With this post, we come to the third and final chapter of 1976’s Justice League of America/Justice Society of America crossover, featuring the formal induction of “Earth-S” — home to the characters formerly published by Fawcett Comics — into the greater DC Comics multiverse.  Following the lead of this saga’s own writers, we’re not going to be offering recaps of the previous episodes — so if you aren’t already familiar with what happened in them, or simply need to refresh your memory, you might want to check out our posts on JLA #135 and #136 before proceeding. 

And now, on to Justice League of America #137.  We begin with the cover by Ernie Chan and Frank McLaughlin, which is almost certainly the best of the trilogy, mainly because its central image of Captain Marvel and Superman heading for an airborne collision is pretty darn hard to beat.  On the other hand, the figures of the heroes watching from below are honestly kind of awkward — and the cheering posture assumed by Batman, et al, seems seriously at odds with Wonder Woman’s “super-killer” exclamation.  Oh, well.

Turning to the story’s first page, we find ourselves once again in the hands of plotter E. Nelson Bridwell and scripter Marin Pasko (though, as we previously covered in our JLA #135 post, just how much of the script’s verbiage was actually penned by Pasko remains unclear), along with penciller Dick Dillin, inker McLaughlin, and editor Julius Schwartz:

This is a pretty unusual opening splash for a JLA/JSA crossover story, given that there’s no “roll call” of the various superheroes appearing therein.  But perhaps that’s for the best, since there are a lot of heroes in this issue, and with the exception of the five pictured here — the two Green Lanterns, the two Flashes, and Ibis the Invincible — most of them are given very little to do.  And, yes, I’m afraid that includes the two superstars whose upcoming clash has been previewed so tantalizingly on the book’s cover.

“Montreal’s Habitat“ was (and still is) an actual place: a model housing complex that debuted as a pavilion at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, aka Expo 67.  As best as I’ve been able to determine, “experimental” technology was never a part of Habitat 67’s design or function, making this story’s “futuristic community of utopian proportions” (to quote from the opening splash), a highly fanciful elaboration of the original concept behind its real-world model.  It’s still an interesting, if highly improbable notion (never mind who invented all this cool new stuff, whose decision was it to restrict its availability to the citizens of Tomorrow?) — which makes it curious that, once past the rather generic sci-fi cityscape and bubble-topped cars depicted by Dillin and McLaughlin on this page, we see little evidence of advanced technology within the story.  That, in turn, makes one honestly wonder why Bridwell bothered to include this model-future-city bit in the first place.  Was it just that he really wanted to write a story called “Crisis in Tomorrow!”?  Because it seems like kind of a waste, especially since it took that very evocative title off the table for the next year’s JLA/JSA summer event, which (for anyone who doesn’t already know), would co-star the 30th Century-based Legion of Super-Heroes.

Like the majority of Fawcett Comics supervillains seen in this storyline, evil robot Mr. Atom had been out of sight since that publisher shuttered its comic-book operation in the 1950s.  First seen in Captain Marvel Adventures #78 (Nov., 1947), the evil robot’s last Golden Age appearance had been in issue #90 (Nov., 1948) of that same title.  At the end of that adventure — which, incidentally, had found both the villain and Cap transported into the far-off future world of 2053 — he’d apparently been utterly destroyed.  Clearly, he either survived that catastrophe, or King Kull has managed not only to bring him back to the present day (as the next page confirms he indeed has), but to reconstruct him, as well.  Or, hey, maybe Kull snatched Mr. Atom from a point in his timeline before his final battle with the World’s Mightiest Mortal.  We can only guess, since Bridwell and Pasko don’t see fit to tell us.

Back in JLA #135, we saw Shazam establish telepathic contact with Mercury and send him off to enlist an assortment of heroes from three Earths to oppose Kull — but we weren’t told how Mercury knew where and when Kull and his allies were launching their various attacks.  In our post about that issue, your humble blogger hypothesized that the wizard was observing/listening to Kull as the villain proceeded with his schemes, and then mentally conveying that vital intel to the divine speedster… so it’s gratifying to see that, by this third and final installment, our story’s bona fide writers have decided to offer readers that very explanation.  (Even if they do feel obliged to contextualize it with a deprecating remark by Ibis about “purely expositional dialogue”.)

As in JLA #136, our writers have contrived to put like-powered heroes together as mini-teams, for no good in-story reason.  I have to confess that it works a little better for me this time around, if only because I’m always a sucker for seeing the Earth-One heroes like Flash and GL teaming up with their Earth-Two counterparts.  And who can resist the idea of the latter Earth’s Flash, Jay Garrick, joining forces with the very Greco-Roman god he nicked his headwear design from?

Unexpectedly, the trio’s mutual assumption of Mr. Atom’s aura allows them to detect a previously unseen trail of dark particles, leading up from the ground to a spaceship high above.  All three heroes immediately fly to tackle the power of the black aura at its source…

Evidently, at least part of the threatened building is devoted to a school of some sort.  To my mind, this would have been an excellent spot to showcase some of that “experimental technology” referred to elsewhere in the script… but, no.

As with the Penguin and the Joker in this story’s previous installments, I’m going to assume that Brainiac needs no introduction to the readers of this blog.  So we’ll simply note that, after employing “opposite” villainous duos in issue #136 — e.g., Joker and Weeper, Dr. Light and Shade — King Kull has opted to use villains of a more complementary quality this time around, seeing as how Brainiac and Mr. Atom, despite being very different in many ways, are at the end of the day both Evil Robots.

That “barium effect” was pretty darn creepy looking — but Green Lantern’s question regarding whether or not he’d actually been turned into “a walking skeleton” never gets an answer.  So what was the point, exactly?

Oh, well, moving on…  After scanning Brainiac’s mind, GL realizes that the humanoid computer’s black-aura technology is responsible for the current gravity-challenged status of many of Tomorrow’s citizens — so, after smashing the spaceship’s computer console, he picks up his Earth-Two counterpart to take the fight back to Earth’s surface…

I gotta say, “I’m rubber, you’re glue” strikes me as a very useful superpower.

Ahh, good ol’ Red Kryptonite.  A mainstay of the “Superman family” comics of the Silver Age, sightings of Red K had become much more scarce in recent years.

Finally, the Marvel Family gets to see a little action.  One may legitimately ask why it took so damn long, however, since Mercury had dispatched Johnny Thunder to Earth-S back in JLA #135 at the same time as he did the three sub-teams whose adventures have taken up the majority of pages in all three issues of this storyline.  There’s no logical in-story reason for Johnny’s very direct and simple mission to have consumed as much time as it evidently has; but, for whatever reason, E. Nelson Bridwell (who, if you’ll recall, was the regular writer of Shazam! at this time) was bound and determined to keep the best-known and most popular of all the Fawcett Comics heroes out of the action for as long as possible in favor of highlighting Ibis and his fellow B-and-below–listers.

In any event, the Big Red Cheese has finally taken the stage, while the Big Red “S” has turned crazy-evil.  So we’re finally set for the clash of titans trumpeted on this issue’s cover — a long-awaited fictional evocation of the real-world legal battle over the two iconic heroes that had helped put an end to Fawcett as a comic book publisher back in 1953.

Too bad we only have two story pages left to wrap this whole thing up, huh?

“A long-awaited meeting is once more deferred…”  Yeah, in case you didn’t quite grasp that particular nuance, Superman and Captain Marvel never do actually “meet” in this story (let alone fight, or team up), despite what we were promised by the comic’s cover copy.  Since Supes wasn’t in his right mind when he attacked Cap, the only individual he’ll remember encountering in connection with that experience is… Billy Batson.

Why in the world did DC want to keep deferring a proper meeting between their two most powerful heroes?  They’d already teased readers at least twice before this; first, in a brief scene in JLA #103 (Dec., 1972) where Superman had fought a demon-empowered Captain Marvel lookalike; then, more significantly, in Superman #276 (Jun., 1974), where the Man of Steel had gone up against an obvious pastiche of the World’s Mightiest Mortal named “Captain Thunder”.  According to an article by CBR’s Brian Cronin, Julius Schwartz — who was the editor of Shazam! as well as Superman at the time the latter story was published — felt that the sensibilities of the two characters were so different (with Superman’s exploits being more grounded than the whimsical and fanciful adventures Captain Marvel regularly got into) that the two heroes should never be featured in the same story; and so he ordained the creation of Captain Thunder as a more “realistic” stand-in.  Perhaps Schwartz still felt the same way at the time he edited JLA #135-137; still, once he’d committed to the idea that Superman and Captain Marvel were going to appear together, for real this time, it’s hard to understand why he wouldn’t want Bridwell and Pasko to go all the way with the concept.

I’ve seen it suggested that perhaps DC was already planning a full-length “Superman vs. Shazam!” project and didn’t want their encounter in Justice League of America to step on its toes.  I suppose that’s possible — although, given that the tabloid-size All New Collectors’ Edition #C-58 wouldn’t come out until February, 1978, that seems like an awfully long gestation time.*  Still, it could have happened that way; in any event, that book’s 72-page Gerry Conway-Rich Buckler extravaganza (which, by the way, was edited by Julius Schwartz and E. Nelson Bridwell) would forever put paid to the idea that the twain of Superman and Captain Marvel should never meet.

But, I digress.  Let’s return, if only briefly, to the summer of 1976, for a few last thoughts concerning Justice League of America #135-137.  If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you’re already well-aware that my contemporary, sixty-nine-year-old self has been less than impressed by this entire storyline: the 14th, chronologically speaking, of what would ultimately be 22 annual summer JLA/JSA team-up events — but one which (at least at this juncture) ranks near the bottom of your humble blogger’s personal list as far as entertainment value is concerned.

Still, as I’ve previously noted, that’s the perspective of a much older reader than Bridwell, Schwartz, and company were obviously aiming these comics towards, fifty years ago.  If I’d first encountered this storyline as a nine-year-old — the age at which I’d avidly consumed my own first JLA/JSA crossover — I might well have had a much more positive reaction, such as the comments made by several readers in our discussions of the earlier chapters have indicated was their own experience, back in ’76.  At that time, these then-young fans simply thrilled to the appearances of so many different superheroes (and supervillains) in one huge story, and weren’t disturbed by the narrative contrivances and logical inconsistencies I’ve been griping about here.  And that’s a perfectly valid viewpoint, IMHO.

Of course, if I’m going to be completely honest, I probably wasn’t as hard on this story even as a nineteen-year-old reader in 1976 as I am today… not so much because my critical standards were less stringent (though they probably were), but because my expectations for any given issue of Justice League of America were considerably diminished from what they’d been just a few years before.  As I’ve related in previous posts, I’d dropped JLA — once my very favorite comic book — as a regular purchase towards the end of Len Wein’s run as writer.  Sure, I was bound and determined to come back each summer for the annual get-together with the JSA — but, in retrospect, that was mostly as an early exercise in nostalgia.  I wasn’t anticipating all that much in the way of reading pleasure from these three issues of Justice League of America, so it was hard to be too disappointed by them.

No, by 1976, my tastes in superhero team comics were running much more to the likes of Marvel Comics’ Defenders and Avengers, where writers like Steve Gerber and Steve Englehart had made complex ongoing storylines, more sophisticated characterizations, and a well-expressed personal worldview part of the regular reading experience.  I had little reason to believe that such sensibilities would be finding their way into Justice League of America any time soon… a fact that made the following tidbit offered up in JLA #137’s letters column by assistant editor Bob Rozakis not just surprising, but positively galvanizing:

Steve Englehart!?  On Justice League of America!?  Now that was something to look forward to.

Starting this November, we’ll be checking out whether it was worth the wait.

 

*In the interim, DC would publish yet another fakeout in the form of the Bridwell-written, Schwartz-edited Shazam! #30 (Jul.-Aug., 1977), which featured a fight between Captain Marvel and a faux “Man of Steel” who turned out to be a robot created by Cap’s arch-foe, Dr. Sivana.