My favorite comic book ever
Dec. 21st, 2005 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiI've talked before about comics that influenced me when I was growing up. There are any number of them, although standouts include the Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #24 (introduced me to the Legion of Super-Heroes), American Flagg #2 (introduced me to adult storytelling), Pfeiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes (introduced me to too many things to count, and I'm talking about the original one here, not the bastardized and pointless one that Fantagraphics released a couple of years back), Uncanny X-Men #3 (introduced me to "my mom threw what away?" syndrome), etc.
But the single comic with the greatest impact on me, and still my favorite book, not only because it's a good read, but because of all it represents, is Justice League of America #200, from March, 1982.
A little background here. I was just a few months shy of my tenth birthday,* and my knowledge of comics was not at the encyclopedic levels that would cost me countless dates later in life. Oh, sure, I liked comics. And I'd read my fair share. But they were pretty much all hand-me-downs from cousins, and many of them were typical Archie or Harvey** kiddie fare. I'd read enough DC and Marvel books to know who the top five or six characters were, and I'd watched the Super-Friends cartoon. I knew I liked super-hero comics, in theory, but I couldn't tell you much more about 'em.
Then, on a trip to Lamston's,**** my Mom let me buy one comic. Looking at the rack, I saw a bunch of super-hero books. There were stories about Spider-Man, who I liked well enough, but he always seemed miserable and mopey to my nine-year-old mind. There was Superman, who was in that really nifty movie, but none of the books with him really appealed. And then there was this book called Justice League of America. And, oh, holy shit, what a cover. There was Superman throwing Hawkman (who I recognized from his appearances on Super Friends)! Wonder Woman had tied up some hot-looking sorceress women with her lasso (okay, at nine, I'm not sure how hot she would have seemed to me, but stay with me here)! The Atom was punching Green Lantern! And the Flash was punching someone who looked like Plastic Man, and the guy's head was going off-cover? I pulled it off the rack, and the cover continued onto the back (wraparound covers were just unheard of back then), and there were Batman, Aquaman, and a bunch of people I'd never seen before. No question, this was the book I needed to have.
When I got home, I read that thing three times straight through. Hell, I needed to just to get a grasp on who all these people were.
The book started with Firestorm, this flame-haired guy who I'd never heard of before, sitting there on monitor duty in the JLA satellite when this green-skinned alien burst in and started fighting him. Neither of the two people knew who the other was, and I was equally confused. After a few pages of fighting, Green Guy won and escaped with a meteor, and Firestorm sounded the alarm, calling every member of the JLA (including reserves and Snapper Carr*****). That's when I met the full league: Hawkman, Zatanna (the hot witch), The Atom, The Elongated Man (clearly a Plastic Man rip-off, I knew), Firestorm, Black Canary, a robot named Red Tornado (and I'd soon discover the multi-earth-spanning stories involving these last two), and Green Arrow (technically a reserve at the time). A hell of a great silver age lineup, even to a kid who hadn't heard of half of them before (did I mention that George Perez and Brett Breeding did the art for the main sequence? And that the cover was Perez, as well?)
But people were missing! None of the "original" Justice Leaguers had responded to the signal. And that, along with background info from Green Arrow, led us to the origin story of the JLA being retold. The JLA origin is a great one (it was originally told in JLA #9), and one that's been retold (and retconned) no fewer than six times. A (very) brief synopsis: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and The Martian Manhunter were all individually fighting crime on Earth already (and some of their paths had already crossed, of course). But when seven huge alien creatures came to our planet to fight it out for the right to rule their planet, each Leaguer ended up defeating one of the monsters******, and then were trapped by the seventh. Only great teamwork allowed them to beat the alien, and they realized that the world needed heroes to team together.
Ah, but here's the rub. Somehow, the aliens managed to implant telepathic signals in the brains of those Leaguers, convincing them to wait 200 issues and then lose all memories of recent years and hunt up their meteors, allowing them to rise again. So now the newer leaguers would have to split up and try to stop the veterans. And those stories just blew me away. Of course, each veteran won, but the fights were marvelous, the concepts and characters introduced (including The Phantom Stranger, who helped Aquaman beat Red Tornado because he felt that events needed to play out that way, and Adam Strange, a comic book hero with my first name!), and in the process of reading the stories, I learned who all fifteen heroes were and what their places in the DC Universe were. Yes, fifteen heroes and another five or six major supporting characters, most of them new to me (and the others warped by their appearances on cartoons), and I had a sense of all of them by the end.
Needless to say, everything ended with the aliens defeated (thanks to team-ups of the old heroes and the young'uns they beat in their various battles), and the heroes getting the memories restored.
And, to top it all off, each fight chapter featured guest artists, including Jim Aparo, Terry Austin, Brian Bolland, Pat Broderick, Frank Giacoia, Dick Giordano, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Joe Kubert.
This book is the reason I read comics today. It introduced me to the DC Universe. Hell, it introduced me to the idea that there could be a cohesive comic book universe. Once I had this book, I knew I had to keep buying JLA, and three issues later, I read the Royal Flush Gang/Hector Hammond storyline (which introduced the idea that villains could be more than one-note -- that iteration of the RFG is still my all-time favorite), and was fully hooked on the DCU. I soon discovered the multiple earths of the DCU (Wonder Woman 291-293, later that year, was the catalyst, even introducing me to Earth-X, although I soon got equally hooked on the Earth-2 book All-Star Squadron), the backstory of their Golden Age characters, the Green Lantern Corps, etc, and I just kept reading more.
And I owe it all to one book written by Gerry Conway.
Without this book, I might have ended up becoming a jock or an engineer or something else that people who don't obsessively read comics become. Hell, I might have ended up a Marvel Zombie.
*Yes, my birthday is in April, but this was back in the day when, for archaic reasons that had to do with newsstand distribution, publishing legalities, and probably some obscure satanic rituals, the date on the comics published by Marvel and DC was often two or three months ahead of the actual date. This is in direct opposition to today, when comics regularly come out three months after their cover date, or, if the writer is particularly adept in the art of the weasel and far behind, simply skip a bunch of issues and pretend to have "caught up." This last doesn't happen often, and the perpetrators usually have names that rhyme with "Rod BcFarlane," but it's been known to take place.
**There was a time when the name Harvey meant as much as Archie. And you've certainly heard of some of their properties -- Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Wendy the Good Witch, Little Dot***, etc.
***A girl who wore polka-dots and liked, well, dots. Richie Rich actually started as a backup in her book, but he soon became the breakout star, probably because there are more stories than can be told about someone who has tons of money (and gets kidnapped regularly) than about someone who likes polka-dots.
****A Five and Dime chain that was around when I was growing up.
*****Like Rick Jones, but with less cowbell.
******Actually, Supes and Bats teamed up on one alien offpanel while the other six were dealt with by the rest of the League, because they were the big stars of DC, and thus didn't need as much time on the page to convince folks to buy their solo books.
But the single comic with the greatest impact on me, and still my favorite book, not only because it's a good read, but because of all it represents, is Justice League of America #200, from March, 1982.
A little background here. I was just a few months shy of my tenth birthday,* and my knowledge of comics was not at the encyclopedic levels that would cost me countless dates later in life. Oh, sure, I liked comics. And I'd read my fair share. But they were pretty much all hand-me-downs from cousins, and many of them were typical Archie or Harvey** kiddie fare. I'd read enough DC and Marvel books to know who the top five or six characters were, and I'd watched the Super-Friends cartoon. I knew I liked super-hero comics, in theory, but I couldn't tell you much more about 'em.
Then, on a trip to Lamston's,**** my Mom let me buy one comic. Looking at the rack, I saw a bunch of super-hero books. There were stories about Spider-Man, who I liked well enough, but he always seemed miserable and mopey to my nine-year-old mind. There was Superman, who was in that really nifty movie, but none of the books with him really appealed. And then there was this book called Justice League of America. And, oh, holy shit, what a cover. There was Superman throwing Hawkman (who I recognized from his appearances on Super Friends)! Wonder Woman had tied up some hot-looking sorceress women with her lasso (okay, at nine, I'm not sure how hot she would have seemed to me, but stay with me here)! The Atom was punching Green Lantern! And the Flash was punching someone who looked like Plastic Man, and the guy's head was going off-cover? I pulled it off the rack, and the cover continued onto the back (wraparound covers were just unheard of back then), and there were Batman, Aquaman, and a bunch of people I'd never seen before. No question, this was the book I needed to have.
When I got home, I read that thing three times straight through. Hell, I needed to just to get a grasp on who all these people were.
The book started with Firestorm, this flame-haired guy who I'd never heard of before, sitting there on monitor duty in the JLA satellite when this green-skinned alien burst in and started fighting him. Neither of the two people knew who the other was, and I was equally confused. After a few pages of fighting, Green Guy won and escaped with a meteor, and Firestorm sounded the alarm, calling every member of the JLA (including reserves and Snapper Carr*****). That's when I met the full league: Hawkman, Zatanna (the hot witch), The Atom, The Elongated Man (clearly a Plastic Man rip-off, I knew), Firestorm, Black Canary, a robot named Red Tornado (and I'd soon discover the multi-earth-spanning stories involving these last two), and Green Arrow (technically a reserve at the time). A hell of a great silver age lineup, even to a kid who hadn't heard of half of them before (did I mention that George Perez and Brett Breeding did the art for the main sequence? And that the cover was Perez, as well?)
But people were missing! None of the "original" Justice Leaguers had responded to the signal. And that, along with background info from Green Arrow, led us to the origin story of the JLA being retold. The JLA origin is a great one (it was originally told in JLA #9), and one that's been retold (and retconned) no fewer than six times. A (very) brief synopsis: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and The Martian Manhunter were all individually fighting crime on Earth already (and some of their paths had already crossed, of course). But when seven huge alien creatures came to our planet to fight it out for the right to rule their planet, each Leaguer ended up defeating one of the monsters******, and then were trapped by the seventh. Only great teamwork allowed them to beat the alien, and they realized that the world needed heroes to team together.
Ah, but here's the rub. Somehow, the aliens managed to implant telepathic signals in the brains of those Leaguers, convincing them to wait 200 issues and then lose all memories of recent years and hunt up their meteors, allowing them to rise again. So now the newer leaguers would have to split up and try to stop the veterans. And those stories just blew me away. Of course, each veteran won, but the fights were marvelous, the concepts and characters introduced (including The Phantom Stranger, who helped Aquaman beat Red Tornado because he felt that events needed to play out that way, and Adam Strange, a comic book hero with my first name!), and in the process of reading the stories, I learned who all fifteen heroes were and what their places in the DC Universe were. Yes, fifteen heroes and another five or six major supporting characters, most of them new to me (and the others warped by their appearances on cartoons), and I had a sense of all of them by the end.
Needless to say, everything ended with the aliens defeated (thanks to team-ups of the old heroes and the young'uns they beat in their various battles), and the heroes getting the memories restored.
And, to top it all off, each fight chapter featured guest artists, including Jim Aparo, Terry Austin, Brian Bolland, Pat Broderick, Frank Giacoia, Dick Giordano, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, and Joe Kubert.
This book is the reason I read comics today. It introduced me to the DC Universe. Hell, it introduced me to the idea that there could be a cohesive comic book universe. Once I had this book, I knew I had to keep buying JLA, and three issues later, I read the Royal Flush Gang/Hector Hammond storyline (which introduced the idea that villains could be more than one-note -- that iteration of the RFG is still my all-time favorite), and was fully hooked on the DCU. I soon discovered the multiple earths of the DCU (Wonder Woman 291-293, later that year, was the catalyst, even introducing me to Earth-X, although I soon got equally hooked on the Earth-2 book All-Star Squadron), the backstory of their Golden Age characters, the Green Lantern Corps, etc, and I just kept reading more.
And I owe it all to one book written by Gerry Conway.
Without this book, I might have ended up becoming a jock or an engineer or something else that people who don't obsessively read comics become. Hell, I might have ended up a Marvel Zombie.
*Yes, my birthday is in April, but this was back in the day when, for archaic reasons that had to do with newsstand distribution, publishing legalities, and probably some obscure satanic rituals, the date on the comics published by Marvel and DC was often two or three months ahead of the actual date. This is in direct opposition to today, when comics regularly come out three months after their cover date, or, if the writer is particularly adept in the art of the weasel and far behind, simply skip a bunch of issues and pretend to have "caught up." This last doesn't happen often, and the perpetrators usually have names that rhyme with "Rod BcFarlane," but it's been known to take place.
**There was a time when the name Harvey meant as much as Archie. And you've certainly heard of some of their properties -- Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Wendy the Good Witch, Little Dot***, etc.
***A girl who wore polka-dots and liked, well, dots. Richie Rich actually started as a backup in her book, but he soon became the breakout star, probably because there are more stories than can be told about someone who has tons of money (and gets kidnapped regularly) than about someone who likes polka-dots.
****A Five and Dime chain that was around when I was growing up.
*****Like Rick Jones, but with less cowbell.
******Actually, Supes and Bats teamed up on one alien offpanel while the other six were dealt with by the rest of the League, because they were the big stars of DC, and thus didn't need as much time on the page to convince folks to buy their solo books.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 02:50 pm (UTC)I sometimes wish I had not dropped out of comic collecting so many moons ago due to financial reasons.
I wasn't doing JLA back in those days...not sure why. Sounds like I missed a fun issue, though. And I'm mildly proud I knew who Snapper Carr was...and laughed out loud at how perfectly your description fit him. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 02:51 pm (UTC)Of course, these days, you have to read a year's worth of a comic to get a sense of who the characters are, whereas you picked up all 15 or so characters in one issue. That must be why comics sell so much better these days... oh, wait...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:27 pm (UTC)And don't forget how well they fixed all that "mess-up continuity" that only a nine-year-old could understand with the current clusterfuck.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:21 pm (UTC)I'm curious, what do you think of the DCAU origin of the Justice League?
On a random note, Zatanna is freaking hot with those fishnet legs in Justice League Unlimited. Plus Batman singing...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:33 pm (UTC)I'm less a fan of the origin tale itself, though, than the tales they spun out of it. Almost every episode has been worthwhile.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 05:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:44 pm (UTC)JSA all the way!
JSM
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 05:33 pm (UTC)Poor Earth 2 Robin. Stooopid Crisis.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 03:45 pm (UTC)Wow! I feel old, yet happy and nostalgic all at the same time.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 05:16 pm (UTC)JSM
(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-21 07:04 pm (UTC)