Nick Cardy’s cover for Justice League of America #109 is interesting in that it completely ignores the conflict that drives roughly 80% of the plot of this issue’s story. Rather, it seeks to hook the prospective buyer by way of a tantalizing mystery — who is leaving the team? It’s not a bad strategy, really, since even casual fans of the JLA would likely be curious to learn the answer.
The only real problem with hanging the cover’s whole pitch on this mystery is that the answer is given immediately, on the story’s very first page. So if our hypothetical prospective buyer was only interested in that bit of information, and they so much as flipped past the cover while still standing at the spinner rack, they might well have opted to put the comic back rather than spend two dimes on it. But, hey, see for yourself:
On the other hand, maybe that prospective buyer would be curious enough about why the Feathered Fury wanted to go (as well as whether he’d actually follow through with it) to go ahead and spring for the issue. Let’s hope so, because it was definitely worth the twenty cents.
Naturally, here at the beginning of our narrative, Hawkman’s fellow Leaguers are as anxious to find out his reasons as any fan. But before we proceed to hear from Katar Hol, let’s pause just a few moments to consider the real-world reasons why the decision-makers at DC Comics — who, in this particular fifty-year-old case, were probably editor Julius Schwartz and writer Len Wein — might have decided to give Hawkman the boot.
While not a charter member of the JLA, the Winged Wonder was a well-established presence in the series, having been around since issue #31 (Nov., 1964). But he’d been without a headlining slot of his own since the cancellation of Atom and Hawkman in 1969, and in the intervening years had largely been relegated to guest shots and team-ups (as well as his regular appearances in JLA, of course). Recently, he’d had a couple of solo outings backing up Batman in Detective Comics, but evidently neither had set the world on fire. Still, why not keep the guy around? It’s not like he was the only League member who currently had not even a regular backup slot to call their own; the team’s most recent recruits, the Elongated Man (who’d joined in #105) and the Red Tornado (inducted just one issue later) were in the same boat, as was the veteran Aquaman.
Six months after JLA #109 came out, JLA #112 presented an “Extra” edition of the “JLA Mail Room” letters column devoted to “The Fuss ‘n’ Feathers over Hawkman”; in it, reader Scott Gibson of Sterling, CO, allowed that he could understand why DC had thought the League needed to reduce the League’s roster by one, noting that some stories had been just a little overcrowded of late. Mr Gibson went on to imagine how the process of deciding precisely who to eliminate might have gone:
Your humble blogger has his own opinions (as I suspect a number of you out there reading this do also) about whether all of the abilities of the four heroes named by Scott Gibson should be so easily dismissed either as “unspectacular” or “not that big a help” . Still, it’s not at all hard to imagine Schwartz and Wein following a similar train of logic in mid-1973, and coming to the conclusion that of the JLAers then serving, Hawkman was the most dispensable. (For the record, Schwartz’s editorial assistant Martin Pasko, who handled the letters column, didn’t confirm that Gibson’s speculations were correct — but he didn’t dismiss them, either.) In the absence of any other evidence, the hypothesis offered above seems as likely to be true as any.
But enough about the “real world”, at least for the nonce. Let’s head back to Earth-One, and to the immediate aftermath of Hawkman’s dramatic announcement:
Hawkman’s explanation for his sudden decision makes… quite a bit of sense, actually. Sure, if they’d wanted, Wein and Schwartz could easily have come up with a reason for Katar and Shayera (Hawkgirl) Hol to remain on Earth (as, indeed, reasons would later be found for them to return) — but the notion of them being recalled to Thanagar by their superiors still follows logically from what we know about the characters. They did come here for their jobs, after all.
As I’ve related previously, my younger self had somehow managed to miss JLA #106 on the stands back in April — so while I’d gleaned from subsequent issues that the Red Tornado had therein scored an official Justice League membership card, this was my first inkling that he’d also acquired a new secret identity (“John Smith”), love interest (employment counselor Kathy Sutton), and — perhaps most impressive of all — a human-looking face beneath his red metal helmet.
Eclipso — “Hero and Villain in One Man!” had first appeared in House of Secrets #61 (Jul.-Aug., 1963), and had gone on to hold down his own strip in that title for the next three years, ending his run with issue #80 (Sep.-Oct., 1966). But in 1973, my only prior exposure to the Master of Darkness had been in his only non-HoS showing to date, when he went up against Batman in Brave and the Bold #64 (Feb.-Mar., 1966) (an issue which happens to have been one of your humble blogger’s first dozen or so comic-book purchases, for those of you interested in that sort of thing). Recalling that earlier dust-up, my sixteen-year-old self wouldn’t have been surprised that the Darknight Detective had been keeping tabs on his one-time foe (“…he hasn’t been heard from in months!”) — but I might have wondered at his failure to recognize Eclipso’s alias of Dr. Bruce Gordon, since I’m sure I must have remembered that Gordon had played a prominent role in that BatB yarn. Certainly my sixty-six-year-old self wondered about that particular bit, when I recently re-read JLA #109 in preparation for this post. But you know what? I checked, and though Batman and Bruce Gordon do appear in close proximity to each other in BatB #64, they never actually meet face to face within its pages. So, either Len Wein did his due diligence in researching Eclipso’s past history before writing “The Doom of the Divided Man!”, or he just got lucky; either way, there are no continuity gaffes here.
Anyone whose first issue of JLA this was was hopefully paying attention back on page 2 when Black Canary mentioned “Green Arrow’s insults” — otherwise. they might be puzzled by Batman’s surprise at GA’s request to be on the same team as Hawkman. Regular readers, on the other hand, would be aware that, beginning around issue #103, Len Wein had been consistently writing the latter two heroes as having a personality conflict.
In a 2008 interview for the JLA Satellite blog, Wein remarked that the fractious Green Arrow/Hawkman relationship “was probably the thing I was proudest for having brought to the book.” He went on to add:
When I took over the JLA, it had always bothered me that these characters all got along so well. In fact, most of their personalities were almost interchangeable. I always felt that, like in any combat unit, these people would absolutely die for one another without a moment’s hesitation, but wouldn’t necessarily like one another at leisure.
Here was Green Arrow, the ultimate ’70s radical Liberal, always at odds with the establishment, and there was Hawkman, interstellar policeman, epitomizing the establishment. These guys would never get along.
I’d push back just a little on the dual notions that, prior to Wein’s advent as scripter, most of the JLAers had “interchangeable” personalities, and that they’d hardly ever experienced interpersonal conflict; Wein’s immediate predecessors, Denny O’Neil and Mike Friedrich, had already made significant progress in those areas, in my opinion. But the GA/Hawkman feud was arguably new in presenting friction between heroes that lasted longer than one scene, or even one issue; fifty years later, it remains one of the most memorable aspects of Wein’s tenure, at least for me.
Before moving on, let’s give due props to artists Dick Dillin (penciller) and Dick Giordano (inker) for the subtle but expert manner in which they convey Hawkman’s pleasure and Green Arrow’s embarrassment in that last panel above. And now, on with our story…
While Len Wein was keen to modernize the approach to characterization in Justice League of America, he also clearly loved the venerable “split-into-smaller-teams” story structure that went back not just to the book’s original writer Gardner Fox, but even before that, to the super-team comics of the Golden Age.
You have to hand it to Wein for sheer brass for that line about how the Atom and the Black Canary — two Justice Leaguers who neither possess the power of flight themselves, nor have ready access to super-charged airborne transportation a la the Batplane or Invisible Jet — have managed to get from the orbiting JLA Satellite to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean “by special Justice League methods we are not permitted to reveal”. (Yes, the Satellite has a teleportation machine — but it won’t beam you to any old coordinates, only to special “transportation centers” at different locations across the Earth; if I’m not mistaken, at this point in League history the only such center we’ve seen is one on the rooftop of a Manhattan building implied to be the location of the offices of DC Comics.)
Wein’s approach to plotting JLA calls for each member of the mini-teams to get a chance to show their stuff power-wise, or at least to make some sort of meaningful contribution to the group endeavor; the Atom has just had his turn.
I happen to believe that Dick Giordano is one of the best finishers Dick Dillin ever had — perhaps the very best — but if I were to find fault with any aspect of his work on JLA, it would be that, as delineated by the two artists in tandem, Black Canary occasionally appears a little too soft. Such is the case in the panels shown above, where the heroine comes across as not just beleaguered, but overwhelmed. Perhaps it’s an unintended carryover from all those romance comics Giordano drew for Marvel earlier in his career — or perhaps I’m just seeing something that’s not there. But I don’t remember Dillin’s version of Dinah Drake seeming like such a fragile flower when his pencils were embellished by Joe Giella or Sid Greene.
In any event, regardless of how strong she appears, BC will get a chance to show her mettle on the very next page — when, after reluctantly leaving Aquaman to handle Eclipso’s henchmen solo, she and Atom proceed into the undersea lab and find one of the three Eclipsos waiting for them…
Gee, I wonder if the failure of the Black Canary-engineered light-burst to do so much as slow Eclipso down will be echoed in a later chapter… no, not really. I have read a Justice League story or two before this, after all.
Eclipso attempts to slow the Flash down by blinding him with a beam of darkness from his diamond — but the Flash just sets his molecules to vibrate through any obstacle in his path and plows on ahead. Hey, who needs to see?
Huh. Kind of seems like Green Arrow only wanted to be teamed with “Feather-Face” so he could needle him one last time, doesn’t it?
Panel from Marvel Team-Up #17 (Jan., 1974), featuring Spider-Man and Mister Fantastic. Text by Len Wein; art by Gil Kane and Sal Trapani.
Len Wein evidently really liked that “boarding-house reach” joke, as he used it this very same month in a story over at Marvel Comics. (The way I figure it, a writer’s entitled to one use of a gag per comic-book universe, so there’s no problem here.)
Back at our story, Hawkman flies anew to the attack; Eclipso defends himself with his black diamond beam o’ darkness move, but our Thanagarian stalwart counters by summoning a flock of birds (Wheet! Wheet!) to bedevil the villain…
With one last dig at “Buzzard-Beak” from Green Arrow for the road, it’s a wrap for the third and last of our mini-team chapters, and on to the whole-team finale…
OK, so is Batman’s surprise solution to the three-Eclipso problem, involving mysterious “special chemicals” that somehow converted the black diamond’s dark energy to really, really bright light and simultaneously turned it back on Eclipso himself, something of a boarding-house reach of its own? Sure it is — but I don’t care. Because the reason I remember this story as fondly as I do after half a century — indeed, the reason that I’m writing about it at all — is yet to come:
That single, look-carefully-or-you’ll-miss-it tear running down Oliver Queen’s face? Yeah. This one’s a keeper.
As many of you out there reading this already know, Hawkman’s absence from the JLA ended up lasting, well, not that long at all — just eight issues, in fact. Justice League of America #117 (Apr., 1975), written by Elliot S! Maggin, brought the Winged Wonder back under less than ideal circumstances, as readers learned that Thanagar had been infected with an “equalizing plague”. (Hawkgirl’s return to Earth-based crimefighting would come a couple of issues later than her husband’s, though she still wouldn’t be granted full JLA membership until #145.) The situation on Thanagar was eventually cleared up, but the Hawks hung around after that, anyway, and never really left — at least, not until Crisis on Infinite Earths and subsequent retcons essentially excised these versions of Carter and Shiera Hall from continuity.
You’ll have to forgive your humble blogger for being a little vague on the details of these latter events, as I had more or less fallen out of the JLA-buying habit (with exceptions for the annual Justice League-Justice Society team-ups) by the time issue #117 rolled around — a habit I didn’t resume until Steve Englehart came aboard as writer with #141, in 1977. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain when or how I even learned that the Hawks were back (though it was probably via JLA #123, the first chapter of 1975’s JLA-JSA shindig, where Katar filled his customary team member role as though he’d never left).
Sometimes I wonder if JLA #109 would have remained as firmly fixed in my memory as it undeniably has been these past several decades, had I been around to experience Hawkman’s return to service a mere fifteen months after his departure. Considering how much I love that last page, I’d like to think that it would… but, obviously, I’ll never really know.
This was a fun issue. Action, characterization and yes, that neat end. I think Gerry Conway did a good job showing Hawkman and GA eventually burying the hatchet and becoming buddy-buddy years later.
2)I’d seen Eclipso
in the same B&B as you, but I’d read a couple of reprints in Action Comics as well so I was primed for this. 3)”I’d push back just a little on the dual notions that, prior to Wein’s advent as scripter, most of the JLAers had “interchangeable” personalities,” It drove me up the wall when Geoff Johns and Jim Lee made the same point about how awesome their New 52 JLA would be — they’d have characterization! Gardner Fox didn’t do characterization! Yeah, not like anyone’s written the book since the Silver Age … 4)For some reason wordpress won’t let me paragraph. 5)As someone who bought JLA up until the death of the Detroit League years later, you weren’t missing much by dropping out. Between Wein and Englehart the stories were “meh,” with a few exceptions (an Adam Strange two-parter by Cary Bates, for instance).
Oh, apparently I can paragraph, it just doesn’t show it in the comment until printed.
Yeah, this one’s a keeper. Great art, a nice tight story, with admittedly a-completely-out-of-left-field Batman ex machina to save the day. When does Bats find the time to do this stuff? How does nobody see him do it? Why does he feel like he has to keep it a secret? Actually, with all the discussion in regard to “characterization,” this particular character trait of Batman’s has been around since the first time he met Superman and it still hasn’t gone away. Dude is sneaky and trusts no one.
You’re right, Alan, that Giordano is a great inker for Dillin, but he’s a great inker for anybody…as long as they want their work to look like Neal Adams. And while on the one hand, it’s easy to say, “who wouldn’t?” I’d have to think it was fairly frustrating for Dillin to have his pencils so overwhelmed by the inker’s personal style that they were indistinguishable from Giordano on Irv Novick or Giordano on Bob Brown or whoever. Of course, in the case of the aforementioned trio, Giordano on inks is a marked improvement. When Dick inks someone who has a really strong pencilling style, like Simonson, Kane or Rogers, having him turn their work into Adams-lite is not all that much of an improvement. And no, before you ask, I can’t think of specific examples of this last trio, but I remember seeing it happen from time to time, not just with Giordano, but other heavily stylistic inkers (Janson, Austin) as well. I remember once when Jim Aparo inked Simonson on an issue of Detective, and well…I digress, but it was not what I expected from “pencils by Walter Simonson.”
Even though he wasn’t there on the opening pages, I was glad to see Aquaman show up in the undersea chapter with Dinah and Ray, though an explanation why he disappeared without a word once that mission was over would have been appreciated. I guess he was busy with “King-stuff.” I also liked how Wein over-lapped the reasons for why Bats didn’t get to tell his team that help was on the way. Wein really paid attention to alot of the small details of how teams work and I always appreciated that.
Finally, trust DC to deliver a big heaping plate of cheese when the time comes for Hawkman to say goodbye. I did think it was a bit of a bad move to have GA grieve in private and not take the opportunity to let Carter know how he felt, but you know…”characterization.” Thanks, Alan!
I can buy Ollie refusing to say it out loud.
I also don’t think Batman’s miracle at the end is that implausible — I’m sure in the DCU finding a chemical that bursts with light if you run an energy charge through it isn’t that difficult.
That explanation is actually a good bit clearer than the one Wein had Batman deliver, frasersherman! 🙂
I see what you guys are saying, but even if such a chemical exists, what are the odds Bats would have it in his utility belt to use? Just seems like a stretch to me.
My very first issue of Justice League—and at six years old, I took Hawkman and Green Arrow’s feud at face value without any prior set-up.
https://tombrevoort.com/2016/04/16/bought-this-one-at-the-7-11-during-another/
Looks like we’re going to start overlapping, Tom! I guess it had to happen eventually. 😉
Yes, we’ve reached that point!
Although JLA was quickly becoming my favorite comic book series, my 7-year-old self missed issue 109 at the time. When I did buy the back issue five years later, I recognized Eclipso from a reprint in a Detective Comics Super-Spectacular. It was really neat to discover that Eclipso’s alter-ego was the same Dr. Gordon that Len Wein foreshadowed back in issue # 106. When Marv Wolfman mentioned a Bruce Gordon early in his Green Lantern run in the early 1980’s, I realized that Eclipso wouldn’t be far behind.
At my young age, Len’s Justice League line-up of members and guests were my very first encounters with a lot of Silver Age characters. So much so that I was shocked retrospectively to discover that he was bringing back guest-stars and villains who hadn’t been seen since at least 1968. If there’s an explanation as to why so many super-villains were on hiatus in DC Comics for the several year interim, I’d love to hear it.
This issue also makes me nostalgic for Batman of the early-to-mid 1970’s, as written by Len, Denny O’Neill and Bob Haney. He and Superman were the World’s Finest duo, he was a partner to his fellow members in the JLA and with his guest-stars in Brave and the Bold, he was the brilliant strategist who saved the day at the last minute (as would be shown again in issue 112), and he was still a decade or so away from becoming … something I still don’t recognize.
Lastly, with the next issue blurb announcing the advent of the 100-Page Super-Spectaculars, I began to encounter a whole bunch of Golden Age and Silver Age reprints which greatly expanded my knowledge of DC and Quality characters. It’s a lot of fun for me 50 years later to begin to reminisce about my first run of collecting consecutive issues of the Justice League.
I had forgotten how enjoyable this issue was, thank you Alan for helping me rediscover it again. I’m in full agreement with your praise for both the writing and the art. This was one of my favourite periods of the Justice League and I think you must be in agreement as you have written individual blog posts on 8 of the 10 most recent issues only missing issues 104, where the Shaggy Man and Hector Hammond reappeared, and 106 (which you couldn’t blog about even if you had wanted to because you hadn’t bought it back in the day). Wien wrote the League brilliantly but alas, within a year he would be gone and the baton would be handed on to others. Like yourself I didn’t find those stories as interesting or enjoyable as Wien’s but I continued to faithfully buy every subsequent issue up until its demise in the 80’s.
Three things:
First, while it was Len Wein who did the most with the conflict between Green Arrow and Hawkman, I think Mike Friedrich hinted that there was a certain tension between the pair in the last two parts of the Starbreaker trilogy. (Green Arrow is the one JLAer absent in Friedrich’s final story in *JLA* #99.)
It’s worth noting that Green Arrow and Hawkman fight the Shaggy Man together in *JLA* #104 and do surprisingly well against him; Hector Hammond, who’s manipulating the creature, praises their efforts in a thought balloon. (Sometimes, Ollie, there are advantages to being teamed with a feather duster!)
Second, “boarding house reach” from the Elongated Man has a history going back to his introduction in *The Flash* #112, when the Scarlet Speedster commends Ralph Dibny for possessing it to such an extraordinary degree.
Third, at this time, I think that the “three other people” who know that Bruce Gordon is Eclipso — prior to the eight Justice Leaguers who learn it in “Doom of the Divided Man” — are Simon Bennett, his daughter Mona and Prince Ra-Man, Mind Master, who fought him twice (*House of Secrets* Nos. 76 and 79).
Can anyone tell me whether I see the light on this score as clearly as Hank Williams, or have succumbed (as Eclipso would wish) to the darkness within?
Good atoms and great stars (read the *House of Secrets* stories and you’ll get the reference) be with you!
I find it a bit fascinating that although Wein was writing for both Marvel & DC, the tone & style of his writing of the JLA is very much classic DC, with some touches of early Marvel in the bantering of Hawkman and Green Arrow, a bit like that between Captain America and Hawkeye in the Kooky Quartet era. But still very different from the tone and style of Englehart in the Avengers and Defenders, even coming off a storyline in which he had the teams split up JLA style to take on one another. Aspects of Wein’s dialogue for the Leaguers strike me as a bit peculiar or antiquated, such as Batman and Flash referring to one another as “Chum”, but then that seems entirely apt for the JLA of this era but would have seemed uncharacteristic for any of the Avengers to refer to one another in that way, although I vaguely remember either Hawkeye or Wolverine in the X-Men using that term in a rather sarcastic manner.
DC’s attempt to streamline the JLA was, to say the least, abortive. Not only would Hawkman return but so would Wonder Woman. And in time Hawkgirl, Firestorm and Zatanna would join the party. It would not be until the (best forgotten) 1980s Detroit Debacle that DC would get serious about a makeover.
Couple of odd things:
—Eclipsco was a Jack Schiff charactor, best known for Alex Toth’s run on the strip, I doubt these factors made it a favorite of Julius Schwartz.
—DC had moved away from its best known bad guys after about 1970. There were attempts to take some bad guys back to their roots (the Two Face story from the summer of 1971 and The Joker’s Five Way Revenge, published right before this but talked about in the Detective Comics letter column in kate 1970). New bad guys were attempted (Man-Bat, Ras a; Ghu;l, Ferlin Nyxly. Sargon the Socerer as a Flash foe), but by the Summer of 1970,, the Rogues were coming back in the Flash.
—Part of this was “Relivance” and part was that some creators had different ideas about bad guys (certainly, Neal Adams).
—Wein seemed interested in bringing other DC Editors’ work into the Schwartz-edited books (see, e.g., Professor Milo from the Schiff-edited 1950s Batman in Moon of The Wolf). Other creators (notably, Marty Palsko) continued the tendancy while Wein was at Marvel.
—I did like Giordano (were some of the backgrounds by Terry Austin?) on Dillin’s pencils, I also much liked Greene, Murphy Anderson and Dave Cockrum (he inkled a World’s Finest story in 1973). Dillin also had Neal Adams ink his work on at least one Jor a Joe Orlando mystery story and the first Terra-Man story in 1972.
—Dick Dillin had worked for Schiff and Kashdan a lot in the 1950s and early to mid-1960s. He probably drew the odd Ecliopsco cover/
—Part of the problem with charaterization in the days of Fox was that he (and even Schwartz) did not “own” Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman and Green Arrow, early on. (In fact, when JLA starts in 1959, Fox was not a regular writer on The Flash or GL (both of which were written by John Broome).
It was late 1960 before Fox got to write The Flash (he co-created the Golden Age Flash!) and late 1963 before Fox got to write GL. Fox eventually snuck some character beats into is GL solo stories and GL in JLA, like GL having a bit of envy of Batman,
Fox did try to get supporting characters, bad guys and plot points right.
—I liked Wein’s JLA and I liked his Defenders. It was not quite Steve Englehart’s JLA or Steve Gerber’s Defnders, but the man was professional and obviously had fun doing the work.
—Between wein and Englehart, I much liked Marty Pasko’s fill-ins. He often did character driven stories that explained gaps like why the JLA revealed their identiries to each other.
Schwartz, Kanigher and Sheldon Mayer coming from All-American and Weissinger, Schiff, Boltinoff and Kashdan coming from DC probably did not help DC create a unified line, even up until the 1970s.
It;s odd, Weissinger was the most “old fashioned” of the guys who came up at DC, but (other than Boltinoff) was the last to leave and may (through championing Neal Adams in 1967-’68 and mentoring Jim Shooter) might have been the one who has had the most lasting influence on comics.
I had the impression that the two 1972-’73bHawkman back ups in Detective did not sell. They were servicable stories by ENB with art by people like Buckler and Jansen in addition to Dillin/Giella.
Archie Goodwin was taking over Detective and created his own back-up series, Manhunter. Hawkman lacked a venue and had always been a questionable seller (needing two B&B runs and a stint as an Adam Strange backup in MIS to get his own book.which unlike The Atom early on, was never a big seller).
I wonder if Schwartz and Wein were planning on eventually bringing Hawkman back (something like how Schwartz eventually did with Bates and Maggin)? They were about to reprint the various “Search for Zatara/Outsider” stories that Schwartz and Fox had done in the 1960s (and Scwarz and Broome had launched the Flash and GL serieses with the Grodd and Qward “mini-series” respectively). Maybe something like that was planned.
About 10 or so years later, Gardener Fox (who co-created both versions of Hawkman) and Tim Truman were playing around with concepts that led to the Hawkworld series after Fox’s death in 1986. I would guess that the cancellation of Sword of Socery and the ERB books (other than Tarzan and Korrek) and Iron Wolf and the Julie Schwartz reprint SF books probably stifilled any desire to put a Hawkman “Sword and Science book on teh front burner.
Prior to this, eleven straight posts on Marvel comics. That’s how far ahead of DC they were at this time— creatively if not financially.
I think that Marvel had actually moved ahead financially at this point, at least as far as monthly sales go.
On the creative end, I feel obliged to note that there were a few DC books out around this time that I wish I *could* blog about, but I can’t because I didn’t have the sense to buy them fifty years ago. 🙂 And a few others that I bought, read, and enjoyed, but simply don’t have all that much to say about. Still, after acknowledging all that, I have to admit that I was buying quite a few more Marvels at this time than I was DCs — a trend that, if anything, only grew more pronounced between 1973 and 1980. Ultimately, the blog’s content can’t help but reflect that.
Yes, they were probably ahead financially as well; most sources put it right around this time, but I’m unsure of any specific mile marker for this. Definitely ahead creatively. This feels like something of a dead period for DC, and they wouldn’t really get a creative pulse back until Englehart came aboard.
Would you care to let us know what DC titles you you regret not picking up during this timeframe? Nothing is coming to my mind outside of Wein and Wrightson’s Swamp Thing (which you’re already covering).
The only thing DC really had going for them was on TV: Super Friends on Saturday morning and then live-action Wonder Woman a year or two after.
Well, I’m already on record as saying that I feel I probably missed the boat on Jack Kirby’s Kamandi. I also regret not picking up Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes while Dave Cockrum was drawing it. Then there’s Joe Kubert’s Tarzan, which I dropped following his adaptation of the second Tarzan novel, and wish I hadn’t. And since I never read war comics, I missed some great stuff from Russ Heath, Alex Toth, and others in DC’s books in that genre around this time.
Finally, there’s the brief Archie Goodwin-edited run of Detective (in which his and Walt Simonson’s Manhunter serial appeared, along with some really good Batman stories), which began with #437 in July, 1973 and lasted through #443 in July, 1974. I *did* manage to pick up one issue new during the run (you’ll read about it next month), but only one. (Thankfully, I scored the rest as back issues just a couple of years later, before they became too expensive. 🙂 )
I was going to say the Cockrum-Grell LSH came to mind after I posted, but I wasn’t sure if that had started by ’73. (Definitely by ’74.) Manhunter in ‘Tec, yeah. Kamandi is no great loss—I wouldn’t consider it required reading, but still fun at times. War books and Tarzan weren’t of much interest to the kid me, so I didn’t think of those.
Okay, so DC wasn’t completely dead, but still trailing Marvel by a lot. Plus Wein and Wrightson’s Swamp Thing only has a few issues left at this point
Those are some of my absolute favorite comics from that time period. It’s a shame you missed them, Alan, especially the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter stuff. The first time I saw Simonson’s pencils, I thought I had died and gone to art heaven. Kamandi is also great. IMHO (and your mileage may vary) I think Kamandi is the last really great run Kirby had on a book before he had to hang it up. Cockrum’s Legion stuff was also great. How did you miss all this stuff? I’m very disappointed…(sarcasm is my life).
Good issue, I was very much into the new-look Justice League, esp Black Canary and Red Tornado joining. Hawkman I liked, but was never too fussed about his powers, so I cant say I was bothered about him leaving – and the story plotline, decent characterisation and artwork were more important to me anyway, as opposed to who was a full team member or guest star.
Contrary to what others have written here (and with all due respect), I did like Giordano’s inks on Dillin’s pencils. I felt they weren’t quite as heavy as Frank McLaughlin’s.
Dillin doesn’t get enough respect for subtle emotions, like the last panel of Green Arrow. (There was also one devastating shot of Green Lantern after he thought he had blown up a planet in one of Englehart’s early JLAs.)
If memory serves, the Green Arrow-Hawkman “feud” was first introduced by Denny O’Neil, who really tried to introduce characterization into JLA after the Gardner Fox era of basically interchangeable dialogue.Miek Friedrich then picked up that ball big time. I don’t know if they were playing with the idea of Green Arrow as a liberal and Hawkman as a – well, a hawk (and a police officer, to boot) Wein did some really nice character bits during his time on this book.
Minor typo:
“While not a a charter member” s/b
“While not a charter member”