Two Justice League stories of note from the pages of Secret Origins

I wish DC Comics would get around to collecting the 50-issue, 1986-1990 Secret Origins series, perhaps in an omnibus or two, or a couple of DC Finest collections. And I hope they do so before I manage to track down all of the issues of interest to me before I find them in back-issue bins or on Comixology. (Oh, and I just found that a bunch of the stories featuring Golden Age heroes collected in 2017's Last Days of the Justice Society of America trade.)

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.

Because of this, I expected Secret Origins #32 to contain origin stories for both the original Justice League of America and the Justice League International, given that both teams were on the cover. As it turns out, however, the entirety of the issue is filled with a 38-page origin for the JLoA, and the JLI is limited to the cover appearance*. 

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.

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. 

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."

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. 

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. 

As for the JLoA story from Secret Origins #46, it is one of three from an interestingly thematic issue of the series, telling the origins of various superhero headquarters: The League's original Happy Harbor base, the Titans' T-shaped Titans Tower, and the Legion of Super-Heroes' original crashed rocket ship-looking base. 

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." 

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. 

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.

Review: Justice League of America: The Rise of Eclipso

The 2012 Justice League of America: The Rise of Eclipso trade paperback collection is a complete mess, which probably shouldn't be surprising. After all, the entire 2006-2011 volume of JLoA was a bit of a mess, especially after its initial writer, Brad Meltzer, left. "Rise of Eclipso" was the final story arc in the series, followed by a sort of one-issue epilogue—"Adjourned"—after which the series was cancelled. 

Not, it's worth stressing, because the series was a mess, of course, nor because its last few arcs were any worse than its first few, but because DC cancelled all of its books at the time, closing out their post-Crisis continuity for their biggest, hardest reboot ever, September of 2011's The New 52 initiative. 

This trade, then, represents not just the end of the JLoA series, but the end of the 25-year post-Crisis Justice League saga. 

It is, I am disappointed to say, not very good, and the sort of historical nature of the story makes it more disappointing still. Were 25 years of stories all leading up to this? No, this was just a placeholder story, something to keep a Justice League comic on the shelves while DC worked on a new, New 52 version of their flagship team title, one that would prove to be a sales hit (and, if you ask me, creative flop).

But let's stay on topic.

The comics collected herein are all written by James Robinson, and drawn by pencil artists Brett Booth, Daniel Sempere, Jesus Merino and Miguel Sepulveda and inked by Sepulveda and three other artists. That may seem like a lot of artists, but Booth draws most of the book, including all but one chapter of the title story, with Sampere and Sepulveda penciling the one issue he does not. 

Booth's presence, by the way, is why I had never before read these comics. I was not (and am still not, I find) a fan of Booth's style, so this is the point at which I finally dropped JLoA, after faithfully reading JLA and JLoA month in and month out since 1997. 

Therefore, I opened the cover—a featuring a fairly nice image by Ivan Reis that originally ran on the cover of the final issue of the series, JLoA #60—somewhat tensed, expecting the worst. Even so, I was sort of surprised to find, on the second page of the trade, the words, "A Dark Things Epilogue." The book starts with an epilogue to a different story...?

Indeed. Even odder, the issue doesn't feature any members of the current Justice League. Instead, it is one long scene in which Green Lantern Alan Scott and his son Obsidian talk to one another on the moon, the rest of their team, the Justice Society of America finally showing up on the last page. The only Justice League of America characters that show up during the course of this particular issue, do so in crowd scenes filling its many splash pages, depicting possible futures. 

I would discover the why of this later. This particular issue isn't even an issue of JLoA, rather it is JSoA #43. The "Dark Things" story arc was a crossover involving both of the Justice...of America titles. My guess is that this ended up in a JLoA trade because DC probably published "Dark Things" under the more popular JLoA title in trade. That, or maybe DC didn't collect the last issues of JSoA into trade at all, and thus there was nowhere else to stick this. It does have some bearing on "Rise of Eclipso," introducing readers who might have skipped "Dark Things" (or, like me, read it like 15 years ago and forgotten it), to The Emerald City.

This is a massive city on the moon, built by the Starheart, the magical source of Alan Scott's Green Lantern ring and its magical powers. I'm not sure when exactly the Starheart entered DC lore, but it's been around since at least the '90s. It was a way to incorporate Alan into the greater Green Lantern mythology, from which he was originally had nothing to do with when Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corpse were created in the Silver Age.

Anyway, whatever happened during the course of "Dark Things," the Starheart's power has now created a massive city composed of Green Lantern construct buildings, and various magical creatures from Earth have been "called" there and have made it their home. Alan is sort of its sheriff and administrator. He gives his son a tour of the place, and they angst about a current bit of drama involving their family: Obsidian and his sister Jade can no longer come within a half mile of one another, or risk combining into some weird composite form that will bring about the end of the world.

Alan says that he and Dr. Fate ran through every conceivable scenario to fix things, but all they found were alternate futures in which, say, Earth's vampire and fairy populations go to war and superheroes get caught in the middle or all of the superheroes with Earth powers will go insane.

The issue is notable for two reasons. First, despite Merino providing the best pencil art of the whole trade, this issue looks like it must have been thrown together in a hurry: Of its 22 pages, six are spent on double-page splashes and three on single-page splashes. (There are also a couple of pages with only two panels apiece, which are practically splashes.)

Some of those double-page splashes do have a lot of figures in them, like the one depicting the aforementioned war, but man, 2011 Caleb would have been so pissed if he spent three bucks on a comic that was, like, half splash pages...

The other notable thing is just to what degree Robinson seems to be treating the endeavor as a "toybox" comic. He's always set his work deeply into the DC Universe setting, of course, often finding and using lesser-known characters in interesting new ways and keeping an admirable fidelity to DC continuity. Here, though, that aspect of his work seems turned up to 11 (and it will stay so throughout the trade). Aside from various JSoA character, Mordu, Nightmaster, Gemworld, Monolith, Zara, Andrew Bennet, Geomancer and Tara II are either namedropped or make cameos of sorts and, of course, that spread with depicting the war is full of various superheroes, at least one of whom I couldn't even identify.

That out of the way, "Rise" begins in earnest and it, too, gets off to a bad start.

Take a look:

The very first page of "Rise" consists of two panels. The first has narration, white type in black boxes (just like Obsidian's dialogue in the previous chapter, although this is not Obsidian talking). It reads:

At a time of grave crisis, the world's greatest heroes banded together to combat evil.

The name of this team...

...The Justice League of America.

The image in this first panel shows the original (pre-Crisis, post-Infinite Crisis) Justice League founders, the seven heroes from 1960's The Brave and the Bold #28, but, in the background, we see the Hall of Justice...which wasn't actually the headquarters of any Justice League in the comics until Brad Meltzer imported it from the Super Friends cartoons in the early issues of this particular volume of JLoA, so circa 2006 or so. 

The second panel, accounting for the bottom half of the page, has narration reading:

Other heroes joined this group...other champions. The roll call changing year by year. 

Here Booth draws a mostly random assortment of later Leaguers, stretching from the likes of Green Arrow and Hawkman to Red Arrow and Black Lightning. 

Between these two panels, but more on the bottom than the top, is...a mysterious object, a colorful box with what looks like a "7" on it (It's on the right edge of the page above). I could not for the life of me figure out what the hell this was supposed to be, especially since it seemed to be reaching onto the page from somewhere off page. I flipped to the next page to see if this was a mistake of layout, and maybe something on the next page explained it, but no.

Eventually I decided it must be a TV news microphone, from a Channel 7, perhaps being pointed at the JLoA founders, as if they were giving a press conference (If you look closely, there's the tip of another tiny microphone in the bottom right corner of the first panel, near Batman's crotch). 

I'm not sure why Booth drew it, but I am sure he should not have. 

And then onto the second page of the issue, a full-page splash featuring the current line-up fighting what, upon close inspection, turn out to be green hard-light constructs of Alan Scott, presumably generated by Jade during "Dark Things." 

Here the narration tells us the team has changed again, and that this version of the team came together during the events of "Dark Things." The line-up during this volume of JLoA seemed to shift each story arc, something I have to assume was not Robinson's doing, nor to his liking (His predecessor on the title, the late Dwayne McDuffie, complained about editorial taking characters he was using or planning to use out of circulation on a regular basis. If you've read much of Robinson's run, you'll find the "official" line-up more fluid still). 

I did appreciate this page, as it tries to contextualize this team as a Justice League, and make the constant changes in team make-up seem like part of the overall Justice League story. That, and it told me who was actually supposed to be on the team at this point: Jade, Supergirl, Congorilla, Donna Troy, Jesse Quick, Batman Dick Grayson and Starman Mikaal Tomas.

So, notably, it's a couple of fun, unlikely characters (Congorilla and Starman), and a bunch of legacy characters plucked from the extended "families" of founding Leaguers (everyone else), some of whom might not have been the second, third, or even fourth choice to fill those roles (Green Lantern-like Jade and speedster Jesse Quick, for example).

Still, it's a noteworthy line-up in just how many women are on it. In fact, I think this may be the first and only time the number of women outnumbered the number of men on the team...?

From here, the scene shifts from the battle scene on the moon to Earth, where Bruce Gordon takes over the narration, and, ultimately, somehow transforms into Eclipso, despite there not being an eclipse. From here on out, the book will mostly be narrated by a conversation between Eclipso and Gordon, the latter of whom is reduced to a voice in the former's head.

Gordon's words appear in very light gray, almost white narration boxes. Eclispo's appear in purple boxes. There is occasionally omniscient narration too, with this in white boxes, which can easily be confused as Gordon's thoughts. And there is at least one instance where Eclipso's dialogue appears in a light gray box, as if it were Gordon's. Again, it's remarkably slipshod for a DC comic, I thought, and I was kinda surprised that mistakes like this made it into the trade, as surely someone would have noticed it the first time the book was published, and then fixed it before it was published a second time, no? 

This first chapter of "Rise" is, aside from that splash page introducing them, devoid of the Justice League, instead following Eclipso as he goes around gathering allies with various shadow-based powers and "eclipsing" them: The Shade, Nightshade, Acrata and Shadow Thief, plus two more I had never heard of, Dark-Crow and Bete-Noir (this Bete-Noir character being a skull-faced gorilla who speaks French, not to be confused with Martian Manhunter villain Bette Noir). (Oh, I guess there's a good reason I never heard of these two; they are new characters appearing here for the first time. Neat.)

Oh, and Eclipso also awakens a slumbering elder god for his team, an off-brand Cthulhu, named Syththunu.

As for what Eclipso is up to this time, well, it's a very complicated plan, and it is revealed only gradually throughout the story arc, but essentially he plans to kill God by destroying the Earth, Robinson proposing a rather interesting idea that, in the DC Universe, Earth is a sort of conduit between God and the universe, transferring energy back and forth (I'm not entirely sure if this is all Robinson's idea, though, as the events of Brightest Day are referenced in relation to this, specifically the White Lanterns and that weird White Lantern entity). 

On the last pages of this chapter, we see Alan Scott in the Emerald City. He is now bald and emaciated, laying in a bed with an IV. What happened to him between the first issue collected in this trade and the second? No clue. 

(Oddly, when events from other books are reflected in the issues, there are no asterisks and editorial boxes letting a reader know where they might have occurred...but there are a few editorial boxes referring back to very old stories, like one reading "Way back in Brave & The Bold #115", which was the 1974 issue in which The Atom entered a braindead Batman's brain and hopped around, "piloting" it).

The next issue is a good example of just how messy this series is. Though it's entitled "Eclipso Rising Part Two: Mayhem", it's actually also a tie-in to a Superman event (The original cover, which you can see here on comics.org, includes a "Reign of Doomsday" banner along the top). 

Supergirl, wearing a black and white costume, is floating around the wreckage of New Krypton, when Batman shows up in a spaceship. And so does cyborg "Alpha Lantern" Boodikka. And then Doomsday, who can now fly...? And then Starman and Blue Lantern Saint Walker (Though not officially a Leaguer, Walker is in this book more than Supergirl and, in the final issue, Dick mentions him as a potential future Leaguer).

They fight. 

The last page of this issue features two reveals. On the moon, Eclipso has eclipsed Jade, and the Cyborg-Superman pops out of Boodikka on the team's satellite base. 

Whatever is happening with the latter, it's not addressed in this book at all. Cyborg-Superman doesn't reappear at all, so apparently that unfolds in the Superman books, where one assumes "Reign of Doomsday" must be playing out. Those events seem to take Supergirl out of the story as well, as she won't reappear until the final pages of the JLoA #59, the concluding chapter of "Rise". (When she does, she's in red and blue again, and, when Congorilla asks where she was, she simply replies, "Long story, Bill...").

On the moon, Eclipso starts eclipsing all the elves and fairies and other magical residents of the Emerald City. The reserves are called in (which, I was surprised to see, included The Bulleteer, who I don't think was ever actually on any incarnation of the League...?), but they too get eclipsed.

Caleb-favorite character Zauriel is among the reserves, and, rather than eclipsing him, Eclipso sword-fights him, captures him, and forces him to send out some kind of weird divine distress signal, which summons The Spectre. Eclipso kills The Spectre (!), cutting him in half vertically with his giant black sword on a double-page splash printed sideways, and Eclipso thus absorbs his power. (I'm not sure who The Spectre's host is at this point, or if this is a host-less Spectre-Force. The story doesn't address that at all; at any rate, this Spectre doesn't have a goatee, so it doesn't look like the Crispus Allen version, although I would have thought Allen was still The Spectre at this point...)

Things seem very bad, but eventually the League rallies and, with the help of Obsidian, a healthy-again Alan Scott and The Atom Ray Palmer, they defeat Eclipso and save the world...and, I guess, the universe and God himself. (As for The Spectre, is he dead-dead? Unclear, but since the universe is rebooted immediately after all this anyway, I guess it doesn't matter. Corrigan is The Spectre again when introduced into New 52 continuity). 

And then we get issue #60, the final issue. In it, all seven official members of the League take turns telling the rest of the team why they are deciding to quit at this particular juncture. Sure, it strains credulity—all seven decide they need to step away simultaneously?—but then, Robinson was writing these characters off for the final time here, and I don't know the best way to close out the series in these particular circumstances might have been. (Me, I think I would have had them stay together, maybe rushing off into their next adventure on the last page, at least implying that this version of the team, and of the DC Universe, might still go on, if only in the readers' imaginations...)

Between the various team members telling one another what they plan to do next, there are splash pages devoted to adventures that they apparently had in the weeks between the end of "Rise" and this particular meeting: A Construct-led robot uprising, "The Saturn-Thanagar War" and "The Battle for Gemworld". 

At first, I assumed this was Robinson using up his ideas for future JLoA stories, a way of getting them into the book before he left it, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt that a writer would "waste" such ideas in such a way, and so perhaps these were just plots he thought up while writing this particular issue, random off-panel adventures that he considered the basic outlines of without really having fleshed them out, or intended to use anywhere else.

The most interesting bit, I thought, was on the last page, when Dick Grayson and Donna Troy are about to teleport back down to Earth, as the rest of the team already did. They have a short exchange about their version of the Justice League, which really sounds like Robinson talking about his run more than anything else.

"Do you think they'll remember us?" Donna asks Dick and, when he replies, "Who? Bill and the others?" she answers in such a way that it seems as if she's talking about the readers:

No, dummy, the people. The world. Think they'll remember this version of the J.L.A. and all that we did?

To which Dick responds:

Who can say? We did what we could with what we were given and I'm proud. I'll remember. Other people? Honestly who cares, it's not why I'm in this anyway.

Well, I hope that's how Robinson felt...and still feels. Because, despite the fact that I'm reading this story arc and writing about it 15 years later, I feel like Robinson's run has been somewhat forgotten, as has been most of the final stories of DC's books immediately preceding The New 52. 

Though DC has since de-rebooted The New 52, restoring pre-Flashpoint continuity...while keeping some of the The New 52 developments that didn't contradict the previous continuity too badly...I think the Justice League continuity is more screwed-up than that of other characters and concepts within the DCU. 

I'm trade-waiting Mark Waid and company's New History of the DC Universe; perhaps that will reveal if this Justice League is still canon or if it was over-written by all the various cosmic timeline altering events of the last decade or so. 

***********************

Among all of the things that were wrong with this trade paperback, the wrongest thing is something I didn't yet mention. 

I don't know why this is the case, or if it was the case with all of the copies of the trade that were published, or just the one I happened to borrow from the library, but there was apparently some kind of printing mess up.

For some reason, all of the narration boxes and dialogue balloons that were on the far side of the pages were cut off throughout. Here's an example; note Jesse's dialogue in the first panel:

In all cases, there is enough of the cut-off words to guess what they are supposed to be, but it's really weird, isn't it?

**********************|

Oh, and if you're wondering why on Earth I'm writing about this particular book at this particular time, well, I'll tell you.

As I mentioned a while back, after reading the last half-dozen or so JLA arcs, I had considered re-reading the book that followed the end of JLA, Justice League of America. I ultimately decided not to because a) I didn't care for it the first time around and b) my library system didn't have every volume of it available in trade (They do have them all available electronically, but I'm not a fan of reading comics on my laptop or phone).

So, the idea of revisiting JLoA was already in the back of my mind.

And then I read The Spectre by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake Omnibus Vol. 1, which made me curious about more recent Spectre comics that followed their series..specifically, the character's storyline after Hal Jordan stopped being the host of The Spectre. Also, during the events of Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre, the title character seems to rather definitively defeat Eclipso, smashing him to ashes, and I found myself wondering how he came back from that, so I was a bit curious about later Eclipso stories too.

When looking for later Spectre comics, then, I saw that "Rise of Eclipso" featured both Eclipso and the Spectre and, given when it was published, these would have been the last appearances of each character in the Crisis to Flashpoint timeline, so that was two reasons to check this story arc out. 

I plan on writing a few more Spectre-related posts in the near future too, so I hope that's something you guys are interested in reading about...

And then what?: Briefly on 2006-2011's Justice League of America

The final issue of JLA might have been 2006's JLA #125, but that obviously wasn't the end of Justice League comics from DC. The team has starred in at least one book pretty much continuously since 1960, when they first graduated from a Brave and the Bold feature into the first volume of Justice League of America, so of course we all knew that, despite JLA's cancellation, we wouldn't have long to wait before we got a new Justice League ongoing series.

The "JLA" branding actually continued for a few years after the series ended, thanks to JLA Classified. Launched in January of 2005, around the same time that Kurt Busiek and Ron Garney's "Syndicate Rules" arc was starting in the main title, the secondary JLA book was intended to be an anthology series giving rotating creative teams a chance to tell Justice League stories that weren't necessarily bound to the month-in, month-out continuity.

The title started strong, with Grant Morrison returning for the first arc, in which he was paired with pencil artist Ed McGuinness for a sequel to Morrison's own JLA #24-26. He was immediately followed by the former "JLI" era team of Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, returning to their "Super Buddies" concept from their 2003 miniseries Formerly Known as the Justice League. And their arc was then followed by one written by the then still popular, not-yet-disgraced Warren Ellis.

While creators with sizable fanbases would continue to show up for the remainder of the book's run, including the likes of John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Dan Jurgens and Gail Simone, the tile seemed to grow increasingly less relevant. Its final issue was 2008's #54. Only a handful of its arcs ever ended up making it into trade paperback collections. 

Whatever the exact provenance of its various arcs—specifically commissioned for the book, inventory stories, repurposed miniseries—it was always clear that Classified was the B-title of the two. 

The actual, official, totally-in-continuity Justice League would return with their own book in September of 2006 in the pages of Justice League of America #0, published just a few months after the last issue of JLA and, perhaps more importantly, the last issue of event series Infinite Crisis, which reset DC's superhero line (and tinkered with its continuity a bit).

The new Justice League series, which was using the Justice League of America title for the first time since 1987, was written by Identity Crisis' Brad Meltzer, pencilled by Ed Benes and inked by Sandra Hope. 

It broke rather sharply from the "Big Seven" formula that powered JLA. Sure, the new line-up featured Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash, but that was it of the core JLA team. They were joined by former Leaguers Black Canary, Red Tornado, Vixen and Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Also joining the team were former Outsiders Black Lightning and Geo-Force, the JSA's Hawkgirl Kendra Saunders and former Titan Roy Harper, who changed his codename from Arsenal to Red Arrow for the occasion (ala Kingdom Come).

Most notably missing was probably J'onn J'onnz, who had been in one Justice League or another for at least the previous 20 years, as well as Aquaman, who had been on the team throughout much of JLA (disappearing for a while when he was temporarily dead, and then taking a sabbatical after his resurrection) and John Stewart, the team's Green Lantern for the last three years. Oh, and Plastic Man, who was on the League for the previous eight years or so (a short sabbatical during Joe Kelly's run aside). (I've never reread Metlzer's run—it wasn't very good the first time around, to be honest—and now I can't remember if, when putting the team together, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman offered rationales for why some of their long-time teammates weren't included.)

While it certainly wasn't the League I would have put together in 2006, it was at least an interesting line-up. I was thrilled to see Black Lightning finally on the team, for example. And Wonder Woman was joined by three other women (one of whom, Vixen, was also Black, so neither she nor Black Lightning seemed like a token character). And there was certainly some interesting potential in Roy, like Wally West before him, essentially "graduating" from the Titans to the Justice League.

Not that Meltzer would stick around long to do anything with the characters, though. And his line-up didn't last all that much longer than he did.

Meltzer only wrote the first 13 issues of the series (all of which were essentially one big story arc, devoted to assembling his new team, a crossover with the Geoff Johns-written Justice Society of America falling in the middle of it), and then he left the title.

Meltzer was replaced by Dwayne McDuffie, a comics writer and editor who had been working on DC's animated shows, including the Justice League one, and was thus probably an even better "get" for people who might actually read a Justice League comic than Meltzer ever was. 

McDuffie immediately started tinkering with the line-up he inherited (His first issue featured Green Lantern John Stewart, for example, and thinking about it now, I don't know if Geo-Force even ever officially joined the team or just managed to pose with the others on Alex Ross' variant for JLoA #12, above). 

McDuffie stayed on through #34—missing only four issues, three scripted by Alan Burnett and another by Len Wein—for a total of 19 issues. Benes had stayed on the title through McDuffie's run, although there were obviously fill-ins. A lot of fill-ins. Joe Benitez, Rags Morales and Joe Luis each penciled two issues apiece, while Ethan Van Sciver, Carlos Pachecho, Allan Goldman, Chris Cross, Shane Davis and the team of Ardian Syaf and Eddy Barrows each drew an issue apiece. 

Oh, and then there was issue #25, for which Benes was joined by five more pencil artists, presumably because it was an anniversary issue: Doug Mahnke, Darick Robertson, Shane Davis, Ivan Reis and Ian Churchill.

That is obviously a lot of pencil artists for so few issues, and I remember McDuffie's run as being particularly chaotic, with characters coming and going more quickly than ever, and the increasingly inconsistent art often being rather poor (To be fair, I didn't care for the work of "regular" artist Benes at all, either). 

That chaos was apparently because of what was going on behind the scenes, as McDuffie reportedly kept finding his plans for the title thwarted, characters he might be able to use one month suddenly being off-limits the next in accordance with the goings-on of other comics (Last-minute changes to his plots and scripts would certainly help explain all those guest artists). (I suppose one could speculate as to why McDuffie seemed to get none of the same deference Meltzer did in terms of his plans for the book, given that the latter seemed to have a greenlight to do whatever he wanted in Identity Crisis and his 13 issues of JLoA, but maybe we shouldn't get into that here.)

After McDuffie's final issue, Wein returned for a three-issue fill-in arc drawn by Tom Derenick and several different inkers.

Finally, Starman and Justice League: Cry For Justice writer James Robinson came on with issue #38, and he would remain on the title until it was cancelled with 2011's #60, a total of 26 issues. He was originally paired with pencil artist Mark Bagley and inker Rob Hunter, who drew 15 of Robinson's first 16 issues (only needing a single fill-in, wherein pencil artists Pow Rodrix and Robson Rocha split duties for an issue). 

Bagley and Hunter were then followed by the team of Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund, who drew four issues, and they in turn were followed by pencil artist Daniel Sampere, who closed out the title, drawing the last three issues of the series (one of which he got an assist from Miguel Angel Sepulveda on).

While the creative team was obviously a bit more stable for Robinson's run, the team line-up was more chaotic than ever. Robinson added some fun (and extremely unlikely) characters into the mix, like Congorilla, Starman Mikaal Tomas or Dick Grayson-as-Batman, but his line-up could and would change issue to issue. Even ones whose covers (and scripts!) seemed to promise new line-ups (like #41, for example) could see many of those characters completely disappear within the space of an issue or two. 

At this point, I'm not entirely sure how long Robinson could have kept the title going, but by fall of 2011, it was a moot point anyway, as DC cancelled all of their titles for the new, rebooted (and, ultimately, temporary) continuity of "The New 52."

It included a new Justice League title, of course, this one simply called Justice League, by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Scott Williams. It resumed a "Big Seven" approach, only with Titan Cyborg replacing Martian Manhunter (J'onn was appearing instead in a new Stormwatch title, for some reason). There was obviously still a bit of chaos behind the scenes, as the book didn't always match up neatly with the continuity of other New 52 titles, some of the plans Johns mentioned in interviews never came to materialize and, if you look at one of the many covers for the first issue, you'll see characters in the background who never ended up appearing in the book (Like The Atom and Element Woman). On, and Lee drew Wonder Woman in the long black pants that were apparently supposed to be part of her new, New 52 costume, but DC ended up backing off of.

That volume lasted 52 issues (of course), sometimes overlapping with other Justice League-branded titles (a new Justice League International, a new Justice League of America, Justice League Dark, Justice League United), and has since been followed by other Justice League books (another Justice League, another Justice League of America, Justice League Odyssey), but I kind of stopped paying attention and/or caring, which "The New 52" reboot seemed to encourage me to do. 

After reading the last few years of JLA and then taking a look at the series that followed it, I confess that part of me considered re-reading this volume of Justice League of America. Like those last few JLA arcs, I had only read Meltzer, McDuffie and Robinson's runs the first time around, as they were originally being released (in large part because I didn't much care for them), and I am a little curious if they read better or worse now, divorced from the context in which they were originally published, and without the weight of expectation being a factor (If I had to guess, I would imagine the Meltzer run might read a bit better, while the McDuffie and Robinson ones, which had to dance around other comics so much, probably aged particularly poorly). 

I looked into my local library consortium's holdings, though, and while Meltzer's run is collected in a pair of trades, the first volume of McDuffie's is only available digitally, and I don't really want to spend the time re-reading comics I didn't like the first time around in a format I dislike. Especially since there are so many great comics out there that I've yet to read. (I'm only eleven volumes into Haruichi Furudate's Haikyu!! as I write this, for example; that means I've still got 34 volumes of it left to go!)

The latest Justice League book, Mark Waid and Dan Mora's Justice League Unlimited series, is fairly promising though...

Briefly on Stane Lee and Julie Schwartz's introductions to 2008's JLA/Aveengers trade

When I wrote about Kurt Busiek and George Perez's JLA/Avengers a few months ago, there was one interesting aspect of the trade collection I read that I couldn't quite find a way to fit into the post, so I've decided to return to it now in a separate post. The particular 2008 trade paperback collection I used for my re-read included a pair of introductions from comics veterans who were integral in the creation of both of the title teams (as well as so much else that went on at Marvel and DC over the course of decades), Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz.

Everyone, of course, knows Lee. Even if this is your first visit to a comics blog, and if you somehow arrived here and started reading this post by accident, you probably know who Stan Lee is, as he's perhaps the only true household name that the medium has ever produced. The legendary editor, writer and promoter of Marvel comics not only co-created the super-team The Avengers (along with his frequent collaborator Jack Kirby) and not only served as The Avengers' first writer, he also co-created all five of the team's founding members (again, along with Kirby, and a couple of others like Ernie Hart, Don Heck and Larry Lieber).

As for Schwartz, he spent over 40 years as an editor with DC Comics, and was pivotal in the publisher's recommitment to superheroes in the latter half of the 1950s, working with writers and artists to reintroduce new, second-generation versions of The Flash, The Green Lantern and others, helping usher in waht became known as the Silver Age of superhero comics (and, indirectly, as we'll see, inspiring Lee and company's creation of the Marvel Universe). It was Schwartz who decided to also update the Justice Society of America team, and thus the Justice League of America debuted in 1960.

In 2008, the year these introductions were published in this collection, Schwartz had already been dead for several years, having died in 2004 at the age of 88 (This may explain why his introduction says "By Julie Schwartz, As told to Robert Greenberger"). And as for Lee, he was 86, and about to start the last decade of his life (He would die in 2018, at the age of 95). 

The introductions are set side-by-side in two parallel columns, not unlike those that were printed on the inside front cover of the first DC/Marvel superhero crossover, 1976's Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1, although in that case they were penned by Lee and his then DC equivalent, Carmine Infantino. 

Amusingly, the Stan Lee introduction is much longer than the Schwartz one, continuing for another six paragraphs after Schwartz's had ended. More amusingly still, neither man gives much in the way of an indication that he's actually read the comic they are supposedly introducing (Not that I blame either man, given their age at the point they must have been writing these). 

Schwartz, at least, proves he's well aware of who the creative team is, the fact that there are a ton of characters involved, and that the story will involve the first fighting and then teaming up. His intro ends thusly:

It may seem like a tired old plot, but in the hands of true professionals they make it entertaining. Kurt and Georg have my admiration for taking the time and care to fit in so many heroes, villains and other familiar beings. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to proofread it all!

As for Lee, he eventually gets around to saying "There are countless thrills and chills on the action-packed pages ahead," but then, that's the same thing he would say about any Marvel comic (or any comic he himself had anything to do with). 

So if not the comic collected within the trade, what do they talk about? 

The history of the two teams, or at least the origins of the team each man is involved with, although, in Lee's case, it takes a bit to get to it, and he also talks about himself (and, charmingly, Schwartz) quite a bit too.

Lee's introduction is perhaps predictably jokey and jocular, as well as somewhat self-deprecatingn and often about the very writing he's in the act of doing. It's very Stan Lee.

He talks about the legendary 1960s golf game between National/DC Comics publisher Jack Liebowitz and Atlas/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, in which Liebowitz said his new comic Justice League of America "was selling like there's no tomorrow."  

Writes Lee:

Well, might Marty didn't need a house to fall on him. As soon as the golf game was over he raced to a phone and called yours truly.

"Stan," he bellowed, "National's Justice League is a hot seller. I want us to get on the bandwagon too. Cook me up a book which stars a whole team of heroes — and to it yesterday!"

This, Lee says, is "comicdom's worst-kept secret," and the call that inspired not the Avengers, but instead the Fantastic Four. (As Lee puts it, it was "the reason I dreamed up the good ol' Fantastic Four, which I modestly called 'The World's Greatest Comic.'" Oh, did Lee dream them up? Well, that's one way of putting it; at least he mentions Jack Kirby in the next sentence, with "Aided by the artwork of the titanically talented Jack Kirby"...).

In Stan's telling, DC's JLoA and Marvel's FF were in " a no-holds-barred, neck-and-neck race," and, while that was going on, "we" (by which he means, but doesn't say, he and Kirby, Steve Ditko, Bill Everett and a handful of other collaborators) created  "a brand-new batch of additional super-heroes," those of the first generation of what was becoming the Marvel Universe.

He names them all, of course, and it's only after a few such years that Marvel actually has enough of its own superheroes with their own books to band together into a Justice League-like team, which is how Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Ant-Man and The Wasp ended up facing off against Loki in 1963's The Avengers #1. 

He spends several paragraphs talking about writing a team like the Avengers, and then spends a paragraph on Schwartz:

But I cannot come to the end of this candid little confessional without saying a few words about my co-Introduction writer, Julius Schwartz. I'm both pleased and honored to have the opportunity to appear with this legendary comic-book great in a watershed collection such as this. In all the years that I've known and admired him, we've never actually worked together or appeared in the same magazine before. It's taken half a century for this to happen. But y'know something? Considering the respect and admiration I have for the countless accomplishments of Julie Schwartz, it was well worth the wait.

Well that was sweet, I thought. 

While Lee's introduction appeared in blue ink on the lefthand side of the first two pages, Schwartz's was in red ink, and on the righthand side of the pages. 

Schwartz jumps right in:

The revivals of super-heroes were going so well that my schedule was getting crowded. But when we came up with the next logical step — combining these heroes into a team — no one else would touch it but me! Obviously, we modeled the new team after the Justice Society of America, but as I've said for years, I've never liked the name Society. It sounded too upscale. I preferred something like League, since, after all, everyone followed the baseball leagues.

He goes on to explain that "Every super-hero who had a feature was going to be in the new team," which is why they numbered at seven, and why characters like Martian Manhunter and Aquaman ended up on the team, despite the fact that those two didn't, at that point, have the sorts of resumes  or track records of the other five (if we allow The Flash and Green Lantern to list their forebears' accomplishments as their own,, of course). 

And as for Green Arrow, Schwartz says he couldn't remember exactly why he wasn't there at the beginning, but he had enough heroes for 24 pages anyway (And it's not like GA would never join the team; he would sign up within a year of the League's Brave and The Bold debut, in the fourth issue of their own book).

Schwartz goes on to write a bit about the original creative team—Gardner Fox, who had also written the old JSA stories, and Mike Sekowsky, "the only artist I worked with who could uniquely fit all these characters on each page"—and how the early issues came together, how they were received, and how the team expanded ("Well, we relented and finally let Green Arrow in. I was then sticking to my guns, and waited for heroes to have their own title before they could join, like the Atom and Hawkman.")

And then, how he and Fox introduced the parallel world of Earth-2, and the JLoA met the JSoA, the sales of which were incredible enough to keep the two teams meeting regularly for decades.

"But I never imagined they would ever cross paths with the Avengers," Schwartz writes. "When DC and Marvel first tried to have the teams meet, I was just an innocent bystander, curious to see what would happen."

Nothing, as it turned out. But that was in the 1980s.

"But as the house ad said when we first gave the JLA their own title, Just Imagine!," he writes. "Just imagine seeing the best and brightest from two entirely different companies combatting one another and then working together."

Obviously, neither piece says all that much about the amazing story that follows, the ultimate DC/Marvel crossover, but it was interesting hearing about the origins of the two teams from men present at (and integral to) their creation and, particularly in Lee's case, I found it somewhat revealing of the men themselves to hear what they had to say and how they said it. 

That time Rex the Wonder Dog almost helped found the Justice League (On 1977's Justice League of America #144)

Justice League of America #144 is particularly interesting for two reasons.

First, it addresses the passage of time in a way that, at least here in the 21st century, seems unusual for a superhero comic book.

Second, it is premised on the never before revealed story of the true creation of the Justice League, long concealed from the world and, indeed, even some of its own members. A literal secret origin, then.

The 33-page story, "The Origin of the Justice League--Minus One!", is written by Steve Englehart, pencilled by Dick Dillin and inked by Frank McLaughlin. In its framing sequence, Green Arrow is on the League's satellite headquarters, reading through a thick book labeled "Journal of the Justice League," as one does. 

Apparently upset by what he has just read, he storms off to angrily confront Superman and Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who are playing cards, as Justice Leaguers do. How upset is GA? Well, Dillin draws an explosion of energy emanating from his head, which colorist Anthony Tollin has colored red. 

What's got him so worked up? Well, he says that Hal has always maintained that he became a Green Lantern in September of 1959 (a date, an editorial box points out, that was chosen because that was the cover date of Hal's first appearance, in Showcase #22). And Green Arrow was told that the League was founded, "with you a large part of it", in February of 1959, which is seven months before Hal was even a superhero.

So what gives? Well, Superman and Hal solemntly lead Ollie to "the communications quadrant" of the satellite, seat him before a giant monitor (Green Arrow sits down while wearing his quivers on his back? Seems uncomfortable), and play him a tape of Martian Manhunter, who will tell the story that will dominate the rest of the book's 30 pages, when the heroes who would become the Justice League all met one another for the first time and decided to form a team...but to postpone doing so for six months or so.

"It wasn't you we feared-- It was the times!" J'onn says, addressing the camera. 

But let's linger on those dates that Green Arrow rattled off, shall we? 

This issue was released in 1977, and, presumably, the framing sequence is meant to be set in 1977 as well. If Hal became a GL in 1959, that means he has, at the point this story takes place, been superhero-ing for 18 years now (and the League has been around for that long as well...meaning the rest of its members are all at least 18 years into their careers already).

If we imagine that Hal was as young as, say, 20 when he became a Green Lantern, then that would mean he is 38 in this story...and, as we know, this was relatively early in Hal's career. It would be another decade or so before Crisis On Infinite Earths altered the timestream/DC continuity for the first time. 

While those numbers work out for the purposes of this story as regards Hal and his Justice League peers, it's worth noting that Robin Dick Grayson appears in the flashback story, which, again, is set 18 years ago, in 1959. He was a teenager then. And, in 1977, he was still Robin and, apparently, still a teenager (He went away to college in 1969, though, at which point he must have been 18 or thereabouts.)

So, um, obviously that doesn't work.

That same editorial note that mentions how they came up with the month of Hal's Green Lantern origin, credited to "Julie" (who would, of course, be editor Julius Schwartz), also contains something of a disclaimer about the passage of time: "Remember-- We're dealing here with comic mag time! And comic heroes have their own ways to stop the clock and avoid aging!"

Dick Grayson especially, I guess.

As for the story, it is, for its first half or so, primarily a Martian Manhunter one. It begins with his origin, being brought to Earth by a device created by scientist Dr. Erdel, who almost immediately has a heart attack and dies, stranding J'onn.

He takes on the identity of John Jones, and becomes a police detective in Middletown, doing superhero work on the sly while trying to figure out Erdel's device in order to get back home. His life is upended with the arrival of a General Blanx and a gang of other White Martians (Who Green Arrow, and I suppose readers at the time, knew from the pages of JLoA #71).

J'onn, resuming his more familiar form of a half-naked green muscle man, is in the middle of battling the White Martians when The Flash arrives. J'onn tries to explain to Barry Allen that there's a difference between good Martians and bad Martians, but upon seeing the aliens, the locals all start to freak out. 

The Flash tries to calm down the spreading mass hysteria, telling the gathering crowd that he will get someone everyone knows and trusts to head up the investigation: Superman. 

He's never, at this point, actually met Superman though. Nevertheless, he runs to Metropolis and finds the Man of Steel, who is at present in the company of Batman and Robin. The four heroes return to Middletown, where they promptly meet Roy Raymond, TV detective.

"If we alert the nation, this story should generate a lot of help for you!" Raymond tells the heroes.

And it does. A turn of the page reveals a pretty spectacular splash, filled with the 30 heroes promised on the cover: Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Blackhawks, The Challengers of the Unknown, The Vigilante Greg Saunders, the original Robotman Robert Crane, Congo Bill "with the amazing Congorilla", Plastic Man and Rex the Wonder Dog. (Do dogs watch TV...? How did Rex know what was going on, and how did he get himself to Middletown...? Well, I he is a wonder dog, I guess). 

Oh, and also Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, introduced as if they too were superheroes.

Now, even after all these years, I still haven't integrated a deep enough knowledge of DC Comics/DCU history to know this for certain, but I suspect this particular gathering is meant to represent all of—or at least most of—the DC Comics heroes who had their own books or regular features in early 1959, or perhaps those that could have conceivably been around then...excluding the various heroes who were already established as occupying other Earths in the DC multiverse, like the Justice Society and other Golden Age characters of Earth-Two, or the Fawcett characters like Captain Marvel and company, assigned to Earth-S. (A pair of other heroes from that time will turn up in the course of the story; just wait.)

That said, the inclusion of Plastic Man and the Blackhawks is curious. 

They all came from Quality Comics, the Golden Age adventures of which were apparently set on a theoretical "Earth-Quality" and, in 1973's Len Wein-written JLoA #107, a Nazi-ruled Earth-X occupied by the various Quality heroes (Plas and the Blackhawks appear in that issue, but only in flashback). 

I haven't similarly tracked the Blackhawks, but DC launched an ongoing Plastic Man comic in 1966, which was presumably set on Earth-One with the majority of the DC Comics line (although I have read that the series, like several other comedic DC comics, was set on an Earth-Twelve...?). And then there are Plas' various Brave and The Bold appearances, of which there were three prior to this issue of JLoA, to deal with. 

I guess there are, therefore, at least three, possibly four Plastic Mean in the DC Multiverse, then...? (The original of Earth-Quality, an alternate one from Earth-X, that of Earth-One and possibly an Earth-Twelve Plas.)

One can see why DC felt a multiverse streamlining crisis was needed about a decade later. 

Anyway, this massive assemblage of heroes broke up into three smaller teams. Plastic Man, The Blackhawks and Jimmy Olsen followed one lead, which lead them to almost encounter Rip Hunter. Robotman, Vigilante, The Challs, Lois Lane and Congo Bill and Congorilla followed another, which lead them to almost encounter Adam Strange. And, finally, the heroes who would eventually form the Justice League, along with Raymond, Robin and Rex, followed another, which lead them to Ferris Air test pilot Hal Jordan, and the Martians.

After a brief battle, the heroes defeat the White Martians, rescue the green one and plan future public relations. J'onn decides to stay on Earth, which he has come to love, and which he believes, in his words, needs a Manhunter from Mars. 

Given the anti-Martian hysteria of the previous pages, though, Aquaman suggests J'onn allow for a six-month cool-off period before coming out, and Wonder Woman adds that, when he does, "it could be with the backing of all of us".

"You know, we ought to form a club, or society...!" Superman suggests. While Batman says he's not much of a joiner, Flash argues the point: "But Batman-- A league against evil! Our purpose would be to uphold justice against whatever threatens it!"

And so it's decided that these heroes would form a league to uphold justice in six months' time...Hal Jordan and Roy Raymond, who were present for the discussion, both swearing secrecy. 

The eventual line-up of the Justice League, this story suggests, seems to have been determined by who just so happened to be on the team that followed one of the three leads in this adventure. Had the team's divided up slightly differently, Plastic Man or Robotman or Congorilla or Vigilante could have ended up on the team. (Of course, Plastic Man would eventually join the team, in 1997's JLA #5, and Congorilla would join around 2010's Justice League of America #41 or so, after appearing in the troubled 2009 miniseries Justice League: Cry for Justice. As for Vig, he never made it into a comics League, but he was an unlikely inclusion on 2004-2006's cartoon Justice League Unlimited's massive line-up).

Of course, the book doesn't explain why Robin wouldn't be offered membership, or, for that matter, Rex, who found the Martians in the first place...

I guess the Justice League must have put a "No Dogs Allowed" sign in front of their Happy Harbor headquarters...?

(If you would like to read the issue for yourself, it looks like it's been collected twice before, in 2018's Justice League of America: The Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 2 and in 2020's Justice League of America: A Celebration of 60 Years, the latter of which is where I read it. I'm hopeful DC will collect the issue, and most of the Satellite Era, in future volumes of their DC Finest series, though...)

On Justice League: Their Greatest Triumphs

This bargain-priced 170-page, $9.99 trade paperback seems to have been assembled specifically to give retailers something to point anyone interested in DC's premiere super-team because of next month's movie towards.

As a long-time fan of the Justice League, I was pretty curious about its contents, as "greatest hits" collections are almost never actually that. Given that their limited page-count, they are inevitably limited to single-issue stories, and the editors generally stick to in-continuity, relevant stories rather than looking to something from, say, a comic based on a cartoon or in an alternate universe (So I wouldn't expect anything from Justice League Adventures or Justice League Unlimited, or from Adventures in The DC Universe or the Paul Dini/Alex Ross one-shot JLA: Liberty & Justice).

Of course, the sub-title here doesn't necessarily promise the greatest or best stories, but the greatest "triumphs," whatever exactly that might mean (Given that they are limited to one-issue stories, though, it's not like they can actually include their greatest triumphs, as those generally come at the end of stories of some scope and size. I guess they could use the final issues of story arcs like "Rock of Ages"...?).

These sorts of books also generally reveal more about where the publisher's collective head is regarding a franchise: What they consider the best or most important stories, which iterations of the League are the most important or relevant ones, which characters and creators they find important or relevant to the line at the moment. I knew without even cracking it I was probably going to disagree with many of the inclusions.

Looking solely at the table of contents, there are only three distinct teams or "eras" represented: Grant Morrison's "Big Seven Plus" roster (although nothing actually written by Morrison is included), Brad Meltzer's short-lived, one-arc team and Geoff Johns' post-Flashpoint team. To the extent that any earlier iteration of the team exist, it is only in flashback form in the Meltzer-written issue.

The average age of the stories is nine-years-old, with a Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo and Walden Wong story from 1999 being the oldest, and a Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques and Scott Hanna story from 2016 being the most recent. Geoff Johns scripted three of the seven issues, with the four other writers each getting an issue a piece of the remaining ones. Three of the stories are set before Flashpoint, the other four in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe.

What accounts for the selection? The heavy representation of Johns feels slightly icky given his current prominence in the publisher's leadership--President & Chief Creative Officer--so it feels a little like flattering the boss. On the other hand, from what we know of the upcoming movie, it seems to be somewhat inspired by Johns' first Justice League story (which was also the basis of the direct-to-DVD animated film, Justice League: War), and the film's line-up reflects the post-Flashpoint, Geoff Johns inclusion of Cyborg on the team (aside from a weird, seemingly aborted line-up initiated by James Robinson, Cyborg was never on the team until Johns' relaunch).

It's possible the specific stories are included to offer suggestions of villains in the movie, but that actually seems a little unlikely, as in addition to a Parademon or two, these include The White Martians, The Construct, Ocean Master, a couple of cameos by Crime Syndicate of America and whatever the hell was going on in Bryan Hitch's first "Rebirth" Justice League arc.

Here are the comics included within...

Justice League #1
By Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair

This is the 2011 first issue of the previous Justice League series, the official launch of The New 52. Despite having the New 52 version of a Big Seven on the cover--all of whom are appearing in the film, save Green Lantern Hal Jordan--the actual issue just features Batman, Jordan and, on the last page, Superman. A pre-Cyborg Victor Stone makes an appearance (in his origin for the League, Johns tied Cyborg's origin to the invasion of Apokolips and the formation of the team), as does a Parademon or two.

Given the collection's sub-title, it seems like a random choice, with the final issue of the arc seemingly a better one (That at least features the whole roster, as well as Darkseid). Johns and Lee, another DC Comics executive, only collaborated on two story arcs, neither of which is very good, and neither of which was broken into strong individual chapters in such a way that would make the inclusion of any single issue read smoothly all on its own.

So on the one hand, while I totally get why a chapter of this arc is in here--it's Johns and Lee, it's apparently a pretty strong inspiration for the film--it also doesn't make much sense at all to include it here.

If a reader wants to find out what happens next, this story is collected as Justice League Vol. 1: Origin.

JLA #33
By Mark Waid, Mark Pajarillo, Walden Wong and John Kalisz

This one actually kind of baffles me. Waid did have a decently well-written run on JLA, picking up the baton from Grant Morrison at the conclusion of Morrison's World War III arc. Waid's run kicked off with a pretty great, over-sized original graphic novel with Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary (JLA: Heaven's Ladder), and  then ran through issues #43-60 of the ongoing monthly title. Unfortunately, the art was a mess, as he was officially teamed with Hitch, who was unable to ever complete an arc (In that sense, the Waid/Hitch run peaked before it even began, as Heaven's Ladder was the only complete story Hitch managed, start to finish).

Waid was writing JLA stories before his run began though. In addition to scripting the prequel miniseries A Midsummer's Nightmare and then JLA: Year One, he wrote two great, two-issue fill-in arcs during Morrison's run, and returned again for two-issue fill-in stint in 1999, featuring two done-in-one-ish stories that kinda sorta dealt with the "No Man's Land" mega-story in the Batman titles. This was the last Waid-scripted fill-in, and it was penciled by then frequent JLA fill-in artist, Mark Pajarillo.

A follow-up to Morrison's first arc, which had the League re-forming to stave off a White Martian invasion, this issue has Batman assigning then-Leaguers Orion, Big Barda, Steel, Plastic Man and Green Lantern Kyle Rayner to investigate Bruce Wayne (actually a White Martian assuming Wayne's identity), while Superman and Wonder Woman investigate The (or is it "a"...?) Flash, a new version with a new costume who was refusing to reveal his true identity to just about everyone.

This was a fun story in several ways, including Pajarillo's drawings of Orion fighting with the tuxedo he goes undercover in, and one of Plas' skeeviest disguises as an inanimate object, plus an overall weird grouping of heroes interacting in the ways that Morrison's ongoing narrative rarely allowed for. It's still a weird choice for the book, though. Not only do few of these heroes seem to appear in the film, but it ties in to a couple of pretty specific and temporary plot points from other comics.

If DC wanted to choose a Waid-written issue, JLA #50 might have been a good one, as it was a stock-taking issue that transitioned between the arc that had just ended and the one that was beginning (and featured bearded Aquaman; he is clean shaven and short-haired in all of these issues), and aside from a compelling cliffhanger, it had some pretty classic Justice League-ing.

The best done-in-one, fill-in from during Morrison's run, however, was probably JLA #27, by Mark Millar, Pajarillo and Wong.

Essentially an Atom story, it features classic Justice League villain Amazo and the entire Justice League reserves (i.e. everyone that was a Leaguer and was still alive at the time) showing up before it's all over. It's a very clever story, too, harkening back to classic, Silver Age League comics. It feels weird suggesting anyone read a Millar comic in 2017, but this was back in the days when Millar seemed to really want to be a comic book writer, before he realized he could used comics as a stepping stone to Hollywood films, and started turning his Elseworlds pitches into analogue comics to entice filmmakers into adapting them.

Morrison had a lot of great short stories, but these were generally two issues long, rather than a single issue long. The only done-in-one of his I can think of is JLA #5, which was full of guest-stars and had some good Martian Manhunter moments but, for the most part, was a Superman and Tomorrow Woman story. Unfortuantely, Superman was going through his electric phase at that point, so I wonder if it would just confuse and repel readers of this particular trade collection...?

At any rate, I'd recommend one read the entirety of the Morrison run and, once that's finished, check out the Waid run as well...or, at the very least, Heaven's Ladder.

Justice League of America #1 #0
By Brad Meltzer, Eric Wight, Ed Benes, Alex Sinclair, and a whole bunch of artists

Huh. That's weird. The table of contents refers to this as Justice League of America #1, the first chapter of Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes and company's "The Tornado's Path" story arc, but it's actually JLoA #0. This was the start of prose novelist-turned-terrible-comics writer Brad Meltzer's run on the newly relaunched JLoA in 2006. Following the events of Infinite Crisis, this over-sized issue was mainly a vehicle for an exploration of Justice League history, as revised on the fly by Meltzer, although because it was coming off of a cosmic, continuity rejiggering, this time there was at least an in-universe explanation for the changes (Those in his Identity Crisis, on the other hand, were just mistakes).

Among those changes was to reinstate Wonder Woman as an original member of the Justice League of America--following Crisis On Infinite Earths, Black Canary II was a founding member in Wondy's stead, as Wonder Woman was being introduced into the DCU for the first time in the then-new continuity--and this issue was basically Meltzer having the "Trinity" of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman getting together to discuss who should be on the new Justice League of America line-up, flashing back to various meetings between the three at various points in DC history as it existed at that point and, oddly, a few glimpses into future meetings of the three.

It is mainly noteworthy for all the great artists involved. Ed Benes, who would be Meltzer's main pencil artist for the remainder of the writer's short, 12-issue run, drew many of the modern day scenes, and Eric Wight drew many of the earliest past scenes, with an all-star roster drawing everything in between. Among the artists were those who had worked on previous runs of Justice League comics before, including Kevin Maguire, Dan Jurgens, Howard Porter and George Perez.

In that respect, it is probably a good issue to include in here. If you want to find out what happens following this story, and I wouldn't recommend it, you can check out Justice League of America Vol. 1: The Tornado's Path. In retrospect, the most interesting thing Meltzer brought to the franchise was including new blood in the form of Black Lightning, Hawkgirl and Arsenal-turned-Red Arrow Roy Harper, but the line-up Meltzer spent 12 issues gradually assembling would begin being dismantled almost immediately.

This volume of the League book ultimately lasted five years and 60-issues, and featured work from talented writers like the late, great Dwayne McDuffie and James Robinson, but it was a complete mess, and perhaps the nadir of League history. (Seriously; I'll reread the Detroit Era and Extreme Justice before looking at these comics again.)

Justice League #16
By Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Rod Reis

This is a particularly perplexing inclusion, as it is the third chapter of the six-part Justice League/Aquaman crossover "Throne of Atlantis," and, as such, doesn't really stand on its own at all. The basic story is that Aquaman's evil brother Orm, AKA "Oceanmaster," is leading the armies of Atlantis against the United States and the Justice League, and Aquaman is caught in the middle. In this particular chapter, he fights Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, while Cyborg is trying to sort everything else out elsewhere.

"Throne" was a pretty decent story, maybe the best of Johns' run, and Reis' pencil art was pretty great, but as just a single chapter, this is kind of a pointless read as anything other than perhaps an enticement to buy the trade it is collected in (Actually, this story appears in two different trades, both of which reprint the entire thing, which I imagine must have been awfully fucking frustrating for anyone following both of the Johns-written series in trade; Justice League Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis and Aquaman Vol. 3: Throne of Atlantis). It does feature characters that appear in the film, so I guess there is that.

Justice League #29
By Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne, Christian Alamy and Rod Reis

This is the final inclusion from Johns' Justice League, a 2015 issue tie-in to that year's Forever Evil event series, which was also written by Johns. It has a rather striking cover, featuring the Metal Men appearing in the shapes of the Justice Leaguers, but little else to recommend it. It is basically a Cyborg solo story, and sees Vic recruiting Doc Magnus and The Metal Men to help him take on The Grid, the evil version of Cyborg that was colluding with the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3.

If you read this and find yourself dying to know what happens next (and I can't imagine you will), then it is included in context in Justice League Vol. 5: Forever Heroes, and you'll probably also want to check out the poorly-drawn Forever Evil collection.

JLA #107
By Kurt Busiek, Ron Garney, Dan Green and David Baron

So, if you had asked me at the time who should follow Mark Waid on JLA, I would have told you that Kurt Busiek would have been the ideal choice. Instead, DC chose Joe Kelly, a writer who wouldn't have even been on my radar at the time, but who nevertheless turned out a remarkably strong 30-issue run on JLA, which then continued into his Justice League Elite book and then returned for a single issue of JLA before reaching its conclusion. That was probably the last high-quality run on a League book until...well, I don't think anyone's matched it since, actually.

For whatever reason, DC de-emphasized the importance of JLA around 2004, perhaps because they were focused on Identity Crisis and the ramp-up to Infinite Crisis. The result was about two years in which the book became an anthology series, with different arcs by different creators, few of which had anything to do with one another, let alone with the DC Universe at large: Denny O'Neil and Tan Eng Huat did a forgettable two-parter; John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Jerry Ordway did a barely readable seven-part storyline that included a soft reboot of the Doom Patrol; Chuck Austen and Ron Garney did a series of solo stories which kind of defeated the purpose of the book (all of these character already had at least one solo book at the time, after all, with the exception of Martian Manhunter) and then there was "Syndicate Rules," of which this is the first chapter.

If anyone was still paying attention to JLA, they would have been rewarded with this eight-part story written by Busiek (finally!) and penciled by Garney, featuring a rematch with the Crime Syndicate, the first since Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely reintroduced them in their original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2. Entitled "Maintenance Day," it featured what was left of the Big Seven version of the League, which now included Green Lantern Jon Stewart in for Kyle Rayner and The Atom apparently out of his self-enforced semi-retirement.

While the storyline would eventually grow pretty epic in scope, this first issue is kind of a low-key start, a day-in-the-life type of story in which the impatient Flash Wally West and Martian Manhunter perform a series of tasks needed to keep the Justice League's lunar Watchtower in working order. This includes a conflict with The Construct.

It was a strong enough story arc that it became all the more depressing that the JLA/Avengers writer never had a proper run on JLA, but he would kinda sorta get his chance a few years later with the weekly Trinity series. To read all of "Syndicate Rules," you can try to track down the out-of-print JLA: Syndicate Rules trade or JLA Vol. 9, which includes it along with Geoff Johns and Allen Heinberg's Identity Crisis tie-in, "Crisis of Conscience."

Justice League: Rebirth #1
By Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Scott Hanna and Alex Sinclair

No, I don't know why these books aren't presented in anything approaching chronological order, but instead keep jumping back and forth.

After his poor showing as the pencil artist during Mark Waid's run on JLA, and a rather poor showing as a writer/artist on his own book entitled Justice League of America (which he hadn't yet finished when this series launched), Bryan Hitch got another crack at the League with the relaunched, "Rebirth" version of the title. The line-up was essentially the same as it was when Johns and Lee relaunched the rebooted League in 2011, only instead of one Green Lantern in Hal Jordan, they now had two Green Lanterns in new, Johns-created characters Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz. Oh, and instead of New 52 Superman, they now had pre-Flashpoint, post-Convergence Superman. What his deal was would eventually all get ironed out in the Superman books, but, at this point, much of the character's interactions with his teammates were colored in distrust, as they didn't know who exactly he was or understand what the fuck was going on with Superman continuity (Join the club, Justice League!).

As with all of Hitch's League writing to date, I read this--three times now!--and couldn't really tell you what happened in it, or why. It's all apocalyptic, wide-screen, disaster picture stuff, but it is also strangely boring, lifeless and unsubstantial. If you read the chapter and find yourself intrigued, however, you can see how it all plays out in the pages of Justice League Vol. 1: The Extinction Machines.