|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 16, 2019 18:47:36 GMT -5
#120-121 is a great two parter, IMHO, and #122 is a good one, too.
|
|
|
Post by zaku on Feb 16, 2019 19:22:19 GMT -5
Pasko also leaves hanging the most important plot point of this “Great Identity Crisis:” Dr. Light now knows the secret identities and home addresses of several JLAers, including Batman! How much will this information be worth on the criminal black market? This ball is totally dropped by every future JLA writer, until Brad Metzger picks it up with his own Identity Crisis mini-series in 2004, in which amnesia and Dr. Light figure heavily, so issue #122 was probably his inspiration. In that series, we learn that Zatanna, with assistance from a cabal within the JLA, has repeatedly wiped the memories of criminals whenever they learn the heroes’ secrets. This was a controversial series due to the death of one popular supporting character, and the heel turn of another, but I must say the Zatanna revelation makes sense of a lot of apparently cavalier past behavior on the part of the JLA. The kicker is that Zatanna didn’t even have to be involved if Superman has a chunk of Amnesium sitting in his trophy room. Aaaand this is one of the best reason why you need periodic reboot in comics. Because if old and silly stories are still in continuity, you characters have a lot to explain for. Try to imagine if Superman didn't have a reboot and someone asks him how the heck he can justify this... And this story was still in continuity in the bronze age, like this page from DC Special #26 (1976) shows:
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Feb 17, 2019 2:08:36 GMT -5
The author of Identity Crisis is Brad Meltzer, not Metzger.
This issue was another early one for me, though it had me rather confused, at the time, as I was less familiar with Atom, Green Lantern and Flash, having only read a couple of Flash stories and one Green Lantern back up story (after GL/GA was cancelled and GL was used in back-ups, in The Flash). I was nostalgic for all of this when I read Identity Crisis, until Meltzer crapped all over things. I did buy the trade that collected the stories he referenced, which was far more enjoyable to read then retroactive rape, murder, and mindwiping.
I re-encountered this and the Adam Strange issues when I was in college, and entered my first comic shop. I soon collected all of the JLA issues I had read in the early 70s. They read as simplistic, yet still relatively entertaining, 10 years (or so) after the fact.
I like to think that the cover, if not the story, helped inspire the Challenge of the Superfriends episode, 'Super Friends, Rest in Peace."
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Feb 17, 2019 2:15:20 GMT -5
JLA #122 “The Great Identity Crisis” (September 1975)Creative Team: Written by Martin Pasko. Art by Dick Gillin and Frank McLaughlin. Aquaman calls Dr. Light “crud.” Hey, watch the pottymouth, mister King of the Seas! Hey, we sailors have pretty salty language! Just be glad he didn't use the P-word! Many is the fight that broke out from calling someone poopy-head. Oh, dang; excuse my language!
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 17, 2019 10:48:12 GMT -5
JLA #122 “The Great Identity Crisis” (September 1975)Creative Team: Written by Martin Pasko. Art by Dick Gillin and Frank McLaughlin. Aquaman calls Dr. Light “crud.” Hey, watch the pottymouth, mister King of the Seas! Hey, we sailors have pretty salty language! Just be glad he didn't use the P-word! Many is the fight that broke out from calling someone poopy-head. Oh, dang; excuse my language! Don't you just love comic book swearing? I love when they say "oh spit" instead of something that rhymes with spit.
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Feb 17, 2019 10:59:47 GMT -5
Hey, we sailors have pretty salty language! Just be glad he didn't use the P-word! Many is the fight that broke out from calling someone poopy-head. Oh, dang; excuse my language! Don't you just love comic book swearing? I love when they say "oh spit" instead of something that rhymes with spit. Just wait for Green Arrow’s torrent of minced vulgarity in an upcoming Pasko issue...
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on Feb 17, 2019 12:16:19 GMT -5
Comics should have avoided the substitutions for swear words, since it came off as so weak or strange because you knew which words they were replacing. Sort of like TV-friendly versions of R-rated movies (think Scarface or Goodfellas).
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Feb 18, 2019 20:24:49 GMT -5
JLA #123-124 “Crisis in Julius Schwartz’s Office” (October-November 1975) Creative Team: Written by Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. JLA #123 “Where On Earth Am I?”: DC Editor Julius Schwartz berates Cary Bates and Elliot Maggin for not coming up with an original JLA story. The Flash’s old cosmic treadmill transports Maggin to Earth-One and Bates to Earth-Two. The Wizard of the Injustice Society turns Bates into a costumed super-villain who fells the JSA using carnivorous plants and knockout gas. Maggin quickly falls in with the JLA and explains himself. The JLA travel to Earth-Two and confront the Injustice Society, who are for some reason climbing out of US fighter planes on the very aircraft carrier on whose deck the JLA happen to materialize. Too convenient! Especially when the quickly defeated villains turn out to be the JSA members, in disguise and mind-controlled… and now dead?!? JLA #124 “Avenging Ghosts of the Justice Society!”: Cary Bates captures Elliot Maggin and carries out a one-man crime wave for his bosses in the Injustice Society of America (mainly The Wizard, who seems to be the only one with any actual powers). A big melee breaks out between the JLA and IJA, but they JLA are so bummed by the JSA’s deaths that they can’t win. God gives The Spectre permission to resurrect the JSA. Maggin knocks Bates unconscious, the JLA and JSA team up to defeat the IJA, and Thunderbolt send Maggin and Bates back to Earth-Prime to write their story down. Check out this massive battle scene! Continuity Notes: Bates and Maggin chat about when Flash was stranded on Earth-Prime “as told in Flash #179: “The Flash—Fact or Fiction?” Bates recalls visiting Earth-One in “’The Day I Saved the Life of The Flash!’ in The Flash #228!” The Spectre’s resurrection is mentioned: “This occurred in More Fun Comics #75, Jan., 1942!” My Two Cents: Like the JSA team-ups themselves, this kind of tongue-in-cheek story is fine for a change of pace every once in a while. It’s not really Grant Morrison-level “meta” since Bates and Maggin were only characters in the story, not its authors. It would have been neater to show someone else typing out story elements which mysteriously appear before the eyes of Maggin and Bates on Earth-Two. It’s commented several times that Green Arrow’s speech patterns and personality are based on Maggin’s own. I’m kind of amazed that God is written into the story so directly. Did this happen a lot with The Spectre? Also, is The Spectre’s hangout usually a hilltop with one big cross, which has six little crosses on its arms? Maggin gets to use his favorite vulgarities, including "freaking" and "bullldinky" and “the crud!”
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 18, 2019 20:36:15 GMT -5
I sure wish there had been more stories featuring DC writers as characters.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Feb 19, 2019 1:07:17 GMT -5
This is pretty weak, though I enjoyed it enough, when I first read it. It could have used a lot more satire. That's Maggin who writes GA's speech patterns, not Bates. Maggin wrote some of the Green Arow back-up stories, in Action Comics and elsewhere.
The Sportsmaster spray-painting a bullseye on a cooperative Black Canary, before throwing darts is the highlight of the melee.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Feb 19, 2019 9:53:17 GMT -5
I thought JLA #123-124 was self indulgent, but fun. I give them a thumb up.
|
|
|
Post by rberman on Feb 19, 2019 12:52:32 GMT -5
JLA #125-126 “Two Face” (December 1975-January 1976) Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Gillin and Frank McLaughlin. J LA #125 “The Men Who Sold Destruction!”: The villain Two-Face is approached by Drondarrians from another dimension which has too much energy; violence on Earth will bleed the excess energy, endangering Earth-One while saving Drondarria. Two-Face flips his coin and decides to rat out the bad guys to the JLA instead of helping them destroy his universe. While one JLA squad quells a prison riot, another one storms the Drondarrian base. They flee back to their own dimension and adopt their Plan B, recruiting Weaponeers from the Anti-Matter Universe of Qward for a second sortie… JLA #126 “The Evil Connection!”: Green Lantern is returning Two-Face to Arkham Asylum when he’s incapacitated by a Weaponeer attack. Two-Face flips his coin again and this time throws his lot in with the bad guys. He attaches energy-leeching devices to the JLA so that even as they defeat Weaponeer squads around the world, dangerous energy is still being siphoned from Drondarria to Earth-One. The Atom figures this out and instructs the JLA to lose every battle. This returns all the dangerous energy to Drondarria, which disappears. Superman speculates that the Drondarrians were forced to evolve under this threat; therefore, they are probably all fine rather than disintegrated. Sure, let’s go with that. My Two Cents: Two-Face really does look like Tommy Lee Jones at times here. His involvement was a fun attempt to rope this unpredictable rogue into a Batman-free environment. (Batman is said to be “out of the country” and thus too busy to help save Earth from destruction.) Two-Face really only had a plot purpose to be in the first issue, when he helped the JLA find the enemy base. In the second issue when he’s supposed to be back in prison, the JLA accept his “no time to discuss it now!” answer for why he is still roaming free near the current alien attack at Niagara Falls. The high concept in this story is the bleeding of dangerous energy from one universe to another. This was also the plot of the 1980 Doctor Who story “Logopolis,” so now I wonder whether its author, Christopher H. Bidmead, was a JLA fan. It seems to me that Conway ran out of pages at the end of the story, as Superman blithely assumes that the JLA didn’t just destroy a whole inhabited universe. Hey, if the evolution forced by this dangerous energy is so great, how come you were protecting Earth from it so diligently? And doesn’t evolution’s “survival of the fittest” only work if lots of the non-fittest don’t, you know, survive? For whimsical reasons never explained, the aliens manifest on Earth in the form of statues of Napoleon, Julius Caesar, and Ben Franklin.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on Feb 19, 2019 14:27:49 GMT -5
Read the second part of this, as a kid, thanks to a loan from a friend. I was fascinated by the Weaponers, due to the design and their actions, never having seen them before. They didn't pop up often, which helped keep them interesting, when they did, also lending them as a memorable element of the Batman: Tha Brave and the Bold episode with the Quality Comics tribute, as Uncle Sam recruits Plastic Man to join the Freedom Fighters in freeing a planet from the Weaponers.
|
|
|
Post by Rob Allen on Feb 19, 2019 15:28:28 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Feb 19, 2019 15:47:35 GMT -5
"Super Squad." I wonder if they really were considering using that name as the actual title of the new JSA series instead of continuing the numbering of All-Star Comics. They used it for a few issues as a way to highlight the younger members as if they were a squad within a society within an alternate universe. Unclever, if that's a word. Schwartz looks like Kate McKinnon playing Wilbur Ross. Or Wilbur Ross
|
|