Beginning in 1963 and continuing through 1973, the June issue of Justice League of America had featured the first chapter of the latest team-up event between the JLA and their Earth-Two counterparts in the Justice Society of America. It was an annual summer tradition that no DC Comics fan would have expected to see change in June, 1974.
And indeed, the Nick Cardy-drawn cover for JLA #113 gave nary a clue that anything was different this time around, what with its blurb trumpeting “A New JLA-JSA Shocker!” But I suspect that for many readers (your humble blogger most definitely being among them), the real “shocker” would come when they got to the end of page 20 of “The Creature in the Velvet Cage!” and discovered that they’d just finished reading a complete story. There would be no second serving of joint Justice League-Justice Society adventuring this year (let alone a third, as we’d had in 1972); rather, they (and we) were one-and-done, until next summer.
At the time, I was definitely disappointed — and perhaps just a little bit irked. My very first JLA-JSA extravaganza, way back in 1966, had been my introduction to the whole notion of “to be continued” (at least in comic books); and despite my finding myself chest-deep in serialized graphic storytelling these eight years later (thanks, Marvel!), that aspect of the tradition still seemed to me virtually essential. Why was DC cheating us this way?
Half a century later, I’m a little chagrined that that was my sixteen-year-old self’s attitude, as the explanation for DC’s decision in 1974 that was offered decades later by Len Wein (who’d been the regular writer on JLA since issue #100) in his introduction to Crisis on Multiple Earths, Vol. 3 (2004) makes all the sense in the world:
When the time came around… for the annual JLA/JSA team-up, [editor] Julie [Schwartz] and I found we had a new problem. In the preceding twelve months, a number of DC’s titles had been transformed into 100-page Super-Spectaculars, with all-new all-new lead stories and classic reprints as backups. JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA had been one of these books and, as a result, was now only being published bimonthly. Julie and I realized that if we were to do our usual two-part crossover, we would be using up fully a third of the book’s yearly output, and that was just too much.
Honestly, how can you argue with that? The only halfway decent reason I can offer for why I didn’t grasp this concept back in ’74 is that I probably didn’t even realize that Justice League of America had been knocked down to a six-times-a-year schedule in the last couple of years. (For the record, the drop to bi-monthly status had actually kicked in in February, 1973, a whole ten months before JLA adopted the Super-Spectacular format — meaning that DC had already given us a year’s worth of Justice League stories in which the annual two-issue team-up with the Justice Society [in issues #107 and #108] had used up “fully a third of the book’s yearly output”… but I think we’ll have to let that go.) This may seem odd, but I tended not to pay a whole lot of attention to publishing frequencies back in those days, even for the books I was most enthusiastic about; I guess I was buying so many new comics every week that I never had much time to sit around wondering when the next issue of any particular title was going to show up. Or something.
But, whatever the reasons for the ill-considered attitudes of my callow youth, and regardless of how I might regret them, they’re all half a century in the past, now. So, I figure I should go ahead and see if I can appreciate “The Creature in the Velvet Cage!” on its own terms, as I share it with you today, in June, 2024 — beginning, naturally, with this opening splash:
Once upon a time, most Justice League stories opened with a “roll call” of the featured heroes (sometimes, though not always, accompanied by floating head-shots) — something that was particularly useful in those issues when you had a whole second team of superdoers sharing space with the regular roster. The series had been moving away from that convention in recent years; still, the first couple of scenes in any given tale usually did a good enough job of introducing that story’s protagonists, a few team members at a time. But by opening this latest JLA-JSA team-up in medias res, with the heroes of two worlds already mixing it up in action together, Len Wein and his fellow storytellers, artists Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano, have offered us a bit of a challenge in figuring out who’s who — since, of the eight costumed crusaders we see on this page, three have more or less exact doppelgängers on both parallel Earths. Are we looking at the Earth-One Superman here, or is this Earth-Two’s? And, of course, the same question applies to both Batman and Wonder Woman.
Of course, the knowledgeable DC fan of 1974 had some visual clues to go on. It was established canon by now that the Justice Society’s Batman had never adopted the yellow-oval version of his costume’s chest bat-emblem, as the League’s had back in 1964 — so this should definitely be the Earth-One iteration of the Caped Crusader. As for Wonder Woman, the Amazing Amazon of Earth-One had been wearing her hair over her tiara fairly consistently since regaining her powers in Wonder Woman #204 (Jan.-Feb., 1973), whereas her Earth-Two counterpart had, to the best of our knowledge, maintained her original, tiara-over-hair look ever since the 1940s. Sure, it’s less of a slam-dunk, visually speaking; but, considering that Earth-One’s Diana Prince hasn’t been an active member of the Justice League since issue #69 (Feb., 1969) anyway, it seems a safe bet to assume that it’s the Justice Society version of the character wielding the magic lasso in the tableau above.
That leaves Superman, who’s probably the stickiest to pin down. The earliest appearances of the Earth-Two Superman in Justice League of America had portrayed him as identical to Earth-One’s in every respect; however, as of 1973’s JLA-JSA get-together, Dillin and Giordano had begun drawing him with some grey in his temples, and with a slightly simpler “S”-shield emblem design — neither of which are in evidence here. Taking that into consideration, along with what would seem to be a reasonable assumption that our storytellers would opt for a numerical balance between the two teams, I think we can with some confidence add Supes to the Justice League roll call, which also includes Batman, Elongated Man, and Green Lantern.
Got that? OK, then let’s turn the page and see how we did…
You gotta feel a little sorry for the Horned Owl Gang, who — as best as one can tell, based on what I’m pretty sure is their one and only appearance — don’t have any super-powers, or even any interesting gimmicks, but have simply chosen to dress up in outlandish costumes to commit their robberies because, well, that’s what all the cool criminals do in a superhero-centric comic-book universe… and who’ve then been hit with the decided ill luck of having “the greatest heroes of two worlds” (eight of them, anyway) show up to crash their caper.
And if you’re wondering, Green Lantern and Hourman’s dialogue above is the only explanation ever offered for why these particular four JLAers have made the trip to Earth-Two at this particular time — or why it would ever take as many as four JSAers to put away a bunch of losers like the Horned Owl Gang, at any time. Hey, we’ve only got 20 pages to tell a story, here, folks!
Cover art by Bob Oksner.
The second panel of page 2 confirms that our deductions regarding the Earth-origins of Wonder Woman and Batman were both correct; she’s from Two, he’s from One. Per her very reasonable question regarding her counterpart: as we’ve already mentioned, “our” WW had taken a leave of absence back in JLA #69, concurrent with her becoming a non-powered, non-costumed adventurer in issue #179 (Nov.-Dec., 1968) of her own title. But though she’d been restored to her previous superheroic self as of #204, for reasons likely known only to Robert Kanigher (her editor at the time), the matter of her JLA membership status went ignored — that is, until Julius Schwartz assumed the editor’s chair with #212 (Jun.-Jul., 1974), and immediately launched into a multi-issue story arc in which Diana — who was revealed to be suffering from severe memory problems concerning her recent, non-powered days — underwent a self-imposed series of twelve trials, the successful completion of which would be judged by the individual members of the League, prior to accepting the team’s invitation to return. Given Wonder Woman’s bi-monthly publication schedule, her final trial (in WW #222) wouldn’t arrive on stands until November, 1975 — and her return to a regular role in Justice League of America would have to wait until the following month’s JLA #128, meaning almost 60 issues had come out since her departure.
But, I digress. Let’s return to JLA #113. shall we? Although before we jump back in, I feel obliged to let you know that, unlike with Wonder Woman and Batman, we never do get textual confirmation as to whether we’re dealing with Earth-One’s Superman or Earth-Two’s in this story. (I still feel pretty sure we were right in going with Earth-One’s, however.)
Note that the name of the cultural amenity where our story’s first scene has played out is “the York City Museum”, and not the New York City Museum. That’s not a typo, as this tale’s primary locale — which, as we’re about to see, is also the longtime home base of the Sandman — will be referred to as York City throughout Len Wein’s script. As best as I’ve been able to determine, the Sandman stories of the Golden Age of Comics didn’t actually name the city where they took place — though the fact that the hero’s first published adventure, in New York World’s Fair Comics (1939) showed his alter ego Wesley Dodds’ place to be within driving distance of the site of the 1939 World’s Fair offered readers a good reason to assume that New York City was where the guy normally hung his hat (not to mention his gas mask and his cape). “York City” thus seems to be a coinage of Wein’s own, offered as a contribution to the long DC tradition of made-up city names; as far as I know, it’s never been used again following this story. (UPDATE, 6/10/24: As it turns out, there was a Golden Age “York City” — it was the original locale for the “Suicide Slum” neighborhood in Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s “Newsboy Legion” stories, appearing in Star Spangled Comics from issue #7 [Apr., 1942]. Thanks to reader FredKey for the tip.)
I’d liked the Sandman pretty much from the moment I’d first laid eyes on him (which, for the record, was as he was being crushed between Batman and a THUD! sound effect on the cover of JLA #46 [Aug., 1966]). He’d quickly become one of my very favorite Justice Society members, for one reason, and one alone: his costume. No other superhero in the summer of ’66 was fighting crime in an outfit anything like Wesley Dodds’. (Again for the record: 1) The Green Hornet television show didn’t start airing until September; 2) I’m reasonably sure it didn’t air in my market when it was originally telecast, anyway [Jackson, MS only had two TV stations back then]; and 3) Did Van Williams wear a full face-covering, weird-looking gas mask? I think not.)
Somewhat ironically, considering how much I liked the Sandman’s original, pulp-and-radio-hero-derived look, as of June,1974 I’d probably seen more Golden Age stories where he was wearing the yellow-and-purple tights he’d been saddled with in Adventure Comics #69 (Dec., 1941) by writer Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris (who simultaneously also added Sandy the Golden Boy into the mix, incidentally) — all thanks to the “Sandman” yarns by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby that had run as backups in six issues of Kirby’s Forever People a couple of years previously. While I’d enjoyed those stories reasonably well — and could, perhaps, appreciate the fact that tights were more appropriate than a business suit for the kind of acrobatic action Simon and Kirby specialized in — I’d never really warmed to what was, to me, a much less interesting and distinctive visual for the hero. So I appreciated that Wein addressed the changes in the character over the years, offering an explanation not only for how and why Wesley Dodds had returned to the look I preferred by the time I first encountered him, but also for the lack of any reference to Sandy Hawkins in any of the Sandman’s several JLA-JSA team-up outings — even if that explanation was tragic. (For an explanation as to why Dodds had ditched the gas mask, hat, and other accoutrements in the first place, I and other fans would have to wait another eight years for the even more tragic tale offered by writer Roy Thomas in All-Star Squadron #18 [Feb., 1983].)
Following the time-honored tradition of both teams, the JLAers and JSAers divide into “three gaudily-costumed search parties”. Indeed, it’s such a time-honored tradition that many readers (my sixteen-year-old self of June, 1974 almost certainly being among them) might never even pause to reflect that, just maybe, splitting into three seemingly randomly chosen groups, and then heading off in what appear to be three equally randomly chosen directions, is an ill-considered strategy for finding the transformed Sandy Hawkins quickly, before he can harm himself or others. Surely it would make more sense for the speedier heroes, as well as those who can fly, to do some initial reconnaissance before everyone simply charges off? Oh, well, maybe one of the groups will get lucky…
What was that I said about getting lucky?
I know I’m probably overthinking the story, here, but who cuts their wedding cake before the ceremony is even over? Or are we to assume that Giselle, Patrick, and their guests are each stopping to slice off a piece and put it on a plate before tossing said plate? Anyway, moving on: offered the chance to catch their second wind by the wedding party, our heroes are more successful in their next attempt to bring Sandy down…
Hahahaha. Actually, given that this is Earth-Two, and the “Mr. Superman” that Giselle’s mother is presumably already familiar with has been around for thirty-six years, maybe she should be asking herself how come she didn’t marry such a “nice boy”, hmm?
Never mind one of our three groups getting lucky — what are the odds of a second one running (almost literally, it appears), into Sandy the Golden Monster?
But, whatever. Batman takes the next crack at tackling Sandy, asserting, “Maybe the proper judo-hold can subdue him without unnecessary violence!” Yeah, sure. After the creature carelessly backhands the Caped Crusader away, it’s then the Flash’s turn…
Re-reading this story for the first time in a while, I half-expected that Howie and his fellow ballplayers would play some active role in stymieing Sandy, a la the wedding group’s role in the previous fracas. But, no.
OK, maybe I could accept the first group of our heroes being lucky enough to stumble over Sandy just as he shows up somewhere and starts to menace people. But the second was really pushing it, and now you’re asking me to accept that it would “just happen” a third time? Please.
And, yes, I’m sure that any number of readers of this story over the years (including all of the faithful followers of this blog, naturally) could (or already have) come up with explanations for just how our heroes were able to find clues to Sandy’s whereabouts, off-panel and between scenes, that ultimately allowed them to show up in the very nick of time. But just because we’re able to imaginatively compensate for lazy plotting doesn’t mean that it wasn’t lazy plotting in the first place, now, does it?
Anyway, to get on with the story… Green Lantern finds it difficult to use his power ring against Sandy because the big guy is, y’know, yellow. Gosh, who could have seen that coming? What’s more, Sandy is able to absorb some of GL’s energy and zap him with it…
Um, has Wonder Woman’s golden lasso ever had the magical property of being able to extend itself to be as long as needed? Because otherwise, I don’t think that the little coil of rope Diana usually wears on her hip would be sufficient to stitch up a fault-line that we’re told “runs as far as the eye can see”. (Although Superman’s doing just that does make for an indisputably cool image.)
I’ve ragged on Len Wein’s writing pretty heavily in this post — but now that we’ve reached the end of his story, I’m obliged to admit that, half a century after my first reading of “The Creature in the Velvet Cage!”, I’ve never forgotten it — and the pathos of its downbeat finale remains quite affecting, even today.
According to Wein’s Crisis on Multiple Earths intro, once he and Julius Schwartz had made the decision to keep 1974’s JLA-JSA event limited to a single issue, there had subsequently been a conscious choice made “to go in the opposite direction from the huge blockbusters of the two years before, and try a smaller, more personal story instead.” As far as I’m concerned, they definitely made the right call. Ultimately, regardless of all the sloppy bits, this one’s still a keeper.*
While “The Creature in the Velvet Cage!” is the only new feature-length story to appear in this 100-page Super-Spectacular issue of Justice League of America, it’s not the only new comics-format material in the book, seeing as how it’s immediately followed by the two-page strip shown below:
“The Freedom Train” is that rare Bronze Age item for which the Grand Comics Database doesn’t even offer a wild guess as to who might have drawn it; the GCD does speculate, however, that the script was by E. Nelson Bridwell… which seems a very good bet, given that Bridwell was the reprints editor for all of the Super-Spectaculars (a job which evidently involved coming up with brief “extra” features such as this one). (UPDATE, 6/10/24: Per a comment on this post submitted by czeskleba over at the DC Archives Message Board’s “DC Comics Time Capsule — June 1974” thread, a contemporary news item in Mediascene #8 credited this piece to Robert Kanigher [script] and John Calnan [art]; this information has also been shared with the GCD, who have updated their JLA #113 entry. Thanks, czeskleba!)
As to why there’s a feature in JLA #113 about the Freedom Train (which was a real thing, incidentally) — well, we’ll have to turn the page for the answer to that question:
Yes, isn’t it interesting that Earth-Two’s Freedom Train — by which we really mean “Golden Age DC Comics’ Freedom Train”, since the “Earth-Two” concept was still over a decade away from being created — was called the Liberty Train? And “their” Liberty Bell was called the Freedom Bell? You have to assume that if DC could have figured out a way to call the Washington Monument, Plymouth Rock, and Old Ironsides by other names and still had them be instantly recognizable to the readership, they would have. I’m not sure exactly where the publisher’s determination to keep just a little sliver of daylight between their fictional universe and the real world came from, but it clearly went way back — and, of course, continued to find expression in such new conceits as “York City” as late as 1974. (UPDATE, 6/10/24: Actually, as already noted in another update above, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby seem to have coined “York City” first, back in 1942; more here.)
Anyway… this 33-page Justice Society story comes from All-Star Comics #41 (Jun.-Jul., 1948). As noted in the credits box that’s been added to the opening splash page for this reprint, it features art by Alex Toth (if only on the splash), Carmine Infantino, Frank Giacoia, Arthur Peddy, Bernard Sachs, and Irwin Hasen; the script, while uncredited here, is attributed to John Broome by the GCD.
“The Case of the Patriotic Crimes!” holds up pretty well as an entertaining yarn, 76 years on, and has a couple of claims to special significance in the JSA’s long and fabled history. The first is that it represents the premiere appearance of the new Injustice Society of the World, consisting of the Wizard, the Fiddler, the Icicle, the Huntress, the Sportsmaster, and the Harlequin (and not to be confused with the original Injustice Society of the World, who of course debuted a whole four issues earlier in All-Star Comics #37, and whose members included the Wizard, Per Degaton, Vandal Savage, Brainwave, the Gambler, and the Thinker). The second is that it’s the story in which Black Canary is officially accepted for Justice Society membership, after having already participated in three previous adventures with the team. (Basically, she took Johnny Thunder’s spot — just as she’d already taken over his feature in Flash Comics.)
The third and final story in JLA #113 is a Silver Age classic by the title’s original creative team of writer Gardner Fox, penciller Mike Sekowsky, and inker Bernard Sachs:
Originally presented in Justice League of America #16 (Dec., 1962), “The Cavern of Deadly Spheres!” — like “The Case of the Patriotic Crimes!” before it — has a special claim to historical distinction, although the typical reader likely won’t pick up on anything out of the ordinary about it prior to reaching page 19 of this 25-page adventure.
We’re not going to go through the plot in detail, but briefly: a villain calling himself the Maestro is able to make the Justice Leaguers — and everyone else in earshot — dance uncontrollably when his hired thugs strike up a tune on special instruments, allowing them to commit robberies at will. One of my favorite things about this story — just because it’s so Gardner Fox — is that when the JLA members are thus compelled, they don’t simply perform some random dance moves, but highly specific and individual expressions of the terpsichorean muse — e.g., a jig, a “toy soldier” march, an “acrobatic” dance, an “Indian war dance”, a “whirling dervish” dance…
…and so on. I suppose we should dock Mr. Fox a couple of points for using “jig” twice (once with Wonder Woman, once with Aquaman), but I just can’t bring myself to do so, sorry.
Using teamwork, the JLAers manage to foil the various robberies, and after learning the Maestro’s whereabouts from his underlings, they take the fight to him. They’ve armed themselves with earplugs, but the villain has outfoxed them — he’s actually been using “a high-frequency cosmi-radio beam” to control the brain’s motor centers, with the music being nothing but an auditory smokescreen. The earplugs thus prove useless, and the once-again helplessly dancing heroes are first imprisoned in transparent spheres, then sealed up in a cavern, where they’ll remain until they die. Wait, what?
I don’t really recall what my reaction was when I first read this story in 1974, but knowing the kind of fan I was back then, I was probably at least a tad pissed off. How dare Julius Schwartz try to pass off what his fellow Silver Age DC editor Mort Weisinger would have called an “imaginary tale” as though it was a legitimate Justice League adventure? It was probably years later that I learned (and was at last able to appreciate) that this tale’s fictional JLA fan, “Jerry Thomas”, had been named in tribute to real-life comics fans Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas — the purveyors of the early comics fanzine Alter Ego — whose shared passion for the Justice Society of America and other Golden Age superheroes had led them to be early boosters of the “revived” JSA — i.e., the Justice League of America.
Of course, the Justice Leaguers can’t bear the thought that a villain could ever defeat them, even in an author’s fantasy — so they put their heads together, and are at last able to find the flaw in the villain’s plan: the Atom was first compelled to dance when he was at microscopic size, and couldn’t have heard the music. (This is technically a flaw in Jerry Thomas’ plotting, rather than something one can pin on the poor Maestro, but never mind.) This allows our heroes to write a new ending to the story, in which their apparent defeat is shown to have been nothing but a ruse to fool the Maestro:
Just three years after this story was first published, Roy Thomas would make the jump from comics fan to comics pro… and just one year after that, he’d be scripting the adventures of the closest thing to either the JLA or the JSA that his employer, Marvel Comics, was putting out — namely, the Avengers. By the time “The Cavern of Deadly Spheres!” was reprinted in 1974, the by-then 33-year-old Thomas was Marvel’s editor-in-chief… which just goes to show how much things could change in the American comics industry in a mere twelve years.
Of course, twelve years after this comic came out, Thomas would be working for DC Comics itself — and attempting to salvage as much of his beloved DC Golden Age continuity as he could, in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. But that’s a topic probably best left to another time…
The Sandman (Sandy Hawkins) by Alex Ross, c. 2007.
*Beyond its merits as a standalone, the tale has additional resonance for those of us who’ve read the numerous later stories chronicling Sandy Hawkins’ second act in the superhero biz, first as “Sand” and then simply as the Sandman, as chronicled by writers James Robinson, David S. Goyer, Geoff Johns, and their various artistic collaborators in the various Justice Society of America-starring series published by DC from 1999 to 2011. (Yeah, like the rest of the JSA, Sandy got retconned out of existence by Flashpoint, but — like most of his peers — he’s back in play as of Doomsday Clock #12 [Feb., 2020]. And good for him. I say.)
Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books 
Sandman Mystery Theater had Wesley Dodds based in New York City . When I first read this story in the Crisis on Multiple Earths trade I was also confused about which Superman this was. The S shield seems to be drawn slightly altered from either the Earth One or Earth Two versions and if you look closely at his hair there are blue streaks at the temples in some panels where the grey streaks would be. I’m leaning towards it being the Earth One version but I’m still not 100 percent positive. Wonder Woman’s lasso has always been inconsistent in it’s length and strength. It’s one of those things that can do whatever the plot requires.
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My feeling is that it’s Kal-El and not Kal-L, because we have eight heroes from two worlds, which would mean four from Earth-One and four from Earth-Two. With the Flash, Hourman, Sandman and Wonder Woman clearly from the JSA, it would have to be Superman from the JLA.
(Ah, memory: I can flashback to *JLA* #55, in which Johnny Thunder orders the Thunderbolt to bring some Justice Leaguers to Earth-Two, and he comes back with the Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern and Superman. Johnny’s upset and the Thunderbolt shoots back: “You said bring back some! To me, some means four!”)
In the previous year’s JLA/JSA gathering, remember, it was three JLAers (the Batman, the Elongated Man and Green Arrow) and three JSAers (Dr. Fate, Sandman and Superman) in the Transmatter Cube. (No disrespect to the Red Tornado, but he wasn’t supposed to be there. Good thing you were, though, Reddy!)
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am I the only one who think Wesley Dodd over reacted a bit by putting Sandy in a cage for years and keeping him knocked out for all that time? And why wouldn’t he have gone to his fellow JSAers to seek their assistance in curing Sandy? It’s quite possible Sandy could have been cured much sooner with the help of JSA members who have a scientific background. The whole thing is a little freaky to me.
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Wein was never any kind of favorite of mine and I never deliberately bought any of his books. That said, this story is the one and only comic by him that I ever remembered after reading it. Sure, it was pretty lame until the twist at the end, and yes, that twist makes Dodds look like a moron, but it did stick with me.
Wonder Woman’s lasso stretching was a regular thing especially considering the various size objects and people she tied up were but while I can’t recall issue numbers or even years, I can recall its stretching being mentioned on panel. Wasn’t it also able to morph into various shapes sometimes?
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Robert Kanigher strikes me as the type of writer who would have made the powers & abilities of Wonder Woman’s lasso vary by the requirements of the plot, but right now I just don’t have the fortitude to look through a whole bunch of his stories to confirm it!
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Wonder Woman – Lasso of Truth – Thomas Kinkade Smoky Mountains includes the text ‘The Golden Lasso of Truth, a magical golden lariat forged by the God Hephaestus from the Golden Girdle of Gaea, makes this weapon unbreakable, indestructible and malleable enough to extend to whatever length needed. The lasso is so strong not even the demi-God Hercules could break it when confronted with the task.’ That’s also reiterated in the Wonder Woman Wiki.
10 Secret Powers of Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth You Never Knew Existed (screenrant.com) is also useful in general.
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Thanks, Steve! I had no idea that the lasso’s “malleability” was an established property. Good to know for future reference!
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Odd thought mailability is a generally known physical trait of Gold (AU).
Did this come from WW;s creators, or did this come from whoever taught Bob Kanigher 11th Grade Chemistry and spread to WW’s Lasso or Truth and Gold of the Metal Men?
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I loved Wein’s work. If nothing else, he made JLA readable again after enduring Denny O’Neil and Mike Friedrich on the book.
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I might have been meh on Wein but disliked both Friedrich and O’Neil’s work everywhere.
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I had stopped buying Justice League at this time, so missed this completely at this time. I returned to Justice League in 1980 (when Perez started drawing the book) and did pick up some back issues including JLA 113. I remember finding this to be a perfectly sol;id story, although agree with many of the above comments, such as being surprised it was only one issue (my first JLA-JSA team up was also JLA 46-47) as I was very used to multi-part JLA-JSA team ups. Also it does seem strange that Sandman never consulted anyone else in the JSA (Superman, Starman, Dr. Fate, etc.) regarding Sandy’s condition. However there is something else that really troubled me about this story. When I realized this issue came out in June 1974, I realized that it reminded me of another story…that I did read when it came out in Giant Size Avengers#1 in May 1974. There are similarities between the stories that are quite frankly, very difficult to ignore. I am not sure if you read this story, Alan. At the time, I read GSA 1 and thought it was ok, but it has not held up very well today for many reasons. In fact Steve Englehart was not very happy with this story (according to interviews in later years) and it does not appear he referenced it during his first run on the Avengers. Roy Thomas insisted on writing GSA 1 even though Steve was the official Avengers writer because Roy had a story he wanted to tell. For some reason, Roy wanted to reveal that the Whizzer and Miss America (from the Golden Age and not seen since the 1940s) were the never before revealed parents of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. This was later retconned for many reasons (such as how could the very European Wanda and Pietro have such white American parents?). Of course Wanda and Pietro’s parentage is now hopelessly confusing and I won’t go near that subject. But in order to create the “menace” of the story it is revealed that the Whizzer and Miss America also had a monstrous mutated son, referred to as “Nuklo” who bursts free and the Avengers are forced to battle. Sorry to say that Nuklo, as drawn by Rich Buckler ( and I believe, Dan Adkins) looks suspiciously like the Sand creature in JLA 113. The problem is, did Len know about this? He was now writing regularly for both Marvel and DC, writing the monthly Marvel Team-Up and just starting his tenure on the Hulk this week in June 1974, as well as the Defenders which was about to go monthly and writing various other features for Marvel. It is possible he didn’t know about this story, but I just don’t know. I thought I would bring this up and wonder what you and others think about this coincidence. I would prefer to give Len the benefit of the doubt..but who knows?
Also, the Romita drawn cover of GSA 1 (looking back on it now) indicates Roy’s fondness for the Golden Age characters with a picture and reference to the Golden Age All Winners Squad and may be predictive (at the time) of his plans in 1975 for the Invaders.
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I liked Giant Sized Avengers #1. I really liked seeing Thomas and Buckler doing The Avengers again. I had liked their run on the book two years before, although Buckler was heavily into his Kirby-influenced period by May of 1974.
I liked the references to the All-Winners Squad and the descriptions of the two published stories. I assumed in 1974 that the All-Winners Squad stories were by Stan Lee (since I understood they saw print after Simon & Kirby had left Timely but had not understood how much Lee hated these stories (by Bill Finger and Otto Binder).
The issue also featured a (then rare) Golden Age Timely reprint, The Ray of Madness, a Human Torch story from one of the last issues of Marvel Mystery Comics by Mike Sekowski. Sekowski became a good writer by the 1970s (although his art was an acquired taste).
This story lacked a lot of basic logic
I honestly thought a the time that the first two Giant Sized Avengers books were among the best of these books..
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I wrote my post just after reading Alan’s synopsis but before reading your own response, Bruce, but the same thoughts came to me, particularly since I’d also read a review of GSA#1 posted in the Marvel Masterworks Forum earlier this week (1632) Marvel Masterworks Marathon 156: May 1974 – Page 6 – CollectedEditions.com (tapatalk.com). If not for that, I wouldn’t have realized both mags were published in the very same month!
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Glad to see I wasn’t the only one to be strock by the similarities between this story and Giant-Size Avengers #1, with Nuklo and Sandy both escaping suspended animation, and the teams splitting up to find them… although the whole “splitting up” thing is a long tradition of JSA stories and JLA-JSA crossovers, and Thomas was clearly emulating that in his GSA story.
Since I’ve read both of these stories in reprints, I wasn’t quite sure which one was published first, only being vaguely aware that they must have come out at roughly the same time. Thanks for clarifying the exact timing. A one-month difference really does not leave much room (if any) for Wein to have copied Thomas. Both issues would have been in production at almost the exact same time.
Perhaps it’s just another one of those interesting coincidences that occurred from time to time. Alan’s blogged about a couple of them in the past, namely the Vision and the Red Tornado, and the Man-Thing and the Swamp Thing.
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To my recall, in most of the cases in which the Avengers purposely split off into sub-teams, it was intended to invoke the Silver Age JLA, such as in the first two Annuals and during the Kang/Grandmaster trilogy wherein one team met the Timely Big Three and another set, in which the Avengers’ Big Three & Goliath II fought the Squadron Sinister, stand-ins for 4 of the most prominent male members of the JLA. Englehart split up the team for its clash with the Defenders (and part of Englehart’s intent was to invoke those summertime Annuals of years before) and again when one set fought Kang while other sub-sets fought sub-sets of the Squadron Supreme (yet another, much expanded variant of the JLA).
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brucesfl, I did read Giant-Size Avengers #1 when it came out. I can’t recall if the parallels with JLA #113 occurred to me at the time — but they for sure eluded me when I re-read both stories recently! 🙂
For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to believe the similarities were another of those “interesting coincidences”, as Ben put it…. though I don’t think there’s any way we’ll ever know for sure if Wein and Thomas had or hadn’t been chatting informally about story ideas in the preceding months, and something sparked somewhere…
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It never occurred to me either, and I read them both back in the day..
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Thanks Alan. I agree. Regarding the JLA reprint in JLA 113 I have a vague recollection that I was disappointed in the ending but not completely upset because I usually enjoyed Gardner Fox’s stories. They were usually solid and entertaining. In retrospect, though the ending was a bit of cop out. Also did anyone notice (I certainly didn’t years ago) that Wesley Dodds without his Sandman mask in the main story looks an awful lot like Bruce Wayne? At least in my opinion…
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Even the best comics artists often had difficulty drawing distinct handsome male faces or attractive female faces — without a particular hairstyle or hair color or facial hair for the men, they all tended to look very much alike. Several key characters had distinct looks that weren’t too difficult for most artists to get right — such as Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Stephen Strange and Matt Murdock. Many others, including Bruce Wayne for dark-haired white men and Steve Rogers for short-haired blonde men, or even Bruce Banner without his glasses for brown-haired men, though, tended to have a more generic clean-shaven handsome man look, such that without their costumes and without knowledge of the context or even the particular comic any drawing of other black-haired, or brown-haired or blonde handsome men, it’d be difficult to figure out who it’s supposed to be. Of course, Kirby & Ditko in particular were pretty good at coming up with a variety of distinctly not so handsome men that you could generally tell in an instant that you’d best stay away from them.
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Not only that, it’s incredibly difficult to create a look for a character that an artist can successfully maintain from panel to panel. If you create a look that’s simple enough to draw quickly, it becomes too simple and too much like everyone else. Too complicated, and it takes forever to draw and too difficult to keep all the details straight (or for other artists to keep them straight). That’s why even something simple like “Clark Kent has blue hair, glasses and a cleft chin” can still look so incredibly different from artist to artist. Or, as was pointed out in an issue of Jim Aparo’s run on The Spectre, a dark-haired guy with a strong chin in a pair of nerd glasses is gonna look like Clark Kent no matter who he’s supposed to be. It’s just comics.
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Around the time this issue came out, former Vice President Agnew, pled “Nolo Contenders” to the Federal Tax Evasion charges that had prompted his resignation as VP.
Jean Loring pleads the JLA Nolo Contendere ‘ in Cavern of the Deadly Spheres (obviously, in a jurisdiction where this is available).
Fox and Schwartz had a footnote that quite effectively explained the concept, better than the local or national news had done. (Fox was a licensed attorney in NYS, a 1936 graduate of St. John’s Law School. Fox had actively practiced law for some years before turning to writing full time, although he apparently remained a member of the NYS Bar as a non-practicing attorney.)
I remember the new story fondly I was surprised the story was “one and done,”. but figured out it was a function of the (fairly) new bi-monthly schedule, since it had been brought up in previous letter columns.
I liked Len Wein’s work, especially on the JLA and (in the 1980s) on Blue Beetle with Paris Cullins. But I never liked his little slice of life supporting characters as much as Broome or Fox or Gerber (or Tony Isabella). Nathan the Soused Merchant Mariner in MTU and these folks come particularly to mind.
Finally, the JSA story always seemed more Kanigher than Broome to me, so I don’t know. This story seemed to have a direct influence on what Roy Thomas later at Marvel on The Avengers.
I actually visited the Freedom Train in early 1975 as part of the build up to the Bicentennial. To hear the interactive exhibits, , they gave you this stick-like speaker (which reminded me of the Chrono-staffs in Avengers # 134 & 135.
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Fox also gave a good explanation of the McNaughton Rule for criminal insanity in GL 35. He knew the law though he never let legal facts get in the way of a good story.
By contrast we have a Daredevil Silver Age story where Matt assumes “corpus delecti” means the corpse of a murder victim rather than “body of evidence.”
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Or the Daredevil story (DD$ 47?) where Matt borrows Lincoln’s trick of looking at an almanac to impeach a witness who said he saw something clearly on a night with no moonlight . . . .
That was another think that got better under Miller . . . .
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Or Yellowjacket in his first appearance confessing to the Avengers he murdered Hank Pym. Their response later: “Well, there’s no corpse—” Not that they bothered to look. “—so legally we can’t do anything against him.” And again making the corpus delecti error.
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Confession against Pena;/legal interest, admissible at trial as an exception to the Hearsay Rule.
Still, getting a murder conviction without a body is news worthy . . . .
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“Penal”
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As you say, Alan, there are a number of seriously wonky plot elements to the main story here that don’t hold up under close inspection. The idea that the creation of a simple crime-fighting tool could so transform young Sandy into a monster makes you wonder just what the hell Wes was putting in that gun in the first place! That speaks to an over-all level of irresponsibility on Sandman’s part as an inventor that Wein hadn’t considered.
And then, the idea that it was OK to keep Sandy in a cage in the basement, drugged and unconscious for all these years, especially when he has access to an incredible roster of scientists and magicians is a cruel and unusual punishment for something that wasn’t Sandy’s fault. What was Wein thinking?
And speaking of things Wein wasn’t thinking about, he refers to the classic Sandman suit as being “double-breasted” when Dodds returns to his former look in shame on either page 5 or 6, but Dillin clearly draws it as a single-breasted suit. Wein probably wrote the script prior to the creation of the pencils and Dillin ignored him b/c the Sandman’s suit has always been single-breasted, but you’d think Wein would know better. Also, forget about the “York City” thing, did Wein come up with “The Grainy Gladiator” (also on page 6) himself, or is that a storied sobriquet for Sandman that I’m just not aware of. It’s terrible, regardless.
All in all, Alan, there’s a lot more to be disappointed about in the 1974 JLA/JSA team-up than the fact that it covered only one issue. By the way, who cares if the team-up takes one-third of the year’s allotment of stories? If the team-up is a GOOD story, isn’t that what really matters? Was their some on-going JLA storyline going on that the team-up interrupted? Lots of questionable decisions being made in 1974, folks. Makes me wonder what they’re smoking back there in the back office, if you know what I mean?
I don’t remember reading this one in ’74, but knowing my reading habits, I would’t have given the Golden Age stories more than a cursory glance, especially if the coloring was as poor in the original book as it is in your digital copy, but in those days, I didn’t care about “old” stories and probably wouldn’t have bothered, either way.
Thanks for introducing me to a story I’d never read before, Alan. I’m not sure I missed much, but it’s nice to read it, anyway.
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The notion that taking up 1/3 of a years issues in one story was “too much” seems rather strange. Over in the bi-monthly Captain Marvel, one story had taken up a year and a half of issues. Of course, no one complained about that (at least not that I know of) because it was a great story. I strongly suspect most readers would prefer one great story spread across 9 issues in a series over 9 done-in-one mediocre stories.
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I think you’re right about that, fred… but my take was that the reluctance had less to do with the storyline’s length than with the “event” of the annual JLA/JSA team-up taking up a third of the available issues in a given year — thus making the event somehow less special when it rolled around.
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That makes sense, given both the bi-monthly status of the title as well the JLA/JSA mashup being an annual event.
What still doesn’t make sense is that JLA, which I presume was one of DC’s top sellers, had been made into a bi-monthly giant size title that cost three times the price of a regular comic at the time, at least before they were hiked up to 25 cents. Even coming from a middle-income military family, I couldn’t afford to get everything I wanted each month. Given the choice between 2 or 3 giant-size mags, whether at 50 or 60 cents each, and 5 or 6 regular size mags, as based on how much cash and coins I had on me, I would’ve gone for 5 or 6 at 20 or 25 cents each (plus the sales tax). I’d think that sales of JLA would’ve gone down quite a bit due to the increased price, even if they saved on the cost of producing as much new content as they had previously.
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Without checking any official numbers, fred, I’m inclined to think you’re probably right about sales going down, for this and for other DC titles that had been converted to Super-Spectaculars — simply due to the fact that by the end of 1974, DC had pretty well canned the format. With JLA #117, the title went back to the standard 32-page format — though, interestingly, it also went back to monthly at that same time!
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I think they expected the 100 page, higher price format might crack markets comics were not in at the time.
Generally, it did not happen.
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John is exactly right. Archie Goodwin said in one of the Detective 100-Page Spectaculars that the higher price point would hopefully encourage more interest from retailers. It didn’t.
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That and ceding half a years stories to another IP and eroding its market novelty . . . .
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I took the point as Dodds being so ashamed of what had happened he wanted to fix it himself. But yes, that is some appalling behavior on his part.
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Ha, what Dodds needs to be ashamed of is HOW LONG he took to try and fix it on his own! How many years did he let Sandy lie unconscious in that velvet cage (and I’m sorry, you can call it Velvet all you want, it’s STILL a cage) before he broke out and how long would he have continued to let him lie there if he hadn’t? Then, according to the Mike Barr story in 81 and 82 that jaybeatman mentioned, he abandoned Sandy again and gave himself amnesia, effectively ignoring the problem oa second time until the early 80’s! I know it’s only comics, but in the real world, Wesley Dodds would have been arrested for this stuff! Sounds more like the actions of a super-villain, than a hero.
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Did all that get written out of continuity after the Crisis of Infinite Earths storyline? An elderly Wesley Dodds made several appearances in the Robinson’s Starman series, and I got the entirely of that, but there no references to Sandy at all that I recall.
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fred, Sandy might not have gotten a mention in Starman, but as I mentioned in the footnote, he was a significant presence in the various JSA-fronted series that followed in the wake of that series’ popularity in the late ’90s and ’00s. And, yeah, his “velvet cage” ordeal remained in continuity, at least up until Flashpoint.
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Alan, this entry was pure pleasure for me to read, for a whole lot of reasons; but first, a brief reminiscence. I still vividly recall the day in April of 1974 when my 8-year-old self brought in the mail and was thrilled to see a familiar brown paper-wrapped delivery. It had to be the long-delayed arrival of Secret Origins # 7, as I had received the previous three issues as my first-ever subscription. And yet, to my surprise, it was actually Justice League of America # 112. The issue was accompanied by a letter from DC explaining that Secret Origins had been cancelled with ish # 6; however, the editors somehow knew that I would enjoy JLA just as well. As a little kid, I was astonished that they could possibly know me so well; as an adult, I think they made a pretty safe bet. Over the course of my active career as a comic book collector, I would acquire every issue of JLA between 55 and 261, along with 37-38 and 46-47.
This was my third straight JLA/JSA team-up, and right off the bat it quickly became one of my favorites, as it featured two of my all-time best Earth-Two heroes: Hourman and the Sandman. From the Sand-Car to Hourman’s knowledge of the secret sliding hourglass to Sandman’s tragic tale of woe, these two characters became even more cool than their costumes and abilities had previously made them.
Despite the antic nature of the ancillary characters at the three venues, the mystery and suspense of the sand-monster’s berserker spree came to a rousing denouement with the poignant explanation that Wes’s “humane confinement” of Sandy for so many years had all been for naught. Long before I became familiar with the word “pathos”, the ending of this story would forever epitomize the concept for me. (Coincidentally, just one month before, Roy Thomas in Giant-Size Avengers # 1 told the similarly poignant tale of Nuklo, the monstrous offspring of the Golden-Age Whizzer and Miss America.)
For me, Dick Dillin was the artist whose renderings of so many superheroes and supervillains became familiar to me, so his artwork was my point of reference. Although Neal Adams and George Perez would become my all-time favorites, Dillin provided solid journeyman work which was ably enhanced by the inking of Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin through his final JLA in issue 183. That very issue was the opening chapter in the JLA/JSA/New Gods trilogy, and it prompted me to write my very first comic book letter. Although it wasn’t chosen to be printed, my letter for issue 184 with George Perez’s debut did appear in issue 187. Dick Dillin’s sudden death at age 50 was shocking to me, as his JLA artwork provided the most consistent throughline of my comic book collecting career going all the way back to JLA # 83 in 1970, which was my earliest comic from when I was 4.
Postscript: About a year and a half ago, I did a random search for JLA # 100 and came across your blog, Alan. I was mesmerized by your review and thrilled to read all the comments from others on the site. It’s taken me eighteen months (at a rate of 5-6 reviews per week) to finally become fully up-to-date with the rest of you. Retroactively, I’d like to make a brief comment on Len Wein’s JLA debut with its magnum opus of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, time travel and depiction of some literary and historical characters. This story bears some parallels to Jim Shooter’s Legion of Super-Heroes story in Adventure Comics # 349, in which the super-villain Universo scatters seven heroes across the span of history: Chameleon Boy to Incan Peru (Crimson Avenger to Aztec Mexico), Shrinking Violet to Ancient Egypt (Stripesy to the same), Colossal Boy to Middle Age England (Green Arrow to the same), and Brainiac 5 to Kublai Khan’s China (the Shining Knight to Genghis Khan’s Mongolia).
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DC published a 7th issue of Secret Origins featuring the origins of Robin and Aquaman almost 10 months after the publication of issue 6. Did DC do the honourable thing and post it out to you as part of your subscription?
I found Alan’s blog in a similar way to you, through a Facebook post on Lois Lane 111 back in 2021. Like you, I went back and read every instalment until I caught up to the most recent post. Each new instalment is a highlight of my week as it brings back memories of comics I had bought (and still have) fifty years ago. I’ve said it before, but thanks again Alan for all the work and time you put into researching and writing these posts.
I’m a bit embarrassed to say that after I had read the lead story in JLA 113 I didn’t realise that it was finished. I read the blurb for the next issue and thought that the JLA/JSA would fight Anakronus as a means to reversing the metamorphosis of Sandy. Imagine my surprise when I bought and read the next issue and found out that it had nothing to do with the story in the previous issue. It never occurred to me that the unwavering tradition of the JLA/JSA team ups taking at least two issues would be broken and was very pleased when future teams returned to the 2 or 3 issue format.
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brian, thanks for the kind words about the blog… and please accept my apologies for not realizing until tonight that WordPress had somehow flagged your comment as spam! Better late than never, I hope. 🙂
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Alan, I think my post for Defenders # 14 might have suffered the same fate.
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Ouch. I’m really sorry to hear that, jay. Unfortunately, it’s not in the spam folder now, so I don’t know that there’s any way to retrieve it. 😦
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Nope. I never received a copy of Secret Origins # 7, but after previously receiving issues # 4-6, DC sent me 12 issues of JLA from # 112-123.
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When DC revived All-Star Comics in the 1970s, Roy Thomas wrote in and said as his final All-Star Comics subscription had stuck him with a year’s worth of All-Star Western, he thought he should get a year’s subscription to the revival book free.
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I was entirely unfamiliar with this story before reading your overview, Alan, but once I got the gist, I couldn’t help but realize that this is yet another example of a strange coincidence with a nearly concurrent story published by Marvel, mainly Giant-Size Avengers #1, written by Roy Thomas himself, wherein the original Whizzer makes his first appearance in a new story since the Golden Age and turns out to have had a son kept in captivity for decades due to a mutation which has made him into a golden-hued giant-sized creature, somewhat similar to the horrific transformation of Sandy, the young ward of the Golden Age Sandman, into a golden-hued giant-sized creature. I didn’t get that issue either, although I browsed through it at the store — but didn’t have enough money on me to purchase it.
No doubt, Thomas kept up with what was going on with the JLA and their annual meetings with the JSA and while he never did stories featuring the Avengers time-traveling to join up with their closest Golden Age equivalent, the All Winners Squad, he did have a trio of Avengers meet the Timely era Big Three. Given that Wein was floating back & forth between Marvel & DC in this period, I wonder if the similarities in these stories are purely coincidental or perhaps intentionally echoing one another. Of course, the stories themselves are distinct enough that neither Thomas nor Wein could be justly accused of copying one another, but I find it a funny that two Golden Age heroes inadvertently created Golden monsters that they needed assistance from Bronze Age heroes to deal with.
Also noticeable to me is that Wein’s style of writing JLA seems markedly different than what I recall of his writing for Marvel, particularly during his run on the FF. Mainly, on JLA his writing strikes me as very similar to what little I’ve read of Gardner Fox’s JLA, while on the FF it’s more clearly taking cues from the styles of Lee and Thomas. I’d surmise that was purposeful, to maintain the house writing styles of the mags. Even so, clearly Wein was also continuing to bring more Marvel-style pathos to DC, pinning on Wesley Dodds a tragedy involving his youthful sidekick as Lee & Kirby had done with Captain America when he was revived but his youthful sidekick shown to have died while on a mission during the closing months of World War II (although decades later, Bucky was shown to have gotten better, if not entirely physically intact, but rebuilt like the Six Million Dollar Man!).
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Someone once suggested that Fox cast a longer shadow over JLA than Lee did over Avengers because he stuck with the series so much longer. It’s telling that in the New 52, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee were comparing themselves to Fox rather than anyone more recent (though claiming “we have good characterization, not like he did!” was a rude insult to both Fox and everyone who’d worked on the book since).
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The other key issue was that the JLA was not Gardner Fox’s “first rodeo” as he had created the JSA for Shelley Meyer back in 1940 and wrote that for 7 years or so.
I would say that Fox was more plot-driven than peers and contemporaries (like Kanigher, Broome, Lee or France Herron) or protégées (like Thomas), who had more character-driven styles.
However, Fox could (and did) write solid character pieces (Man Thy Name Is Brother in the JLA or Spotlight on the Lamplighter in Green Lantern or Hunt for a Robin Killer in Detective Comics).
I also think Fox’s Adam Strange. and early Hawkman and Atom work was of high quality and is underestimated.
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No argument Fox deserves more love than he gets. And yes, at his best, it was hard to top him as a plotter.
He also wrote some of the better women of the Silver Age, such as Karel Sorensen of the Star Rovers (https://atomicjunkshop.com/an-unusual-role-for-a-woman-karel-sorensen/). And Alanna/Adam and Ray/Jean are among the decade’s better romances (and the couple I’d nominate for Least Likely To Sleep Alone).
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I was remiss in not remembering The Star Rovers. It was solid pop adventure writing, not unlike the better TV Shows of the period (Dante’s Inferno; Burke’s Law; Bonanza; HGWT, etc.)
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Be fair to yourself. Fox was so prolific it’s hard to keep track of everything he wrote.
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Well, Kanigher and Paul S. Newman, who mostly worked for Golden Key), wrote more than Fox! (I’m not sure about Joe Gill , , , ,
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I read this one in the collection Crisis on Multiple Earths Book 2: Crisis Crossed which reprinted the JLA-JSA team-ups from 1971 to 1978. I agree, there’s some seriously dodgy plotting going on here, but Len Wein ultimately pulls out a win with his sense of tragedy & pathos. So, yeah, not one of the best of the summer team-ups, but still fairly good. Solid artwork by the team of Dillin & Giordano.
I read “The Case of the Patriotic Crimes” when it was reprinted by DC in 1999 in the Justice League of America Super Spectacular, which was a nostalgic emulation of the 100 Page Giants from the Bronze Age. It’s one of the first Justice Society stories from the Golden Age that I ever had an opportunity to read, so even though I found it a bit hokey, I still have a certain fondness for it.
Never read JLA #16, but I agree that it’s a real WTF premise. I don’t mind “imaginary stories” because we can always say they took place in some other reality somewhere off in the multiverse, but this feels a bit like a bridge too far. I wonder how I’d have felt if I had been a kid in 1962 and I had read it.
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I recall reading somewhere a while back that Sandy Hawkins was somehow related to Dian Belmont, Wesley Dodds’ long time girlfriend. I think he was a nephew but I can’t be sure. Unfortunately I have read so many books and articles on comics history that I can’t recall where and when I read it, just that that bit of trivia has stuck in my brain all these years. I had this item when it first came out, and still do. Justice League was one title that made the trek from Ontario to British Columbia when I moved.
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Roy Thomas retroactively made Sandy the nephew of Dian Belmont in All-Star Squadron # 18, at the end of a flashback sequence in which the Tarantula told the All-Star Squadron about the tragic death of Dian while wearing Sandman’s costume, which led to Wes Dodds abandoning his business suit, gas mask and fedora for the purple and yellow outfit that he wore for the rest of the Golden Age.
Incidentally, JLA # 113 marked the end of the Sandman’s career in the 1970’s, except for cameo appearances in All-Star Comics # 74 and Adventure Comics # 466. Evidently, the authors of all following JLA/JSA team-ups (most of them written by Gerry Conway) and the revived All-Star Comics (Conway and Paul Levitz) had no interest in using the Sandman.
The explanation for the Sandman’s virtual disappearance came in “Whatever Happened to the Sandman?” in the back-up feature of DC Comics Presents # 41 (Feb. 1981). Written by Mike W. Barr and drawn by Jose Delbo and Joe Giella, the story revealed that Wes Dodds was so guilt-ridden about keeping Sandy in the “Velvet Cage” for so many years that he found a psychiatrist who hypnotized him into forgetting that he was the Sandman. At the end of the story, Wes’s memory was restored, he resumed his costumed identity and vowed to find Sandy.
As revealed in “Whatever Happened to Sandy the Golden Boy” (by Barr, Delbo and John Calnan) in DC Comics Presents # 47 (July 1982), Wes had placed Sandy the Silicoid Giant in York City Hospital before his amnesia was induced. The Sandman located Sandy and exposited that his subconscious had generated a solution: Since an explosion of silicoids had turned Sandy into a silicon-based humanoid, a carbon-based explosion would reverse the process and turn Sandy back into a carbon-based human. Thanks to comic-book science, the procedure actually worked, even restoring Sandy’s youth, costume and mask along with his humanity.
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Thoroughly enjoyed this one despite the plot flaws you mentioned.
I did not have a problem with the twist ending of Deadly Spheres. IIRC, most LOC were favorable, and Schwartz never hesitated to print critical letters.
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The JLA/JSA team-ups were always a highlight of my summers, because I first got on board via one of their joint ventures (91 and 92). I remember buying this one during a visit to my aunt’s in South MS. While I did enjoy the story, it was a bummer to see it as a “one and done” story. Sandman was one of my favorite Golden Agers, too.
The 100 pagers were a godsend to a young reader like myself, for all the vintage stories presented, especially the JLA ones because you always got a JSA story plus an older JLA story, though I really didn’t like Mike Sekowski’s blocky characters as much as Dick Dillin’s.
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bluesislove, I think your message might have gotten flagged by WordPress as spam when first submitted… sorry about that. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, never mind! 🙂 )
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Hey, Alan,
I remember being bitterly disappointed by this issue for a couple of reasons. First – as you noted – a “done-in-one” JLA/JSA team-up bugged me, though in retrospect I can sort of accept it. It’s worth noting that in each of the previous two team-ups – both written by Wein – the story had to introduce a whole new set of characters who might have been unfamiliar to the current readers: The 7 Soldiers of Victory in 1972 and the heroes later known as the Freedom Fighters in 1973. So I can, to an extent, accept the shorter story this time around. But by coming up with a story of only 20 pages, it made this year’s team-up that much LESS special.
Another thing that stuck in my 15-year-old craw was Wesley Dodds’ behavior and the (to my mind then and still) manipulative emotional ending. I generally liked Wein’s writing, but I also think he had a mile-wide sentimental streak that often walked a fine line between pathos and bathos, and the ending of this one crossed the line for me. And this story just diminished Dodds to me as a character. I know one of the hallmarks of post-1961 comics has been flawed heroes, but this time around seemed a bit of a bridge too far.
But the main reason that I was souring on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, despite having read it almost religiously and despite having amassed a collection that stretched back to #10 (!), I was so digging what Englehart was doing in AVENGERS in terms of both plotting and character development. There was just no comparison, so these stories seemed particularly superficial. Little did I know that only three years later…
Well, that’s for 2027, I guess. Hope we’re all still around for it!
But as always, Alan, even if the story didn’t exactly thrill me, your commentary made me put my feelings in a context where I can appreciate the story on its own terms. For that, much thanks!
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As a 13-year-old who had been reading JLA since the Red Tornado’s debut in issue 64, I also was disappointed about the one issue teamup. I guess it was a sign of things to come since the next several JLA-JSA meetings were less than spectacular until the Mr. Terrific murder in 171. Even in my youth, I wondered why The Sandman didn’t go to Dr. Fate and his mystic powers to see if he could do anything for Sandy. I thought Dr. Fate was the best thing about the JSA.
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I too was disappointed by The Creature In The Velvet Cage, Alan. But for an entirely different reason. The fact that it was a single installment instead of a two parter bothered me not at all. Did I say I was disappointed? That’s an understatement. In fact I despise this story! Sandman is a good guy; a hero! But here Len Wein has given him “feet of clay”.
For the most part I am a fan of Wein’s work on JLA. And I am especially fond of his two prior JSA team up stories. It’s unfortunate that his third and final entry was such a stink bomb!
As for the rest of this issue, it’s just as well that this was (as far as I know) the only appearance of The Maestro. As a fearsome adversary he’s certainly not in a class with Despero or Kanjar Ro.
The Case Of The Patriotic Crimes was one of the better JSA All Star Comics stories; certainly an improvement over the prior reprint The Plight Of A Nation. This time The Justice Society battles worthy opposition.
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Hey, I just found out something: Originally the Newsboy Legion and the Guardian were based in York City, according to Fred Van Lente (writing in 13th Dimension). Suicide Slum was in York City, but later it, the Legion, and the Guardian were all retconned to Metropolis. Maybe that was the York City intended here.
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Interesting. I’ve read more than half the series but I must have read “New York” wherever they mentioned “York City.”
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A-ha! Great find, FredKey. I’ll update the post.
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That’s so interesting that York City was first depicted as the hometown of the Guardian and the Newsboy Legion decades before Len depicted it as the Sandman and Sandy’s as well. Regarding the JSA members in the 1940’s, DC had established the fictional home cities of Metropolis (Superman), Gotham City (Batman & Robin, Green Lantern, & Wildcat), Keystone City (the Flash), Cliffland aka Cleveland (The Spectre), and Calvin City (the Atom). In the 1960’s, Hourman was identified as living in Gotham City (Showcase # 55-56), Black Canary in Park City (Brave and the Bold # 61), Starman in Federal City (B & B # 62), the Spectre in Gateway City (Showcase # 60, 61 & 64), and Wildcat in Knickerbocker City (Spectre # 3). In the 1970’s, Gateway City was also shown to be the home of Mr. Terrific (JLA # 171). Gardner Fox created the majority of the 1960’s cities, except for Knickerbocker City, which was Mike Friedrich’s idea, while Gerry Conway in the 1970’s placed Mr. Terrific in Gateway City in the same issue that saw the champion of Fair Play’s unceremonious demise.
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