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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 4, 2019 0:16:08 GMT -5
Great topic, rberman. I grew up on this period of the JLA, and as we will see, for comic fans young enough to read the title and still watch cartoons, they were shocked by the mile-wide contrasts between the printed JLA, and Hanna-Barbera's almost defining (unfortunately) version of the team in the awful Super Friends cartoon that would debut in September of 1973, and still convince many in the general culture that the "real" JLA was infantile like that, too. It did not help that DC would actually refer to the comic characters with the "Here Come TV's Super Friends" plastered across several JLA covers from 1974.... I grew up watching Super Friends and did wonder where Apache Chief was when I started reading JLA comics. I was too young to notice things like tonal difference, or just attributed it to the difference between the two kinds of media. Out getting coffee....
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2019 7:34:05 GMT -5
JLA #80-81 “The Soul-Stealer and the Jest-Master” (May-June 1970)Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. Issue #80 “Night of the Soul-Stealer!”: We start in media res again: The Atom’s girlfriend Jean Loring has had her mind turned to mush, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl are supposed to be taking her to Thanagar for advanced medical treatment. But instead, Hawkgirl is found floating in space with her mind as blank as Jean’s. Thousands of people on Earth are now suffering the same fate due to Norch Lor, a Thangarian who’s flying around on a high tech broomstick while clutching a mysterious device; he defeats Green Arrow and Batman on Earth. Then he boards the JLA satellite, finds Green Arrow and Batman there, and defeats them again! Not their finest moment. As Black Canary subdues Norch Lor, his Ghenna Box is knocked out an airlock, and The Atom has to go out into space to retrieve it. Opening the box, all the souls pour out and return to their owners. Superman flies off to find Hawkman’s missing spaceship, rescuing it from falling into a Neutron Star. A passing Green Lantern (Tomar-Re, not Hal Jordan) mistakes Superman’s efforts as an attack on Hawkman, but that’s soon straightened out. When Superman returns to Earth, he smashes the Ghenna Box. Issue #81 “Plague of the Galactic Jest-Master”: Atom and Hawkman resume their trip to Thanagar to cure Jean Loring of her madness. But when they arrive, everyone there is acting crazy and violent, and soon the heroes are as well. Back on the spaceship, Norch Lor’s thought balloons exposit his motives: He was using the Ghenna Box to put all the souls temporarily in protective custody while a madness-inducing villain, The Jest-Master, passed through this area of space. He's not such a bad guy after all, but he soon falls victim to the violence-inducing aura himself. Superman, Black Canary, Batman, and Flash arrive on Thanagar and start succumbing to the crazy-maker effect. But as they get loopy, Jean Loring regains sanity and leads the heroes to the space diamond which houses the soon-defeated Jest-Master. Continuity references: This story overflows with footnotes to other stories: “Atom and Hawkman #45,” “JLA #72!” “The (sigh) final issue of Atom and Hawkman,” “the previous issue of this self-same magazine,” and so on. The most hilarious caption is part of what amounts to a half-page advertisement tooting Denny O’Neil’s horn, calling his recently launched work on GL/GA “the most unique excitement in comics history!” This forces us to ask: Was Stan Lee moonlighting at DC in 1970? I can just imagine Hal Jordan telling the Guardians, "Sorry, boss! I'm seeking the soul of a nation by sitting around a campfire, so I'm too busy for your cosmic police assignment." My Two Cents: I’m a little happy and a little sad to read this story, because I now realize that the awesome Babylon 5 episode “Soul Hunter” (1994) was inspired by JLA #80. In that episode, an alien comes to the space station on a self-assigned mission to collect the spirits of important persons, preserving the soul (but not the body) in anticipation of a coming galactic conflagration. The cover of issue #80 has little to do with the contents, though the last panel tries to connect the cover and the story. Roy Thomas’ foreword comments that sometimes the covers were drawn before the stories were written. That seems a likely explanation for what happened this time around. “Ghenna Box” is of course a reference to the Greek word Gehenna, which directly refers to the Valley of Hinnom, the pit of burning garbage outside of Jerusalem. In the New Testament, Jesus regularly refers to this place of fire and foul smells and things no longer valued, comparing it with the fate suffered by those who reject God. I suspect O’Neill is just using it as a cool-sounding word without the theological connotations; indeed, the Soul Stealer is seeking souls, not rejecting them. Issue 81 is a total LSD story. Jest-Master has scented bowls which he forces people to “sample," altering their perceptions of both time and space in a decidedly psychedelic way, as the two page "diamond turns to spiky ball" spread illustrates above. Apparently he can get whole areas of space to partake of his perfumes simultaneously. I also wonder whether Issue #81 is an homage to Isaac Asimov’s character “The Mule,” a jester-type character who conquers a galactic empire by his powers of empathic manipulation. Don’t you laugh every time Hawkman says that he came to Earth to study our police procedures? I wish we’d gotten to see more of his home planet. Maybe we would have found out why he’s the only one who goes shirtless, while everybody else dresses like Buck Rogers cast members. Green Arrow finds an excuse to embrace Black Canary, who accepts his overture. Later, Black Canary’s thoughts turn wistfully toward the absent Green Arrow. Romance is blooming! In one scene, Black Canary is clearly defeated by the Ghenna Box. But several pages later she’s fine, with some “It didn’t affect me because…” dialogue to paper over this inconsistency that probably arose due to the vagaries of the production process. Here’s an unintentionally hilarious panel in which Superman tries to carry three JLAers into deep space using only two arms. Come on, dude! You’re super-smart. Rig up a super-sled! O’Neill is wildly inconsistent about the effects of space vacuum. Back in the Vigilante/Chokh story, Hawkman was exposed to space for a while (maybe a few hours?) and was said to require three weeks of recuperation. At the beginning of the Soul-Hunter story, Hawkgirl is found floating in deep space, presumably after days of exposure to vacuum, but seems no worse than he. When an “airlock” opens on the JLA satellite, there’s no actual airlock (no separate room); it’s just a door that opens to the station exterior! And no explosive decompression either. Yet there’s plenty of dialogue explaining that if Atom stays outside in a vacuum more than ten seconds, his blood will boil, and a previous scene demonstrated the effects of decompression when Norch Lor broke into the station. Perhaps the airlock has an unmentioned force field that keeps the air in? O’Neil likes grading people. Watch for recurring dialogue about whether any given hero or villain is “amateur grade” or “top grade.” It is one of his dialogue tics.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 4, 2019 9:18:14 GMT -5
I'm willing to admit that it's a matter of taste for me but , This JL run would really have been special with a Marvel style artist using the layouts that Marvel was known for. Dillin's storytelling was Tre -bland.
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Post by zaku on Jan 4, 2019 10:21:40 GMT -5
Don’t you laugh every time Hawkman says that he came to Earth to study our police procedures? I admit I never read anything of Pre-Crisis Hawkman. Was this really a thing in the comics? I mean, did he snoop around precincts studying Earth police methods or whatever?
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 4, 2019 10:25:20 GMT -5
JLA #78-79 “Vigilante vs Pollution” (February-March 1970) Ohh...the headaches that came from reading this issue... More than any other part of the plot, this was the most realistic and memorable set of actions. In fact, its probably more realistic than any other comic of the day, in that superhero comics rarely had a city official simply do what they would with any other person causing a disturbance--call the police. Romita-era Spider-Man was an exception, but even there, we did not see an official treat the hero as nothing more than an annoyance, easily dismissed by the police in the way it happened with GA. The problem with O'Neil at this point in his career, is that he could--on occasion-script as though he were writing a PSA. At the time, TV and print media was already flooded with anti-pollution (and anti-ANYTHING) ads, with its most famous output coming one year later, tied to the "Keep America Beautiful" TV/print campaign's use of "Iron Eyes Cody" as the crying Native American surveying trashed natural lands-- --which was far more effective than O'Neil force-feeding the message in a comic not known for that sort of tone or sensibility. Whether O'Neil would come to realize it or not, his ecological message was pretty much the topic of nearly every episode of the first season of the Super Friends cartoon, which replaced true comic villains with threats to the environment, etc. I wonder if O'Neil would pleased to know that his work was likely the biggest influence on a TV series universally despised for tarnishing the general perception of the JLA? Sign of the times...for some comics, as it had been for a long period of the medium's history. Honestly, this was still a period where you could not go for too long in a Kirby illustrated title where a woman did not stand back with a worried palm against her face, usually while the male characters jumped into action. ...and this makes sense, as some--particularly "bluebloods" who were used to generations of power and influence over society--having to even acknowledge beings who do not need to bow to any established order. That said, the rejection/"freaks" feeling always worked better with The Doom Patrol, a team created to address some of those feelings/experiences, instead of the world's darlings--the JLA. O'Neil's heart may have been in the right place, but as mentioned earlier, this story felt like a PSA--no better than the one page social commentary comic panels DC produced over the decades, or the giveaways we would see pop up again in the "Just Say No" period of the 1980s. Preachy and about as subtle as Godzilla stomping through any unfortunate city.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 4, 2019 13:40:57 GMT -5
Don’t you laugh every time Hawkman says that he came to Earth to study our police procedures? I admit I never read anything of Pre-Crisis Hawkman. Was this really a thing in the comics? I mean, did he snoop around precincts studying Earth police methods or whatever? No, that was just an excuse to get the alien Hawkman on Earth. Otherwise, he spent time at a museum and used ancient weapons. There were some stories in space and on his homeworld. But, no, he didn't go on ride-alongs and did not attend lectures at police academies. Later, Hawkworld explored a grittier police job, before Hawkman comes to Earth; but, once he is here, he becomes more and more a superhero, rather than a cop. Unfortunately, DC took what was supposed to be a story set in the past and made it the present and used it for a reboot of Hawkman, which created all kinds of nightmare's like explaining his time with the JLA. Someone came up with the bright idea to insert the GA Hawkman into the SA stories, ignoring the ones that involved Thanagar. Should have just rebooted everything after Crisis, as was once the plan.
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Post by rberman on Jan 4, 2019 22:24:15 GMT -5
JLA #82-83 “The year of the aborted JLA/JSA crossover” (August-September 1970)Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. Issue #82 “Peril of the Paired Planets”: Red Tornado is in space, moping that the JSA treats him more like “a lost puppy” than a person. His navel gazing is interrupted by an alien vessel that captures him and programs him to bridge the gap between Earth-1 and Earth-2. The collision of the two worlds is simply a way for these “Creator 2” aliens to get enough energy to build a new planet for some client. The aliens figure that they’d better incapacitate the JSA too, and their web-based attacks defeat not only the Earth-2 heroes, but also their Earth-1 counterparts, laid low by some pan-cosmic symmetry. (Dr Mid-Nite’s defeat brings down Earth-1’s Batman, which is a slight stretch.) The surviving heroes figure out that the two worlds are about to catastrophically merge, and Black Canary wonders, not unreasonably, whether her move from Earth-2 to Earth-1 a year prior might have something to do with it. Should she kill herself to see if that helps? Issue #83 “Where Valor Fails… Will Magic Triumph?”: As more of the JSA are captured, more of the JLA fall incapacitated as well due to their dimensional linkages. Dr. Fate summons The Spectre, who interposes his essence between the two worlds, holding back their merger at the cost of his continued existence. Dr. Fate and Thunderbolt race into space and explode the alien ship, releasing Red Tornado and ending the threatened dimensional merger. All the heroes awaken, having missed their annual chance to have a cross-dimensional party. Continuity references: “Just a year ago, we tangled with the Cthonic Demons!” (JLA #72). Regarding GL, GA, and Black Canary, “The reasons for the trio’s absences have been related – memorably – in the July, 1970 issue of Green Lantern!” “The reason The Spectre abides in this crypt may not be related now… rest assured that the story is fearsome indeed!” My Two Cents: JLA/JSA team-ups are fine, but Gardner Fox unwittingly wrote himself and his successors into a corner when he established that once a year like clockwork, Earth-1 and Earth-2 line up. It becomes like a family birthday that you don’t necessarily enjoy but don’t dare skip. A two-part story means that 1/6 of all JLA issues will be consumed with JSA crossover stories. That’s quite a limitation on the writer. Roy Thomas commented that Denny O’Neil does better writing small teams than big ones, which may explain why his “crossover“ actually kept the two teams apart. O’Neil also uses Gardner Fox’s tried-and-true page-filling method of stringing together single-hero vignettes, with each JSA member falling in turn to the alien attack. The JLA does absolutely nothing in either issue; the aliens are on Earth-2, and that’s where all the relevant action plays out, with Dr. Fate, The Spectre, and Thunderbolt as the only ones who ultimately solve the problem. As usual for O’Neil, all the character development goes to Green Arrow and Black Canary. She’s willing to sacrifice herself, but he rejects that solution, then lofts her in elation when the danger has passed. O’Neil is relatively restrained in his sermonizing this time, but he does let the alien leader comment that our planet deserves to be destroyed, because we can’t get our act together. As I mentioned in another thread, Grant Morrison had a similar “Earths threatened with interdimensional collision to generate energy for a villain’s scheme” story in his graphic novel JLA: Earth-2 But in that post-Crisis story, Earth-2 was what used to be called Earth-3, the universe in which the Crime Syndicate of America ruled supreme. The highlight of this story is when The Spectre stands between the two Earths. I thought I remembered a similar scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but looking back through that now, it didn’t really go down that way, though there were a couple of panels with The Spectre looming over the multiverse. But this scene has been homaged elsewhere, as when Grant Morrison’s authorial stand-in character Wally Sage hallucinates himself holding the worlds apart. Two of the aliens are named “Nougat” and “Caramel,” leading us to guess that Denny O’Neil was eating a Snickers bar when he wrote this script. The Spectre rebukes Dr. Fate for seeking scientific solutions instead of trying magic. Oh, use magic! Why didn’t Dr. Fate think of that… oh wait, that’s his whole shtick. Also, Dr. Fate establishes that Thunderbolt is a less powerful wizard than himself. Grant Morrison contradicts this in his JLA run, in which Thunderbolt is a being from Mxyzptlk’s “fifth dimension” who can do pretty much anything he wants. I know, things are different post-Crisis. “They’re strictly amateur class!” says Hourman. See, I told you Denny O’Neil liked that figure of speech. Hourman is laid low when his opponent causes time to pass extremely quickly so that his hour elapses “prematurely.” All-Star Superman spoiler related to this: {Spoiler: Click to show}Grant Morrison did the same when Lex Luthor imbibed a serum to give himself temporary Superman powers.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 5, 2019 0:11:34 GMT -5
JLA #82-83 “The year of the aborted JLA/JSA crossover” (August-September 1970)........Two of the aliens are named “Nougat” and “Caramel,” leading us to guess that Denny O’Neil was eating a Snickers bar when he wrote this script. ..............
Could have been a Milky Way.....
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Post by zaku on Jan 5, 2019 3:26:39 GMT -5
I admit I never read anything of Pre-Crisis Hawkman. Was this really a thing in the comics? I mean, did he snoop around precincts studying Earth police methods or whatever? No, that was just an excuse to get the alien Hawkman on Earth. Otherwise, he spent time at a museum and used ancient weapons. Thank you. :-) So, this alien, who had access to advanced extraterrestrial technology, was going around ruining ancient historical Earth artifacts..?
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Post by rberman on Jan 5, 2019 7:01:19 GMT -5
I didn't do my research properly. I thought that my Omnibus (and this thread) began with Denny O'Neil assuming the writer's chair on JLA. But now I see that he had actually been writing since #68 (December 1968). He wrote the stories that killed Larry Lance and brought Black Canary to Earth-1, though Gardner Fox wrote the story that brought Green Arrow (sans facial hair) into the JLA in #67. No wonder it seemed so convenient that O'Neil happened to begin in January 1970. He didn't! But they used that date to demark "Bronze Age" for convenience, and to keep the Omnibus from being even larger. Were O'Neil's earlier JLA stories as Bronzey as the ones from 1970 onward?
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 5, 2019 11:47:46 GMT -5
No, that was just an excuse to get the alien Hawkman on Earth. Otherwise, he spent time at a museum and used ancient weapons. Thank you. :-) So, this alien, who had access to advanced extraterrestrial technology, was going around ruining ancient historical Earth artifacts..? Pretty much. DC wanted to basically just revive Hawkman, which featured a winged flying man bashing people with maces and scooping them up in nets. With Julie Schwartz, a devoted sci-fi guy doing the reviving, everything got a sci-fi hook. Hawkman became an alien cop who comes to Earth and studies its past, using the old weapons in battle, despite having a spaceship with far more advanced technology. Now, that technology was also used in the series; but, yeah, he would take items from the museum's collection and go punch criminals with them. I recall one story where he tools up with a pair of Roman caestus, which was an early form of brass knuckles, consisting of a leather glove with additional strips of leather over it, often with spikes or other metal pieces. The mace was a favorite. The advanced technology would be used with criminals like the Shadow Thief and to analyze things. They also occasionally cruised around space in it. Hawkman wasn't one of the more successful Silver Age revivals, as he ended up paired with the Atom, to try to boost both their sales; and, mostly ended up in the JLA to keep him around, with the occasional appearance in Brave and the Bold and guest appearances in other books. Same with the Atom. They would pop up in back-up stories and such. Sad thing was, their books had some sweet art from Joe Kubert and Murphy Anderson (Hawkman) and Gil Kane (Atom); but, the concepts didn't prove to have enough meat for the writers to create stories that captured a wider audience. There were memorable stories; but, their headlining status was far briefer than some of the other JLAers. With the post-Hawkworld reboot, the Hawks carried advanced firearms and used the occasional Earth weapon. A katar, a form of Indian punch dagger, became a favorite, since Hawkman was Katar Hol, of Thanagar (derived from the Golden Age Carter Hall, the original Hawkman, a reincarnated Egyptian prince). In reality, it is a dagger; but, in the hands of comic artists (including Walt Simonson, in the Manhunter feature) it is as big as a sword.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 5, 2019 11:50:35 GMT -5
ps. Here's the Hawks' ship...
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 5, 2019 14:10:33 GMT -5
The revamp of Hawkman and the proceeding mess proves that they should have kept the multiple earths. They didn't have to explain his origins every few years.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 5, 2019 14:36:40 GMT -5
JLA #80-81 “The Soul-Stealer and the Jest-Master” (May-June 1970)Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. On paper, this is the kind of "as its happening" (or in media res, if you prefer) sci-fi thriller that would serve as the teaser for the original Outer Limits TV series: strange, tense and successfully reeling the audience in to its bizarre events... Nice to have Loring be the one to lead, instead of being the stereotypical victim for the entire story. Its appreciated; some Marvel die-hards used to love claiming DC comics of this period had no continuity, but this, along with Teen Titans/Aquaman, and the Bat-titles linked stories disproves what was the equivalent of a kid sticking his tongue out to tease another. Oh, yes. That was till a common DC practice at the time. Not across the board, but it was still their "thing" that actually deserved criticism. I see it as O'Neil making the story a sort of catch-all of historical-Biblical references, in the way that the original Star Wars trilogy took occasionally dissimilar religious messages and used them to frame the story. Possibly. Good theory. Never.. ever expect anything approaching hardcore scientific accuracy in a comic book--not in 1970, and for the most part, not in any comic book era. Technobabble (or ripped TREKnobabble)--maybe, but not much leaning toward reality. ...and a way he and other creators of his generation were trying to make clear distinctions between what a "real superhero" is as opposed to the "any masked man will do" type of characters from the Golden Age, who were not particularly special for their job or reputation. His beloved Green Arrow would normally fall into the "amateur grade" category (he is, after all, a world class archer, but that's not exactly a superhero), but not for GA in the Green Lantern title of this period.
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Post by Farrar on Jan 5, 2019 16:42:28 GMT -5
I didn't do my research properly. I thought that my Omnibus (and this thread) began with Denny O'Neil assuming the writer's chair on JLA. But now I see that he had actually been writing since #68 (December 1968). Actually O'Neil started writing the JLA with #66, cover dated Nov. 1968 (so, on sale a couple of months earlier). He wasted no time in setting the tone for his run: As an aside: a couple of years later, in 1970, I got a sense of déjà vu when I picked up Avengers #80, written by Roy Thomas:
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