Fifty years ago this month, DC Comics brought us the second and concluding chapter of the 13th annual Justice League/Justice Society team-up event. If you missed last month’s post about this story’s first half, or simply need to refresh your memory about what happened in it, you might want to go take a look at that post before digging into this one. The rest of us, however, are just going to blow right past JLA #124’s cover by Ernie Chan and jump to the issue’s opening splash page, where we find the creative team of Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin (writers), Dick Dillin (penciller), and Frank McLaughlin (inker) picking up not long after the finale of the previous issue — which, if you’ll remember, ended with six members of the Justice Society of America having been rendered, well, dead:
I say “not long after”, because it sure doesn’t seem like the JSAers’ Justice League of America colleagues have wasted much (if any) time getting their late pals interred in what appears to be a communal grave. Indeed, at this point there’s no indication that they’ve even informed anyone else — the deceased heroes’ family and friends, the police, etc. — about what’s happened. Presumably, they’ve at least been in contact with a mortuary service for the purpose of discreetly dealing with the caskets, embalming, and so on, because I’d really hate to think that the JLA just shoveled dirt onto the corpses of their comrades and then stuck a bespoke cross marker up on top. (That last gesture seems particularly inappropriate, to my mind; I mean, I don’t really know about anyone else, but I’m pretty sure that Wonder Woman, at least, was no Christian).
And just in case you’re thinking “well, this is an opening splash. Maybe it’s symbolic?” — a quick turn to page 2 will quickly disabuse you of such a notion:
So, wait, the Justice League somehow lost all control in the middle of a standard super-people battle and killed six people they thought were villains? Well, not necessarily. If you’ll recall, back on the last page of the previous issue, upon realizing their opponents were no longer breathing, one of the Leaguers (not clearly indicated, but probably Batman) said, “I don’t see how”… an eminently rational response that he and his peers seem to have immediately forgotten. Seriously — given that our heroes have had at least one previous experience of a slate of their peers dropping dead, only to discover that the seemingly expired good guys had only been dosed with an unnatural energy that made them seem dead, and that that process could be reversed, you’d think that they’d at least want to establish a precise cause of death for each individual JSAer, wouldn’t you? To run some basic tests, at least, even if they weren’t going to perform full autopsies? None of that appears to have occurred to the Leaguers, however — nor, for that matter, to the two guys credited with writing this stuff. Speaking of whom…
JLA editor Julius Schwartz proceeds to type up a quick account of how both Elliot S! Maggin and Cary Bates were pulled out of their (and our) home reality of Earth-Prime to end up who knows where; since we don’t need that info, we’ll skip ahead…
Yes, it is indeed Cary Bates — former mild-mannered comic-book writer, now criminally insane super-villain. As seen in the previous chapter, the villainous Wizard zapped Bates while he was in the interdimensional transit zone betwixt Earths Prime and Two, simultaneously turning him eeevil and giving him awesome “mental energy” powers. Per the final panel of JLA #123, he was also directly responsible for disguising the recently deceased JSAers as their Injustice Society foes; presumably, that also included manipulating their minds. And, as long as we’re here, I’ll go ahead and pin the murders on him as well, since, c’mon, there’s no way all of the Justice Leaguers suddenly lost it and used deadly force, all at the same time. (Yes, it would be nice if the script for either issue clarified that matter. But neither ever does.)
Bates flies with this ill-gotten gains to the hideout where await his new “masters” — the Injustice Society, of course — who delightedly help themselves to his golden haul…
Hmm, a ghostly “wisp” with a penchant for vengeance and/or justice, who favors a green-and-white color scheme… I wonder who that could be?
Why is this nuclear power plant “starting to blow“? Who knows? All that apparently matters to our storytellers is that three JLAers are here to avert disaster, or at least keep the damage to a minimum.
As you can imagine, the Flash does most of the heavy lifting here, creating a “speed-vacuum” to contain the blast and vent the fallout… somewhere, with Green Arrow contributing by means of a few “heat-absorption” shafts, and Hawkman providing a modest assist to Flash’s vacuum by literally flapping his wings over it (yes, I’m serious)…
Yeah, this scene confirms it — the Justice League is keeping that little matter of the Justice Society’s murders to themselves for now. It’s interesting that Bates and Maggin have the supposedly anti-establishment Green Arrow being the one saying they ought to come clean, while Hawkman — a law enforcement officer by profession! — states they should continue to lay low, and police scientist Barry “Flash” Allen simply keeps mum.
OK, that accounts for three out of the six JLA members appearing in this story. What do you suppose their colleagues Aquaman, Batman, and Black Canary are getting up to in the meantime? Well, if you imagine they’re out there trying to locate the Injustice Society and bring them to justice, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Because what they’re actually busying themselves with is breaking up what looks to be a very small-time diamond-smuggling operation on board a cabin cruiser in some unspecified location — which is certainly a worthwhile activity, but also seems the kind of thing that might be left to the normal Earth-Two authorities under the present circumstances. But, hey, what do I know?
Once the crooks have all been corralled, out heroes take a look around and realize that someone who was supposed to be in their charge — Elliot S. Maggin, who else? — has wandered off for some unknown reason. (Well, you and I know the reason — it’s called “narrative convenience” — but the characters in this story will have to remain clueless, I’m afraid.)
Cary Bates — who, as you may recall from our JLA #123 post, is supposed to have done most of the plotting for this two-parter — has just entrapped his erstwhile colleague Elliot Maggin — who reportedly handled the actual dialogue and other verbiage — in a literal speech bubble. Pretty meta, and the kind of thing this chapter of the story could use more of, frankly. Because there’s not a whole lot else going on here to get enthused about — at least, not until the next page, where we’ll finally learn the identity of our mysterious “wisp”…
Cover to Justice League of America #83 (Sep., 1970). Art by Dick Dillin (?) and Murphy Anderson.
Cover to Adventure Comics #431 (Jan., 1974). Art by Jim Aparo.
The Spectre! The last time we’d seen the Ghostly Guardian in Justice League of America, it was back in issue #83, the second half of 1970’s JLA/JSA team-up. As you may recall, in the climax of that story the Spectre had sacrificed his existence (“life” doesn’t seem to be quite the right word) to help save not just his JSA teammates and their JLA friends, but the entire populations of Earths One and Two. But then, some three years later, the Astral Avenger had returned in a new solo series in Adventure Comics which handily ignored not just that story, but essentially every other bit of the character’s continuity that had been established following his origin in More Fun Comics #52-53 (Feb. and Mar., 1940). That series had itself recently come to an end, seemingly leaving the Spectre’s near future a question mark — but now here he was back again, hardly four months later, mysteriously reappearing in a fashion that seemed to vaguely allude to his “demise” back in JLA #83 (though without directly referencing it), and that didn’t appear to account for his recent stint in Adventure at all.
Which, frankly, was just fine with your humble blogger. I’d enjoyed the Spectre’s Adventure run, which, if nothing else, had featured a lot of truly outstanding artwork from Jim Aparo. But I much preferred the version of the character who behaved like a bona fide superhero, fighting villains in his own weight class (more or less), to the guy who got his jollies coming up with inventively grisly ways to execute ordinary murderers — turning one into wood and putting him through a buzz-saw being the classic example. (I realize, of course, that the personal mileage of other fans may have varied.)
One last thing to note before moving on is how Dick Dillin has chosen to draw the Spectre’s face in this story; rather than follow the usual convention whereby the upper half of the face is drawn in perpetual shadow from which peer two white eye-slits (thus giving the impression of a mask), Dillin gives us his full, skull-white countenance, with the eyes represented as blank orbs. This interpretation calls back to how the hero was originally depicted by his co-creator Bernard Baily (although I think the red eye color used here may be a new innovation).
OK, moving on now…
Umm… is that a giant banana peel that the Wizard has conjured up to stymie the Flash? Why, yes, I do believe it is. What’s more, based on the Scarlet Speedster’s hesitant posture, it looks like the ploy just might work…
In the two-part storyline that concluded the Spectre’s stint in Adventure, the heavenly “Voice” (presumably, God) had briefly allowed the crusading spirit’s mortal identity, police detective Jim Corrigan, to be returned to full human life — only to pull the metaphysical rug out from under him, returning him to his non-physical status as a crimefighting ghost. The callback here isn’t to that story, however, but rather to the earlier Golden Age story (correctly footnoted as having appeared in More Fun #75) that had inspired it — a story which, in allowing a resuscitated Corrigan to act henceforth as a “host body” to the Spectre (now a separate personality) established a new status quo for the character that had carried on through the decades all the way up to Adventure #431, where writer Michael Fleisher had ditched it in favor of the original character concept (i.e., Corrigan-as-ghost).
For my money, the invocation of the “Ring of Life” in this scene served not only to remind readers of an in-universe precedent for the divinely-ordained resurrection of a superhero (or six), but established that this Spectre — the “real” one, as far as my younger self was concerned — had nothing to do with that guy who’d been turning perps into glass and shattering them over in Adventure for the past couple of years. Which, again, was fine with me. (And, yes, I’m aware that later stories would attempt to account for the discrepancies by positing that, somehow, the same Spectre was flitting back and forth between Earths One and Two, maybe even between two different Jim Corrigans. Sorry, folks, but my personal headcanon’s not having any of it.)
As if the Flash wasn’t already having enough problems with that giant banana peel…
Not sure you have any real cause for complaint, Cary Bates. After all, as the story’s plotter of record, you presumably came up with the “blasted miracle” that resolves this storyline — a resolution that’s about as literal an example of a deus ex machina ending as I can think of. (All it’s lacking is the machina.)
At least the Flash has finally been rescued from that damn banana peel. Whew!
Back in 2016, the late David Torsiello (whose comments on this blog, posted under the handle of “crustymud”, are still very much missed) ranked all twenty-three JLA/JSA team-ups in a blog post of his own (text archived here). Guess which one came in dead last? I can’t say I entirely agree — I’d probably give the bottom spot to David’s number #22, that clusterf*ck of continuity over-correction otherwise known as JLA #219-220 — but, even so, I find it hard to argue with the basic reasoning behind the Crusty Curmudgeon’s choice for worst. To wit: after pointing out some of the same plotting deficiencies that I’ve noted in this post, David said in his wrap-up: “I realize they were mostly going for humor here, but it really doesn’t work. It just comes off as goofy and cornball and silly.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
That said, I imagine that I was rather less hard on JLA #123 and #124 when I first read them, back in the summer of ’75. That’s probably in part because I was reading so many comic books that summer that I blew through both of these and was on to the next one in the TBR stack so fast that it probably didn’t even register with me that the big weird yellow thing menacing the Flash in the latter scenes of #124 was in fact (say it with me) a giant banana peel. Beyond that, I’m sure that the return of “my” Spectre to active duty covered a multitude of sins at the time — as, to a considerably lesser extent, it still kind of does.
On the other hand, nothing in these two issues would inspire the younger me to come back the following month to see what the Justice Leaguers were getting up to these days when they weren’t killing meeting up with their Justice Society chums. As had been the case the previous year, I would abstain from buying another issue of JLA until the next summertime get-together of the two teams.
For once, however, I wouldn’t have to wait almost a year before being able to enjoy another comic book starring the JSA — since, just like it said in the blurb at the bottom of JLA #124’s last page, those stars of the Golden Age were coming back in their own book, “on sale soon!” As it turned out, I’d have to wait two months to find out just what the heck this “Super Squad” business was all about… but find out I would, and so will you, if you check back in this space come October. I look forward to seeing you then.
https://tombrevoort.com/2016/12/17/it-came-in-the-mail-folded-in-half-as-was-the/
I don’t disagree about JLA 219-220 but the Spectre was the only reason this self-indulgent piece of garbage isn’t dead last in the long history of the JLA/JSA teamups. I’m looking forward to the Super Squad blog. I have fonder memories of that issue (hint: Power Girl).
Yeah, I’m certainly looking forward to Alan’s retrospectives on the mid-1970s All-Star Squadron revival featuring the JSA. Those were some really enjoyable comics
This was the last appearance of the amalgam costume that the Earth Two Robin is wearing.
I always wondered when I read this story where was the rest of the Justice Society and Earth Two’s other heroes? The Justice League acted as if those 6 were the only heroes that Earth Two had.
It’s incredible that it’s 50 years since I purchased this issue , but I have to admit that by this stage I was buying JLA as a habit. I used to get excited in the summer waiting for the annual JLA/JSA team up to appear in the spinner rack, hoping that the hap hazard distribution here in the UK would not mean I’d miss the second issue of the two parter. For me the glory days of Fox, Sekowsky and Greene were long gone and much missed !.
At this point the magazines were my preferred reading material: Warren’s Creepy and Eerie, Mad magazine, and Marvel’s Unknown World’s of Science Fiction. I did pick up the Marvel treasury editions and DC’s limited collectors series as well.
I glanced at National Lampoon for the art, but the writing was often so ribald and in intentionally poor taste that it turned me off. My oldest brother was buying Savage Sword of Conan, so I would take a peek at those. In the mainstream (bi-)monthlies I was buying Swamp Thing. Even though Redondo drew beautifully, it was never the same once Wein and Wrightson had left.
My younger brother bought some of these JLA comics, but they looked bland and unmemorable to me.
Though I was aware of StarReach, Hot Stuf, and other pro zines, I didn’t purchase any until years later—-same with some of the better fanzines of the late ’60s/early ’70s.
I always thought of Spectre as having a counterpart on each Earth like other heroes so the Aparo version was Earth 1 and this one was of Earh2. Doesn’t help this being my nomination for worst JLA-JSA team up ever. It boggles my mind that a writer I revered even teamed with one that mostly left me cold could conjure up such drek. as to the Supermen’s power levels, didn’t they once say that Kal-L reached Kal-El’s power levels but at a much slower rate?
Oh and my disliking this crossover at the time wasn’t helped by how much I hated the Robin costume featured as the cover’s center point or that it was drawn by a person whose art I disliked immensely as both inker and penciler.
As your Crustymud quote points out, Alan, “goofy and cornball and silly,” is as an apt description of this story as you can offer without going straight to something like, “bad, infantile and amateurish.” We discussed in the mid-week post about how Gerry Conway’s work bent with the wind in terms of plotting and structure and Bates and Maggin could be just as bad. I think there’s actually the kernel of a good idea at the heart of all this, “a comics creator finds himself in a world of super-heroes as his own powers turn him into a villain.” There could be a really good story here about the balance of power vs the balance of temptation, or the “real world morality” vs “comic book morality,” but we don’t get that story here. All we get here is self-indulgent posturing as Bates and Maggin take the spotlight in a tale that was never supposed to be about them in the first place.
Still, not so much now, but back in the seventies, I loved that meta stuff and probably enjoyed this story a heckuva lot more then than I do today. The idea of a writer going into the world he’s written would really have appealed to 18-year old me and would have certainly inspired a willingness to suspend my belief in logic and story structure, just to see how it turned out. Ah, to be young again. Mike wonders in the comments above just what the rest of Earth-2’s heroes were doing while six of the JSA get killed, and based on an aggregate of DC comics at the time, the answer was “nothing.” The JLA books in particular were really bad about pretending that the only heroes who mattered were the ones in the story you were currently reading, and that, for the length of that story, other heroes didn’t really exist in any meaningful way.
Since the Spectre’s whole “raison d’etre” was to basically be a human-shaped deux ex machina to begin with, I don’t have any real problem with how he was used here. Though, if he’d wanted to turn The Wizard into wood and force him head-first into the chipper, I wouldn’t have complained. As much as I enjoyed the Aparo run on the Spectre, the idea of “God’s vengeance in human form” is awfully Old Testament and contrary kinder, gentler version we get in the New Testament after the sacrifice of Jesus. I guess Jim Corrigan never went to Sunday School.
Anyway, by this time I was totally used to Dick Dillin drawing the JLA and whatever weaknesses he had were no longer noticed by me. He was fine. Especially with Giordano’s inking, he was more than fine. Thanks, Alan for a look back at a story I’d forgotten. Now, I have to go back and forget it again. Cheers!
I agree that the idea of the writers of the book inserting themselves into the story as a kind of “meta” commentary on the superhero genre *could* be interesting, but, as with the Rutland Halloween parade issues of Batman and the Avengers?, I don’t find the idea to be particularly well executed here. I enjoy a lot of Cary Bates’s work despite recognizing that it is often … formulaic, to put it charitably, but I would say he bit off more than he could chew by inserting himself into the story here. Still kind of a fun blast of zany Bronze Age DC tropes, though.
Overall, a rather cheesy story and not the sort of thing that would have convinced me to start getting JLA or other DC comics regularly. Given all the silliness with the co-writers taking such a key role in the story, it made sense for a deux ex machina conclusion to bring the dead heroes back to life. The creators of these comics, after all, are the “gods” of the stories they tell and can make just about anything happen within them (at least as much as their senior gods will let them get away with!). Of course, they’re not omnipotent enough to make all readers enthralled with their creative endeavors.
The apparently genuine “deaths” of this set of the JSA brings up another query to my mind — would the JLA have felt any remorse at all if the dead had really been the members of the Injustice League? Were the crimes of the individual members of that evil league truly so horrific as to justify the death penalty? Should the JLA rename themselves the Capital Punishment League of America? Of course, the real causes of death are left ambiguous. But what if they weren’t really dead but the JLA decided to “honor” them with a funeral pyre, burning their bodies to ash without verifying that they were actually dead, never mind determining the actual causes of death. About two years earlier, Captain America was faced with a situation in which he seemed to have killed a villain (although readers were well aware that Cap was entirely innocent and that Moonstone had been the real killer). Although there was some typical comicbook silliness, including Cap being imprisoned but allowed to keep his mask and costume on in jail – hey, even genuine super-villains were typically allowed to wear their costumes after being convicted and sentenced, as seen in many Silver Age comics, including Avengers #15 (Melter & Black Knight) and FF #44 (Trapster & Sandman, although the latter doesn’t really count as at the time his “costume” was just his regular slacks and striped shirt). Of course, an autopsy of the Tumbler should have been able to exonerate Cap but the story didn’t go in that direction but did deal with Cap internal struggles with how to deal with the situation — run away? let the justice system work things out? before accepting the circumstances that resulted in his being broken out of prison and conducting his own investigation. The debate between Green Arrow and Hawkman seemed rather cursory but it does seem off that there was so little reflection by other members of the JLA not just that they appeared to have killed members of the JSA but that they appeared to have killed anyone in the heat of battle, and not under circumstances in which they had to do so to save their own lives or that of someone else from imminent murder.
Appears Cates & Maggin simply sought to create escapist fare in which none of the actions have consequences and everything would be reset at the end and readers shouldn’t take any of it seriously. Certainly, there should be such fare available in comics for those seeking such fare to while away their free time, with something that wasn’t more pure little kid material such as Harvey’s offerings. Pure escapist fare had made up the bulk of comics for most of its history from their beginnings in the 1930s, but I think even Siegel & Schuster in their earliest Superman stories yearned to show their new costumed hero fighting all manners of real life injustices, including domestic abuse and people facing the death penalty for crimes they hadn’t committed, and corrupt politicians, etc. And in more recent years, writers such as O’Neil, Englehart & Gerber told their own stories dealing with social injustices, as committed both by costumed cutups and ordinary people. They also dealt with all too human frailties that even the most powerful beings fell prey to. To a great extent, that began with the comics revolution inaugurated by Lee & Kirby with Fantastic Four #1, with heroes with fantastic powers but still prone to the sins of pride, jealousy, anger, and reckless behavior.
Just some of my own random thoughts that bubbled up while perusing this latest installment of reflections on comics of half a century ago. As always, enjoyed your own thoughts and remembrances of these graphic tall tales of the ever receding but not forgotten past.
My impression has always been that Cary rigged the fight so that the JLA killed the JSA without using lethal force — though that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Shouldn’t Grant Morrison have brought back Evil Supersuited Cary Bates by now? Seems like an obvious move!
Back in 1975, I really, really wanted to like this 2-parter. For me, it had a lot going for it:
• It was a sequel to one of my favorite stories: the Barry Allen/Julie Schwartz team-up in Flash 179 that introduced “Earth-Prime”
•I generally enjoyed the individual work of Bates and Maggin (so pairing the two was sure to deliver something special, right?)
•I had been intrigued by the notion of a grown-up Robin since first meeting him via that wonderful Murphy Anderson JSA pin-up in JLA 76 — so always happy to see him on the roster
•The concept of a writer using his imagination to affect the world around him sounded pretty cool
But, as well documented here, the execution fell miles short of the promise. I remember being disappointed back in ’75, but revisiting the story now, it comes off far worse. Even making allowances for the evolution of the medium over the decades, this is embarrassingly childish — particularly compared to the contemporary work recently highlighted by Alan (Warlock, Dr. Strange, Man-Thing).
I have to wonder if Bates & Maggin were aiming for sort of a “Trouble with Tribbles” change-of-pace comedy. The splash panel featuring the Wizard’s giant banana peel feels like a parody of silver age super-hero battles. In addition to the banana peel, we get:
• Sportsmaster spray painting a bullseye on Black Canary’s abdomen as he winds up to throw a pub dart
• Icicle doing a frosty spit-take into Batman’s face
• Aquaman flummoxed by a flurry of playing cards that appear to have no special properties (the 52 pickup effect?)
Plus, you have meta elements like Maggin getting trapped in his own word balloon and trying to defeat Bates by disparaging his writing abilities.
One bit that did land for me: “It’s a bird!” “It’s a plane!” “It’s Cary Bates!”
On another note, I want to take a moment to defend an unpopular opinion: I loved the original adult Robin costume the first time I saw it in the Anderson pin-up and I still do.
Yes, the giant yellow cape is garish, but the overall design is a nice blend of the Batman and Robin costumes as they existed at the time. The muted gray and blue bodysuit paired with the bright cape and modified domino mask encapsulate the reason Robin was created in the first place: to be a light counterpoint to the dark Batman.
Unlike the next iteration of the adult Robin costume (coming shortly in Super Squad, I believe) with it’s modified cowl, the original leaves the head largely uncovered — which befits Robin’s more open, accessible personality. Plus, the mask itself feels like a precursor to the modern Nightwing mask.
No, I wouldn’t want to see Dick Grayson (of any earth) running around in the original adult Robin costume today, but I will always carry a torch for it.
With the “relevance” trend, so beautifully exemplified in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, having died out at DC, and the notion that a new generation of fans came along every five years, this light, kiddie-ish fare was only made worse when, for a short time in the mid-’70s, DC decided to make Bates and Maggin their “front men,” so to speak.
When I saw house ads popping up across the DC line with a comics portait of this long haired hippie (Cary Bates) my 10 year old self wondered, “Who is this guy?” He certainly wasn’t Stan Lee or Carmine Infantino. I guess DC’s top brass thought younger readers would relate to him more than bald, middle-aged men like Carmine or Julie Schwartz (that’s why Stan donned a toupee and got in shape — and it worked wonders at Marvel, along with his witty repartee).
But Cary Bates as a DC mascot didn’t last long.
Gotta say, I hated the relevance trend. Rereading as an adult, I still hate it. For every good story, there were nine that felt forced. And rarely as deep as the creators may have hoped.
When lesser creators try to “jump on the bandwagon” the results are often abysmal. We’ve seen that time and again in various media across the years.
Agreed. I always felt that GL/GA, despite its classic status, was embarrassingly po-faced virtue signalling. It swiftly devolved into ‘liberal issue of the month’. Consequently, the series has aged rather badly.
You’re entitled to your own opinion of course, Chris. But I have to say here that I really, really hate the phrase “virtue signaling”, which to me implies that the supposed perpetrator is mostly interested in trying to make themself look moral and upright, and doesn’t really care all that much about the issues they’re addressing… an authorial motivation which I think is very difficult to discern in a work of fiction, generally speaking.
“Po faced”? There was a lot of levity in Gl/GA. Ever read no. 84, “Peril in Plastic”? Very funny story with the KA-LOO-TA! sound made by machines cranking out cheap plastic items on a private island run by corporate types. Another story had a little girl who was clearly based on U.S. president Richard Nixon, right down to the receding hairline. Hilarious! Her sidekick was obviously a caricature of then-VP Spiro Agnew before he was ousted. Not everything was deadly earnest in those stories.
And in yet another example of varying mileage, I very much appreciated the relevance trend as a young reader, and how I feel about it today hardly matters. Those stories helped make me who I am today, and I’ll always be grateful to their creators.
My two cents is that a lot of the O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories are (sadly) still relevant today, and that the best of them are pretty skillfully executed.
I think Denny’s writing was heartfelt on those, even if I disagreed with certain takes on burning issues of the day. Some of it dates alot, because it was meant to be very much of its time. Neal’s art is top notch, then and now.
I always felt that GL/GA was amazingly inconsistent
It features a couple of real classics (#76 and #89) and some bold attempts that did not quite get there (85 & 86) and some really weak work with nice art (#77– #84) and a nice (but slightly undistinguished) change of pace issue (#87).
Using Norman Mailer (and particularly The Armies of the Night)) as a stepping off point might have been part of the problem. Many people thought Mailer really only had one story he had to tell (The Naked and the Dead) and the rest was just marketing clever but shallow ideas.
Still, someone had to try and some talented people did.
Historically, I look at Stan Lee as important in breaking the mold of perfect super-heroes saving the day with very real personal problems. Denny O’Neil brought relevance squarely to the table with GL/GA and rewrote “the Batman” as a dark knight detective. Alan Moore and others brought another level of sophistication to mainstream super-hero comics scripts in the ’80s.
My last exposure to Norman Mailer was his dialogue with his son John Buffalo in *The Big Empty,* which I can’t recommend…but I think there’s a great deal more to him than *The Naked and the Dead* and *The Armies of the Night.* (I liked *The Executioner’s Song* even more on a second reading.)
Amidst the *Advertisements for Myself,* there’s a lot worth reading and buying (though you may want to bear “caveat emptor” in mind).
How do you feel about Maggin’s use of the quotation from Ernest Hemingway’s *Farewell to Arms* in the issue of *Green Lantern/Green Arrow” you deemed “a nice (but slightly undistinguished) change of pace”?
Cary Bates also shows up on the cover of Superman no. 289, cover dated July 1975, along with Bob Rozakis, Jack C. Harris, and Carl Gafford:
https://files1.comics.org//img/gcd/covers_by_id/15/w400/15610.jpg?-5619289518869434989
I first read this story in 2023 when I picked up the trade paperback Crisis on Multiple Earths Book Two: Crisis Crossed, which collected all of the annual Summer JLA / JSA team-ups from 1971 to 1978. I thought it was a fairly silly story with some rather dodgy plotting. Since Alan was blogging about these issues, I recently re-read JLA #123-124, and my opinion of these issues has scarcely changed. I unfortunately have to agree with the other commentators who view this as one of the weaker of the JLA / JSA team-ups.
On a positive note, though, I will say that the ever-professional Dick Dillin seems to have done his best to have penciled this bizarre story. Dillin was definitely a good, solid, underrated artist. These annual team-ups could not have been easy on him, with the multiple characters to juggle, but I feel he did a quality job each time making sure that the storytelling & action was clear.
It is hard to see how any Leaguer might have used enough lethal force to kill Earth-Two Wonder Woman while believing her to actually be the villainous Huntress. She was skilled, but ultimately an unaugmented human.
I’m with you on relegating Fleisher’s Spectre to Earth-O(rlando) or, given that weird “Clark Kent” remark in one story, even Earth-Prime.
Also, if the Wizard really has the ability to impart “mental energy” powers on a level capable of altering reality, why waste them on a comic book writer that he also needs to brainwash over to the side of evil, instead of giving the powers to one his fellow villains who already meets the “evil” criteria? Or better yet, keep the powers for himself? (Maybe the answer to the last part is in your review, though: comic book writers have boundless imagination, while the best the Wiz can think up is a banana peel).
As a kid, I didn’t even catch on to the indignity of having 6 JSA’s dumped into one mass grave (apparently stacked on top of each other!) but I did have trouble with the Leaguers deciding to hide from the world the fact that (1) they were dead and (2) they died at the hands of the League. You’d think as heroes they’d turn themselves in to let the courts decide what if any responsibility they bore, rather than sweeping it all under the carpet, or more accurately a pile of fresh earth.
This surely wasn’t the best JLA/JSA team-up ever, but that last panel promising the Society in a book of their own went a long way to making this a happy ending for young me (even if “Super-Squad” is a lousy name). I remember eagerly awaiting the revived All-Star Comics, and when it arrived, I was not disappointed.
Even though they don’t spell it out, I assume it was “Cary Bates is used to coming up with clever criminal plans — give him the power, he can kill our foes!”
I don’t think the Clark Kent remark proves anything. I figure either the guy he said it to scratched his head and shrugged (“Why does he care that some reporter’s mild-mannered?”) or the cop remembered all those times someone tried to prove Clark Kent was Superman and laughed.
As I pointed out in my original Adventure Comics #435 post, you can make the “Clark Kent” remark “work” in continuity if you try hard enough. I think it’s harder to argue that Michael Fleisher *intended* such a reading when he wrote that line; rather, I feel pretty sure that Fleisher simply didn’t care about such things, which irked me then, and still does.
Yes, you’re undoubtedly right on that one.
Joining in the fondness for Dick Dillin. Even though I started with Mike Sekowsky (and like him on JLA more than many people do) Dillin is probably “my” JLA artist.
Also, here Bates was someone from outside the Universe, who happened to know some of the biggest secrets in that world (e.g., does Superman have a civilian identity and what is it?)
You can see how valuable that could be.
Think about it this way, in 2004, I was an Army Reserve MI officer serving in the GWOT. Imagine someone had shown up and said, “I know where bin Ladin is” and I was fairly certain the info was valid.
That aspect of the story rings true (if nothing else).
It seems like Julie Schwartz kind of painted himself into a corner with the JLA/JSA Team-Ups after 1972 when Wein did the three issue story with the 7 Soldiers. .
Except they never actually use Bates’ knowledge to, say, ambush the heroes in their secret identities or the like.
And the reason why The Spectre was trapped in that tomb in JLA 83 still has not been explained more than 50 years later, despite promises!
Paul Levitz offered an explanation in Amazing World of DC Comics #16 (https://atomicjunkshop.com/this-post-is-an-excuse/).
fraser, I believe that that article was actually written by Cary Burkett, not Paul Levitz.
A silly story, but then as now I liked any story with Johnny and his hot pink genie in it. It was also good to see the Gambler in his first post-golden age appearance. He was originally an Alan Scott foe (and a master of disguise among other talents). Those stories were all pretty good, especially by golden age standards. He was even given a real name and back story, unusual for villains at the time.
One of the few things about CW’s Stargirl that disappointed me was making the Gambler a generic computer hacker. He should have been more interesting.
Yes, this! I did like his southern accent though
An Alfred Bester character wasn’t he? Good GL writer for the Oath and Solomon Grundy . . . .
Mike’s Amazing World says Gambler was Henry Kuttner. But yes, Bester was Grundy, the oath and Vandal Savage.
Kuttner was another great Pulp Science Fiction and Horror writer and half of “Lewis Padgett” with his wife (C.L. Moore).
And several other pseudonyms. A writer i know jokes that together “they’re five of my ten favorite Golden Age writers.” I’m fond of both their work.
While I recognize the absurdities and deficiencies in the plot, I have rather fond memories of this mishmash of a JLA/JSA team up. I was still young enough to be engaged by the concept that the comic creators in the world I lived in could step into the world of the very super heroes I read about.
I wrote my own blog post about this myself (https://imsogladmysufferingamusesyou.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-justice-league-vs-cary-bates-arch.html) wherein I expressed my joy over the basic concept while also poking holes in the easily shredded plot (so the JLA “killed” the JSA by merely… punching them? Really?)
For me, the best line of the story is from the bystander who comments “It’s Cary Bates, the arch fiend who’s been terrorizing the Earth!”
On the matter of the artwork, I hold Dick Dillin in high regard as the ultimate JLA artist. For nearly every artist who has come afterwards, even up to the current work of Dan Mora, I still think Dick Dillin remains the standard for a great Justice League artist.
I enjoyed your review, Dave-El!
I enjoyed this as a teen because dang, the idea the JLA and JSA really existed, out in the multiverse somewhere, was just sooooo cool. And yes, some of the dialog was definitely funny.
But even then I felt a little dissatisfied. Though not particularly so — the JLA had been in a slump since Len Wein left (though Bates’ Adam Strange teamup was fun).
As a young kid, this JLA-JSA team-up was just as entertaining for me as the previous three dating back to 1972. After all, thirteen super-heroes, six super-villains and four real-life comic book creators (plus the divine voice) made for plenty of action and dialogue all around. And yes, to everybody’s point, Bates and Maggin did not foresee that their audience would become a bunch of middle-aged critics. I’d also like to add my opinion to that of some of you others about the quality of the artwork of Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. Their consistent depictions of the JLAers over the course of 66 almost-consecutive issues (not counting that wretched George Tuska fill-in in issue # 153) of a standard look stood out during a time period when many comics seem to have had a revolving door of artists. Still and all, this story provided several items of interest to me. A number of you asked about the whereabouts of the other JSA members who weren’t present. In the last panel of Page 9, the Spectre conveniently narrates that the other members were all off on a space mission. Another thing that stands out for me is that Bates and the Injustice Society conveniently leave the Justice Leaguers alone so that they have enough time to bury their deceased friends. This seemed reminiscent of the 1969 team-up in which Aquarius leaves the combined super-heroes alone long enough for them to not only bury Larry Lance but to hold a service for him. Something else that really seems implausible to me is that the otherwise omniscient and omnipotent Spectre can only watch and wax catastrophically about the demise of his former teammates while wondering how much longer he can avoid taking action. Yes, I know that this was exposition designed to enhance suspense for us spellbound readers, but the Spectre? (I suppose that the in-story explanation of this is that even Jim Corrigan’s ghostly alter-ego was kept at bay by the magically augmented super-plotting abilities of super-villain Cary Bates!) This was also my first experience of seeing comic book creators in a comic book story, so it was neat to “meet” Bates, Maggin, Schwartz and Infantino. Lastly, even fifty years later, I still remember Cary Bates’s sweat-induced utterance of “Piffle!”. Alan, I hope that beginning in just two months’ time you’ll be covering the JSA’s adventures in All-Star Comics on somewhat of a frequent basis.
My favorite (I haven’t read them all yet) of GL/GA is John Stewart’s debut because O’Neil doesn’t try to thread the needle (a common problem in “relevance” stories trying not to offend anyone) — it turns out John was right about the case they’re working, Hal was completely wrong.
“Ulysses Star is Still Alive” is painfully white savior in its handling of the Native Americans, though that wouldn’t have occurred to me (or quite possibly the creators) at the time.
Hi, Alan!
Not much for me to add to this one. Looking back, I’m sure I was buying JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA out of inertia more than anything. Following the departure of Len Wein (who I thought had done quite a creditable job), there was no one hand guiding the book (Outside of Julius Schwartz, of course), so comparing this book to what was going on with the Avengers and the Defenders – well, there WAS no comparison. It wouldn’t be until issue #139 that I would again become excited about this book, at least for a year.
I felt that Dillin wasn’t well-served by Frank McLaughlin’s inks, which generally were heavier than Dick Giordano’s. Both were, of course, MASSIVE improvements over Joe Giella. But even so, I think Dillin could have been better served. I’d call your attention to the time that Neal Adams inked him on the “Origin of Terra-Man” story in SUPERMAN, which was a bit of a revelation. (Kinda like when Tom Palmer inked Ross Andru for a few issues in the color DOC SAVAGE book in the early 1970s, which had the added benefit of being written by – oh, dang, what was his name again…?)
I really liked the Rutland Halloween Parade stories, Stan and Jack trying to go to Reed and Sue’s wedding and the upcoming (from 1975) story where the Impossible Man bedevils the Marvel Bullpen. However, like many of you, I hated Bates and Maggin inserting themselves into this JLA/JSA storyline.
I think for me the difference is that in the other stories I listed, the creatives inserted into the story are either only affected by the story or are witnesses to it. In this case, Bates and Maggin proactively drive the story. It’s fun to see what happens when the creators are affected or witness what’s happening. However, it’s annoying when the creators indulge themselves as the major actors in it, particularly as in this instance when they throw everything else out the window regarding a consistent plot and realistic actions (in the comic book sense) to service their “excellent adventure” (to use a term from the future) to have fun with themselves.
Of course, Steve Gerber inserted himself into Man-Thing #22 proactively, but Gerber is probably the only writer with enough talent and style to get away with it and even he, in my opinion, barely succeeded.
I think Bates and Maggin were able to get this travesty published because at this time D.C. had returned to being known for kid-centric, light, entertaining, don’t think too hard stories (e.g., yes six JSA members died for a bit, but as you all point out, it isn’t dwelt on deeply or logically at all. It’s more of a wink-wink plot device). The fact that so many of you disliked this story 50 years ago as well as now, I think is a result of liking the more adult Marvel style than the D.C. style of this time.
When I first started reading comic books in January 1968, I liked both D.C. and Marvel equally or close to equally because at the time D.C. was entering the relevance era (which I really liked because my thinking was older than for my age back then); reorienting Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to the (then) present day; and Jack Kirby then topped it off with the Fourth World. After D.C. pulled the plug on all that around 1972-1973, I lost all interest in anything that D.C. did for the last seven years that I read comic books because all of the interesting, teen/adult fare was taking place in Marvel with Englehart, Starlin, McGregor and Gerber (although Gerber has never been my cup of tea).
Lar Grand beat me to it writing about how the scene in which the JLA fights the Injustice Society is filled with so many ridiculous images apart from the banana peel. It looks like a scene one would see in Not Brand Ecch, although I guess this was publish IN Brand Ecch. I do remember back in the day that I thought the Sportsman was quirkily cool, although now I think differently about a villain whose superpower seems to be to be able to teleport items from his sporting goods store for him to throw at people.
Finally, the idea of having a creator place himself in his own story is decades old. This example is hands down my all-time favorite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJq8FySsIdk
I did enjoy the issue of Nova where Marv Wolfman interview Nova for a possible Marvel comic book.
Funny, I just rewatched that TZ episode a few days ago for the first time in 40 years.
This sort of thing has happened a lot in comics, though. I used to own this Brave & the Bold issue, cover dated January 1975, where Jim Aparo is a character throughout the story:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-6keZmg9RznlL-jUDs_mjoRV2AKnYLbxCn1zS1UFxHnCoUtQQjbPKKi2iPd_igZc6s4ky9JxXnhjC7ej1aHfnI9LUpeEzJaphKezJ4B7FGBLGkgdoylgMnd7nJqIr0hmanyYwNzF38eo/s1600/IMG_1777.jpg
I love that issue. Bonkers but fun bonkers.
This one was pretty wacky, too (from House of Mystery no. 180, cover dated June 1969):
https://thebristolboard.tumblr.com/post/75953303011/forgotten-masterpiece-his-name-is-kane-by-mike/amp
If that was Gil Kane in the mid 1970s working for Marvel, his editor might really have been Cain, I mean Len Wein.
So we have Gil Kane in a story narrated by Cain who was made to look like Len Wein.
His editor in the middle of page 3 is a caricature of Joe Orlando. Yes, I remember seeing Len Wein dressed up as Cain in some mid ’70s San Diego (?) Con photos.
I blogged about His Name Is Kane at Atomic Junk Shop (https://atomicjunkshop.com/come-to-think-of-it-yes-house-of-mystery-sounds-like-an-intriguing-place-to-live/) It is indeed off the wall.
Since we discussed GL/GA in comments I’ll mention that Scooby Doo and his friends encountering them in Scooby-Doo Team-Up (https://atomicjunkshop.com/scooby-doo-where-are-you-all-mashed-up-in-the-dcu/) is a hoot: Ollie starts ranting about “this is a moral cancer on America!” and GL shrugs and tells the kids when he gets in that mood, it’s best to just smile and play along.
I Think Grace Van Dien would be good choice as Black Canary/Dinah Laurel Lance In James Gunn Reboot DCEU
I Think Meg Bellamy, Hermione Corfield, Annie Shapero, Freya Mavor, Elizabeth Debicki would all be great choice as Wonder Woman/Princess Diana of Themyscira In James Gunn Reboot DCEU