed like a simple heist story involving a team up of three ice-based villains (Captain Cold, The Icicle and Minister Blizzard), but by its climax a hidden menace was revealed, personality clashes between heroes had begun to fester, and the Phantom Stranger had popped in to inject some much appreciated mystery. From #140, things got even better, as The Justice League went up against the seemingly unstoppable Manhunters, who were determined to execute Green Lantern for a crime we were yet to learn of. The masked ring bearer wasn’t the only one in trouble though, as the enemy’s code threatened the whole League: “There can be no witnesses to the work of the Manhunters! Such is the code!” Learning the history of the Manhunters, which involved being the predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps, made for fascinating reading, as did the JLA joining forces with the normally unsympathetic Guardians.
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I’ve become quite fond of the Phantom Stranger, appearing out of nowhere to give a mystical helping hand before disappearing back into the unknown.
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Green Arrow and Black Canary are no match for the Manhunter. Green Lantern’s response was unexpected and intriguing!
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Englehart has a knack for including human insecurities and emotions within action packed stories of superheroes and arch-villains. Thankfully artist Dick Dillin was more than up to the challenge.
I’ll refrain from going on and on about every great issue in this run, but I simply have to talk about the double whammy of #144 (The Origin of the Justice League…Minus One!) and #145 (The Carnival of Souls), as I feel these best represent what was achieved here. The first of these involves no less than twenty-five superheroes! Englehart, Dillin and inker McLaughlin not only managed to re-establish the true origin of the League in exciting fashion, they did it whilst being true to the comic style of the fifties, throwing in a few generational references on the fly. I haven’t specifically mentioned the artwork yet, so will take the opportunity to do so. It’s already pretty awe inspiring that artists can crank out this fantastic stuff month after month, but consistently producing double length issues of this quality while accurately representing dozens of characters with all of their idiosyncrasies is mind blowing. Englehart brought out the best in both artists, and I think it says a lot for all three creators that this comic closed with Green Arrow, who on page one was aggressively combative, walking away with an effective emotional tear rolling down his face. To top it all off, they followed up that classic issue with The Carnival of Souls, which temporarily set aside character development and history-changing dialogues to focus on thrilling the reader with mysterious, mystical and action packed excitement. With these two issues alone, Englehart proved that he had more than one feather in his cap, which is why I was distressed to find that he took a temporary step away from the comic industry with the last issue I read (#150). This run will be tough to follow.
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No DC superheroes can escape the storytelling flexibility of Englehart
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The Carnival of Souls was overflowing with action and entertainment. Fantastic issue!
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I haven’t even mentioned the brilliant two-part Crisis in the 30th Century, which managed to include the JLA (Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary), the JSA (Power Girl, Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, Doctor Fate) and the Legion of Super-Heroes (Sun Boy, Brainiac 5, Wildfire, Princess Projectra), all fighting for the same cause.
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The Justice League of America (1977) RetroCard has now been added to the RetroCard Shop. It’s a common card, so therefore costs 10 smacks and has a limited release of 120.
Feature Image Credit: Luke McDonnell and Bill Wray from Who’s Who: The Definite Directory of the DC Universe vol XII via Firestorm Fan
The post 1977 – Smack 58 of 77 – Justice League #138 to #150 appeared first on RetroSmack.