Isn't this the exact thing people used to argue was necessary in order to save the comics industry...?

I've been blogging about comics here at Every Day Is Like Wednesday for about 20 years now but even before that I used to read about and very occasionally talk about comics online, mostly on the DC Comics message boards and the handful of comics news sites that were around at the time. One thing I used to hear said an awful lot back then was that the one thing that could save the comics industry* would be if publishers could just get their books back in grocery stores and drugstores, where they could be seen and purchased by kids and other new readers, thus growing the market beyond those that already patronize their local comics specialty shops.

Well guess what I saw in the checkout aisle at the grocery store?

Shelved among the latest issues of People and Woman's World and, um, some books of word searches was a magazine simply entitled Justice League, the cover featuring a Jim Lee drawing of the New 52 League (note the presence of Cyborg, and Superman's lack of red briefs) and the words "Four acclaimed comic book stories by all-star writers and artists!"

I was surprised to see it there, although I suppose I shouldn't be. I had previously seen similar magazine format collections of reprints focused on Batman and Superman in the same store, although those were in the magazine section, rather than right here in the checkout aisle, where a kid could presumably spot it and ask his or her parent if they could get it.

This was for a very long time Archie Comics' whole business model, selling digest collections of their comics in grocery store check-out lines and, according to Tim Hanley's book Betty and Veronica, it was a model that helped save the publisher when the comics market was contracting and specialty shops started to replace newsstands and spinner racks as the places that people bought comics. 

Of course, this collection costs $14.99, which seems like a fairly steep price for an impulse buy, although I suppose that's about what magazines tend to cost these days. (There weren't any Archie digests on sale there to compare it to, but according to the publisher's online store, one of their upcoming digests costs $9.99 for about 100 pages). 

Comics readers will likely find that price point pretty high, though, as that's $15 for only 84 pages of comics, all of them reprints. That price is approaching trade paperback level. I mean, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1: Into the Inferno, the latest trade paperback collection featuring the Justice League, costs $17.99, and that collects six issues, or about 120 pages.  

I did ask my sister if she would buy a $15 magazine for my nephew if he asked for it in the checkout line of the grocery store, and she said she would, as she encourages any kind of reading. Given that this is a survey of just one parent though, I can't be sure how representative she is of the average parent. 

So, what are the four acclaimed stories by all-star writers and artists collected within? A quartet of timeless, evergreen done-in-ones? Ha ha, no don't be silly. Rather, they are the first issues from four different Justice League titles from the last 30 years or so, and I couldn't discern the logic for the order in which they appear; they are neither chronological (that is, oldest to newest) nor reverse chronological (newest to oldest). 

Also, somewhat surprisingly, though the magazine is magazine-sized rather than comic book sized, the comics pages within have been blown-up or reformatted in anyway. They're at comic book page-sized, they just all have wide borders that fill up the rest of the extra space. 

Anyway, here's what $15 will get you at the grocery store...

Justice League Unlimited #1 (2025) by Mark Waid and Dan Mora This seems to be a smart, even obvious choice, as this is the first issue of the current Justice League title, one that's only about a year old at this point (DC has only published one, maybe one and a half collections of it so far, depending on how you want to count Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday).

It introduces various plot elements that won't be resolved for a while (the mysterious villain team Inferno, for example) and it ends on a fairly potent cliffhanger (with point-of-view character Airwave confessing to the readers in a narration box that he's only joined the Justice League in order to kill them all). But, at the same time, the first half or so of the issue pretty thoroughly introduces the premise of this particular Justice League book, that of a massive, army-like super-League consisting of pretty much every superhero in the DC Universe.

The early scenes, in which Airwave arrives on the new team's new satellite Watchtower headquarters, is chock-full of appearances by various heroes, making this story a pretty strong introduction to the breadth of the DC Universe. Skimming through the book again as I pound this post out (I had previously reviewed the first trade paperback collection of the series in this column), I counted over 50 heroes appearing in some fashion, including those you might expect in a modern Justice League comic (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, a The Flash), some less likely candidates (Firestorm, Black Lightning, Star Sapphire, a Kid Flash) and some pretty deep cuts (Tuatara, for example; he doesn't just cameo, but is name-dropped as well, as Red Tornado sends him off on an off-panel mission with a few others). 

The issue, and the next five, are collected in the aforementioned Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1: Into the Inferno, which was then followed by Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday. Other characters and concepts introduced in these 20 pages are followed up on in various spin-offs too, like Challengers of the Unknown, The Question: All Along the Watchtower and Justice League: The Atom Project. The JLU title is still ongoing, and the last issue to ship as of this writing seems to be #16.

I have some concerns about JLU—mainly that the book seems to offer a status quo rather than a story or stories, and, increasingly, that it's meant to serve as a bridge between various big event series like Absolute Power and DC K.O.—but in terms of quality, that first issue was solid. 

There are certainly worse creators a new DC reader could choose to follow after this series than Waid and Mora, too. The former has decades of quality series and miniseries on his resume (including various Justice League-related books), and Mora is one of the best artists drawing super-comics for DC at the moment...or drawing them for anyone else, for that matter. 

Justice League #1 (2011) by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Scott Williams I was a little surprised to see this one in here. Not just because this was the first chapter of The New 52 version of the Justice League's origin and the New 52 continuity has since been rebooted away (Although according to New History of the DC Universe, this story, or at least some version of it, still happened in current continuity, it just would have had to happen fairly differently). No, I was mostly surprised because it's not really much of a Justice League story. Despite the whole team appearing on the cover, the issue itself is basically just a Batman/Green Lantern team-up; the only other Leaguers to appear at all are Superman, who is one panel, and a pre-Cyborg Victor Stone, who is on a couple of pages.

This issue (and the story arc it is a part of) has been collected and recollected several times now, starting with 2012's Justice League Vol. 1: Origin (There have also been deluxe, "Absolute" and "Unwrapped" editions since). This iteration of the title would last 52 issues, with Johns writing the first 50 of them (Lee would draw two arcs, the first one and "The Villain's Journey"). 

As I was a Justice League fan, I wasn't exactly enamored with this story or this run (or the New 52 in general), which jettisoned DC comics history/continuity to offer a new "Ultimate" style reboot. 

Johns' greatest strength as a DC writer was his ability to finesse thorny continuity into things that mostly made sense, solving the storytelling problems that occurred when various writers over the decades took turns on the characters, synthesizing past, sometimes contradictory stories into something that felt natural, even intentional. The New 52 stripped him of that, of course. 

Lee is, obviously, a pretty great artist, and this arc was a decent showcase for him—although the number of splash pages in this first issue is striking and, if you happened to have bought the issue in 2011, annoying—but he's not the best character designer, and the New 52 Justice League notoriously had him redesigning some of the best and most iconic characters in history. I mean, can one really improve on Superman's costume? No, but Lee tried and, well, you can see what that looked like. (Even the costumes he left mostly alone, like Carmine Infantino's Flash costume and Gil Kane's Green Lantern costume, were given more, fussier lines.)

And, again, because The New 52 continuity is now over, I'm not sure there's a whole lot to really recommend this iteration of the Justice League book to new readers. Although if you are a Jim Lee fan, then there are at least two trade collections of him drawing a Justice League you might want to check out.

Justice League #1 (2018) by Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung and Mark Morales The Scott Snyder-written iteration of the Justice League book spun out of his Dark Nights: Metal event series and Justice League: No Justice miniseries, and his line-up seemed to be an in-comics re-creation of the that in the old Justice League cartoon series, with Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart rejoining after pretty long absences from each. (You'll note Cyborg is on the cover, and, in this issue at least, he is presented as a member of the current team, while John is called in as a secret weapon at one point; Cyborg will pretty immediately leave this "main" league, joining the splinter team in the spin-off Justice League Odyssey, while John will essentially replace him on the team.)

In this issue, the already formed Justice League, headquartered in the Hall of Justice, fight a long-term scheme of Vandal Savage's, the heroes keeping in touch via J'onn's telepathy while they fight against Savage's armies on various mini-missions. Each is assisted by a guest-star or two—Green Arrow, Adam Strange, Plastic Man, Mister Terrific, Swamp Thing, etc.—although these do little more than cameo. While the League staves off that threat, it's actually Lex Luthor and his new (rather small) Legion of Doom that ultimately confront Savage. 

Meanwhile, a mysterious threat from beyond the Source Wall streaks like a comet towards Earth, space-time swirling "like road dust" behind it, while various other cameos look on (The 853rd Century's Justice Legion-A, Kamandi, a Monitor, The Quintessence).

Like the previous issue collected in the magazine, this issue has been collected and re-collected plenty of times; I just re-read it in a library-borrowed electronic copy of Justice League by Scott Snyder Book One The Deluxe Edition. 

Snyder's run, which featured a few fill-in issues from writer James Tynion IV and art from a whole bunch of different artists, lasted about 39 issues. The title continued for another 36 issues though, with writers Robert Venditti, Simon Spurrier, Jeff Loveness, Joshua Williamson, Brian Michael Bendis and the team of Andy Lanning and Ron Marz all following Snyder, some of them writing enough issues to constitute a "run", others only writing a story arc. The title was then cancelled with issue #75, as part of the lead-up to Williamsons Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

I read all of the Snyder issues (and the rest of the title more sporadically), so I guess it was good enough that I never dropped it. It was well-written, and the art was never terrible (although it would have been nice if Snyder had a true, regular, consistent partner on his run). What is both noteworthy—and really weird—about Snyder's run is that it is essentially just one big, long story arc, about the Justice League fighting the Legion of Doom (Luthor, Grodd, Sinestro, Black Manta and Cheetah...The Joker, who is in this first issue, would leave almost immediately) over fundamental forces of the universe, and the direction that the universe was to take...towards justice, or towards doom. 

Snyder also introduced some cosmic beings that played into his own messing around with the nature of DC continuity and the multiverse.

It had its moments (most of them revolving around Starro and Jarro), but, seen from the remove of years, it now seems a lot like an ongoing series devoted to marking time, acting as a bridge between Snyder's Dark Nights: Metal and his Dark Nights: Death Metal. Because of that, I can't really remember the specifics of any single issue or arc within the overall narrative, nor have I ever been tempted to revisit it. 

JLA #1 (1997) By Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell The final issue collected in here is the first of the Morrison/Porter/Dell JLA, which took the then novel (if obvious) approach of re-teaming the Justice League's founders (with the legacy versions of The Flash and Green Lantern taking the places of their then-dead predecessors). It was the first time that some version of these seven heroes had starred in a Justice League title together since the early 1980s, and thus seemed pretty fresh, new and exciting then.

I do wonder how readers seeing this comic for the very first time might react to certain aspects of it. Would they know who this Kyle Rayner character was? Would they wonder at all about Aquaman's design, with the gladiator armor and harpoon hand? Or why Superman has a mullet? Or perhaps why Martian Manhunter seems so nude?

The issue opens with a UFO landing on the White House lawn. Out of it steps a golden, caped man named Protex and his superhero team The Hyperclan, who say have come to save the world and deal with all of its problems...even if they do so in a much harsher way than any Justice League ever has (At one point, they execute supervillains tied to posts with their eyebeams; Porter draws one of them to resemble Marvel's Wolverine). They are met by Superman, and he and various other heroes aren't so sure about the Hyperclan's methods or promises of quick fixes to long-term problems.

At one point, mysterious assailants assault the then-Justice League America's satellite base, knocking it out of the sky, and forcing Leaguers Metamorpho, Ice Maiden, Obsidian and Nuklon to a desperate gamble to save their own lives (Metamorpho, who transforms himself into an escape capsule, dies in the process, or at least seems to die in the process; his funeral is then held in JLA #5 but, like all superheroes, and like Morrison hints during the funeral, he will eventually get better).

In this first issue, all of the incoming Leaguers appear, except Aquaman, who will be reluctantly drafted into the brewing fight against the Hyperclan in JLA #2. Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman (who was leading the previous League, the team who flee the satellite, in Justice League America, the title that JLA would replace) get the most panel time, while Martian Manhunter and Batman get the least, the latter showing up in the last five panels, and uttering "HH!" for the first time.

(I love how Potrter poses Batman there, melodramatically stalking around, gesturing like a vampire; this is pretty consistent with how then Batman artist Kelley Jones was drawing him.)

Frankly, I could talk about this title, and this particular story arc, for thousands of words, but that's probably enough for this post. 

This issue, and this arc, has also been collected and recollected over and over. If you've never read it and would like to, basically just look for any book with "JLA", "Grant Morrison" and a "1" on the cover. 

Morrison's run would last through issue #41, with maybe a half-dozen fill-in issues, and include JLA/WildC.A.T.s (did I spell that right?), original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2 and event series DC One Million.  Porter and Dell drew most of it, with fill-in artists needed here and there to meet deadlines (These include Oscar Jimenez on #8 and #9, Mark Pajarillo here and there and, surprisingly, the likes of Greg Land and Gary Frank, among a few others). 

Morrison was followed by Mark Waid and Joe Kelly on JLA, which would ultimately run 125 issues, and, after Kelly's run, the book became an anthology series with rotating creative teams until it was finally canceled in 2006 as part of the events of Infinite Crisis. 

I am likely prejudiced and influenced by nostalgia to some degree, as this was my first introduction to the Justice League, but Morrison and company's JLA was (and is) one of my favorite comic book runs ever; revisiting it now and then, I still think it holds up as one of the best superhero comics ever.

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Previous to the comics portion of this magazine, there's a two-page introduction by a Jim McLaughlin, under the headline "Top Heroes. Top Talent." It's maybe 500-800 words, tops, and seems to do a decent enough job of offering a sort of elevator pitch to the Justice League concept and then introducing the writers, pencil artists and concepts for each of the issues included. The thesis seems to be that the idea of the Justice League was to unite the best DC characters into one book, which naturally produced the best comics by the best creators.

It's a decent piece given its brevity and I wouldn't argue with its main points, publisher boosterism aside, although I will nitpick it (I also would have attached the names Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky when mentioning 1960's Brave and the Bold #28). I mean, you know how wordy I am; I would struggle mightily to produce a piece that hit all these points in so few words.

The parts I found most interesting, maybe even revealing, were the ways in which McLaughlin described the writers and pencillers.

Mark Waid isn't just "one of comics' most acclaimed and award-winning scribes," but he is also "the scholar, the teacher." And Dan Mora? Well, he's "a 30-something hotshot who burst out of Costa Rica to become one of comics' most dazzling talents almost overnight." (Overnight, I guess, if you don't count his pre-DC work for the likes of Boom, although you should count it; it's also great!).

Upon relaunching the League for the New 52, Geoff Johns was "writer and executive producer of DC's The Flash TV show and Wonder Woman movies", rather than one of super-comics' most popular writers, who then had a decade of experience writing most of DC's biggest heroes, teams and events, and had even managed to make books starring less-than topline characters like Hal Jordan and the Justice Society into hits. (As for the New 52, that was "a groundbreaking slate" of comics "that grabbed both critical acclaim and massive sales success." Sales? Sure. Acclaim? Eh...the fan press sure like Scott Snyder's Batman, but I'm having trouble thinking of many—or any—critical darlings among that mess. Refresh my memory, if you do.)

Scott Snyder's run on Batman was also "groundbreaking", according to McLaughlin, and Jim Cheung is an excellent draftsman. Together, their book—which Cheung didn't last all that long on, intentionally built a lineup to "echo" that of "the smash-hit Justice League animated series."

And finally, we get to Grant Morrison, "a madman-with-a-plan writer who cut his teeth on DC Imprints books." (McLaughlin also refers to Morrison as "he" here, rather than Morrison's preferred pronoun "they", which I can definitely relate to, as EDILW readers have repeatedly had to call me out for doing so here and on Bluesky; still, it's probably embarrassing to do so in print, rather than online, where it's so easily fixed).

I found the "DC Imprints" phrase...weird. Yes, Morrison wrote some Vertigo books (And why not just say "Vertigo" instead of "DC Imprints", with a capital "I" in "Imprints"?). These included Sebastian O, The Mystery Play, Kill Your Boyfriend and Flex Mentallo. But before that, Morrison had written Animal Man and Doom Patrol (Morrison's runs on each title concluding before these books were absorbed into the new Vertigo imprint in 1993, although certainly Morrison's work helped establish the Vertigo aesthetic). And, of course, there was Morrison's earlier Batman work, the original graphic novel Arkham Asylum and the Legends of the Dark Knight arc "Gothic" (the latter of which was collected into a trade paperback, back when such collections were relatively rare). That's just the DC stuff, though; prior to that Morrison "cut his teeth" (or "their teeth") on comics in the UK, of course.

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Anyway, it's nice to see that DC Comics' Justice League comic is finally taking its place in the grocery store checkout aisle, alongside such other important pieces of American pop culture, like, let's see here...

...ground beef, Sydney Sweeney's breasts and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's "epic" romance, I guess. 

*And by "comics industry", I think they just meant "the direct market" or "DC and Marvel as publishers that release series as floppies once a month".

Revisiting 1999's Day of Judgment

The 2005 Countdown to Infinite Crisis-branded miniseries Day of Vengeance that we discussed the other day was preceded by the five-issue Day of Judgment event series back in 1999, which also centered on the threat of a rampaging Spectre...and the title of which Day of Vengeance was apparently meant to echo. 

I just re-read it. Unable to find a copy of the 2013 collection of it in the library, I was forced to pull the single issues from one of my long boxes; luckily it was fairly easy to find among my fairly disorganized collection. 

I found it a very pleasant reminder that DC's crossover events don't have to be about cosmic goings-on to rewrite, reboot or rejigger their continuity; that's just a choice the publisher seems to keep making. Over and over and over again.

This one was written by Geoff Johns, fairly early in his career in comics. By the time the first issue of Day of Judgment hit the stands, he was only a few issues into his Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. (the fourth issue of which was a Day of Judgment crossover) and he hadn't yet replaced James Robinson as David Goyer's JSA co-writer. (I guess DC is a little quicker to hand their iconic heroes over to a new writer if said writer was already working in Hollywood, as Johns was...?).

I am curious about just how much of the plot was conceived by Johns himself and what points editorial may have mandated, as one of the big things to occur in the series is that the dead Hal Jordan, a character Johns has long since demonstrated a love for, is rescued from Purgatory and becomes the new host of The Spectre. 

Although this didn't quite bring Hal back to life, it did put him back in circulation and allow for him to continue the redemption arc that DC had started with 1996's Final Night. Still, it would be Johns himself who would decouple Hal and The Spectre a few years later, in 2004's Green Lantern: Rebirth, so it doesn't seem like Hal-as-The Spectre was a concept that Johns loved or anything.

For this series, Johns was paired with artist Matt Smith, who had previously done a little work for DC, including issues of Sandman Mystery Theater, Starman and the short-lived 1996 reboot of Marv Wolfman's Night Force. The comics he drew just prior to Day of Judgment were Lobster Johnson and Abe Sapien back-ups in Mike Mignola's Hellboy: Box Full of Evil, which might help explain just how Mignola-esque the art in Day of Judgment looks. (I've tried to include a bit more art than I usually do in my reviews, as Smith isn't as popular an artist as many of those I write about here; do note that the colors might be slightly off).

Smith's figures are thick and somewhat squat, and the imagery simple yet bold. Working with inker Steve Mitchell and layout artist Chris Jones, Day of Judgment reads a lot like Mike Mignola drawing a script intended for Howard Porter. I would say it answers the question of what a DC crossover series drawn by Mignola might look like but, of course, we already got one of those in 1988's Cosmic Odyssey.

But artwork evocative of the Mike Mignola of the late '90s is pretty much perfect for comic set partially in Hell and is full of demons and devils, including Jack Kirby's Etrigan, The Demon and the by that point increasingly Hellboy-esque Blue Devil. 

The story, told across five weekly issues that kicked off with an over-sized 29-page #1, is fairly simple. The conflict imperils the Earth—and Hell and, to a certain degree, perhaps even Heaven itself—and facing it involves various configurations of superheroes to form ad hoc teams and perform different missions. 

It also moves the DC Universe story forward a bit—brining back Hal, giving The Spectre a new host, and seemingly priming a magic super-team book that never actually materialized at the time—and it provides a very easy way to tie any and all other DC books into it, and to do so without derailing them all that dramatically.

So, remember Asmodel? The rebel angel and leader of the Bull Host who planned to overthrow Heaven and invaded Earth in an attempt to get to Zauriel in the pages of 1997's JLA #7-8? We open with him in Hell, where he was consigned at the end of 1998's not-very-good miniseries JLA: Paradise Lost, written by a young up-and-comer named Mark Millar. 

After Neron gloats over him for a bit, Asmodel receives a visitor in the form of Etrigan, who has big plans for Asmodel. First, Etrigan frees him from his bonds, then he summons the then host-less Spectre (Jim Corrigan and The Spectre were split from one another in 1998's The Spectre #62), and then he performs a bit of magic he says he learned from Merlin, which bonds Asmodel to The Spectre, making the new host of The Spectre a bad guy!

The new Spectre, distinguished from the old one by being a solid green-ish blue in color rather than a white-skinned dude with bits of a green costume, wastes no time. First, he sucks up all the hellfire in Hell, literally making it a cold day in Hell. Second, he freezes Neron solid in a block of ice. And, third, he invades Earth, an army of demons behind him. 

(These demons, by the way, are mostly generic in appearance, with horns and batwings. We'll later learn Hell is more or less emptied out, with devils, demons and even the dead rising all over the Earth. This, then, is what gives the heroes something to do in their own books that tie-in to the crossover: Fight the legions of Hell or any specific underworld threat that particular book's writer might want to use).

The Spectre, Etrigan and their demon horde make their beachhead in New York City. Meanwhile, Martian Manhunter J'onn J'onnz calls out the JLA and their reserves, members of other super-teams show up to rumble (Damage and Argent from the Titans, the just-formed JSA) and Zatanna spends an issue gathering a group of magical characters that will introduce themselves as "The Sentinels of Magic" on the last page of the first issue.

The Sentinels manage to drain much of The Spectre's energy and temporarily trap it in Madame Xanadu's crystal ball, giving the assembled heroes time to split up and take on a couple of different missions to save the day.

The JLA's resident angel Zauriel leads Sentinel Alan Scott, Wonder Woman, Mister Miracle and Supergirl to Heaven, teleported there by Raven (whose demonic nature forces her to flee immediately). Their job is to bring Jim Corrigan back to Earth in order to reclaim The Spectre, but, after some 50 years of avenging the murdered dead and finally knowing peace, he no longer wants the gig. The angel Michael instead directs the heroes to Purgatory where, as you probably know, they'll find Hal Jordan among a small group of fallen heroes, heroes who, Zauriel explains, are all there "due to their own mistakes, their own shortcomings." (There are a few panels outside the gates of Heaven where Alan meets a handful of dead members of the Justice Society, but no one seems to think to ask if, say, the original Mister Terrific or Hourman might want to come back to Earth and be the new host of The Spectre). 

Meanwhile, Zatanna, Superman, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Firestorm, The Atom, Faust and Deadman-in-Enchantress' body go to Hell, where they hope to rekindle the flames, drawing back the army of demons (Interestingly, Kyle and Firestorm just there a few years ago, in the pages of Underworld Unleashed, but no one mentions this). 

And, finally, Batman sends Captain Marvel, Starfire and S.T.R.I.P.E. into space, in order to recover The Spear of Destiny, the only known weapon that can hurt The Spectre (The last Spectre, the one bonded with Corrigan, had deposited the dangerous artifact there, out of the reach of most of humanity, during Ostrander and Mandrake's Spectre run).

Despite unexpected events—which, in Hell, means the resurrection of Blue Devil and the murder of Enchantress—the three missions are more or less successful.

At the climax, The Spectre is wounded, and both Neron and the dead Hal Jordan, having changed his form so that he's wearing his old Green Lantern costume rather than the Parallax get-up he wore in Purgatory, enter into The Spectre's body, where they wrestle with Asmodel over control of the Spectre-Force. 

That, which is described as a parasite and, as drawn by Smith, appears as a green-cloaked skeleton whose ribs stab into Asmodel, listens to the three as they each make their appeal for why they should be the new host. Halfway through his pitch, Jordan breaks down in tears, confessing his crimes. 

"I don't deserve power," he says. "I deserve punishment."

At this, The Spectre seems to perk up. "You believe you deserve punishment?" it says. "THEN FACE YOUR PENANCE!" 

And so Asmodel and Neron are both ejected from The Spectre's towering form, each of them prone and bound, while The Spectre has taken on a new shape to accommodate its new host, an interestingly hybridized costume mixing elements of The Spectre's with that of Hal's Green Lantern costume, including a domino mask under the hood and a blazing ring of green fire on his chest where the GL Corps symbol used to be. 

In the last few pages of the series, everything is set more or less right. Corrigan's soul briefly returns to Earth to bless Jordan's new mission, which Jordan indicates will not be about vengeance, Corrigan saying that The Presence (that is, God) approves of Hal Jordan-as-The Spectre. The Sentinels of Magic, which now seems to include Blue Devil and the new Doctor Fate Hector Hall, again announce their name and mission, and return to their daily lives. Asmodel is not returned to Hell, but taken to Heaven, where he is the sole inmate in The Silver City's first prison. And Neron returns to Hell, where he is punished for this whole fuck-up, demoted from an infernal Prince down to a rhyming demon, which, apparently, is why Etrigan kicked this mad plot off in the fist place: He just wanted to mess with Neron. 

(Having spent so much time with DC's devils and demons of late, I was interested to see that, in this short passage, a human-sized Neron is shackled in front of a huge, skeletal demon on a throne, one with enormous horns and batwings. This character is never named but is presumably meant to be DC's answer to "The Devil" or "Satan", although, to my knowledge, DC never really had a direct analogue to the devil/Satan before, just Lucifer and a sort of court of sub-devils...?).

In addition to its various tie-in issues in ongoing series—of which there were 14 issues, plus a Batman: Judgment Day special—DC also published a Day of Judgment Secret Files and Origins special. The Secret Files and Origins specials were fairly common in the late '90s, and contained a full-length comic book story, the "Secret Files" pages that paired a pin-up like image of a character or team with stats and short paragraphs of prose about the character (essentially an abbreviated, '90s answer to a Who's Who entry), plus some shorter features.

In this case, the features were mostly epilogues. 

The main story was written by Scott Beatty and drawn by Hitman's John McCrea (I remember it being a great pleasure to see him draw so many different super-characters here originally, and it was just as much of a pleasure to revisit it in 2025; we'll take a closer look at this story in a few days). In it, the new Spectre secretly, magically gathers the Sentinels of Magic in a field around the Spear of Destiny, explaining at the end to The Phantom Stranger that he had essentially convened them as a sort of jury to judge him, while handing them a weapon with which they could take him down if they so decided. 

There were also a couple of short, two-page stories: One by Mark Millar and Yanick Paquette in which Madame Xanadu does a tarot reading for Blue Devil, another by Millar and Phil Winslade following Zatanna over the course of a date and one by Geoff Johns and a Jason Orfalas following Faust—the son of Justice League bad guy Felix Faust, the "white sheep" of his family introduced in the 1993-1995 Outsiders series—and what his actions in Hell mean for June Moon. 

This was obviously pretty early in both Johns' and Millar's comics careers, but still, reading the issue in 2025, it's strange to think of these future superstars basically taking any writing job they could get like this.

Some other thoughts...

•As mentioned above, Zatanna puts together another ad hoc super-team of magic-based characters in the series, and they are repeatedly referred to by the name "Sentinels of Magic." 

The first issue ends with a splash depicting her with The Phantom Stranger, Deadman, Ragman, Doctor Occult, Sentinel, Raven, Madame Xanadu and Faust and declaring, "You might call us-- --The Sentinels of Magic!", those last words in a big, colorful, almost logo-like font. 

The scene repeats itself on the first page of the second issue, with captions naming the members of the roll call. 

Near the end of the fifth issue, the team—now missing Raven and The Stranger, but with Blue Devil and the newest Doctor Fate added to their line-up—all pose in one panel, while Zatanna tells the other superheroes, "The Sentinels of Magic will be on center stage whenever you need us." 

And in Secret Files special, the Sentinels star in the main story, wherein they all put their hands together like a sport team before a big game, and Alan declares them "Sentinels of Magic!" ("Oh well...guess it beats 'Justice League Europe'," Blue Devil says in the next panel). That's the image above, drawn by McCrea.

And, finally, the team gets a two-page "secret file" entry following the story.

I now find myself curious if DC was perhaps planning a Sentinels of Magic series following Day of Judgment and, if they were, why they ultimately decided against it. As I said in the post about this crossover's kinda sorta sequel Day of Vengeance the other day, DC seemed to have been flirting with a magical super-team since at least 1995's (excellent) Underworld Unleashed one-shot special Abyss—Hell's Sentinel #1. 

That was the first time I had personally encountered such a grouping, anyway. (That one, like this one, included Sentinel Alan Scott, presenting him as something of a bridge between the world of superheroes and the supernatural.) Looking back, though, Alan Moore and company's 1986 Swamp Thing #50 gathered together many of DC's magical characters for an assault on Hell and a sort of seance, and, in writer Neil Gaiman's 1990 mini-series The Books of Magic, new character Timothy Hunter is introduced to DC's various magical characters by what John Constantine jokingly refers to as "The Trenchcoat Brigade," a quartet of magic characters who got a Vertigo mini-series under that name in 1999.

While the Sentinels of Magic never got a book of their own, Day of Vengeance introduced the Shadowpact (whose number included the Sentinels' Blue Devil and Ragman), and that team would go on to star in a 25-issue ongoing series. And then the magical super-team concept reemerged in 2011 in the Justice League Dark, which lasted 72 issues across two volumes. 

•I kind of love how catty Zauriel is throughout the series regarding the belief systems of other superheroes, especially considering that theirs are just as concretely real as his, as has been repeatedly demonstrated throughout DC history. 

When Wonder Woman volunteers to go with Zauriel's team, for example, she notes, "I've been to Olympus...I've some experience with the divine." 

"Hmph," Zauriel says, "I'd hardly call Olympus divine..." 

When they reach Heaven's gate, Mister Miracle refers to himself as "a New God". You can see Zauriel's reply above. "A new god?" he says, "Unlikely, Mr. Miracle." (He does have a smile on his face while saying this, though.) 

•Whether or not it's a good idea to give Hal Jordan, a guy who had, in addition to murdering a bunch of his Green Lantern Corps colleagues later went on to unmake all of time and space, (temporarily) killing uncountable billions in the process, almost unparalleled, god-like powers seems to be an issue that is rather under-discussed in this series.

Alan Scott is Hal's cheerleader throughout, noting that he is the only person other than Jim Corrigan he knows with the willpower to control The Spectre. (Alan doesn't mention that he had fought Hal repeatedly since his heel turn, including in 1994's Guy Gardner: Warrior arc "Emerald Fallout" arc and Zero Hour, nor that the only reason so many of Alan's old JSoA colleagues were in Heaven to greet him at all is because Hal's henchman Extant killed them during Zero Hour.) 

Batman is a skeptic. Most of the other heroes don't even get to voice an opinion on the matter, let alone discuss it (Johns does have Wonder Woman put her hand on Alan's shoulder in Purgatory and ask him if it's "wise" to try to give Hal control of The Spectre's powers, given that Hal "couldn't even control himself".)

I've got to say, I'm with Batman here. Interestingly, while Batman's take seems the more reasonable of the two in this book, over the years of writing Hal, Johns would continue to present Batman as doubting Hal, but, gradually, it seems like Johns would present Batman as too cynical and judgmental about Hal. 

In the penultimate issue, we get as close to an argument between heroes regarding this course of action that we get in this series (above). 

I have to admit, I found sarcastic Batman pretty funny in that exchange. 

•Reviewing the list of tie-in issues, I see that I had bought and read eight of the 15 that DC published. These were all books I was already reading regularly—Anarky, Aquaman, Hourman, JLA, Martian Manhunter, Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Titans and Young Justice—plus Supergirl, which I only bought because the cover so prominently featured Zauriel, a favorite character of mine.

My memories of most of these comics are pretty dim at this point, which probably doesn't speak well of their quality. I do remember the Anarky issue pretty well, as it was an extremely unlikely team-up with The Haunted Tank (and I'm pretty sure it was my first exposure to that weird concept, as I don't think I had yet read Gath Ennis's 1994 "Haunted Glory" arc of The Demon at that point). And the Hourman issue was basically a Snapper Carr solo story, in which he teaches a stray demon about free will. And the Martian Manhunter issue pit the hero against undead versions of past Leaguers who had died in the line of duty. 

•As for the big change that this event story wrought within the DC Universe, making Hal Jordan the new host of The Spectre? Well, that state of affairs lasted almost exactly five years, which seems a respectable amount of time. At the very least, DC seems to have given Hal-as-The Spectre a healthy chance of succeeding, before reverting Hal back to his pre-"Emerald Twilight" status quo as a Green Lantern, relying on a retcon to excuse his fall from grace and heel turn. 

DC launched a new volume of The Spectre starring the Hal Jordan version of the character in 2001, and it ran 27 issues before being cancelled in 2003 (For context, the three previous Spectre ongoings had lasted 10 issues, 31 issues and 62 issues). That series was written by J.M. DeMatteis and drawn first by Ryan Sook and then by Norm Breyfogle (with a handful of fill-in artists coming and doing during both artists' runs). I appreciated what DeMatteis was trying to do with the character and concept, particularly the effort to have Hal trying to remake The Spectre into a Spirit of Redemption instead of a Spirit of Vengeance, but I didn't much care for the series. Of course, I mostly only read the Breyfogle issues, and those only because I was a fan of Norm Breyfogle's. 

This Spectre also shared a DeMatteis-written mini-series with the JLA, 2003's not very good JLA/The Spectre: Soul War (I'll write about that in the near-ish future), and he had some notable appearances during big doings in the DCU, like playing a key role in the resurrection of Oliver Queen in the pages of the 2001 Green Arrow series and cameoing in JLA/Avengers (Hal would get much more time in that mini-series as Green Lantern though, able to appear as part of some time-travelling shenanigans). (Oh, and he also appeared in one scene in 2004's Identity Crisis, telling Green Arrow that he was "working on" being brough back to life...)

I'm sure there were others.

Anyway, Hal's career as The Spectre ended in the aforementioned 2004 Green Lantern: Rebirth mini-series, restoring Hal Jordan to his original form and, seven years later, The Spectre would return to his original form too, character development and ongoing narrative be damned, with the New 52's Spectre once again bonded to Jim Corrigan. 

The End of JLA Pt. 6: "Crisis of Conscience"

The five-part "Crisis of Conscience", which ran through 2005's JLA #115-119, is a probably a pretty good example of being careful what you wish for. 

A regular JLA reader at the time might have understandably wanted the title to start reflecting the goings-on of the wider DC Universe by the summer of that year, given that some rather big events were happening, all seemingly building towards something even bigger still.

And, of course, some members of the League were involved in various stories that one might assume would impact the Justice League team, like Wonder Woman killing Max Lord (who had suddenly, randomly and in defiance to decades of continuity been retconned into a murderous bad guy for the pages of that May's Countdown one-shot) or Batman building a super-spy satellite with its own army of nanotech cyborg enforcers in the pages of The OMAC Project miniseries. 

And, of course, there was the fact that JLA had been without a regular creative team for 24 issues or so, the last five story arcs all reading like fill-ins to one degree or another. 

What the readers ended up getting, though, was what was essentially the last JLA story. While it would be followed in the title by one more story arc, "Crisis of Conscience" had most of the team quitting and expressing various degrees of finality regarding their decisions (Wonder Woman, who shows up for a single scene, seems to have left the team somewhere between issues #114 and #115, while Plastic Man isn't mentioned at all, the arc's two writers and the book's editors seemingly being unaware of the previous story arc or Justice League Elite, both of which had Plas still an active member).

Also, in its final pages, in which Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart are shown considering new candidates for a new JLA line-up, the Watchtower is attacked by someone in a red cape that the computers register as Superman. The Watchtower is destroyed, and J'onn is seemingly killed.

The story is the work of writers Geoff Johns and Allan Heinberg, the latter of whom was a TV writer whose only previous comics work was Young Avengers for Marvel (This decade of comics was, for better or worse—mostly worse—a period in which DC and Marvel seemed to quite actively court and recruit writers from other media like TV, film and prose to tackle their characters). It was drawn by artists Chis Batista and Mark Farmer. (The evocative coves weren't drawn by the Batista/Farmer team, though, but were instead penciled by the great Rags Morales, whose presence will make sense in a moment).

Now, unlike the five previous stories in the pages of JLA (covered in the last five installments of this series), "Crisis of Conscience" isn't much of a standalone or an evergreen story and, given the fact that it is a direct sequel to the miniseries Identity Crisis, it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense if one reads it out of that context. 

I mean, the art is great, it's full of familiar characters, and its pages are dominated by costumed heroes fighting costumed villains and arguing with one another, although the reason they are fighting one another is mostly just mentioned in dialogue that refers back to the events of Identity Crisis.

I suppose its readable as an example of superhero comics-as-professional wrestling, with Johns and Heinberg employing that one Johns trick—where a character announces their surprise arrival off-panel on the last panel on the bottom of one-page, only to make a dramatic on-page appearance in the splash page that follows—no less than a half-dozen times (Plus there are a few variations of these entrances). 

But the story revolves around the events of other comics, like Identity Crisis and Wonder Woman and, somewhat surprisingly, a Justice League of America story published in 1979 (Which was 26-years previous; I was only two-years-old when those issues were published, and if DC had reprinted them at all, it would have been in a Showcase Presents volume).

DC seems to have realized this book requires a bit of "homework" to follow along when they collected it. For the purposes of this post, I re-read it in the form of the 2005 trade paperback collection. The cover of it features a little red circle reading, "The Explosive Aftermath To Identity Crisis", plus a "The Story So Far..." page of text preceding the first pages of the comic, featuring a lengthy synopsis of Identity Crisis.  

While I would rather not, I suppose I will have to refer to Identity Crisis here. I'll denote the references to that book with a string of asterisks below; feel free to skip ahead if you don't want to read about Identity Crisis at all; I wouldn't blame you, as I'm afraid it might get slightly rant-y, as the story still irritates me. (Also, trigger warning for mention of sexual assault.)

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

Identity Crisis was a seven-issue miniseries published between 2004 and 2005. It was written by the prolific prose novelist Brad Meltzer, writing what was only his second comics story following the six-part 2002-2003 Green Arrow arc "The Archer's Quest". It was penciled by the great Rags Morales and inked by Michael Bair.

It was presented as a murder mystery, the victim being Sue Dibny, the wife of The Elongated Man, who played a prominent role in various iterations of the League her husband was a member of, particularly the so-called "Detroit Era" and "JLI" era Leagues (If I recall correctly, her last appearance before Identity Crisis was in the pages of the 2003-2004 comedic series Formerly Known as the Justice League).

Her murder rocked the superhero community and was followed by attacks on the loved ones of other heroes, like The Atom's ex-wife Jean Loring and Robin's father Tim Drake, and threats to others, like Superman's wife Lois Lane. Whoever the killer was, they knew the secret identities of DC's heroes, even the best-kept ones, like those of Batman and Superman.

It also reminded a group of former Leaguers who were part of the Satellite Era of the team of a terrible secret from their past (And that past was a very long time ago, even then; for reference, the Satellite era was roughly 1970-1984). 

Apparently, the villain Doctor Light had once raped Sue, and, in order to protect her, this group of heroes—Hawkman, Black Canary, The Atom, Zatanna, The Flash Barry Allen, Green Lantern Hal Jordan and Green Arrow Oliver Queen—had voted to have Zatanna use her magical powers to attempt to "fix" Doctor Light so that he might never do such a thing again. 

When Batman walked in on the process, which Meltzer suggests resulted in Light becoming a dopey Teen Titans villain afterwards, Zatanna similarly used her magic on the Dark Knight, removing his memory of what he had just witnessed.

(At the time, I had assumed that Meltzer chose those particular characters from so long ago because they were no longer Justice Leaguers, and thus their extremely unheroic, not-very-Justice League-y actions wouldn't impact the current or future Justic League books, but, given that he would use several of them in his own relaunched 2006 Justice League of America, I would later realize he likely chose to set the events back then, and to build the story around them, simply because that was the Justice League he had read as a little kid.)

As I said, the story was presented as a murder mystery, complete with the introduction of suspects and a few red herrings and the real killer only being revealed at the end. Unfortunately, Meltzer didn't exactly play fair, and his editors didn't seem to press him to do so. 

See, the mystery sort of hinged on pre-Crisis continuity (with some hiccups), so anyone who, say, had been reading DC Comics in the previous 20+ years wouldn't have even thought to guess who the murderer actually was (For several reasons, really, but I'm just going to stick to the continuity one here, since this post isn't really about Identity Crisis). 

Sue's murderer turned out to be (Spoiler warning...? I guess...?) The Atom's ex-wife Jean Loring. 

Why did she want Sue dead? Well, apparently she wanted to get back together with her superhero ex-husband, and thought the way to do that would be to start attacking the loved ones of various superheroes, thus making The Atom worry about her and grow closer to her (Oddly, Meltzer chose to also indicate that The Atom wanted to get back together with her too, rendering Jean's plot moot).

So, she targeted Sue, which, fine, Ralph Dibny hadn't had a secret identity for most of his existence, and Sue openly worked with and/or for the Justice League for at least a decade within the DCU timeline. But, as I said, Loring's hit list also included Jack Drake and Lois Lane.

The problem is, of course, Jean Loring wouldn't know Superman's secret identity, nor would she know Batman's...which she would need to in order to figure out who the current (and third) Robin might be (Also, given that Robin wasn't one of The Atom's Justice League colleagues, he was an oddly chosen target, suggesting that the killer was after all superheroes, and not just former Justice Leaguers). 

Apparently, Meltzer was operating on the understanding that all of the members of the Justice League knew one another's secret identities and shared them with their significant others. 

That may have been the case when Meltzer was reading JLoA in the late seventies and early eighties (or at least the Justice Leaguers knowing one another's ID's), of course, but that had changed post-Crisis. In fact, a majority of Mark Waid's JLA run was devoted to the fact that most of the Justice League pointedly did not know one another's secret identities, and Batman's refusal to reveal his to his teammates was threatening to break the League up. It was presented as a major moment when he did finally unmask for the rest of his team (which, of course, no longer featured The Atom). (Tim Drake, by the way, didn't become Robin until 1989; Jean Loring divorced Ray Palmer in 1983, the year before Jason Todd became the second Robin. Again, his inclusion in the plot at all makes no damn sense.)

In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that Meltzer was picking Jean Loring's victims off a list of characters DC must have said they were willing to let him kill off, rather than one's that make any sense at all.

Anyway, that was Identity Crisis. 

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"Crisis of Conscience" opens with a page of J'onn J'onnz on the surface of Mars, while a fight breaks out on the Watchtower, with Flash Wally West, Zatanna and Black Canary trying to keep Hawkman and Green Arrow apart. Apparently, The Flash had called them all up there to get them to agree to fess up to Batman about what they did to him, something Wally learned of during the course of Identity Crisis. A newly resurrected Hal Jordan and J'onn soon arrive. 

Hal refers to the events of 1979's JLoA #166-168 (I believe), where the Justice League at the time had swapped bodies with the Secret Society of Super-Villains, allowing the bad guys to discover their secret identities. Hal says they had Zatanna magically zap their identities out of the brains of the villains, which apparently presaged the later attempt to magically lobotomize Dr. Light, to use Green Arrow's term for what they did.

In addition to erasing about ten minutes of Batman's memory, they also used Zatanna's magic to block J'onn's telepathy from accidentally picking up the secret from their minds.

Let's pause to note how damn weird this story read in 2004. 

Not only is it based on a story from a generation previous to that—not an allusion to that story, or a reference to it, or a modern retelling of something similar to it, but an honest-to-God sequel to it—but some of these characters have never even appeared in the pages of JLA or its spin-offs, or did so in minor, supporting roles, as, say, Black Canary, Green Arrow and Hawkman did in "Syndicate Rules" and JLA/Avengers.  

Hell, Hal Jordan had never appeared in JLA wearing a ring; his only interactions with this incarnation of the League were when he was temporarily The Spectre.

Anyway, J'onn leaves to go talk to Batman, whom he said already knows what the Satellite Era Leaguers did to him, and no sooner does he leave then the Watchtower gets distress signals from two other former members, Red Tornado and The Elongated Man. 

The remaining heroes split up to attempt a rescue their former teammates, but they face fierce resistance from mostly unseen villains (There's an extremely dumb page where Ralph is shown retreating into his kitchen to grab his Gingold extract, which he has placed on the very top shelf of a cupboard, well out of his own reach. Why? He lives alone, not with any children. Apparently, Johns and Heinberg thought it would be ironic to show him trying and failing to stretch far enough to reach the thing that gives him stretching powers).

Meanwhile, J'onn finds Batman on a Gotham City rooftop, where he's having a flirty conversation with Catwoman (In this story's one genuinely funny moment, Catwoman attempts to close the distance between herself and Batman, perhaps to kiss or embrace him, and instead bumps into some invisible barrier; it turns out to be J'onn, standing between them invisibly). (Interestingly, the skies in Gotham are red; I'm not sure if this is meant to be a reference to Batman: The Animated Series, in which the night sky of Gotham was always red, or to Crisis, when the skies of the DC Universe rather notoriously turned red.)

The conversation doesn't get far before pieces of Red Tornado rain down on Batman from above, followed by the unconscious bodies of Ralph and the Leaguers who had just answered the distress calls. (Coincidentally, as I write this post, I'm currently working my way through DC Finest: Justice League of America: The Return, and in 1985's JLoA Annual #3, Red Tornado is also torn to pieces. This...happens to him an awful lot, doesn't it?) 

Floating on a platform above Batman, J'onn and Catwoman are the reawakened members of The SSOS (Felix Faust! The Wizard! The Floronic Man! The Matter Master! (A) Star Sapphire! The original Chronos! Don't worry if you don't recognize any of them; the next issue opens with a roll call naming them all, and Johns and Heinberg are good enough at writing such fight comics that they drop their names into the fight patter and have them all demonstrate their powers).

"Hello, Bruce," The Wizard says. "Remember us? Because we remember... ...everything."

Oh snap! The Secret Society of Super-Villains have returned! And they have somehow had their memories restored and thus know the Satellite Era Justice Leaguers' secret identities again, like they did in 1979! Thank goodness Johns and Heinberg had Hal mention these events like 15 pages ago...!

That's the first issue. On to part two!

There's a big fight, during which Catwoman is fairly badly wounded, and then the villains disappear. So too does Batman, having taken Catwoman and the pieces of the Tornado back to the Batcave with him. The others all barge in, during one of those dramatic entrances that Johns so likes, although the way it is presented here, it makes it seem like eight superheroes all snuck into the cave simultaneously, and Batman didn't notice them until J'onn announced them. 

Batman punches out Hawkman, which is cool (Cool enough Morales made it the cover of this particular issue). I wish he would have then punched out Hal Jordan too, but alas, just as Hawkman picks himself up and grasps the shaft of his mace, threatening, "I hope it was worth it, Batman. Because I'm going to give you ten minutes you'll never forget," Hal pushes them apart with ring constructs.

Batman tells them all to get lost, and they do, while J'onn returns to the Watchtower. There he finds someone sitting in the monitor womb. "J'onn, I'm so glad you're here," the darkened figure says over his shoulder. "Someone has given the Secret Society their memories back."

This last bit is, of course, in the last panel at the bottom of a righthand page, and turning it reveals a big panel featuring a big, muscular Despero sitting in the chair, nude save for a cape. He has apparently spun the chair around to face J'onn, all dramatic like. 

"I wonder who that could've been..." Despero grins.

"Despero," J'onn says, apparently answering the question and identifying the character for anyone who might not know who the three-eyed, fin-headed guy was. (Why did Despero give the Society their memories back? How did he know they lost them in the first place? What does he care about a bunch of C-list League villains from like four incarnations of the Justice League ago? Johns and Heinberg never really clear any of this up, and so the Desperso/SSOV plots don't really connect in a satisfactory way...unless we are to believe that Despero is a bit of a gossip, I suppose, as there are a few references to the fact that word of what the Satellite Era team did to Light has been getting out of late...)

Part three!

As the pair of old enemies battle in the Watchtower, The Flash runs around the country, checking in on various heroes and their loved ones or teammates. He's on his way to warn Lois Lane of the Secret Society's return when the vey villains attack the Daily Planet building. (Allow me an aside to complain: "Who's next, Wizard?" Star Sapphire says, "Carol Ferris? Jim Jordan?" Those are the names of some of Hal's loved ones, of course. The Wizard replies, "Why not? Then Iris Allen, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon..." Okay, so it's possible that Jean Loring did some research to find what black-haired young man Bruce Wayne spent the most time with these days and thus was able to deduce Tim Drake was Robin, but how in the fuck would The Wizard know who Tim is? Dick Grayson was still Robin at the time the SSOS discovered the Leaguers' identities.)

Anyway, it's another big, multi-page fight, this time with Wally and the mind-wipers joined in the battle by Superman. The heroes defeat the Society, knocking them all unconscious and binding them with ring constructs, and while Superman makes his disapproval of mind-wiping known, he asks aloud, "Then the question is... ...what do we do with them?" 

Hawkman points directly at the Man of Steel and says, "We vote." This, of course, evokes the long-ago vote that led to Dr. Light's magical lobotomy at the hands of Zatanna. Here though she will just extract some information from their minds, rather than seeking to change them.

Part four! 

J'onn and Despero plunge from the Watchtower to Earth, fighting all the way. Despero seems to have J'onn on the ropes, when Aquaman makes his dramatic splash page entrance, having thrown a pointed piece of rebar through the villain's shoulder with a SHUNKK.

The assembled Leaguers all make their votes about whether to have Zatanna alter the minds of the SSOV again, and a few of those that aren't Hawkman make excuses for the way they vote (The ayes are Hawkman, Green Arrow and The Flash, the neighs Hal, Canary and Superman). Zatanna says she refuses to do it again though, and tells Hawkman, "For the good of the League... ...take me off the reserve list. I quit."

She teleports herself to Themyscira, where she briefly chats at the then-new, recently rebooted Supergirl, and then has a heart to heart with Wonder Woman. There, Wondy reveals that she's now estranged from the League, and that Superman and Batman think she's a murderer, just because she killed someone. 

She essentially advises Zatanna to zap the villains' minds again, saying that just as Zee doesn't want to use her powers like that ever again, she too doesn't want to use hers to take a human life again, "But in the end... ...it might come down to that for both of us."

Meanwhile, Despero has defeated J'onn and Aquaman, and with them in his mental thrall, he next visits the Batcave, where he then mentally dominates Batman as well. His control over their minds is signified by the appearance of a third, luminescent eye on their foreheads (Catwoman, trying to fight off Batman, scratches his cowl just so, ripping it to reveal his third eye under it).

Part five! 

Superman, Flash and the others arrive in the Batcave to duke it out with Despero's pawns (The best part? Hawkman bashing Batman over the head with his grandfather clock, shouting "Wake up!"). Red Tornado, who Batman has been putting together in his spare time, gets the same surprise splash entrance that Aquaman just had in the previous issue, but it's not enough to tun turn the tide. (Say, how come Batman is able to fix Reddy in a day or two with a screwdriver and the tools of the Batcave, but, in the pages of Justice League Unlimited, the team has yet to fix his body after he was "killed" during Absolute Power...?)

Zatanna, who reappears and shouts, "Orepsed-- --POTS!" is enough, though. 

She freezes Despero in place, banishes his influence over her friends' minds, and then disappears again, lingering only long enough to sass Hawkman and Batman.

As Batman tells the assembled heroes that they can show themselves out, J'onn and Superman broach the subject of the League. 

Hal Jordan decides to chime in.

The League? 

I don't know about you, Superman, but from what I've just seen...?

...There is no League.

Or if there is...this isn't it.

No shit, Hal. That's because it's not 1983.

But Hal continues to Hal-Jordan on to J'onn J'onnz, who had interrupted him.:

Now Batman's quit.

Wonder Woman's not coming back.

Arthur, Ollie, Dinah, Red Tornado and I haven't been members in years.

And Carter works with the J.S.A.

As of now, the League is you, John Stewart, Wally, and Superman.

Okay, a couple of things here. Hal is, obviously, wrong. Of course, he's been dead for years and his ghost playing host to a divine force of vengeance, so maybe we can't blame him too much for getting a few things wrong, but the fact that no one corrects him is a little weird.

True, Arthur had disappeared from the League after his death during Our Worlds At War and, after his resurrection, he took some time off, so that he was absent from the team between 2001's JLA #54 and 2004's #106, but those of us who had been reading JLA know that we just saw him on the team in the preceding story arc, "Syndicate Rules."

Ollie was on the team between 2002's JLA #69 and 2003's #76, serving as part of Batman's Nightwing-lead contingency League that served while the main team was time-lost in the ancient past, and he then joined the black ops team in Justice League Elite, serving with the Justice League offshoot between 2004 and 2005, and shown siding with the JLA at the climax of the series. 

Also, I know I've said this before, but you (and by "you" I mean Hal Jordan, as well as the writers and editors) forgot Plastic Man.

These are things that people actually reading JLA in 2005 would have known, and it's weird that the writers and/or editors didn't seem to. 

As the book winds down, Wally says that he needs some time away from the team too, mentioning the birth of his twins, and Superman basically ducks responsibility for the team, telling J'onn, "You've managed to rebuild the team more than once...And when you do, I'll be there."

Meanwhile, as Wonder Woman seemed to intimate, Zatanna does indeed make the Society forget the Leaguers' identities, with as "Uoy LLIW Tegrof!"; J'onn visits Batman in the cave and we find out exactly why Zatanna and the others messing with the minds of villains might have pissed him off so much, as he reminds us that Catwoman  was part of an incarnation of the Secret Society and that he "thought she'd changed, but... ...Maybe it wasn't her choice";  and then we see J'onn before a monitor full of headshots on the Watchtower, John Stewart's head appearing in a an apparently ring-conjured GL symbol, his voice coming through it in green dialogue bubbles.

Oddly, given that John has been the team's Green Lantern for the last 43 issues, this is his only appearance in this story about the League reacting to the fallout of Identity Crisis and breaking up. He appears in just two panels and speaks about four sentences of dialogue.

Anyway, if you're curious about such things, the headshots J'onn is considering belong to Zauriel, the late Blue Beetle, Nightwing, Vixen, Fire, Gypsy, Metamorpho, Huntress, Booster Gold, Hawkgirl, Animal Man and the brand-new Firestorm (Meltzer also killed the Ronnie Raymond version of the character in the pages of Identity Crisis).

John is in the middle of suggesting Vixen when J'onn becomes distracted marking Blue Beetle deceased. He then rattles off references to the events of The OMAC Project, Villains United, The Rann/Thanagar War and Day of Vengeance. Then the computer recognizes Superman, and J'onn turns to face someone in a red cape. 

And then the Watchtower explodes in a big KROOOM that fills the final page. A little tag at the bottom reads "Not The End..."

I know I've basically just been summarizing the plot and complaining about elements of the writing. I should note that, despite all those complaints, the book looks good, both inside and out. 

Obviously, Morales' covers are great; I don't think I've ever seen less than stellar artwork from Morales, going back to when I first encountered it, in the pages of 1989 DC/TSR series Forgotten Realms. 

Batista is now slouch, either. The story basically treats its characters like action figures that Johns and Heinberg are playing with, and Batista follows suit. All of the various characters he draws, almost all of whom are superheroes or supervillains, are all big and muscular and usually in the act of posing, but Batista manages to sell the images of them as compelling, and he similarly succeeds in making them seem fluid, alive and emotive. 

Sure, some of the posing is a bit cheesy—Aquaman attacking Despero and then, rather than bracing for a counterattack, standing there with his arms crossed struck me as particularly odd—but Batista manages a decent amount of character work. Like Garney in the previous arcs, I could certainly see him as a worthy artist for a JLA ongoing. 

But, obviously, JLA wasn't going to be doing too much more going-on. 

As for where this story picks up, well, there is, of course, one more arc in the title, "World Without a Justice League". That follows Green Arrow and Justice League Elite's Manitou Dawn as they battle The Key and react to the events of Infinite Crisis. But for the actual resolution regarding the attack on the Watchtower and J'onn, and what becomes of guy doing the attacking, and what happens next to our heroes, well that story is actually told in Infinite Crisis. The next (and final) arc of JLA doesn't really address any of that.

"Crisis of Conscience" is collected in 2006's JLA Vol. 18: Crisis of Conscience, 2012's The Infinite Crisis Omnibus and 2017's JLA Vol.  9.

Next: Bob Harras, Tom Deranick and Dan Green's "World Without a Justice League" from 2005-2006's JLA #120-125.

Compare and contrast these pages from 1987's Shazam: The New Beginning and 2012's "Shazam!"

A CYNICAL BILLY BATSON RELUCTANTLY SAYS "SHAZAM" AT THE WIZARD'S INSISTENCE:

BLACK ADAM RETURNS TO THE PRESENT, MEETS SIVANA AND HOLDS HIM ALOFT BY HIS COLLAR:

BLACK ADAM FLIES SIVANA TO THE TOP OF A HIGH STRUCTURE SO THEY CAN DISCUSS THEIR ALLIANCE:

In 1987, DC Comics had writer Roy Thomas reintroduce C.C. Beck and Bill Parker's Golden Age superhero Captain Marvel to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 1986-1987 Crisis On Infinite Earths limited series, in which that shared setting was refreshed and recreated, with older characters being reinvented for more modern times. Thomas and co-writer Dann Thomas wrote the four-issue Shazam: The New Beginning, which was penciled and inked by Tom Mandrake and colored by Joe Orlando. In 2017 it was collected along with another Thomas-written story from the era and re-released in a hardcover format as Shazam: The New Beginning 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition.

In 2012, DC Comics had writer Geoff Johns reintroduce Captain Marvel, now re-named "Shazam," to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 2011 Flashpoint miniseries, in which that shared setting was rebooted and recreated, with classic characters being reinvented for more modern times and introduced to readers as if for the very first time. Johns wrote a "Shazam" strip as a back-up in his Justice League ongoing series. It was penciled and inked by Gary Frank and colored by Brad Anderson. It was later collected into a trade paperback under the title Shazam Vol. 1 and, later, republished as Shazam: Origins. It was the basis of the 2019 film.

Interestingly, in rather broad strokes, the two miniseries, which had identical mandates, resembled one another in terms of their plots. In both, scientist Dr. Sivana frees the Wizard Shazam's first champion, Black Adam, from his centuries-old imprisonment and the two villains become allies. Meanwhile, orphan Billy Batson is given a magical word by the wizard in order to transform himself into a superhero. Both stories even end with the teasing introduction of another of Captain Marvel's most colorful villains, Mr. Mind.

Despite the similarities of the broad shape of the two Captain Marvel reintroductions, they differ quite a bit in the details (Thomas' story posited Sivana as Billy's uncle, and included versions of the pre-existent characters Uncle Dudley, Magnificus and Beautia and even Hoppy, The Marvel Bunny; Johns', meanwhile, included versions of Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mr. Tawky Tawny and Ibac...plus three new "lieutenant" Marvels).

Still, I was struck by the degree to which certain scenes in the Johns/Frank comic so strongly echoed scenes from the Thomas/Mandrake take. Obviously, Johns and Frank drew inspiration from their predecessors, even as their Captain Marvel/Shazam story was quite different in tone, emphasis and in so many of the particulars.