I recently read two issues, 1988's Secret Origins #32 and 1989's Secret Origins #46, both of which feature stories starring the founding members of the Justice League of America...or at least the post-Crisis founders, meaning that Black Canary had replaced Wonder Woman in the line-up (This version of the team is the one that starred in Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn and Barry Kitson's 1998 maxi-series JLA: Year One; it was the canonical original line-up between 1985-1986's Crisis On Infinite Earths, which removed Wonder Woman as a founder during the publisher's first major continuity rejiggering, and 2005-2006's Infinite Crisis, which restored her status as a founder).
Now, one of the things that fascinates me about this volume of Secret Origins is the covers, which more often than not depict the characters whose origins are featured within interacting in some way, even though they do not actually do so within. This often means the covers suggest unlikely team-ups, like Adam Strange and Doctor Occult or Black Lightning and Miss America, or unlikely match-ups, like Green Lantern and Poison Ivy or Animal Man and Man-Bat. My favorite is, of course, is Ty Templeton's cover for Secret Origins #30, depicting a Plastic Man/Elongated Man meeting of sorts.
The story, entitled "All Together Now", is the work of Keith Giffen, Peter David and Eric Shanower, providing the plot, the dialogue and the art, respectively. Gardner Fox also gets a credit for "Story", as this story is a retelling of he and Mike Sekowsky's 1962 Justice League of America #9.
In Gardner's original, Snapper Carr arrives at the Happy Harbor headquarters to find the Leaguers preparing for a party to celebrate the anniversary of the team's founding, and they relate their first case to him, in which they faced off against bizarre alien creatures from the planet Apellax, each of which was wildly different from the next, and had the strange ability to transform victims into the same material as them (stone, wood, mercury, yellow bird, etc.)
In the Secret Origins version, this adventure isn't presented as a story within a story, but simply as a story. It opens on Apellax with the same basic backstory, although in this version the Apellaxians are all more-or-less identical, and the strange shapes they take on Earth are presented as special "battle forms."
Each of these end up encountering a different superhero, the five on the monitor on the cover. These five heroes all convene at the site of a sixth Apellaxian, and work together to defeat it. There is a seventh one that Superman deals with, although he does so off panel, and he himself is barely in the story.
Each of these end up encountering a different superhero, the five on the monitor on the cover. These five heroes all convene at the site of a sixth Apellaxian, and work together to defeat it. There is a seventh one that Superman deals with, although he does so off panel, and he himself is barely in the story.
The main difference here is that Black Canary has replaced Wonder Woman, of course, and that Batman, who only plays a very minor role in Fox's story, is completely MIA. Giffen also switches the alien battle forms around a bit. Here Aquaman fights a mercury creature rather than a glass one, while Canary fights the glass creature rather that the mercury one that Wonder Woman had originally fought. This is presumably because Black Canary's canary cry power is a good fit for fighting a shatter-able glass creature.
Interestingly, David's script, most of which involves the heroes thinking or talking to themselves, has each character express the desire for allies of some kind at one point or another.
"It would be so nice to have friends, comrades, who I know would accept me as I am," Martian Manhunter thinks while assuming his green-skinned form and flying away from the police station he works at in his disguise as human being John Jones.
"Speaking as a newcomer, I'd love the idea of working with more experienced people," Black Canary tells the others on the penultimate page. (This adventure apparently occurs during her very first patrol as the new Black Canary; that's a heck of a first day on the job.)
Aside from the way the story rewrites a classic one from decades prior, this story is mostly of interest because of Shanower's superior artwork. It's as stately as that of Sekowsky, but much more realistic while also being a great deal more dynamic.
Shanower shows a particular facility for expressions, and there are several panels I lingered over just to admire the way he showed, say, Hal Jordan reaction when he realizes his opponent is yellow, or J'onn J'onnz pondering the reaction of civilians who lay eyes on him in his Martian form, or Flash slapping himself on the forehead when he realizes something.
Aside from the way the story rewrites a classic one from decades prior, this story is mostly of interest because of Shanower's superior artwork. It's as stately as that of Sekowsky, but much more realistic while also being a great deal more dynamic.
Shanower shows a particular facility for expressions, and there are several panels I lingered over just to admire the way he showed, say, Hal Jordan reaction when he realizes his opponent is yellow, or J'onn J'onnz pondering the reaction of civilians who lay eyes on him in his Martian form, or Flash slapping himself on the forehead when he realizes something.
It's really some of the best Justice League art I've ever seen.
A few more things seem worth noting. In the original, after they defeat the wood Apellaxian, the heroes all travel to Greenland, where Superman and Batman are fighting a diamond Apellaxian. There, Batman suggests they form "a club or society", to which Flash responds, "A league against evil! Our purpose will be to uphold justice against whatever danger threatens it!"
Here, the heroes learn that there is a final Apellaxian in Antarctica, and arrive to find Superman dusting off his hands while standing above what looks like a pile of ashes, having apparently just defeated the alien. As they approach the Man of Steel though, he takes off without ever even acknowledging them. David's thought balloons let us know what's going on inside his Kryptonian noggin:
Just my luck! Lois was about to give poor Clark a tumble--and suddenly I had to make excuses and fly off!If I hurry, I might still be able to salvage this--
I guess the implication is that he is so distracted thinking about Lois that he doesn't notice the other superheroes over his shoulder, but I'm not sure I buy that. How does a guy with super-hearing and super-vision not notice the big green guy, Green Lantern, and three other colorfully dressed characters being towed in a big, glowing green orb...?
"He didn't even notice us!" Flash says in the panel after Superman departs. "Bet the 'S' stands for 'Snob.'" Aquaman defends Superman, though: "Oh ease off," he says. "He probably had something really cosmic on his mind."
"He didn't even notice us!" Flash says in the panel after Superman departs. "Bet the 'S' stands for 'Snob.'" Aquaman defends Superman, though: "Oh ease off," he says. "He probably had something really cosmic on his mind."
Nope. He's just thinking about his work crush.
The scene reads a bit awkwardly, and I imagine the story would be improved had Giffen just left Superman out of it entirely, given that the Man of Steel wasn't going to end up joining the others in forming the Justice League.
Instead, Green Lantern flies them back to a city, and Flash proposes they form a team, during which David makes what seems like a rather customary Peter David groaner of a joke:
On the final page, a splash, they settle on Justice League of America, and a broadly smiling Hal Jordan asks, "Do you think anyone else will join?" That's the image at the top of the post.
If you've never read this story before, do take a moment to scrutinize the heroes floating in the sky above, their presence apparently meant to answer Hal's question.
In addition to Batman, Green Arrow, The Atom and Snapper Car, we see the heroes who will join during the "Satellite Era" (Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Elongated Man, Zatanna, Red Tornado and Firestorm) and the "Detroit Era" (Steel, Vixen, Gypsy and Vibe). Even The Phantom Stranger, whose membership status has always been a bit equivocal, is pictured.
The scene reads a bit awkwardly, and I imagine the story would be improved had Giffen just left Superman out of it entirely, given that the Man of Steel wasn't going to end up joining the others in forming the Justice League.
Instead, Green Lantern flies them back to a city, and Flash proposes they form a team, during which David makes what seems like a rather customary Peter David groaner of a joke:
If you've never read this story before, do take a moment to scrutinize the heroes floating in the sky above, their presence apparently meant to answer Hal's question.
In addition to Batman, Green Arrow, The Atom and Snapper Car, we see the heroes who will join during the "Satellite Era" (Hawkman and Hawkgirl, Elongated Man, Zatanna, Red Tornado and Firestorm) and the "Detroit Era" (Steel, Vixen, Gypsy and Vibe). Even The Phantom Stranger, whose membership status has always been a bit equivocal, is pictured.
As no one from the post-Legends League is up there, it seems clear that the creators have drawn a bright line between the Justice League of America and the Justice League International (Even if the JLI first appeared in a book called Justice League, before the book changed its name to Justice League International...and then changed it again to Justice League America).
There are two pretty notable characters missing: Superman and Wonder Woman.
Given that Crisis changed continuity so that Diana didn't come to Man's World until right then, in the late 1980s, it of course makes sense that she's not there (I guess in the post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, Wonder Woman didn't join the Justice League until 1989's JLI #24, after which she was on Justice League Europe for, what, one issue...? She would rejoin the League around 1993, though, and stick with the team until the JLA relaunch, during which she was of course a member).
And Superman? Well, I never read John Byrne's Superman comics, but based on this comic, it would appear Superman was never on the Justice League of America, at least in the post-Crisis, pre-Infinite Crisis continuity, and thus I guess he didn't actually join any incarnation of the Justice League until Dan Jurgens took over Justice League America in 1992...?
Oh, and if you're wondering what the current status of the Apellaxian invasion/founding of the Justice League is today, in 2026, after more continuity reboots than I can easily recall, well, according to Mark Waid's New History of the DC Universe, sometime after the events of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's 2011-2012 Justice League #1-6, "The Justice League wasn't formalized as a team until a subsequent alien invasion from the planet Appellax caused J'onn J'onnz, a.k.a. Martian Manhunter, to step into the limelight and brought Dinah Lance, the Black Canary into play when she assumed the costumed identity of her mother." (The timeline in the back of the collection also places JLA: Year One in continuity, saying that Wonder Woman, like Batman and Superman, would rejoin the team sometime later, after its "formalized" founding).
This story has only been collected once, and so long ago that finding that collection probably isn't any easier than finding this issue. That collection was 1990's Secret Origins of the World's Greatest Super-Heroes trade paperback, with the extremely fun Brian Bolland cover showing Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, posing in the background in their heroic identities, while their civilian secret identities interact in the foreground.
That trade, by the way, was 150 pages and sold for just $4.95, if you need a good reminder of how much things have changed since 1990.
I'm only going to address the Justice League story here, as that's the only one I've read so far (I have a hard time working up any interest at all in the Legion or this iteration of the Titans, even though I know the Marv Wolfman/George Perez run on the team is widely regarded as the best; I will point out that the Titans story features artwork by Vince Giarrano, which is in an entirely different style than that he employed during the '90s on Manhunter, various Batman comics and other works, more David Mazzucchelli than Rob Liefeld or Erik Larsen. Oh, and the LOSH story is the first appearance of Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, by the way).
The thing that most interested me in this story was that it was written by Grant Morrison, and was thus Morrison's first Justice League story, written eight years before JLA. Prior to this, Morrison's only DC work was the earlier issues of Animal Man and Doom Patrol and Arkham Asylum. Members of the JLI made appearances in Animal Man and Doom Patrol (Buddy Baker was briefly in Justice League Europe, remember, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold show up in Doom Patrol #28, with more heroes appearing in #29, cover dated after this issue of Secret Origins), but this was Morrison's first story in which the League were the featured characters.
Morrison could hardly have asked for a better collaborator, as the artist for the story was the legendary Curt Swan, here inked and colored by George Freeman. The art is thus, unsurprisingly, gorgeous, and the Justice League has rarely looked better (Stylistically, Swan and Freeman's Justice League art is fairly similar to that of Shanower in the first Justice League story discussed in this post).
The 14-page story opens with a splash page depicting a bizarre milieu: The Justice League battling their own costumes. The scene recalls classic, Silver Age DC Comics, like the team battling their own weapons on the cover of JLoA #53 or, more directly still, "The Battle Against the Bodiless Uniforms from JLoA #35 (The empty costumes also reminded me of The Invisible Destroyer from 1959's Showcase Presents #23).
After the title page's splash, we open in Central City, "Some years ago," where Barry Allen is literally pushing a particularly hot-looking Iris West out of his apartment while making a lame excuse; in reality, he's running late for "the first real meeting of the Justice League of America."
Morrison could hardly have asked for a better collaborator, as the artist for the story was the legendary Curt Swan, here inked and colored by George Freeman. The art is thus, unsurprisingly, gorgeous, and the Justice League has rarely looked better (Stylistically, Swan and Freeman's Justice League art is fairly similar to that of Shanower in the first Justice League story discussed in this post).
Once his Flash costume pops out of his ring, however, it displays a quite creepy life of its own, pausing long enough to laugh "HA HA HA" and then streaking away at super-speed; Barry dons a spare costume and gives chase, following it to Rhode Island, where the rest of the nascent League is assembled, their similarly animated empty costumes encased in a green force bubble created by Green Lantern (All had spare costumes save Aquaman, who is there naked, except for a pair of black swim trunks; "This was the best I could manage," he shrugs. Hell, it works for Namor!). 
The others fill Flash in on what's they have found out so far—namely that the costumes seem to be inhabited by alien minds that want something in the mountain—which saves time, as this is a rather short story.
To find out what's going on inside the mountain that the aliens may be interested in, Flash plans to vibrate into it, but just before he can do so, the costumes break free of the force bubble, the Flash costume's yellow boots apparently kicking through it at super-speed. 
Meanwhile, no sooner does Flash vibrate into the mountain than a mysterious voice, the same one that appears in sketchy blue boxes like the one that said "But first...tell me your story" on the opening splash, greets Flash and starts telling him its story.
This unfolds over eight horizontal panels across two pages, and the voice is apparently that of the mountain itself, speaking in purple, poetic dialogue of its origins in the Pre-Cambrian, and what followed over the millennia, a highlight of which is a strange alien vessel that disgorges even stranger aliens during dinosaur times.
Finally breaking free, Flash relays that the mountain is a sort of giant stone computer storing information that can be released via vibration, and he does so in what reads exactly like the sort of dialogue one could expect from the Morrison of the late-'90s. Morrison had apparently already found a distinct, even signature voice.
The mystery solved, the team uses their powers to unlock visual memories of the aliens landing all those millions of years ago, the possessed costumes abandoning the fight to silently watch the images of their long-dead people. ("They've come here to pay their respects to their dead," Flash explains).
As to why the aliens chose to inhabit the Leaguers' costumes, well, Morrison never gets to that. Nor is it explained why the Flash's costume has his super-speed powers.
The team obviously decides to make this mountain their headquarters, though, and the mountain again narrates, this time flashing forward to the League's time there, and noting that now, whenever "some small creature" passes through it, the animal will "unlock the lattice memory" within it, temporarily generating ghosts of the Justice League, the mountain's memories of their time within it replaying themselves.
I can't imagine what readers in 1989 might have thought of the story. Were they happy to see the "real" League again, after years of first the Detroit League and then the JLI? Were they irritated about the retconned version of the League, now absent Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman? Did they think Morrison's story clever and smartly written...or pretentious?
I don't know. I liked it. It essentially reads like a sci-fi ghost story tied to deep Justice League history, one that, as I noted, evokes the Silver Age while being told in a modern, more sophisticated style (itself a very Morrisonian thing). And, again, it's obviously gorgeous looking.
I can't imagine what readers in 1989 might have thought of the story. Were they happy to see the "real" League again, after years of first the Detroit League and then the JLI? Were they irritated about the retconned version of the League, now absent Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman? Did they think Morrison's story clever and smartly written...or pretentious?
I don't know. I liked it. It essentially reads like a sci-fi ghost story tied to deep Justice League history, one that, as I noted, evokes the Silver Age while being told in a modern, more sophisticated style (itself a very Morrisonian thing). And, again, it's obviously gorgeous looking.
Somewhat surprisingly, this story doesn't seem to have ever been collected anywhere, which is another good argument for DC to work on some sort of Secret Origins collection.
*The founding of the JLI iteration of the Justice League the previous year was probably still new enough that there was no real reason to re-present its origins in this title. Notably though, the three issues that followed this issue were devoted to individual heroes from the JLI, three origins per issue. So, Mister Miracle, Green Flame (not yet Fire), Icemaiden (not yet Ice), Captain Atom, Rocket Red, G'Nort, Martian Manhunter, Max Lord and Booster Gold's origins were all told in Secret Origins #33-35, all of which featured connecting covers by pencil artist Jerry Ordway and inker Ty Templeton. As for JLI regulars Blue Beetle and Guy Garnder, their origins had already been told in Secret Origins #2 and #7, respectively.
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