"The Great Super-Star Game!" from 1976's DC Super Stars #10

When I was working on that post about Plastic Man team-ups a few months ago, I plugged "Plastic Man" into the Grand Comics Database and scanned his various appearances to see if I was missing anything. Among the Plastic Man appearances that turned up was 1976's DC Super-Stars #10, in which he was one of nine superheroes playing baseball against a team of supervillains. (The story was reprinted a few years later in 1981's DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #13, which has a far better cover, upon which Plas and most of the other characters appear.)

The story didn't really seem to fit the criteria for a Plastic Man team-up that I had established for that post—that is, rather than featuring Plastic Man teaming up with one or two other characters, he was part of an ensemble cast—so I didn't pursue it too urgently, but I remained curious about it. Partially because it seemed like a weird place for Plastic Man to show up and partially because a superhero vs. supervillain baseball game was obviously intriguing. 

Well, it took a while, but I finally found a copy.

The story is the work of writer Bob Rozakis, pencil artist Dick Dillin and inker Frank McLaughlin, and it's an odd one, right from the get-go. It opens with a scene of...domestic violence....?

After an opening splash page detailing the two teams' line-ups and positions (above), not unlike an issue of a Justice League comic might start with a roll call, we get a panel of the exterior of a house, from which argumentative dialogue bubbles seem to be coming. A caption reads, "One of the sounds of the suburbs--or the city, for that matter--a husband-and-wife shouting match!"

The next panel reveals who the husband and wife are, Golden Age villains Sportsmaster and The Huntress, both of whom are in full costume for some reason (Probably because it's 1976, and superhero comics were still just for kids?). They seem to be doing more than just shouting, though. The Huntress (the villainess in the animal print bathing suit, not one of the later purple-clad heroines to use that name) is holding up a chair like a lion tamer might to fend off a big cat, while Sportsmaster is swinging a tennis racket at her ("I just want to knock some sense into your head!" he shouts).

And what are they fighting about? Well, The Huntress is arguing that superheroes always win and supervillains always lose (Fact check: True), and thus she wants to switch sides and become a good guy, to which Sportsmaster objects ("Over my dead body!"). 

To prove that bad guys can sometimes win, he proposes a hero vs. villain baseball game. She picks a team of heroes, he picks a team of villains; if her side wins, she can become a crime-fighter, while if his team wins, she sticks with him.

The next eight pages shows the couple doing their recruiting. Using some sort of never explained equipment, they spy on various heroes and villains and then teleport them to the baseball stadium where the game is to be played. Conveniently, the heroes and villains are all grouped together, and each at some sort of sporting event. 

So, for example, Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen and Dinah Lance are all at a Gotham City bowling tournament when The Joker and Matter Master show up to steal the prize money. 

Plastic Man is quite literally hanging out with Wonder Woman at a United Nations soccer championship, where upon her first appearance you might notice something off about her (See the first panel below). Though her lasso is glowing with a yellow aura, it seems miscolored, red instead of yellow. This is not a mistake, though.

When Weather Wizard and Chronos appear to steal the championship's platinum trophy, Wondy goes for her lasso and discovers that it's actually Plastic Man! 

They're mid-fight when Sportsmaster and Huntress "Pop" them.

And is it just me, or does Plas' tornado maneuver here make no sense...? Like, I can see that he uses his arms to form the shape of a tornado, but I don't get how that would actually suck up the gas or blow it away. He could have transformed into a big fan or something to dispel the gas, but how exactly does this work...? (Or, wait, on third thought, did Weather Wizard make Plas start spinning with his spell two panels previous, and so his arms aren't merely in the shape of a tornado, but are actually still spinning like a tornado in that panel...? I guess that could make some sort of sense...)

Let us here pause to note how unusual the superhero team is. While some of DC's most popular superheroes are present, it's clear Rozakis didn't choose, say, the nine most popular heroes. Nor do these nine necessarily have anything in common. Sure, most of them are Justice Leaguers, but there are also a pair of Teen Titans and a pair of Golden Age heroes from Quality Comics that weren't known to hang out with the Justice Leaguers all that often at that point.

So, we've got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Robin, Kid Flash, Plastic Man and Uncle Sam, the last of whom will serve as an umpire given that he is, as Wonder Woman says, "the most honest, trustworthy man alive!"

(Note the editorial box at the bottom of the panel; perhaps that's why Uncle Sam is here; DC could have been using the appearance to help promote the short-lived, 15-issue Freedom Fighters book).

In the next panel, Luthor chooses the bad guys' umpire: "I can't vouch for Amazo's honesty--but since he's an android, he'll have to call them as he sees them!" 

As to why everyone agrees to play in the first place, well, the villains seem taken by Sportsmaster's argument that, if his team wins, it will prove that bad guys really can win, and, as for the heroes, Huntress has (somehow) filled the stands with hypnotized victims who, we're told, will remain there forever if the heroes refuse to play.

To make the game completely uninteresting, no one is allowed to use their powers. 

Rozakis seems to have tumbled on the fact that such a baseball game won't therefore be any more interesting to read a comic book story about than any actual baseball game would, and so a single page montage takes us through the first eight innings ("Readers interested in knowing the complete play-by-play of the game can find it on our text page, elsewhere in this issue!" an editorial note from "Julie" says; indeed, as editor Julius Schwartz promises, there's an all-text breakdown of the game in the back, which I suppose was fun to imagine and write. Maybe to read too, if one were the least bit interested in baseball but, well, this one isn't.)

So, in the ninth inning, the losing villains finally resort to using their powers and gadgets, and some of the heroes similarly use theirs. There are only five pages devoted to this inning, but at least they are a bit more interesting than they might have been sans powers.

Here's Plastic Man, using his powers to first trick and then tag out Sportsmaster:

And so, the heroes win 11 to 10, and then everyone POPs back to where Sportsmaster and Huntress found them, to finish up their battles, which the heroes also handily win (Wonder Woman lassoing Chronos and Weather Wizard with Plas). We see the climax or end of each of these in another montage.

And does The Huntress go straight and become a superhero? Do she and Sportsmaster get a divorce? Unclear. 

I suppose the fact that the creators spend as much time gathering the heroes and villains as they do detailing their game reveals that this was more of a fun idea for a story than it is a fun story, but it's certainly an interesting curio, and I remain fascinated by the choices of heroes included, like using Plastic Man and Uncle Sam instead of, say, Hawkman and Aquaman, or in choosing Kid Flash over The Flash...

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You know, after reading this, I kind of want to tackle my longboxes and see if I can dig up 1994's Showcase '94 #3 and #4, in which Alan Grant and Tim Sale tell a two-part story of a softball game between the Arkham Asylum inmates and the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary. 

Unlike "The Great Super-Star Game!", it's actually as fun as it sounds, if I recall correctly. And check out Kyle Baker's cover for #4:

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...)

Muddying the waters

In Savage Tales #1, cover-dated May 1971, Marvel comics readers were introduced to Man-Thing, a shambling swamp creature created when a chemist working in a laboratory in the swamp had a terrible accident with some of his chemicals, and fused with the muck of the swamp. In House of Secrets #92, cover-dated July 1971, DC comics readers were introduced to Swamp Thing, a shambling swamp creature created when a chemist working in a laboratory in the swamp had a terrible accident with some of his chemicals and fused with the muck of the swamp.

Man-Thing—created by Stan Lee, who came up with the name, and Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and Gray Morrow—has the earlier cover date, which would seemingly make Swamp Thing the imitator, although complicating things a bit was the fact that one of Man-Thing's creators, Conway, was living with one of Swamp Thing's creators, Len Wein, at the time. Wein also wrote Man-Thing stories in the early'70s.

Despite the many similarities, the fact that the two characters came out almost simultaneously has generally been regarded by people who care to think of such things as just one of those weird coincidences that occasionally occur when you have two rival comic book companies who share a city, talent pool and audience. (The other most prominent example is probably Marvel and DC's dueling teams of outsider superheroes lead by middle-aged men in wheelchairs, The Doom Patrol and The X-Men, which debuted three months apart in 1963).

I've recently been working my way through Showcase Presents: Justice League America Vol. 5, and had just arrived at JLoA #91, which contains this panel: Forgive the poor scan (The Showcase Presents line is full of great blog fodder, but very, very difficult to scan images from if they fall too close to the middle of the book). As you can hopefully make out, the narration box refers to Solomon Grundy as "The Macabre Man-Thing."

Writer Mike Friedrich is quite enamored of the expression, using it over and over during the course of the two-part story that begins in JLoA #91 and continues into JLoA #92. In fact, I counted five references to Grundy as a "Man-Thing" in Friedrich's narration (followed up by "Marshland Monster" and "Swampland Savage").

These two issues were cover-dated August and September of 1971, mere months after Man-Thing appeared in a Marvel comic, although JLoA writers have been referring to Grundy as a "Man-Thing" for years prior (Also of interest: Friedrich dedicated his two-part story to Roy Thomas, who, as we already mentioned, helped create Man-Thing, although Friedrich's dedication was for introducing him to the Golden Age JSA characters, and thus not swamp monster related). Here's a panel from a collection reprinting the Gardner Fox-written "Crisis Between Earth-One and Earth-Two!" that was originally published in 1966's JLoA #46 and #47 (which I discussed at some length here):That's Fox calling Solomon Grundy "The Macabre Man-Thing" some five years before Marvel's Man-Thing appeared in Savage Tales. Did Stan Lee steal, or unknowingly appropriate, the nickname of a DC swamp monster to give to a brand new Marvel swamp monster?

Maybe...but probably not. A Marvel's 1960-published Tales of Suspense #7 featured a story called "I Fought The Molten Man-Thing!," which was also the cover feature:Jack Kirby drew that particular story, and Stan Lee edited that comic, and thus might have written or dialogued that story. So maybe Stan Lee borrowed the name from himself...or from Kirby...? But let's not get into that here. Anyway, that's as far back as I can trace the etymology of the name "Man-Thing."

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Speaking of Marvel and Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 5, it was interesting to come across this panelin a DC comic. It's from JLoA #95, which contained the story "The Private War of Johnny Dune!" (Also written by Friedrich, and, like the black and white Grundy panels above, drawn by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella).

Johnny Dune is a Vietnam vet turned protest singer with the ability to control people with his voice. Where did he get this miraculous super-power? He was apparently born with it. He was a mutant.

Mutants are, of course, Marvel's thing, and though there are mutants in the DCU, and one does see the word used to refer to characters here and there throughout DCU history, this is a pretty rare example of a Marvel-like mutant. That is, an otherwise normal-looking person getting a super-power during a time of stress basically for no reason other than possibly genetics. Super powers in the DC Universe generally require an origin of some sort.

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Justice League of America #91-#92 is of interest for more reasons than the number of times their writer called Solomon Grundy "Man-Thing." They're also the story in which Robin Dick Grayson gets a new costume from his older, extra-dimensional counterpart that none of the readers seem to like very much.

Those issues were one of the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, in which the Justice Leaguers of Earth-1 (i.e. the "real" DC Universe of the time, where the majority of the line was set) and the Justice Society members of Earth-2 (a parallel universe where the Golden Age characters lived). The JSA brought along their Robin this time, and he meets up with his Earth-1 counterpart, who has torn his uniform.Luckily, he has a spare:Dick seems to like it okaybut I guess readers didn't. Near the end of the story, Robin thinks to himself, "Well, back to my interrupted case--and my original uniform! Funny thing, though--I kinda like this one--I just may keep it!"

A narration box at the bottom of the same panel asks, "What do you think, readers? Would you like Robin to switch to this new costume? Write us--Let us know!"

I assume few wrote in to say he should keep it, as this is the only time I've seen the costume. It looks better in black and white than in color, I think, but I don't care for the Gambit-like mask-thing. Interesting to see the ways in which it presages some of the Nightwing costumes he'd wear years later, especially in the gliding feature.

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Finally, here's a splash panel from the first page of JLoA #94, one of the several pages in it drawn by Neal Adams: The narration begins like this: "A simple man...a simple face."

Man, that face is many things, but simple it is not.

Green Arrow, possessive a-hole

Earth is under threat from a series of strange disasters, and so then-chairman of the Justice League Green Lantern Hal Jordan summons the rest of the League, and then splits them up into teams to investigate.

Black Canary and Green Arrow join Batman in the cockpit of the Bat-plane, where GA is a little annoyed that everyone's not paying attention to him: What are they thinking about, that's so much more interesting than how happy GA is to be flying a plane again?

Well, here's what's on Batman's mind: The two kissed briefly on the JLA satellite a few adventures ago, before "the slashing sword of guilt" caused them to break their embrace and apologize profusely to one another.

Once they land, Black Canary tries to have a semi-private word with Batman, which Green Arrow—who has no idea the two ever kissed, or that Batman once had something of a crush on Canary—freaks out:
Green Arrow gives them a whole three panels before he starts yelling at them:And, after all that, he still borrows Batman's plane.


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Panels originally from 1971's Justice League of America #88, drawn by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella and written by Mike Friedrich, although the above were scanned from the 2011 collection Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 5, which is awesome and DC should totally keep publishing future volumes of it until they hit 1987's Justice League of America #261.

"Why is this man grinning?"

IS IT BECAUSE HE'S SO PROUD OF HIS GIGANTIC HANDLEBAR MUSTACHE?!

I assume it is because of his mustache, since Superman gets his powers back, Captain Comet regained control of his powers (and kicked the villain's ass) and the sinister plan to dominate the world totally failed.



("Amazing New Super-Villain" Starstriker and his amazing new mustache were drawn by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin in DC Comics Presents #22, which is collected in Showcase Presents: DC Comics Presents—Superman Team-Ups Vol. 1).

Satellite Spotlight: Justice League of America #78-#79

Last month we took a look at Justice League of America #61, by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. It was the first issue collected in Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 4, and I talked a little bit about how interesting that particular volume was, as it contained between its covers the the transitional issues in which the Silver Age slowly became the Bronze Age, how a reader today could pick up this volume and see the characterizations and relationships that defined these characters coming to be, and, perhaps more interestingly, watch writer Denny O'Neil struggle with the conventions of his medium as he tried to tell more sophisticated, relevant stories.

The two-part story that ran in JLoA #78 and #79 is a pretty good example of this phenomenon, as it's chockful of instances of the title's growing pains. In the preceding issue, O'Neil did away with the team's longtime sidekick Snapper Carr and the original Happy Harbor headquarters, and in #78, he unveils their new HQ, making this issue the very dawn of what we now refer to as "The Satellite Era."

So let's take a look at this important moment in Justice League history, starting with "The Coming of the Doomsters," featuring art by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, and a not-terribly-representative-of-the-actual-contents cover by Gil Kane.

I mean, yeah, Vigilante does appear in the story, and the JLA do beam themselves up to their new satellite HQ, but it wasn't to quit earth while people were passing out all around them. If I had paid fifteen cents for this in 1970, I would have been so pissed off! And then I would have gone to visit my dad in high school.

It opens with the sort of purple narration I wish I could say I never see in comics any more: "Night has fallen on Star City...a night as bleak and chill as a dream of death! A solitary figure moves through the jungle of the slums, vigilant, alert..."

This vigilant, alert, solitary figure belongs to Green Arrow, who is frustrated by all the smog, which makes it "like a patrolling in a sack;" he can't see a thing! Of course, it's also night time. That might have something to do with the poor visibility.

The be-goateed hero can still hear though, and the sound of gunshots draws him to a nearby factory, where a night watchman is battling some armed thugs, and doesn't seem to be in need of any help from GA. Nevertheless, our hero decides to shoot a flare arrow up into the air, to "shed some needed light on the smoggy situation," but, unfortunately, it falls into a nearby river, and sets the polluted water ablaze, Cuyahoga River style!

Way to go, hero. Green Arrow calls his more effective friends Superman and Green Lantern, and they put out the blaze. Together the trio fly off, leaving the watchmen running after them with a briefcase, thinking, "They didn't hear!" That seems rather unlikely, since Supermman has super-hearing.

"Dang...I gotta find 'em," his ominous thought balloon continues ominously, "The whole future of the human race may depend on it--!"

Meanwhile, Superman and Green Lantern take Green Arrow—and through him, the readers—through the process of commuting to their new satellite headquarters. Where to find half of a Thanagarian Relativity-Beam System, how it will verify his identity and teleport him to the satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,3000 miles above the United States, showing him a map of the joint, and so on.

I like this sequence because it means that the whole Justice League got together and decided to build a brand new headquarters in outer space and no one even told Green Arrow until it was completely finished.

Just then, the Atom reminds GA that they have to make a public appearance in Star City, and Black Canary heads towards the teleportation cylinder, saying "Will someone descend with me? I'm still spooked by super-scientific gadgets..."

Green Arrow sees an opening:
He's so smooth, it's no wonder she ended up marrying him. Actually, dig how completely unimpressed whe is with him in that panel, despite how intense his face is while he delivers his come-on/joke.

Back in Star City, it's a very slow news days
so the Star City Gazette goes with a headline-only front page, which is lucky for the night watchman, who was looking for the JLA.

Less lucky for him? A car full of thugs with machine guns attack him, but he's able to shoot out one of their tires and make his escape.

Cut to the ballroom of an expensive hotel, where a $100-a-plate charity banquet is being held, featuring the Justice League:
Apparently, this is shortly after Green Arrow changed costumes and grew his goatee, as everyone keeps talking about it.

Superman introduces the League's newest—and prettiest—member:
This story apparently takes place around the time when Superman was still crushing pretty hard on Black Canary.

The crowd calls for a speech, but Canary's just a dizzy dame, how could she possibly string together enough words to deliver a speech?
In fact, she's such a dizzy dame that a halo of dizziness emanates from her head.

Canary is saved from public speaking when the night watchman rushes in, demanding that the League "powwow" with him about "a mess of owlhoot," owlhoots who are right behind him, with guns drawn. The League vanquishes them, and Superman's x-ray vision reveals they are actually robots who are about to self-destruct.

They take the night watchman up to the satellite, and learn that he's really Greg Sanders, the retired crime fighter who used to go by name The Vigilante. Apparently, he got sick of being a cowboy-themed superhero, and decided to move to Star City and become a night watchman for some dumb reason.

The factory he worked at was might strange though. It was always running, day and night, shooting soot into the air and dumping waste into the river. Eventually he learned that the pollution wasn't a byproduct of production, it was production: He was guarding a pollution factory!

He managed to get his hands on some documents, including the formulas for the pollution the factory was making, and a star map.

The team decides to split up, with GL and Superman seeing where the map leads, and Vigilante and the others checking out the factory. Green Arrow decides that rather than do any of that, he'll take the opportunity to tell off the city manager of Star City.

The city manager's second-in-command Jason Crass isn't terribly impressed by Green Arrow's claims that the factory is actually a pollution factory operated by robots at the behest of aliens from the Sirius star system.

Crass (Ha ha, subtlety!) takes the opportunity to make fun of Ollie's beard, making a point of saying he has time to shave, which seems odd, since Crass has a mustache himself.

GA commences with a sermon about pollution, which doesn't have much of anything to do with the sinister alien pollution factory in town: "Man, you are stupid! Look...in some cities the air is so foul that breathing is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes... And cigarettes are hazardous to health!"

Eventually Crass orders the city hall security guards to put GA in the slammer, although they ultimately let him go, despite his insinuation that they were Nazis.

Batman, Atom and Black Canary take Sanders to "a local western goods shop" where he finds everything he needs to reassemble his costume.
Black Canary tells him he looks very handsome in his costume, which may not actually be a compliment, considering the fact that his costume consists of a mask obscuring most of his face.

"At that instant, many light-years distant," GL and Superman arrive at the fifth planet from the sun Sirius, a one-time earth-like planet which has been changed to "a gigantic trash-can!" What could have caused this devastation, and could it provide a teaching moment about the environment to the kids at home?

Maybe!

At the factory, Vigilante and the gang get captured, put in a big net, and are being slowly lowered into a vat of "bubbling, noxious...death." And that's where the issue ends! With a cliffhanger! Holy shit, is this the end of the Justice League?! Or at least three of 'em, plus Vigilante?!

No. Not it's not, as we discover in "Come Slowly Death, Come Slyly!" by the same creative team.
(This next issue's cover is by Neal Adams though. The focal point is clearly the dying Superman, directly appealing to the reader to stop pollution, but look at Hal in the background: He looks like he's going out big with a death scene he learned in an opera, but that's silly. Hal Jordan would never see an opera).

After a brief recap of the events of the previous issue, we follow Green Arrow as he runs from city hall to the pollution factory, arriving just in time to rescue his allies from the net-dipped-in-a-vat-of-death trap.

Once free, they attack the, um, the Doomsters. Check out this page:
Note how the characters can't simply crack wise while fighting the robots called the Doomsters who run a pollution factory for an alien, but they have to talk about how weird it is to be cracking wise, and justify and rationalize the comic book convention to each other.

Defeated, the Doomsters escape to a portion of the factory which is actually a rocket ship and blast themselves into space.

Even further out in space, GL and Superman finally find a survivor on the ruined planet in the Sirius system. This humanoid alien in on the way out too, but he has time to tell the story of his world and the Doomsters.

Once, the people of Monsan—that's the name of this planet, I guess—gloried in their industrial might, creating goods like crazy. Scientists warned that the were destroying the planet with pollution, but the government didn't pay any attention...until people started dropping dead and the planet dying. The evil leader Chokh (Get it?! Chokh!) used a radiation bath to transform himself and his followers into "Doomsters," able to survive in such an environment. Now they travel the galaxy for new worlds to pollute and conquer.

When that dude dies, Hal considers destroying the planet with his ring, but Superman wants him to leave it as it is, "a monument to mortal ignorance-- and a warning!"

Back in our own solar system, Chokh and his Doomsters seed the earth with pollution bombs that, in one hour's time, will release "total pollution!"

GL and Superman return, beat the shit out of all the Doomsters on their ship-disguised-as-a-factory, but they missed Chokh himself, who attacks the JLA satellite, and gets the upper hand. Waving a gun at them, he demands they open the airlock and throw themselves into space.

The Atom asks Batman to distract Chokh, and shrinks out of sight.

Bats and GA decide to distract the main Doomster with some soap opera shit:
That gives the microscopic Atom the one panel he needs to sneak across the room, enlarge and, ZOKK, punch out Chokh. The alien begs Green Arrow not to remove his mask, but GA does so anyway, and Chokh immediately chokes to death. See, fresh air is poisonous to him! Irony!

Finally, the earth is saved...

...or is it?!

"Hey Batman, have you seen The Atom anywhere? We were--Seven Hells!"

Way too many words about JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told

I was originally planning on reviewing JLA: The Greatest Stories Ever Told and Shazam!: The Greatest Stories Ever Told together, perhaps in the “Delayed Reaction” format I often use when writing about books that have been out for a while that I’m getting around to a little late. But when I started writing about the JLA one, and considering why the stories that were chose were chosen, it became evident that almost all of them were there to represent particular eras of the team, and I soon found myself getting sidetracked, and, well, this grew in the writing.

So, if you’ve got the patience, this is going to be one hella long post, I’m afraid.

As with all of DC’s Greatest Stories Ever Told collections, this is really more of a Greatest Short Stories From a Variety of Different Times and Creators That Don’t Belong in Any Other Trades Really So We Put ‘Em In Here collection. None of these are among the greatest JLA stories ever told, but they are, for the most part, pretty decent, and are all good examples of the contributions of particular creators.

It’s really more of a sample platter of Justice League history. If you like the Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky story, you’ll want to read Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol 1. If you like the Giffen/DeMatteis story, they have a JLI trade (or two) out (or coming out). Like the JLA stories? Every issue of that run is in trade. Like the Satellite Era stories? Well, tough; none of ‘em are in trade yet.

The book begins with a two-page origin of the League by Gerry Conway, George Perez and Brett Breeding, a story which is kind of like a condensed version of the Mark Waid/Barry Kitson JLA: Year One story, only with Wonder Woman standing in for Black Canary, who was standing in for Wonder Woman. That’s followed by a pretty thorough four page overview of Justice League publishing history by Mike Tiefenbacher, and then it’s on to seven stories spanning 40 years of publishing history, and a nice set of contributors’ bios at the end, which should be helpful to any new readers wanting to see what else this Grant Morrison character has written, for example.

Here’s what DC decided to include, and way too many words about each story…



“The Super-Exiles of Earth” (Justice League of America #19)

This 1963 Gardner Fox/Mike Sekowsky story is typical of Fox’s run, in that it is simultaneously stupid and brilliant at the same time, depending on what angle you regard it from. Recurring villain Dr. Destiny, whose powers are ever-changing and vague—but always derived from dreams and reality shaping—has caused the Leaguers to dream of themselves, and then bring their dream versions of themselves to life.

This created a League of “super-super heroes” who are “naturally” wicked, since Destiny is himself wicked. The wicked Dream League defeat the true League, since they are those heroes but slightly better, and then go about robbing banks. The real Justice League members are brought before a judge for the crimes, but settle on exile, since no prison can hold them.

Presiding over the case is future Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:


Ultimately, the League decides to return to earth but, so as not to break their promise to Scalia, they do so in their secret identities. At this point, the Leaguers didn’t know one another’s secret IDs, so this is a pretty big moment. It’s revealed in a wonderful two-panel sequence:

Good thing their spaceship had a hallway with eight rooms in it!

The secret identities fight the dream League, but are again outmatched, ultimately only triumphing when The Atom shrinks to microscopic size in order “to enter our dream selves’ brains undetected and unfelt—and perform delicate ‘operations’!”

So, essentially he lobotomizes them all, to the point they can’t control their bodies, and Superman heroically suggests the rest of them then “finish off” the feeble-minded versions of themselves.

This issue is pretty representative of the breathless, dream-like storytelling Fox engaged in, and the casual savagery of superheroics. Even in this era where “crime” consisted solely of bank robberies, and rape and murder weren’t on anyone’s minds, you still have the heroes triumphing through stealth lobotomy.

Rereading the from today’s perspective, what stands out most to me is that Fox’s hyperbolic storytelling was more or less standard for the era, but in today’s super-comics scene, it seems extraordinarily weird. People always talk about how insane Grant Morrison’s stories are—not just his Justice League stories, but all his superhero stories—and yet Morrison’s really just writing like a Fox in a post-Dark Knight/Watchmen/Maus world. In tone, pace, scope and scale, this reads just like a Morrison story, albeit one with much more narration and explanatory dialogue.

The other striking thing about this story is the way in which Fox undoes whatever changed in his story. Story-to-story continuity existed at that point—Dr. Destiny is in jail, right where the League sent him in a previous adventure—but changes came pretty slow back then. Here, the League out themselves to each other, but the last two panels have Superman explaining his going to fetch some Amnesium from his fortress to erase that info from all of their minds.

I’m not positive why this particular story was chosen over all the other Fox/Sekowsky ones; if I had to guess, I would guess that this issue was chosen in large part because featured the whole League (the Big Seven, plus Green Arrow and the Atom).

It sure gives Sekowsky a lot to draw. In addition to the full line-up—two full line-ups actually—he gets to draw two sets of the heroes in their secret identities, including some great panels of the evil secret identities (I particularly like evil Bruce Wayne in his ascot), and some cool shit like a cutaway of the crust of the earth after the bad League imprisons the good League under it, and a small army of Aquaman’s octopus friends carrying “art treasures” over their heads.
(Can you spot the billionaire in the above panel?)

I can’t think of an instance of DC later re-doing this story, or following up on it, but the scenes of the Silver Age League looting and robbing reminded me of Ty Templeton’s cover for Silver Age: Justice League of America #1, and during Mark Waid’s too-brief run on JLA, he wrote a four-part story in which the Justice Leaguers’ secret identities had to defeat self-dreamed versions of themselves.




“Snapper Carr—Super Traitor!” (Justice League of America #77)

The next story in the collection is from a 1969 issue, scripted by Denny O’Neil and drawn by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella.

Tonally, the book (like a lot of DC’s superhero comics) is now in that gawky, awkward phase, where they were becoming less full-on zany, and more imitative of Marvel’s superheroes-as-soap-operas-for-teenage-boys approach. The sensibilities were thus growing a lot more modern, but often these books seem more grating than Fox’s, if only because their more literary aspirations and their relative weaknesses give them an aura of pretentiousness (I don’t mean that in a bad way, necessarily; O’Neil’s pretentiousness at the time give his work here and elsewhere—particularly on the classic Green Lantern run—a particular, peculiar charm).

The story involves Snapper Carr, the only teenager who looks older and squarer than Jimmy Olsen, getting hassled for hanging out with those “freaks” like Superman and Wonder Woman. If it seems insane that the Justice League could be vilified as if they were the X-Men in the Marvel Universe, well, I thought so too—you can’t get any more establishment and mainstream than the JLA, even though they let Green Arrow stick around after he grew his goatee.

But hang on, O’Neil explains why they’re being vilified. These bullies are followers of John Dough, “otherwise known as ”Mr. Average”!-- The most normal man in America!” Dough is conducting a two-pronged PR campaign against the League; one-part propaganda, one-part mind-control technology. He got his hooks in the Justice League’s mascot Snapper Carr, turning him traitor.

It’s a pretty fleet story, and while it’s certainly not one of “the greatest,” it is something of a turning point in League history, ending with Green Arrow bemoaning the problems John Dough has caused them: “We’ve got to establish a new secret H.Q…our mascot is having the biggest trouble of his life…”

The League would shortly move to their space satellite headquarters, and things would be queered with Snapper from then on (this is his only appearances in this book, for example).

I don’t know how influential this particular issue was on the stories that followed; it came up in that stupid story involving the, um, Star Tsar, and was re-explored at length in an issue of Hourman, one of the best superhero comics DC ever cancelled.



“The Great Identity Crisis” (Justice League of America #122)

So, does that title sound familiar? And guess who the villain of the piece is? That’s right; Dr. Light. This story isn’t one that Brad Meltzer references in his Identity Crisis, but we’ll get to that one soon enough.

This is “an untold tale from the Justice League of America Casebook,” a short story by Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin pitting seven Leaguers against Dr. Light in Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, where the villain has launched an incredibly stupid plan (particularly for 1975).

He uses a mind-light gun, the aforementioned chunk of Amnesium and a special prism to steal the secret identities of the Justice Leaguers and then—and this is an idea with great story potential—completely scrambles them. So Oliver Queen puts on a lab coat and shows up at Ray “The Atom” Palmer’s university lab, thinking he’s research scientist Ray Palmer; billionaire Bruce Wayne thinks he’s Queen, and shows up at the tenement Ollie lives in, getting friendly with his poor neighbor, and so on.

Now, there are probably all kinds of ways to turn a profit and/or make life miserable for the Leaguers once you know their secret identities, but Light opts to bump them all off with elaborately prepared light traps.

They, of course, survive, and use the Amnesium to wipe Dr. Light’s mind (Hey, that sounds familiar), before Superman KRUNNNCHs it so it “will never confuse anyone again!” and Green Arrow proposes the Leaguers all learn one another’s secret IDs to prevent troubles like this in the future.

Then they all hold hands and agree:

This one may have been included in part to get another Dillin-drawn story in the trade. With an influential 12-year run on JLoA, he’s probably still the definitive Justice League artist; given how rarely most DC artists can draw 12 consecutive issues of a particular title, chances are that’s not going to change any time soon. (The current volume of Justice League of America has only been around for 22 issues so far, but in that time has had eight different pencil artists working on it).

I imagine Meltzer’s Identity Crisis had a lot to do with it too, given the mind-wiping, Dr. Light and the title and, perhaps, the revelation that the Leaguers know one another’s secret identities after all (one of the bigger stumbling blocks in the mystery aspects of IC was that it assumed that the Leaguers’ IDs were widely known among the superhero community and their loved ones, which wasn’t actually the case since the early ‘80s).




“The League That Defeated Itself" (Justice League of America #166-#168)

Now this, this is the story that seemed to have influenced Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis. In this 1979 three-parter by longtime League scribe Gerry Conway and the art team of Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin, The Secret Society of Super-Villains get their evil hands on a Bronze Age statue of a gryphon, and use its magical properties to switch their minds with those of some of the Justice Leaguers, Freaky Friday style.

So now The Wizard, Star Sapphire, The Reverse Flash, The Floronic Man and Blockbuster reside in the bodies of Superman, Zatanna, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Wonder Woman and Batman, and vice versa.

This is the story alluded to in flashback in the pages of Identity Crisis, in the discussion of how the Leaguers had to occasionally wipe minds to keep on Justice League-ing. There’s a scene where a character points out that of course the SSOSV peeked under the masks of Batman and Hal Jordan while they were in their bodies; it wouldn’t have made sense for them not to take advantage of the situation to do so.

I think this was one of the fundamental conceptual flaws of Identity Crisis, because the world of the Justice League need only work according to what’s logical there, not what’s logical in our world. It doesn’t make sense for the villains not to discover the heroes’ identities? Okay. It doesn’t make sense for the villains to imprison the heroes in a giant green diamond and throw it into the sun to kill them instead of just slitting their throats either. It doesn’t make sense for The Wizard-in-Superman’s-body to plan an elaborate museum heist when he could just fly around taking what he wanted in Superman’s body. It doesn’t make sense for him to try and trick and trap the other Justice Leaguers, when he could kill them all at super-speed in about ten seconds, tops.

You really have to be careful when you start pulling threads on these old stories, because it doesn’t take too long to unravel the whole thing.

At any rate, I’m sure the fondness Meltzer had for this story is the main reason its included here, as Conway and company had plenty of other stories to choose from if the idea was simply to showcase their run on the League, and show some of the Satellite Era members like Zatanna, Elongated Man and Red Tornado in a story (Poor Red Tornado gets defeated, like, three times in this story).

I don’t have it in front of me, so I’m not 100% positive, but I think this may also be the old Satellite Era adventure that was referenced in the Geoff Johns, Allan Heinberg, Chris Batista and Mark Farmer story arc “Crisis of Conscience,” which is an additional reason for inclusion.



“Born Again" (Justice League #1)

You’ll get no arguments from me that this is an issue that belongs in a trade called The Greatest Stories Ever Told. This is the first issue of the seminal Keith Giffen/J.M.DeMatteis run on Justice League, one of the creative highpoints of the franchise’s 40+ year history.

This first issue, drawn by Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin over Giffen’s breakdowns, is awfully early in the writers’ five-year run. Some of the team members introduced here won’t stick around on a full-time basis very long (Dr. Fate, Black Canary and Captain Marvel will be gone in a matter of issues), and some of the characters most associated with the JLI Era don’t appear here at all (Booster Gold, Fire, Ice).

But despite the somewhat opening ending—who is this mysterious Max Lord character who seems to be manipulating events and talking like he’s going to be taking over the Justice League?—this first issue is full of classic moments. There’s Green Lantern Guy Gardner rehearsing his nominating himself for leadership; there’s Guy picking a fight with the rest of the team; there’s Batman shutting him up with a dirty look and a few sharp words; there’s Blue Beetle casting about for a comedy partner to bounce his jokes off of; there’s the mix of character humor, superhero action and occasional melodrama that would make the next few years worth of Justice League stories among the best ever.

There were certainly one-issue stories during the Giffen/DeMatteis run that I would qualify as greater, but this is probably a pretty perfect introduction to that era, particularly since this is the only story a newcomer to the material could actually continue reading in trade format, since only the first handful of their run was ever collected in trade (Now, there are at least two handfuls of it in trade).

This issue features that classic cover of Maguire’s, which he himself would riff on over and over in the following years. In 1998’s JLA Secret Files & Origins Special #2, Christopher Priest would re-stage a few scenes from this issue beat for beat.



“Star-Seed” (Justice League Secret Files and Origins #1)

This is one of the three—count 'em—three origin stories for the Morrison/Porter League, counting miniseries Justice League: Midsummer's Nightmare and the first story arc of JLA, "New World Order." It originally appeard in the JLA: Sectret Files & Origins Special #1, the very first of DC's SF&O, and by far the most substantial. In additon to this story, there was another one by Mark Millar, an interview with Martian Manhunter by Millar, profile pages of each of the Leaguers featuring pin-ups drawn by the regular artists on their monthlies at the time, two pin-ups by Phil Jimenez featuring every Justice Leaguer ever and every Justice League villain ever, a year-by-fictional year JLA timeline/history and collecters cards.

This story features six of the Big Seven on the Justice League satellite—apparently before the Hyperclan knocked it down in "New World Order"—figuring out what to do about an alien invasion in Blue Valley. These particular aliens are these weird star-shaped, cycloptic face-hugger things, a scarier, slimier version of the old Starro face-huggers. They've taken over the city and The Flash, and is ranting about conquering the world. The U.S. government wants to nuke Blue Valley, and the League wants to save the day, but The Spectre arrives and forbids them. He gives them a vision of the future should they intervene, and they would inevitably be taken over by The Star Conquerer, who would then use them to conquer the universe.

They arrive at a compromise: The Spectre strips them of their superpowers, removing all risk of that future he showed them, and also getting around the Conquerer's defenses, since it was "primed" for super-humans.

As Morrison's League run goes, it's not among his better stories, but it is fairly representative. It demonstrates the Batman as the hero of the heroes, who often ends up saving the day (particularly in "New World Order"), the stakes are as high as they are in every work of his (global apocalyse, if not universal or all reality), and it features Morrison's subtle diddling with the "rules" of superhero conflict, wherein the day is saved by the characters altering some part of the near-mathematical equation that is superhero comics. It also features an ending in which he comes out and offers a sort of mission statement for the League. Story-wise, it also functions as a bit of a preview of a two-parter in which the actual Conquerer comes to earth, and invades and subjugates the human race through their dreams (The Dreaming from The Sandman, who also guest-stars, in one of the rare and now non-existent Vertigo/DCU intersections).



As to why it bore inclusion above all the other stories of the run, I imagine it was a simply matter of space. Morrison and company had quite a few quite excellent two-part arcs—The Zauriel/angel invasion story, The Green Arrow story (although Porter didn't draw it), the Prometheus HQ invasion, the aforementioned fight against the Star Conquerer—but only one single-issue story. That would be JLA #5, which encapsulated a lot of the greatest attributes of the run, but also prominently featured the temporarily blue electric Superman, something that the assemblers of this trade might understandably have wanted to avoid. The Secret Files story worked better in that it avoided Electro-Supes, even if it did feature long-haired mullet Superman, and '90s-style Aquaman (the latter of which I liked, but has ultimately proven short-lived).



“Two-Minute Warning” (JLA #61)

If the Giffen/DeMatteis and Morrison eras were the League’s creative high points, then the creative team of Joe Kelly, Dough Mahnke and Tom Nguyen presided over the end of the success of Morrison’s vision for the team. Neither Kelly nor writer Mark Waid’s runs were quite as good as Morrison’s, but they weren’t bad either, and they kept the basic formula in tact—the JLA was a book about the world’s greatest heroes banning together to stave off apocalypses they couldn’t take alone.

Kelly was the last regular writer to work on a Justice League book. He wrote 29 more or less consecutive issues (there was a single fill-in issue during that time), and then JLA became something of an anthology title: three issues by Denny O’Neil, six issues by John Byrne and Chris Claremont, six issues by Chuck Austen, eight issues by Kurt Busiek, five by Johns and Heinberg, six by Bob Harras. Even when it was relaunched as Justice League of America, Meltzer only stuck around for 13 issues (four stories) and Dwayne McDuffie’s only written five complete issues so far.

It was an incredibly solid run though. Though did exceptional character work, getting a strong handle on all of the characters, even Martian Manhunter and Plastic Man, two that seem to give a lot of writers trouble. He managed to come up with threats that seemed to be big enough to menace such a powerful team, but he often had a light touch, and wrote in bits of humor that weren’t too far away from what Giffen and DeMatteis might have managed. He seemed like a nice compromise between the two greatest runs on the title, even if his wasn’t as good as either of them.

I didn’t always agree with the decisions he made—particularly giving Plas a bastard son—and I’m sure some were controversial among some elements of fandom (like the Wonder Woman/ Batman almost-romance), but his stories were always big, fun and full of creativity, as JLA stories should be.

This was his first issue on the title, and it seems a good one to represent the post-Morrison era. The team is the exact same as it was during Mark Waid’s run—save that Aquaman was time-lost and presumed dead—but he goes ahead an introduces the characters anyway.

The story jumps back and forth between “two minutes ago” and “now.” He introduces each of the Leaguers in their day-to-day lives, showing what they were doing two minutes before their emergency signals go off (J’onn was meditating in the shape of a sphere, Superman was trying to spend some quality time with Lois, Kyle Rayner was discovering he didn’t have enough cash on him to pay for the expensive coffee and scone he had just ordered, etc) and then jumping ahead to the amazing feats they do when “on the job” (Kyle uses his ring to lift the entire island of Manhattan into the sky, saving it from a tidal wave, Superman lifts an aircraft carrier out of the water, etc), before they all come together to solve the problem…a problem that, naturally, takes all of them working together.
(Above: Two minutes in the life of Wally West)

Kelly presents the Justice League as something like a job (on the first page, J’onn even sighs, “Work,” as alarms start going off), albeit one they are extremely good at and seem to enjoy doing. They’re neither as business-like as they were during Morrison’s run, nor as riddled with internal strife as they were during Waid’s. They all seem to know each other well, and needle one another, giving it that comfortable, just hanging out kind of felling that permeated the JLI days.

(Note that Flash isn't the only character in the first panel who seems shocked that Batman is actually touching him)

It’s a tone that pencil artist Dough Mahnke was well-suited to, as he’d done equal amounts of work in comedy and superheroics. He’s a gifted actor with the pencil, wringing a variety of emotions out of the characters, and draws them with a great deal of variety. J’onn and Superman may be built like body builders, but Kyle and Batman are slimmer, and Flash slimmer still. Plastic Man is tall and skinny, and Wonder Woman imposingly athletic—neither over-muscled nor like a too-thin, big-breasted supermodel. She also has a vaguely ethnic-looking facial structure, which is appropriate, given that she belongs to the vague ethnic group that is the Amazons.

This creative team packs a lot of detail into panels, and these details describe the characters. Plas’ shape-changing and Kyle’s ring-structures are in almost constant flux, moving as quickly as they think (just as they would in real-life), and J’onn’s shape-changing is downright amoeboid, as he contorts to fit emergency situations.

Rereading this at the end of the collection, it seems like a much greater Justice League story than I remember it the first few times through. Divorced from continuity, it’s something else entirely than the then-new creative team’s first issue. It’s not really that great a comic, but it is a great character piece, introducing seven superheroes and, more importantly, their relationships to one another.