Justice League of America #2

As the story begins, Green Lantern is attending a magicians' convention. Why? Well, on the story level we'll assume it's because he's a fan of legerdemain, but from the writer's (Gardner Fox) standpoint, it's so that he can witness an important event. A girl is summoned apparently from nowhere, but when the magician reveals the secret, it turns out that the trap door she was supposed to come up through was locked. So how did she arrive?

Note in particular that the light switch doesn't work. Indeed, none of man's scientific gadgets work, from planes to trains to automobiles. What can have happened? Well, once the JLA has gathered, Green Lantern makes the obvious deduction; magic works, but science doesn't. We see the extent of the fabulous JLA library:

Meanwhile, in the magic dimension, we learn what caused the sudden change:

The concept of two different Earths, with strong similarities but important differences, was of course the idea behind the multiverse of Earths 1, 2, 3, etc. Note in particular that this story predates Flash of Two Worlds by about 8 months.

Merlin, the magician, quickly learns who's behind the sudden change:

As those three are the only people on their world to understand the application of science, they quickly loot the planet of its treasures. After a test of magic, the JLA summons Merlin to their HQ. He explains the background of the story, and the JLA members split into teams to take on the three villains:

This was the basic template that Fox used for the JLA adventures: Identify the menace, break the team into parts, and then have the team get back together again for the denouement. It was also the template for the old JSA stories in All-Star, although there (because the Golden Age books had more pages), Fox had let them star in their own solo adventures.

The team-up concept is promising, but Fox doesn't really deliver. Green Lantern fights a manticore, while the Martian Manhunter battles a Griffin. They only really join forces to capture Saturna and to prevent him from destroying a part of the magic spell that will return our Earth to the science dimension.

Wonder Woman and the Flash do cooperate more in their capture of the Troll King, but Batman, Superman and Aquaman split up, and as it happens, the Sea King is the one who finally captures Simon Magus. So all that remains is for Merlin to cast the spell to return our Earth to the science dimension, right?

Well, no, there is the problem shown on the cover to handle. But it turns out that the monster the JLA are trying to prevent escaping into the magical Earth is none other than:

Comments: A pretty standard Gardner Fox plot, with art by Mike Sekowsky.

The JLA Mailbox includes a letter from Jerry Bails, Jr (I assume written by his father and possibly posted by Roy Thomas):

Bails pere, of course, was a major figure in the then-nascent fandom movement, and had been a longtime reader of the JSA stories in All Star Comics. From correspondence between him and Roy, we know that many of the early letters to the editor in JLA were written by him under various pseudonyms.

Correction: As noted by Jonathan L. Miller in the comments, Jerry Bails, Jr, was himself the actual fan. I knew that Bails lived in Michigan for most of his adult life, but he was apparently originally from Kansas City.

Justice League of America #16

I saw that this comic was mentioned in Tony Isabella's book as one of the 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, and thought it would be worth reviewing in some detail. As you can see, my copy of JLA #16 is not quite mint, so I don't think I'll be sending it off to CGC anytime in the near future.

The story starts with the various members of the JLA heading towards a meeting. Wonder Woman is flying there in her invisible plane, while Green Arrow is taking the Arrow Plane, and they meet, as usual, over the town of Three Corners. But they notice something odd down below.

When they exit their planes, they find themselves compelled to dance along with the rest of the civilians, as does the Atom, who emerges from a local phone line that has been tapped into by a repairman. Things get a little more interesting as a group of crooks target the local bank while everybody's busy. But Green Arrow spots a chance to grab Wonder Woman's rope and tosses it into her hand. Then WW lassos GA and forces him to stop the crooks.

Meanwhile, Green Lantern, Batman and the Martian Manhunter have similarly met up along the way to their meeting, and stop to break up a payroll robbery. Once again the weird music compels them to dance, and once again the group teams up to defeat the crooks. Batman frees some silver iodide crystals from his utility belt, and MM sends them up into some nearby clouds. As the rain pours down around GL's feet, J'onn freezes it, making it impossible for Green Lantern to dance. Thus freed from the spell, Hal is able to capture the crooks.

Superman, Aquaman and the Flash have a similar adventure, and again team up to defeat the crooks. It appears that all of the gangs have been using the musical abilities of the Maestro to pull off their robberies. As they compare notes, the Atom sadly muses:

They head off in search of the Maestro, whom they have located in a general area of caves. Sure enough, they find him at his keyboard, but this time they are wearing earplugs so that his music should have no effect. But:

The Maestro reveals that the bubbles he has the JLA trapped within are specially devised for each member. Superman's bubble contains Kryptonite, while GL's bubble saps his willpower and Aquaman's prevents him from telepathically summoning his finny friends, etc. It appears he has finally won, and as we go to the third chapter of the story, the JLA looks defeated. But:

Yep, it was all a bit of fan fiction by "Jerry Thomas". Of course, Jerry Thomas is a composite name, created from two big fans of the Justice League, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas. So the JLA spends much of the third chapter trying to figure out how they might have been clued into the real scheme of the Maestro. And, not too surprisingly, it is the Atom who figures it out:

Armed with the knowledge that the music was not the real means of hypnotizing the JLA, they would have approached the Cavern of Deadly Spheres with a secret weapon of their own:

And sure enough, they would have defeated the Maestro.

Comments: Although I am not usually a fan of these kinds of "trick" stories, I must confess that I enjoyed this one thoroughly, especially now that I know a little more about the Bails/Thomas/Julius Schwartz relationship.

Cover Appearances of the JLA Members

This came up in the guest post by M. Hamilton, and I thought it was an interesting enough topic to be given its own post. I went through the covers of Justice League of America to see who did (and who didn't) appear on each cover through 1969. I broke it down 20 issues at a time:

As you can see, Superman and Batman only made rare appearances on the cover of JLA during the first 20 issues. Note that Green Arrow was not inducted until #4 (the Atom in #14, and Hawkman in #31), so aside from them, the Martian Manhunter was the first member not to appear on a cover, Green Arrow was the second, MM the third and then Aquaman became the first to miss two covers in a row.

In JLA #21-40 we see Superman and Batman becoming more regular features on the cover. Wonder Woman's consecutive string of covers ends with #25, while Green Lantern is first missing from #32. The Flash makes it to #33, but just barely, as his run of appearances includes this one from JLA #21:

Correction: As pointed out by sharp-eyed Tom Brevoort in the comments, those aren't the Flash's hands between Green Arrow and Superman, but actually Green Arrow's hands, rather awkwardly drawn (especially the right hand). So in fact Green Lantern had the longest run of the core JLA five. Good catch, Tom, you should be an editor. ;)

The Atom goes missing for a total of 19 issues, from 26-44; obviously his small size made including him on the cover somewhat difficult.


You can see Batmania writ large in this set of issues, as he appears on the cover for 13 consecutive issues, and the first one that doesn't include him has the adult Robin (of Earth 2) featured prominently. Batman was also the only JLA member to appear on the cover of the first issue of a JLA/JSA teamup between JLA #37 and #73, and the first JLA member to be the only JLA member on a cover with JLA #46. Of course that doesn't begin to tell the story as Batman was almost always in the foreground of these covers to take advantage of his newfound popularity with the TV show.

Doing rather well during this entire period was Green Arrow, who made the cover of JLA 40 times out of 74 issues. Not bad considering that his backup feature in World's Finest had been canceled in 1964 and that he seldom appeared anywhere else in the DC universe from 1964-1969. Aquaman, who had his own book, missed 43 of 77 covers, and only appeared on 11 covers after #28. Atom, also a headliner, only appeared on 8 covers from #21-#60.

Who made the most covers? The Flash appeared on 59 covers of JLA by the end of 1969, while Green Lantern made 58.

Guest Post: "Super-Exiles of Earth" (May 1963; Justice League of America #19), or, Life in the Pre-"Crisis" World

Note: I have authored every post here at Silver Age Comics so far. But I received an unsolicited email submission from a "M Hamilton" (a nom de plume) that was well-written and seemed pretty interesting, so I'm going to break with tradition and post it in its entirety. However, I will break in occasionally to make a point (or post a panel or cover to illustrate a point). Here's Hamilton's post:

If I were to recommend a single comic book to a Silver Age newcomer which would introduce him to the DC Universe before Earth-Two became a major force (and really started complicating things), it would be "Super-Exiles of Earth" (Justice League of America #19, May 1963).

It is the earliest JLA story included in the 2006 compilation "Justice League of America: The Greatest Stories Ever Told" and with good reason. The reader not only learns about each hero's superpowers by seeing him in action, but also finds out:

- The secret identity of each superhero along with the city he/she was based in (with the exception of Green Arrow and the Martian Manhunter),
- That Atom's girlfriend was lawyer Jean Loring,
- In the very last panel, Superman mentions his "Fortress of Solitude."
(I assume that the point here is to mention that the story served the purpose of acquainting readers painlessly with the background of the characters. This is definitely worth noting: Justice League of America, while also a (highly successful) magazine in its own right was intended to cross-sell the magazines featuring its individual members.)

This issue is atypical in several ways:

- With regard to the cover, most early JLA covers left out Superman, Batman and Snapper Carr. I think that this cover is the last one to portray the entire roll call of members. For hardcore JLA followers, the crowd drawn in the foreground and background portrayed the civilian identities of all the superheroes (except for Aquaman who had none). And in the foreground, I suspect that Barry Allen, Hal Jordan, Diana Prince, and Ray Palmer were drawn by their respective artists (e.g., Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Ross Andru),

(Cover:)

(I concur on the faces; they do seem redrawn. And it's far from the only time that happened on a JLA cover, so it's no stretch. It's definitely one of the more interesting covers on a JLA issue due to the puzzle aspect--if the JLA is really leaving, who are the people on the cover with the real identities of every member?)

- Concerning action, most issues broke the then 9-member JLA into 3 teams of 3 superheroes each. Each 3-member team worked together to fight against a villain or to cope with a problem. "Super-Exiles of Earth" includes mostly one-on-one battles between each member and his/her respective evil alterego which accounts for a page in this story that has 10 panels.

(Excellent point. In the JSA stories in the 1940s All-Star Comics, the individual heroes usually had a chapter of 5-6 pages where they battled alone. During the Silver Age this would not have been possible, due to the larger size of the JLA and the smaller size of the comics. So it was getting traditional to split into mini-teams of 2-3 JLA members to handle one aspect of the current issue's "menace".)

With regard to the plot, there was an incredible amount of logic and consistency in telling the story:

- Early on when the JLA was arrested, one panel portrayed the 3 members who travelled by plane (Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Batman). Another panel featured the 3 who could fly on their own (Green Lantern, Superman, and Martian Manhunter) and another panel portrayed the remaining earthbound members (Flash, Aquaman, and the Atom),



- When a message written in invisible ink needed to be analyzed, both Superman and Martian Manhunter simultaneously used their super-vision,
(Good point, but the message itself came from nowhere, which is a significant plot hole. On page 13 of the story, the Flash conveniently remembers a mysterious message that had no writing on it that the JLA received during a previous meeting. And Batman suddenly remembered that he put it in his utility belt intending to analyze it for a message, but he forgot to do so.)

- Like most of the JLA stories, the members solved their problems by using reason and deduction rather than by relying solely on their superpowers. Mental effort was always the key to ultimate success in JLA stories,
- And the member who contributed to solving the problem that was the ultimate climax of the story was then newcomer Atom who had joined the JLA a few issues earlier (JLA #14, "Menace of the Atom Bomb"). To justify the worth of new JLA members, it seems that writer Gardner Fox allowed the newest member to play the crucial role in providing the final solution.

(Good points both. Although I should note that the solution entails the following:)

(Given that Ray is a research physicist, there are some questions I might have about his ability to perform the necessary brain surgery from inside).

Concerning Sekowsky's artwork, I feel that the following quote sums up the fact that he was underrated, overlooked and neglected among the roster of DC artists:

- The perfection of art is to conceal art. (Quintilian)

(Sekowsky did a credible job on a number of features in the Silver Age. Personally though, I am not a fan of his work.

His work on the JLA could never be called 'beautiful' in the way that Murphy Anderson's Hawkman or Carmine Infantino's Adam Strange could, but its dynamism was full of a kind of energy that especially suited the brisk pace of the JLA plots. (To get an idea of how the JLA members would have looked if Infantino had been their artist, see Flash #158 "The One-Man Justice League" or Mystery in Space #75 "The Planet That Came to a Standstill.")

[Concerning Adam Strange, Sekowsky was his original artist. What reader can forget the first page of Adam's debut in Showcase #17 ("The Planet and the Pendulum") portraying Adam rescuing Alanna by scooping her up in his spaceship. You were simply pulled into the story by the immediacy of that image. A few issues after JLA #19, Sekowsky would get to draw Adam again in JLA #24 ("Decoy Missions of the Justice League")]
(I concur, Sekowsky did a fine job with the initial Adam Strange story.)

If you compare the cover of JLA #19 drawn by Murphy Anderson with the same scene as portrayed within the issue, you can see that Sekowsky's other strong point was his portrayal of emotion. On the cover, the JLA members look stoic in accepting their exile; in Sekowsky's panel, they look like they are walking the gangplank and some of them look positively broken by having to face their cruel fate.

My favorite panels and pages in JLA #19 include:
- The panel where the members step into their dressing rooms followed by a panel showing them emerging wearing their street clothes as their respective civilian identities,

- When the JLA are in their spaceship taking them away from earth, those panels where the windows give views of an inky black outer space are so atmospheric,

- The page of six panels showing the villain in prison from different angles and revealing his thoughts. One of those panels didn't even include him.


Concerning the evolution of the JLA, "Super-Exiles of Earth" represents the ending of an era when the entire JLA roll call would participate. Beginning with the first issue of the following year (1964), stories would begin to appear where only a partial roll call of members would participate and where Superman and Batman would gain the status of "anchor" members and begin to appear more regularly and prominently on JLA covers. The reduction of members was probably in reaction to the annual summer tradition of the two "Crisis" issues which must have caused Sekowsky to put in a lot of overtime drawing all those superhero (and supervillain) costumes.
(I have recently written about how Julius Schwartz was given permission to use Superman and Batman in the JLA by DC publisher Jack Liebowitz. With now nine very active members (and a tenth in another year when Hawkman joined), it's natural that not every member would be active.)

Re-reading JLA #19 over four decades later, I have to conclude that life in the pre-"Crisis" DC world certainly had its moments.
(Great review, M Hamilton!)

Obvious question for the peanut gallery: Should we make guest posts a regular thing at Silver Age Comics?

Tracers: Batman and Superman in the JLA

Julius Schwartz tells a famous anecdote in Man of Two Worlds, his autobiography, about how in the early days of the Justice League of America, Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff refused him permission to use Superman and Batman in their stories, and especially on the covers. They were reportedly worried about overexposure of their characters. As Schwartz tells it, he was getting congratulated by Jack Liebowitz on the success of the JLA when Liebowitz, DC's publisher, asked him why he didn't use Superman or Batman in his stories. When Schwartz explained, Liebowitz exploded with anger that Weisinger and Schiff didn't own the characters, DC did, and that he now had permission to incorporate them into the JLA stories, which Julie did with alacrity.

The first part of the story certainly fits; although Batman and Superman had cameos at the end of the JLA intro story in Brave & Bold #28, they were not featured on the cover, and indeed did not appear on a JLA cover until #10:



Okay, so here we go; JLA #10, Mr Liebowitz gives him the nod, and Schwartz responds with a cover featuring Batman and Superman, end of story, beginning of Dark Knight and Son of Krypton in JLA, right?

Uh, no. Superman and Batman next appeared on the cover of JLA #19, and there, they were used as bookends for the rest of the League:



After that, Batman and Superman popped up on #21, but neither of them appeared on the cover of #20, #22, #23, or #24. At that point the series did change quite substantially, featuring Batman and Superman very prominently on almost every cover.

So it would appear that Schwartz got his permission from Liebowitz around the time that JLA #25 was being planned; prior to that Batman and Superman had appeared on only three covers; after that, they were generally featured prominently on virtually every cover, and of course around the same time (as JLA #27 was published) Schwartz took over the editorship of Batman and Detective Comics.

Spring Cleaning at JLA HQ

This bit of domestic bliss comes to us from Justice League of America #66 (November 1968).

Worst Covers of the Silver Age: Justice League of America #25

Wow. There's a lot not to like there, starting with the obvious. What the heck is going on? It almost looks like Mike Sekowsky forgot to draw most of the Flash. Superman's head was clearly redrawn (probably by Superman's regular artist, Curt Swan), but the effort leaves him with an undersized head and a very long neck. The Flash's cabeza looks like it was pasted on to his shoulders without the benefit of a neck.

Looking at the story inside, the Flash was disappearing and Superman and Green Lantern are at least trying to save him. But what does the Atom think he's doing running up the Scarlet Speedster's arm? And Wonder Woman, while well-drawn, isn't going to help things much with her magic lasso; assuming she does get it around the Flash's head isn't she more like to choke him to death?

Single Issue Review: Mystery In Space #75

Mystery in Space was one of DC's long-running science fiction magazines. It was a generally outstanding title for much of its run, initially featuring mostly one-shot stories. Effective with MIS #53, the cover feature became Adam Strange, whom I have talked about previously.

Up until this issue, it had never been clear that Adam Strange existed in the same "universe" as the DC superheroes. But as you can see, Kanjar Ro (the alien shown on the cover) intends to go after the Justice League of America in this story.

Ro had appeared in the third issue of JLA's own magazine, and the beginning of this story sums up the ending of that one. Superman created a planet in space out of meteors, and deposited Kanjar and three other villains. Using his power ring, Green Lantern surrounded the planet with a force field to prevent the gang from escaping. But through dogged determination, the villains willed a tiny hole in the force field, through which Ro was able to escape:



Well, you can probably guess his answer to their pleas: Go suck eggs! After that the story follows the usual pattern of a new menace appearing on Rann, although there is one interesting difference. Adam had apparently gone to the far-off planet in the previous issue on a teleport machine and not a zeta-beam, so for a change he was not doomed to return to Earth and could remain with Alanna indefinitely.

The menace they encounter are barbarians from Rann who have an oddball crystal, which, when struck, paralyzes Adam and Alanna. They manage to reverse the effect, and Adam figures out that if they plug their ears, they will be unable to hear the vibrations from the crystal and thus immune to the effect. They confront the barbarians again and pretend to be overcome, so they can learn what's behind the sudden attacks:



Yep, it's Kanjar Ro, working to make himself more super than the Justice League. He eventually discovers that Alanna and Adam were not under his control, and imprisons them in a gravity field. But they manage to escape, and Adam hurriedly uses Kanjar's ship to return to Earth, where he hops on the next zeta beam.

Alerted by the presence of the ship, a small contingent of the JLA head to the prison planet that Superman had created, where they learn from the remaining villains that Ro had gone to Rann. Meanwhile Adam, after returning to Rann on the zeta beam, manages to ring the villain's giant gong, thus freezing everybody on the planet, including himself. But when the zeta beam wears off, he returns to Earth where he regains freedom of movement. He goes to Kanjar Ro's ship, where he discovers the remaining JLA members. Together they head off in the ship for Rann.

But when they arrive they discover that Kanjar Ro was too powerful to be affected by the gong, and was just waiting for the rest of the JLA members to arrive so he could defeat them all. He seems to be making good work of it, too. Several people express a little pity for Adam, who has no superpowers, but he uses his mind to come up with the way to defeat the villain:



Unfortunately, the illness he feels is a symptom of a problem: He learns that he cannot remain on Rann for more than a year because it would kill him. So he is forced to return to Earth once more and wait for the zeta beam.

Comments: This is generally acknowledged as one of the finest DC stories of the Silver Age. It won fandom's Alley Award for the best story of 1962, presumably both for the clever plot and the appeal of crossovers back in that era when they were rare. Excellent script by Gardner Fox and terrific art by Infantino and Anderson.

One interesting oddity: Although the story highlights that Kanjar Ro's goal is to become more powerful than Superman, in fact Supes is one of the few JLA members who is not defeated by the villain in the final chapter. Batman explains that the Man of Steel is busy on a mission in Kandor. I suspect, although I don't know, that Weisinger would not give his consent to a story where Superman is defeated by a villain whom Adam Strange then proceeds to best.

Infinite Crises on Infinite Earths

After bringing back the Golden Age Flash in Flash #123's memorable Flash of Two Worlds, Gardner Fox followed up with Flash #137's Vengeance of the Immortal Villain. In that story, Vandal Savage, a major Golden Age villain, had captured the former members of the Justice Society of America and the two Flashes rescued them.

The Golden Age and Silver Age Flash teamups had become an annual tradition by that point, and it was only natural that DC extend the concept to a JLA/JSA teamup, which they did starting with Justice League of America #21-22, the August and September 1963 issues. This was significant in that I believe it was the first time a DC story had covered two complete, book-length issues. DC had experimented with continued tales before, but always in their anthology comics, so that the stories were not book-length.

In that first tale, Golden Age villains The Icicle, The Fiddler and The Wizard teamed up with the Silver Age baddies Mr Element (the pre-reformed Al Desmond), Chronos and Felix Faust. The Fiddler had appeared in Flash of Two Worlds, so he became the first GA villain to make two appearances in the Silver Age.

One notable oddity about the GA/SA characters; DC revived the heroes in new costumes and identities, but there were very few cases of DC bringing back GA villains as new SA characters. I'm wracking my brain here and the only one that comes to mind is at the very end of the SA, the GA Hawkman's villain the Gentleman's Ghost popped up as a new villain for Atom and Hawkman. Anybody? I'm not talking about just the return of the GA villains (like Mxyzptlk or the Penguin) in the SA, I'm talking about new villains roughly based on the GA villains but as recognizably different as Jay Garrick and Barry Allen, and therefore as new as the Barry Allen Flash. Anybody?

Anyway, in this story the GA villains meet some SA villains and they decide to combine operations. The Fiddler has a note that will open up the barrier between the two worlds, and they realize that this takes care of a major problem for them:



Now that is a cool concept for a story. But eventually the GA crooks on the SA world (Earth-1) decide to take on the JLA. At first they succeed, in fact trapping the heroes in their clubhouse. But fortunately there's a crystal ball there and the Justice League heroes summon the Justice Society stars to help them out:



In the second story everything seems to work out fine for the heroes, but this turns out to be a trick to get the Green Lanterns (both GA and SA) to use their powers to free the two Flashes. This gives the villains a chance to imprison all the heroes:



Note in particular the SA heroes presented and the ones that lack a real GA counterpart. At the time, DC still had not quite embraced the concept that there was a difference between the GA Superman and the SA Superman. Ditto with Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Aquaman. What do those five characters have in common? They were the only five DC superheroes to be published continuously from the 1940s to the 1960s. Of course the Martian Manhunter lacks a GA equivalent as well, but he was a strictly new SA character, not a revival.

It was easy for DC to say that there were two Green Lanterns (in fact there were a multitude of them), or two Flashes; it didn't take a genius to tell the difference between Alan Scott and Hal Jordan. But with Batman or Superman establishing a dividing line can be extremely tricky, as DC would discover over the years. DC would eventually accept the idea as we shall see in later instalments.

Next in this series: If there's an Earth-1 and an Earth-2, can Earth-3 be far behind?