1975’s team-up between the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America was the thirteenth such event since the annual tradition had begun in 1963. Over the years, DC Comics fans had been privileged to vicariously visit such parallel worlds as Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-X, and even the short-lived Earth-A. But there was one particular Earth that had been established as existing in what would eventually be known as “the DC multiverse” that had yet to be glimpsed in any of the JLA-JSA summer shindigs… though readers of those comics could hardly claim to be unfamiliar with the place. After all, they lived there.
Of course, I’m talking about Earth-Prime.
Cover to Flash #179 (May, 1968). Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.
Earth-Prime had been first introduced back in Flash #179 (May, 1968), in a story called “The Flash — Fact or Fiction?” In this yarn, writer Cary Bates extrapolated logically from an idea that went all the way back to Flash #123 (the classic comic in which the whole “parallel Earths” concept had made its debut in DC continuity, courtesy of writer Gardner Fox), wherein “our” Flash, Barry Allen of Earth-One, discovered that the Flash whose comic-book adventures he had read in his youth, Jay Garrick, was a real person who lived on Earth-Two. Somehow, the DC comic-book writers of Earth-One had “tuned in” mentally to Earth-Two, and had recounted as fiction events that had really happened on that other Earth. If that could happen, Cary Bates must have reasoned, then why couldn’t there be a world where both Earth-One and Earth-Two’s respective realities were believed to be only the stuff of comic-book fantasy? The answer was simple, of course; there was indeed such a world — and it was ours.
Cover to Flash #228 (Jul.-Aug., 1974). Art by Nick Cardy.
And so, in Flash #179, Barry Allen had found himself accidentally trapped on our very own Earth, from which he eventually made his way safely back home only with the help of Flash editor Julius Schwartz. Six years later, writer Cary Bates himself got into the act via a sequel published in Flash #228; in “The Day I Saved the Life of the Flash” Bates provided his first-hand account of how he’d accidentally daydreamed himself across the dimensional barrier between worlds (as one does) and then hung around on Earth-One just long enough to… well, it’s right there in the story’s title.
Your humble blogger would probably have enjoyed these comics if I’d read them when they came out; however, I’d pretty much dropped Flash as even a semi-regular purchase not long after Carmine Infantino stopped drawing it, so I’d paid no attention to either #179 or #228 when they arrived on stands. For that reason, I’m not certain that my younger self was even aware of the parallel Earth soon to be dubbed “Prime” prior to picking up JLA #123 in July, 1975; but, in any event, reading an actual story about it was going to be a novel experience.
Behind a cover pencilled and inked by Ernie Chan (though all those sideways-leaning running figures make me suspect it was at least roughly laid out by Carmine Infantino), the credits box on #123’s splash page assured me (as if the artwork itself wasn’t a dead giveaway) that the story had been drawn by the book’s longtime artist, the ever-reliable Dick Dillin…
…though with the exception of editor Julius Schwartz, the other names in the credits were new to me — at least in the context of Justice League of America. I hadn’t bought an issue of the series since #113 (which, not so coincidentally, had featured the most recent JLA-JSA team-up prior to this one). So while I was familiar with Frank McLaughlin’s inking from such other titles as Marvel Comics’ Captain America and Defenders, I’d been unaware that he’d taken over from Dick Giordano as the regular finisher on JLA as of issue #117 (a gig that McLaughlin would continue to hang onto through #189, published in January, 1981). At the time, I’m not sure I even noticed there’d been a change; looking back from the perspective of half a century later, however, I find McLaughlin’s finishes over Dillin’s pencils a little less appealing than Giordano’s, though it’s solid enough work.
As for the story’s writers, Cary Bates and Elliott S! Maggin, I’d read some of each of their work in other DC titles — e.g., World’s Finest and Superman for Bates, Detective and Batman Family for Maggin — though not enough that I’d formed strong opinions about the talents of either of them. Both had produced three scripts apiece for JLA in the last year (Bates’ had appeared in issues #116, #120, and #121, Maggin’s in #117-119), but this was their first joint effort — either on JLA or, as best as I can tell, any other title.
Though you wouldn’t know that from the first scene of this story, which back in July, 1975 had me assuming that the duo worked as a team on at least a fairly regular basis…
The “real” world to which Barry Allen traveled in Flash #179, and from which Cary Bates journeyed in Flash #228, hadn’t been given a special label of any sort — which makes the middle panel above the first appearance of the name “Earth-Prime”.
Does it surprise anyone else that the Comics Code Authority let Bates and Maggin get away with “Holy bazonkas!” in 1975? Just me? OK.
Hey, remember what I said earlier about how I thought Carmine Infantino might have had something to do with this issue’s cover? Well, here’s proof that DC’s publisher was still keeping his hand in in regards to his company’s cover layouts as of mid-1975. I mean, would Bates and Maggin lie?
Since I hadn’t read an issue of JLA since #113, I was unaware of the circumstances by which Hawkman had returned to the team’s fold in issues #116-117, following his and his wife/partner Hawkgirl’s being called back to their planet of Thanagar in #109. (For the record, it involved an “Equalizing Plague” that had made a mess of things on the Hawks’ homeworld.) But, given the bittersweet ending of #109, where Hawkman and Green Arrow had each made their regard for the other hero plain (to us readers, at least, if not actually to each other), I was probably slightly taken aback to see them sniping at one another again, as though nothing had changed since the not-so-old Len Wein-written days. Looking back on these stories now, however, I have to admit that this was probably realistic; after all, the aspects of the two heroes’ respective personalities that had gotten under each other’s skins in the past were unlikely to have changed much within the seven-issue span Hawkman had actually been gone.
In addition to his JLA scripts, Elliot S! Maggin had written dialogue for Oliver Queen in multiple Green Arrow backup stories published in Action Comics over the last couple of years — not to mention an earlier GA solo story published in Green Lantern #87 (Dec.-Jan., 1971), “What Can One Man Do?”, which happened to be the young writer’s first professional sale.
Why have the Justice Society members come here? Because of a mysterious message Wonder Woman has received by means of her ever-useful “mental radio”. But whatever the source of the summons, it seems to have been on point, as the Earth-Two heroes are immediately attacked by animated plant-life…
I guess that having Johnny Thunder rendered unable to summon his incredibly powerful Thunderbolt by means of being whopped in the jaw by a giant seed pellet is no more contrived than how, over in Marvel Comics’ Defenders title, writer Steve Gerber would have the comparable magical heavyweight Doctor Strange taken out of a fight by being suddenly knocked unconscious. But it somehow feels more lame — maybe because Bates and Maggin try to make the episode funny, and the joke just doesn’t land… at least, not for this reader.
Though I had been reading DC comics for almost ten years as of July, 1975, I knew the Injustice Society of America (originally “of the World”) — both en masse and as individual supervillains — entirely from reprints. Among such reprinted stories was the last prior appearance of the Injustice Society as a group (albeit with a slightly different lineup) from all the way back in All-Star Comics #41 (Jun.-Jul., 1948), which I’d perused just one year previously, in the aforementioned JLA #113. Another was the most recent showing of the Icicle and the Wizard, both as members of another villainous collective (the Crime Champions), in JLA #21 (Aug., 1963) and #22 (Sep., 1963); obviously, my younger self hadn’t yet been reading comics when that seminal two-part story — the very first JLA-JSA team-up — had originally come out, but I’d been fortunate enough to have caught it via its encore presentation in 1971’s DC 100-Page Super Spectacular #6 (“World’s Greatest Super-Heroes!).
Before we move on, I do have one question to pose in regards to the specific scene above: while one may accept that the Wizard is capable of “casting a spell between Earths to turn young Bates into a criminal” (and also give him super powers in the process, apparently), how did he know that an incursion from Earth-Prime was happening in the first place? Are we supposed to think he just sits around monitoring the interdimensional gulf for anomalies all day long? That seems unlikely — but it’s as much explanation as we’re ever going to get from our storytellers, I’m afraid.
The “time-flux” idea discussed above had come up before (I believe that it was first introduced by writer Denny O’Neill in JLA #82 [Aug., 1970], but I may be wrong). Presumably, it was supposed to account for at least some of the historical discrepancies between Earth-One and Earth-Two, but it’s always seemed to me that DC’s writers got it backwards. After all, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all appeared on Earth-Two long before their doppelgängers did on Earth-One; wouldn’t that mean that time on Earth-Two was running twenty years ahead of Earth-One, rather than behind? In any event, this concept became less and less useful, not to mention less wieldy, as DC’s panoply of parallel Earths continued to expand; if it wasn’t abandoned immediately after this particular story, I’m pretty sure it had been forgotten well before 1985-86’s Crisis on Infinite Earths made it a moot point.
As the JLAers engage with their ISA foes, Elliot finds himself understandably sidelined…
Taken together with the earlier references to Elliot Maggin’s dialogue sounding like that of a comic-book character (especially where Green Arrow is concerned), Maggin’s self-deprecating remarks here about having trouble coming up with something to say during the fight scene, as well as “never being much good at plotting“, makes for some subtle meta-commentary on how this story’s script was itself produced — as, by the writer’s own later account, he was responsible for all the verbiage, while his colleague handled the business of constructing the plot:
Cary and I wrote this story… as we did all the stories where we collaborated, by dividing the job mechanically. Cary wrote panel-by-panel scene descriptions and I filled in the dialogue from that. He wrote script pages with spaces for the balloons and captions and I filled in the spaces… (from Back Issue #82 [Aug., 2015])
Ending the first half of a JLA-JSA team-up with the latter team’s membership stone dead wasn’t what you’d call a new idea — original JLA scribe Gardner Fox had done exactly the same thing for the cliffhanger to the first half of his final such storyline, back in 1968 — but, hey, it’s not like any of us reading this in 1975 thought that the JSA were going to stay dead, any more than they had that last time. The big question was how Bates and Maggin were going to pull off their resurrection, and make us buy it… assuming they could make us buy it. But, naturally, the answer to that question will have to wait for another post, which will be coming your way next month; I hope to see you then.
https://tombrevoort.com/2016/11/27/i-was-super-excited-when-my-subscription-copy-of/
As Tom says in his post, this isn’t classic, though I enjoy it better than he did (if nothing else, for Maggin’s line in Part Two “I liked your last story about as much as having an incontinent yak sit on my dinner.”). It feels “off” in ways I’ve never quite pinned down.
Over at Atomic Junk Shop, I’ve blogged about writing comics in the DC multivese where apparently a lot of the characters are sensing events on other worlds (https://atomicjunkshop.com/and-your-writers-shall-see-visions-writing-superheroes-in-the-dc-multiverse/) and some of them just write based on news stories (https://atomicjunkshop.com/the-golden-age-of-comics-as-experienced-by-earth-two-comics-readers/). And Marvel too (https://atomicjunkshop.com/my-letters-on-the-fan-page-silver-age-marvel-comics-on-earth-616/).
Havent read this in decades, and it’s all coming back to me now – I liked the idea, and it was nice to be able to picture Cary bates & co thanks to the artwork. I always liked the Earth 2 crossovers but often I would get an either/or part 1 or 2 issue and find the other impossible to get hold of at the time. I cant remember if I got part 2 here! I will tune in for the next part here to find out! 🙂
I saw this (or more properly, “I have seen this since”) as Bates and Maggin’s warm up and shake down for their Who Took the ‘Supe’ Out of Superman story in late 1975 and early 1976 leading up to Superman #300.
I thought that later story arc was a nice meditation of the whole concept of Superman.
I haven’t read that particular storyline, though I’ve seen it recommended by others. I should probably check it out.
Yes, it was quite well done. And Clark romancing Lois when he was trying to live 100 percent human led into a long-running romantic arc in the Marty Pasko run.
Hi, John! I remember that SUPERMAN arc. I especially liked the issue where Clark opted to be just Clark for a time, and he and Lois – er, connect in a new way. (Seem to remember something racy was implied as going on between panels.)
First a question: Who designed the abomination of a costume Earth 2’s Robin wore? The follow up is ‘Why wasn’t it ever replaced?’
Dillin wasn’t the splashiest artist but I loved his JLA and World’s Finest. It just clicked with me and despite it’s stiffness I find through this blog entry I still love it. His loss was huge when I read why he was off the book, the loss of the man himself more than as a favored artist. I was even disappointed seeing Perez as the first new artist since I’d started reading the book!
The Earth 2 Robin’s costume was horrible. The yellow cape alone was an eyesore and should have been redesigned immediately. Fortunately, the adult Robin came to his senses and came up with better duds later, if I’m not mistaken, and in a color scheme of his more familiar red and green.
The E3 Robin did indeed come to his senses about that outfit — just three months later, in fact, in All-Star Comics #58. I’m sure we’ll all have more to say about that one in October!
The Earth 1 Robin tried out THAT costume (designed by Neal Adams) in JLA # 92 in 1971.
I assume Mike Sekowsky designed the original “Adult Robin” costume (with some editorial in-put from Julie Schwartz). (https://captaincomics.ning.com/forum/topics/deck-log-entry-181-mysteries-of-the-silver-age-part-one)
It does not work . . . and I’m not sure Neal Adams’s idea was that much better.
it probably made the most sense for the adult Robin just to be Batman . . . .
No, I think he’d stick with his own identity, not just become his Dad.
Friedrich was clearly thinking about the incongruity of a college-age kid running around in short pants as he tackled the topic a couple of times (https://atomicjunkshop.com/some-comic-book-images-from-1970/)
To paraphrase the title of another Elliott Maggin story, “Must there Be A Batman?” (https://www.supermanthroughtheages.com/theages/Maggin/must.php)
Since “criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot” there needs to continue to be a Batman for longer than any normal man could fill the role. It is kind of making them wonder WHAT is hounding them.
It is kind of a take on Lee Faulk’s The Phantom, but that is also part of Batman’s roots, so why not? (Also, this is what Grant Morrison came up with a few years ago and he thinks about this stuff more than is healthy. Besides. he’s from Glasgow where some of my people are from and ,Glaswegians, stick together.
We’ll have to agree to disagree.
I disagree respectfully with appropriate respect to your well-obviously thought out opinion.
All our ideas are views of fiction, which can (and probably should) differ.
If we all thought about “art” in the same way, would it be art>
I remembered this comic immediately once I saw it’s cover–I’m almost certain I have my original copy tucked away somewhere, bagged and boxed for your protection–but remembered very little about the story itself. My first memory of the term, “Earth-Prime” comes from Crisis on Infinite Earths, but I have to assume I heard the term previously, since it’s introduced here. Ah, memory…always the SECOND thing to go…
I have a strange emotional relationship with Cary Bates and Elliott S! Maggin. Back in the day, when they were two of DC’s most prolific authors, I loved their stuff, mainly because they enjoyed the same kind of meta, goofy comic adventures I did; sometimes it seemed they were the only two writers working who remembered comics were supposed to be fun. And yet, sitting here today, fifty years later, I can’t help but read this story in particular as the most self-indulgent arrogance. Yes, writers and artists were getting more popular and were being recognized and lauded for creating the books we loved, and yes, there were writers and artists we all followed and loved, but that said, why in the seven caves of Kukamonga (I stole that from Green Arrow), would I want to read a story about Bates and Maggin? Every time this has happened in the past, ie: the Flash stories you already mentioned or the earlier issue of JLA that featured Mike Friedrich and Harlan Ellison, of all people, it’s just seemed so over-wrought and cheesy–that is, that’s how it seems to me today; back when they were originally written, I loved this fan-fictionesque nonsense–I don’t understand why Julie would keep putting up with these stories unless he secretly liked seeing himself in a comic book as well. If Mr. Brevoort is correct (and why wouldn’t he be?) in that the Bates/Maggin/Schwartz brain trust was aiming to write something so bad that no one would ever write a story like it again, then mission accomplished, good buddies! You have hit the bullseye with this one. Stories like this really underscore the difference between Marvel and DC in those days, not to mention why Marvel was ahead.
As to the book itself, the Dillin/McLaughlin team did their usual fine job. I don’t know if their rendering of Bates/Maggin/Schwartz actually looks like the famed trio, but I’ve seen Julie drawn often enough to assume they were pretty dead-on. In regards to the Cosmic Treadmill, I thought it’s operation was supposed to require a certain amount of super-speed, if not skill, to operate. Having norms like Bates and Maggin be able to use one makes me wonder why everyone isn’t doing it. It makes Barry look “less” if his equipment is so easily co-opted by others. Plus, why wasn’t Schwartz building and marketing his own interdimensional time-traveling treadmill instead of editing comics? He could have been rich.
You’ve already pointed this out, Alan, but how did the Wizard know Bates was coming? Why did he think turning a comic book writer into a super-villain was a good idea? The combined skill-set of the Earth 2 Injustice League was pretty weak-sauce anyway; I guess they needed a corny comics writer to put them over the top. Also, here’s a question: has it been previously established that the Batman and Robin of Earth 2 are just brawlers and not martial arts masters themselves? Robin’s comment to Wildcat about the latter’s karate skills stuck me as odd.
Ah well, I don’t want to nitpick through this whole story (though I could go on for days about WW’s “mental radio”). I hope you had a good birthday, Alan. Thanks!
I too think it’s really self indulgent to put yourself in the story in this manner. It’s also full of inconsistencies too like what you mentioned about Flash alone being the one who can initiate travel on his Treadmill. The two writers really aren’t essential to the story either. I mean, any common person could have alerted the JLA. Heck, maybe even insert long lost Snapper as the ordinary human. I also agree with your statement about the difference between Marvel and DC at this time. It was more like a chasm
At this point, 50 years ago, I still hadn’t read any issues of JLA and I must admit, having read the recap of this story, if I had read it in 1975, not even the cliffhanger would have made me eager to read the follow-up. It all just seemed all too cheesy, and I think my 13 year old self would have thought so too. And not simply due to the co-writers putting themselves so thoroughly into the story. The same month, Steve Gerber put himself into what would be the last issue of Man-Thing volume 1. I missed that one too, although I had gotten the previous issue, M-T #21, which ended on a cliffhanger. Didn’t get #22 until at least a decade later. It was a curious means to end an ongoing epic on a title that was being cancelled, and with story relating how Gerber himself had gotten too involved in the stories and had to resign to keep his sanity, or something to that effect. But, anyhow, Manny, with some magical help, saved the day and Thog was defeated again. It wasn’t quite like anything I’d really expected, but then, well, this was Gerber, after all, possibly the most off-beat mainstream comics writer of the 1970s, so I wasn’t thoroughly surprised. Haven’t read much by either Bates or Maggin, so don’t have a strong opinion on their writing styles. This does bring to my mind two later stories in which the comics creators interjected themselves into their stories. First, Fantastic Four #176, from a little over a year later, featuring the Impossible Man running rampant in the Marvel offices, which was a very goofy but fun issue. Then, much later, there was the conclusion of Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man, in which the hero, who had lately undergone immense trauma, including the murder of his wife and two children, finally had a face-to-face encounter with the man responsible for all his troubles. Not any supervillain but merely a comicbook writer who had the power of a god over Animal Man and everyone in his solo stories over the last few years — mainly, Grant Morrison himself! A really fascinating story, I thought.
Back to the story at hand, one aspect which I had seen before (only online!), but which struck as abysmally horrid, mainly the adult Robin’s costume — that particular mix of the costumes of Batman and Robin looks utterly ridiculous, like Dick Grayson had grown up but utterly lost his mind.
My post about Man-Thing #22 (and the three issues preceding) will be coming up in just a couple of weeks, fred!
Looking forward to that, Alan!
Gerber also had a long talk with Howard the Duck in one issue, which IIRC was because he was moving and didn’t have time to write a conventional plot.
Morrison’s meeting with Buddy Baker came off insufferably pretentious, patting himself on the back about how well he tackled Serious Issues, which I don’t think he did (basically his Serious Approach was to right all the people with “wrong” positions as monsters). Though I still liked his run overall.
I’m a big Bates fan for his run on Flash, some of his Superman work, and for his later reboot of Captain Atom and standalone series Silverblade (not that I need a TPB but DC’s daft not to have issued one).
I really enjoyed CAPTAIN ATOM and SILVERBLADE. It was almost like Bates reinvented himself after CRISIS.
I loved this back when it came out (and I was nine years old) but boy, it does not hold up! From what I recall, the next issue is worse.
Also – B.O. Schwartz? Really?
Nice write-up, Alan!
This was, I believe, a nickname he had (“Be Original”).
I also assume it was a call back to “FAO Schwarz”, the famous NYC toy store.
Yes, it was! I saw him on panels at a couple of conventions in the 1970s/early 1980s, and each time he mentioned that nickname.
When I bought this magazine as a teenager, I thought this was self-indulgent garbage. Fifty years later, my opinion hasn’t changed. The worst JLA-JSA story I ever read. Gardner Fox, Denny O’Neil and Len Wein were hard acts to top at the time. The only subsequent JLA writer who lived up to that trio was Steve Englehart.
I was still a pre-teen in 1975 and I was already unhappy with 99% of the product from the Big Two at that time. Industry pros were fond of saying that there was an audience turnover every five years (in those days), and 1974 seemed to signal a very clear change, especially at DC. Marvel’s seemed to have come a year earlier. This is one of the reasons I migrated over to the Warren magazines at that time, and started buying a lot of older mainstream material I had missed from the silver and early bronze age.
JLA was very “meh” between Len Wein and Steve Englehart. Frustrating for a die-hard fan. Fortunately Gerry Conway had a good long run, though he lost his mojo even before the Detroit League.
About the time-flux thing …
I read JLA #82 in 1970 and it made sense to me. It made the JSAers closer in age to the JLAers, otherwise some of the JSAers would be around 50 years old, which to 10 year old me was pretty old. At the time, I thought that the heroes appeared close to the same time on their respective worlds, I hadn’t yet read the Flash’s origin or his first trip to Earth-2, which clearly shows that the JSAers had been around much earlier than the Earth-1 heroes.
I think O’Neil did it so that Black Canary would fit in better with the JLA, especially with her relationship with Green Arrow.
That would make more sense than the later “She’s the daughter of the Golden Age Black Canary but with all the memories of her Mom.”
Yeah, that was just bad. I get what Thomas was trying to do. The age gap between Canary and the rest of the JLA was getting too large, especially with the introduction of Infinity Inc., but … just not a good story at all.
Particularly when that means Larry Lance’s daughter has memories of getting naked with him.
ouch
Hadn’t thought of that.
Thanks for nothing!
Hi, Alan,
Remember this one well. The annual JLA/JSA used to really excite me, seeing the clever ways that Gardner Fox, Denny O’Neil, Mike Friedrich, and Len Wein would bring the teams together. However, by 1975, they had sorta lost their luster, partly because by this time I was more of Marvel fan.
This one wasamusing in a meta way (though we didn’t call it that at the time). The division of labor seemed about right – Bates was better at plotting stories while Maggin was better at dialogue. But I have to say that both of these guys were a bit emblematic of WHY I was turning away from DC, especially on SUPERMAN and ACTION. Their stuff, though well executed and occasionally witty, just seemed so shallow, compared to what was going on over at Marvel.
This is somewhat surprising in the case of Maggin, when you consider his first published story was the truly remarkable “What Can One Man Do?” from GREEN LANTERN #87. Of course, having Neal Adams illustrate the script helped
I now wonder how much of this was Julius Schwartz’ editorial control, though. In the mid-1980s, Cary Bates seemed to have reinvented himself with SILVERBLADE and especially CAPTAIN ATOM with stories that were more character-oriented. I almost drafted a LOC to CAPTAIN ATOM that was set up as a conversation between me and my comic-book reading nephew Jason in which he expresses disbelief that there was a time when Bates WASN’T so deft at characterization. (“Oh, c’mon, Uncle Bill. Now I KNOW you’re pulling my leg.”) Where was THIS guy in the 1970s???
I digress, as usual.
Like you, I felt that Frank McLaughlin’s inks were a bit stiffer than Dick Giordano’s, but he was a HUGE improvement over Joe Giella. With the exception of Adams’ inks on the “Origin of Terra-Man” story from SUPERMAN, I’m not sure that Dillin ever regularly receive the kind of inking that put his work in the best light.
Anyway, thanks for this week’s trip down memory lane.
I think Cary Bates, always a superb plotter, was simply fulfilling the DC requirements in the 70s, with plot-heavy stories and very basic characterisation. In the 80s, as DC became more experimental, he felt at liberty to move with the times, hence the likes of Silverblade. He seemed to start this process with his long-running Trial of the Flash sequence, which was beautifully executed, combining Fox/Broome style plotting interweaving with a lengthy but always compelling multi-issue arc that really examined Barry and his cast. Great stuff! (Of course, the magnificent Infantino artwork was also a major plus.)
Whereas I found the Trial interminable and insufferable. It had good bits, such as the fraught relationship between Flash and his workers but way too many nonsensical and clunky ones. And simply ran too damn long. A shame, given the book had largely recovered from the messy “Iris and Barry are angry at each other and then she’s dead” period under Ross Andru’s editorship.
This was my fourth JLA/JSA team-up, and I loved it simply for that. Just like with the previous ones, the most special part was the seemingly random roster of JSA heroes, some of whom I had gotten to see more of in the Super-Spectaculars. For the fourth straight year in a row, I got to see my favorite, Hourman (I know, he only had a cameo in 1973), but I also really enjoyed seeing Robin and Dr. Mid-Nite. My other favorites were Starman, Sandman and Mr. Terrific, the three of whom would get even more short shrift as the decade wore on. Looking back in retrospect, I think I was especially intrigued by many of the members who had no Earth-One counterparts and those who had very different costumes.
A few years later, when I purchased my first set of back issues, I was quite struck by the similarity of the rosters for JLA # 123-124 in 1975 and JLA # 55-56 back in 1967. Both team-ups included Hourman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Wildcat and Johnny Thunder, with the current team-up substituting Dr. Mid-Nite for Hawkman and Mr. Terrific (whom I would have loved seeing more of before his untimely demise). It was also great to see the first Silver-Age appearance of the Injustice Society, even if their involvement was more of a McGuffin than anything else.
It seems that I was a bigger fan of Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin than many of you, so it’s great to re-visit their artwork all these years later. I guess I really imprinted on their work over the span of their 66 issues together, and I also enjoyed the contemporary work of Jim Aparo, Irv Novick, Dave Cockrum and Mike Grell at DC, along with Gil Kane, Sal Buscema and Rich Buckler over at Marvel. Neal Adams and George Perez would become my all-time favorites, the former in retrospect and the latter in real-time once my Avengers subscription began in April of 1976. And no special feelings for Cary Bates and Elliott Maggin (along with Marty Pasko). As a 9-year-old, I was as yet uninitiated in the differences between writing styles; for me the joy of comic-books was simply in the characters and the story.
Oh this was fun! Wow, fifty years ago!! To be fair, the second part in the next issue doesn’t live up to the whacky promise of the first (How could it?) but it is still a blast!