Comic Books 101 Page 12

  As for Hal Jordan, after Kyle and Hal's longtime friend Green Arrow thwart his attempt to destroy and then recreate the universe with an intact Coast City (all this taking place in the pages of DC's Zero Hour miniseries in 1994), he resurfaces in The Final Night (1996), and sacrifices his life to destroy the Sun-Eater, a mysterious creature that was to extinguish the Sun, with Earth and its inhabitants slowly freezing to death.

  However, fans would not allow Hal Jordan to rest in peace, and DC was forced to resurrect him, first as Earth's ghostly protector, the Spectre. Later, in the miniseries Rebirth (2004) written by fan-favorite Geoff Johns, Johns skillfully returns Hal Jordan to the land of the living, and manages to explain away his villainous acts, making him, once again, a bona fide hero. He has since provided some of DC's best comics in his new Green Lantern series, which stars not only Hal Jordan, but also John Stewart, Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner. In doing so, Johns wisely chooses not to alienate fans of any particular Green Lantern character. Make no mistake, though — Hal Jordan remains front and center, which, in our humble estimation, is as it should be.

  6 The Justice Society of America

  Strength in numbersSometimes it's easy to forget that comics, like everything else, don't exist in a vacuum. Everything that comic-book readers think of as conventions, as benchmarks, even as clichés of the genre had to appear somewhere first. Even something as basic as, say, the team-up.

  Before 1941, despite the fact that the newsstands were positively overflowing with the cape-and-mask set, superheroes just did not team up. Never met, never hung out, didn't even refer to one another. After 1941, though, things were very different, and not just in comics. The notion of separately created fictional characters meeting up in a “shared universe” has spread from its comic-book origins to the worlds of prose, television and film. So what happened in 1941? Five words: the Justice Society of America (JSA).

  The inception of the Justice Society had the same motivation as most other commercial fiction of the time: profit. By 1941, the superhero business was booming, so much so that many characters were expanding past their original homes in magazines such as Action and Detective. To help meet demand, Superman and Batman were also given their own solo magazines. For characters that weren't quite popular enough for their own comic books but still had a rabid following, All American Comics (National's sister company) created an anthology book, All Star Comics.

  In its first two issues, it featured such first-stringheroes as Hawkman, the Flash, Green Lantern and the Spectre as well as less popular ones such as Biff Bronson (love that name) and Red, White and Blue. It was with All Star Comics #3 (late 1940–1941) that the revolutionary leap was made — if these characters are in the same book, why not have them meet and interact with one another?

  THE FIRST TEAM-UP

  So whose idea was it? Unfortunately, the exact answer has been lost in the sands of time, and the truth falls somewhere within the following three names: All-American Comics publisher M.C. Gaines, All Star Comics editor Sheldon Mayer and All Star Comics writer Gardner Fox. The rationale behind the team of characters is much less of a mystery — charter membership consisted of All-American's most popular characters: the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the pint-sized pugilist the Atom, the pulp-style mystery man the Sandman, the ghostly avenger the Spectre, the mystical sorcerer Doctor Fate, and the pharmaceutically enhanced strongman Hourman. Along with official mascot Johnny Thunder (a hapless goof who stumbles through adventures with the help of his magic Thunderbolt), this was the roster of the team in its first appearance in All Star Comics #3.

  The charter membership of the Justice Society, from left to right: the Sandman, the Spectre, the Flash, Hawkman, the Atom, Green Lantern, Hourman and Doctor Fate.

  HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE, BOOK ONE © 1986 DC COMICS. JUSTICE SOCIETY™ & © DC COMICS. ART BY GEORGE PEREZ AND KARL KESEL. COLOR BY TOM ZIUKO.

  The first meeting of the Justice Society was little more than that, a meeting. Johnny Thunder, upset at his exclusion from the newly publicized gathering, crashes the party with the help of his magic Thunderbolt. Johnny wishes he could attend the meeting, and all the members are magically drawn to him, and he gets an invite to the hotel where the Justice Society had planned to have dinner. At the dinner, Johnny recommends that each member tell a story about a recent adventure; each member recounts a seven-page tale, and that's pretty much the extent of the issue. In addition, JSA membership for Superman and Batman is implied when the Flash makes a passing comment that someone has to look after things while the rest of them are at the meeting.

  In All Star Comics #4, the Justice Society is summoned to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC and given a mission to close down a network of saboteurs working to attack the U.S. from within. Each JSA member is given an envelope containing his orders, and the members go their separate ways to carry out individual missions. This sets up the formula for Justice Society stories for years to come: the team meets up or is otherwise collectively informed of a threat, then the members go their separate ways to investigate the matter, reuniting at story's end to finish off the threat. JSA writer Gardner Fox would use this solid structure again and again. It allowed for new solo adventures of the popular characters (drawn by their own signature artists) and gave excited readers something they'd never seen before — their favorite heroes teaming up.

  JSA ROLL CALL

  The first membership change for the JSA came in All Star Comics #6 (August 1941). When a character became popular enough to earn his own solo magazine, he would be named an honorary member of the JSA, removed from active membership and replaced by a new member. In this case, it was the Flash, and mascot Johnny Thunder was initiated to take his place as a full-time member.

  All Star Comics #7 (October 1941) is most notable for the appearances of Superman and Batman as JSA members. The new JSA chairman, Green Lantern, challenges the members to each raise $100,000 of relief aid for war orphans in Europe and Asia. Johnny Thunder boasts that he can raise $300,000, to make the group's total an even million. When he fails to fulfill his promise, he falls back on his magic Thunderbolt, who conjures up honorary JSA members Superman, Batman and the Flash, who each pony up the necessary money to meet Green Lantern's intended goal.

  The roster soon changes again. All Star Comics #8 (December 1941) reveals that Green Lantern has also been granted honorary status, having earned his own self-titled magazine. Also gone is Hourman, though not because he was given his own magazine. Instead, the Man of the Hour is rather ignominiously booted from the team, with only a note stating “a leave of absence is hereby granted to the Hourman.” No respect at all.

  The first of the two open spaces is taken by Starman, a rich playboy-type who fights evil with the help of a cosmic rod that allows him to fly and fire off bursts of energy. The second spot is filled by Doctor Mid-Nite, the first blind superhero in comics. Having lost his sight in an explosion, he discovers that he can see perfectly in total darkness, prompting him to invent his infrared goggles (enabling him to see in daylight) and blackout bombs (which blind his enemies as he continues to see perfectly).

  THE WAR EFFORT

  The war effort takes on even greater emphasis in issue #11 (June 1942). The JSA members decide to enlist in the military and fight on the frontlines, rather than on the homefront and on the occasional FBI special mission. Carter Hall, Wes Dodds, Kent Nelson, Al Pratt and Ted Knight (otherwise known as Hawk-man, the Sandman, Doctor Fate, the Atom and Starman) enlist in the army, while Johnny Thunder joins the navy. Dr. Charles McNider (Doctor Mid-Nite) is commissioned to serve in the Army Medical Corps, despite his disability, and the Spectre — well, the Spectre's dead, so he ain't signing up for jack. The ultimate way to beat the draft.

  Despite themselves, the JSA members are drawn into action as superheroes while on duty. Then, while visiting his longtime girlfriend Shiera Saunders, Hawkman runs into Diana Prince and lets slip that the JSA has somehow found out that she's really Wonder Woman. By the iss
ue's end, the JSA's military commanders discover the various superheroes in their midst, and argue over whose outfit has the most effective super-soldier. In response, the commanding officer of the U.S. forces in the Pacific pulls the JSAers from each of their units and reforms them into the new Justice Battalion (including new member Wonder Woman). The JSA is back together again, as if anyone really had any doubt.

  The JSA supported the war effort in various ways. An example is the “Food for Starving Patriots” story in All Star Comics #14 (December 1942), in which the team embarks on a mission to deliver concentrated dehydrated food to European civilians suffering under Nazi occupation. Such war stories often reinforced the concepts of charity and sacrifice instead of just depicting superheroes clobbering buck-toothed caricatures. Even the JSA fan club, the Junior Justice Society of America, promoted such ideals, asking its members to “keep our country united in the face of enemy attempts to make us think we Americans are all different, because we are rich or poor; employer or worker; native or foreign-born; Gentile or Jew; protestant or Catholic.” Good advice even six decades later. Who'd have thought we'd still need to be reminded?

  THE INJUSTICE SOCIETY STRIKES

  Another comics first came in All Star Comics #37 (October 1947), with the first appearance of “The Injustice Society of the World!” The JSA's team of opposites is made up of previous JSA villains such as the Wizard, Brain Wave and Per Degaton; Green Lantern villains the Gambler and Vandal Savage; and Flash antagonist the Thinker. The Injustice Society makes a big splash, setting off five different jailbreaks across the country to recruit troops to its criminal army, declaring martial law and seizing control of a small but sizeable portion of the American Midwest.

  And as if that wasn't epic enough, the very next issue sets the JSA against an even greater collaboration of villainy in “History's Crime Wave!” The Justice Society is pitted against the greatest villains in history: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Nero, Goliath, Cesare Borgia and Captain Kidd. Although the historical haters turned out to be impostors (more precisely, the disguises of an insane guard at a wax museum), they manage what no other JSA foe has ever accomplished: the murder of the Justice Society. In one gruesome scene after another, we see our heroes perish, in what appear to be permanent and sometimes grisly deaths. Fortunately, the quick-acting Wonder Woman and prospective new member Black Canary whisk the JSAers to Paradise Island just in time to be resurrected by the amazing Amazon Purple Healing Ray.

  The Justice Society makes its final Golden Age appearance in All Star Comics #57 (March 1951). There's no grand finale for the father of all superhero teams, either. The following issue simply and unceremoniously changes to All Star Western. Readers expecting their regular dose of superhero action are instead treated to the adventures of the Trigger Twins and similar fightin' cowpokes. Hardly a fitting end for such an auspicious series, but not to worry: the Justice Society of America would not be gone for long.

  BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

  By 1962, DC Comics had fully embraced its superhero renaissance. Revived and redesigned versions of the Flash and Green Lantern were tearing up the sales charts, and an updated version of the Justice Society, entitled Justice League of America, reunited all of DC's first-string superhero characters (plus the Martian Manhunter, but that's another story) in a single monthly team book. With superheroes selling hot at the newsstand once more, many of DC's old-time fans requested the original heroes of the Golden Age of comics.

  Editor Julius Schwartz revived the original Flash Jay Garrick in the pages of The Flash #123 (September 1961), “Flash of Two Worlds!” The story, by writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino, introduces the “parallel Earths” concept to the DC Universe, which allows the original 1940s versions of characters to exist on a separate parallel Earth — Earth-Two — from their modern-day 1960s counterparts on Earth-One. Once the Earth-One Flash (Barry Allen) meets the Earth-Two Flash (Jay Garrick), it becomes just a matter of time before the rest of Jay Garrick's teammates come out of retirement and cross over to visit Earth-One. And come out they do in The Flash #137 (June 1963), in “Vengeance of the Immortal Villain,” again by Fox and Infantino.

  SCOTT SAYS

  Power Girl, in contrast to her fellow JSA characters, was a distinctly 1970s super-heroine. She was forever spouting about “women's liberation” and railing against Wildcat for being a chauvinist, all while showing some of the biggest cleavage ever seen on a comic-book rack.

  Two months later, the JSA returns in a much bigger way in the classic “Crisis on Earth-One!” from Justice League of America #21 (August 1963), by writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky. In this adventure, the reunited Justice Society members face off against their old foes the Wizard, the Fiddler their old foes the Wizard, the Fiddler and the Icicle, while at the same time, the Justice League of Earth One is challenged by frequent adversaries Chronos, Felix Faust and Doctor Alchemy. Little do the JSA and JLA know that their enemies are actually working together, using a fairly well-thought-out plan to escape between each other's Earth and enjoy the fruits of their thievery without fear of capture.

  However, boredom soon gets the best of them, and the Crime Champions of the two worlds begin to run rampant, challenging each other's foes to combat. When the defeated Justice League is magically trapped in its own headquarters, a tip from the Flash leads the JLA to contact the JSA through a séance, summoning the Justice Society to Earth-One. With a little magical help from Doctor Fate, the JLA is sent to Earth-Two to battle its own enemies, while the JSA stays on Earth-One to round up its foes.

  Together, the united Justice Society and Justice League put an end to the Crime Champions and propose that the two teams stay in touch in case a future need arises for their combined strength. And for nearly every summer for the next twenty-five years the pages of Justice League of America would feature a team-up between the Justice Society and the Justice League.

  The annual summertime Justice Society appearances were sometimes used as a plot device to revive other Golden Age characters, too, such as the Seven Soldiers of Victory (the Bad News Bears of superhero teams, boasting such lesser-knowns as Green Arrow and Speedy, the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, the Vigilante, the Shining Knight and the Crimson Avenger) and Quality Comics' stable of characters (including Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady and Black Condor), whom DC would later dub the Freedom Fighters. It wasn't until 1976 that the Justice Society would again regain a monthly series all its own in the pages of the newly revived All Star Comics, which picked up where the last JSA appearance left off, issue #58, entitled “All Star Super Squad” (January — February 1976), by writer Gerry Conway, artist Ric Estrada and comics legend Wally Wood.

  An effort was definitely made here to give the old-timers a shot in the arm with some brash, younger members, focusing in the first story on Robin and two new members: the Star-Spangled Kid, freshly brought back from being lost in time since the 1940s and utilizing Starman's cosmic rod so as to make him a more powerful character, and the newly introduced Power Girl, the Earth-Two version of Supergirl, Superman's Kryptonian cousin.

  The revived All Star Comics had a respectable run, notable mostly for Wally Wood's art and the return of most of the JSA's rogues' gallery, including Vandal Savage, Per Degaton, an all-new Brainwave and Solomon Grundy. The series also utilized the original Earth-Two Superman more than most JSA stories of years past — Wood clearly rendered him in the style of original Superman creator Joe Shuster.

  Another lasting creation to come out of the series was the Huntress — Helena Wayne, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, who made her debut in All Star Comics #69 (November–December 1977), “United We Stand,” by Paul Levitz and artist Joe Staton. The Huntress is the last new member the group would see for quite some time.

  THE JSA RETURNS

  After an ugly period in the 1990s when the JSA was first banished to limbo and later led to slaughter, the popularity of James Robinson's Starman series and Grant Morrison's use of the JSA in h
is JLA series moved DC to bring the team back in a big way.

  Fans became reacquainted with the history of the team through the “Justice Society Returns!” event in 1999, a series of nine comics that featured the JSA back in the 1940s.

  Their own title followed in late 1999, JSA, written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer, and drawn by Scott Benefiel and Stephen Sadowski. Present are original JSAers Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, Wildcat and Hippolyta (Wonder Woman's mother, retroactively added to the team in a bit of time-travel sleight of hand). Members of the next generation are also added: new Starman Jack Knight, Black Canary (daughter of the original), the new Hourman (an android from the future imbued with the memories of original Hourman Rex Tyler), Atom Smasher (godson of the original Atom Al Pratt), the new Star-Spangled Kid (Courtney Whitmore, stepdaughter of the original Kid's sidekick Stripesy) and Sander-sonHawkins, the now-grown sidekick of the original Sandman (who occasionally fought alongside the JSA as Sandy the Golden Boy). Joining later in the first story arc are the new Hawkgirl and the new Doctor Fate, revealed to be Hector Hall, son of original JSA member Hawkman. When Hall returns to the living, the decision is made to officially reform the Justice Society of America. All eight of the younger members eagerly agree to join up, and Sand Hawkins is elected the JSA's new chairman.

  This was the magic element that earlier JSA revivals lacked. While the series should pay respect to the team's history, there also needs to be a balance between admiration for the past and simply dwelling on it. Robinson and Goyer understood this, and cleverly combined the team's veterans with experienced, younger hands like Black Canary, Jack Knight and Atom Smasher and neophytes still learning the ropes such as Hawkgirl and the Star Spangled Kid.

  This balance gives the JSA series a mood separate from any other team books in comics: a feeling of legacy. Before, there was no real interest in accepting new members to carry the torch. Now, not only is respect for the past assumed, it is a requirement to secure a place on the roster. On top of “beating the bad guys,” the team serves a valuable purpose — to train tomorrow's heroes and keep the spirit of the Justice Society alive.