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Post by rberman on Oct 13, 2019 7:34:13 GMT -5
JLA #155 “Under the Moons of Earth!” (June 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: Earth suddenly has two moons near each other, and their combined gravitational pull is wreaking havoc on Earth. The JLAers have their hands full all over the globe, and worse, some sinister aliens are lurking in the shadows, sneaking into a nuclear plant. Batman kicks one alien, who turns to dust; the other escapes with jnuclear fuel rods. Turns out the aliens live on the second moon, which they say has teleported from a parallel dimension in a desperate attempt to escape a disaster. Moving this inhabited moon could kill its people, but Superman swears to find a way. Superman's offer is nice, but the aliens have a plan of their own to ensure their survival at the expense of humanity. I'm not sure how destroying all life on Earth will make their moon more gravitationally stable, though. Batman infiltrates the aliens and foils their plan. The alien leader then confesses that they have not come from another dimension, but from Earth’s own distant past. Superman rebuilds the alien machine and sends the second moon further forward in time, to the year One Billion. I love the hangdog look on the alien leader in the last panel below. My Two Cents: This one was definitely in my cousin’s stash. I will have to ask him how these late 70s comics got into the mix, since the rest of his collection was from 1970-1972. Most of this issue is taken up with various JLAers in brief natural disaster vignettes that don’t advance the plot. There’s not a whole lot of characterization in this issue, except for one scene in which Batman treats Red Tornado with decency. Superman sends the moon forward to the year One Billion “when life on Earth is extinct.” I guess he forgot Action Comics #387 (1970), in which a very old Superman, in the year One Billion, takes the extinct Earth and makes a new planet which he populates with animals and a new species of mankind. Hey, that New Earth didn’t seem to have a moon. The spare moon from this story could fill that role! A missed opportunity to tie the two stories together.
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Post by rberman on Oct 14, 2019 7:27:03 GMT -5
JLA #156 “The Fiend with Five Faces!” (July 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: A wounded Aquaman spends four pages crawling out of the water, fending off some thugs by the docks, taking a taxi into town, taking an elevator to the top of a building, and stepping into the teleporter to the JLA satellite. Other JLAers spend three pages answering his call. One gets the impression that some of the material in these double-sized, sixty cent issues is just filler. It’s flashback time! Aquaman delivers several pages of exposition about finding an underwater volcano, getting attacked by sperm whales, and finally discovering an island temple whose giant, five-headed statue attacked him. A jungle has sprouted in the Pacific Northwest. When Flash and Green Lantern investigate, they are felled by a nature-themed fellow named Tane. In Eastern Europe, “ Ku the War-God” and “ Rongo the Jester” are causing NATO and Warsaw Pact troops to fight each other with time-lost weaponry. Superman leads a squad that has difficulty handling this magical situation. Rongo delivers lengthy exposition about how the island was once a great civilization ruled by five gods who were forced to fuse when their civilization collapsed. Now they are free and want to supplant the current human civilization with their own. Half of the remaining JLA (including Phantom Stranger!) check out the island temple. Atom defeats an entire animated statue by bashing a couple of its atoms into each other. I don’t think that’s how that works, but whatever. The various heroes eventually prevail against the four evil gods. Phantom Stranger is able to awaken the sleeping Zeus-like god on the Island. He summons the other four and gives them a good talking to. Apparently this scenario has played itself out repeatedly in the past, with the evil gods forgetting each time. The island temple sinks again beneath the waves, to rise again sometime in the future for another round. To fill out a few final pages, Atom asks the heroes whether he should reveal his secret identity to his fiancée. He gets conflicting answers. My Two Cents: This issue has the same basic plot as the previous one! An ancient civilization, long dormant due to a cataclysm, awakens on modern Earth and wants to take over. This time there’s a Brigadoon element as well. Red Tornado has adopted Traya, the Middle Eastern orphan from issue #152. It’s a nice thought, but his job doesn’t exactly involve much of a home life. Maybe she can be trained to be the JLA satellite receptionist? In a later issue, he will reveal that he's placed her in an orphanage, which is all for the best, but so much for his promise! One of the five gods was a goddess of love not featured in this story. Is it an oversight? We’ll see…
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Post by badwolf on Oct 14, 2019 13:01:40 GMT -5
I only have the followup to this issue, and didn't realize the Siren didn't appear in the first story.
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Post by rberman on Oct 15, 2019 5:51:13 GMT -5
JLA #157 “Til Doom Do Us Part!” (September 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin, Juan Ortiz, and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: The Atom reveals his secret identity to Jean Loring the night before their wedding. She doesn’t take it well and stalks off. As the JLAers wrap their wedding presents up on the satellite, Phantom Stranger arrives to inform them that one of the ancient evil gods from previous issue is still on the loose. Must be that goddess of love that didn’t play a role last time. Could she be this lady calling herself “Siren”? Aquaman, Batman, and Green Arrow return to the now-submerged island and confirm that “Mauri, goddess of love” is not there. They also beat off an airplane attack from some goons serving the Siren. Oh well, on with Atom's wedding! When Green Lantern and Red Tornado pick up Solovar from Africa, they too are attacked by goons. When that fails, Siren appears and takes hypnotic control of Green Lantern. Soon Superman, Batman, and Green Arrow are under her sway as well. They take captive Flash, Elongated Man, and their wives. The ladies Wonder Woman, Black Canary, and Supergirl cannot be controlled by the Siren song, so they fight the male JLAers. But Superman can’t bring himself to kill Supergirl. The spell is broken, and Siren is defeated and returned to her island home. For the finale, there’s a double splash page of Atom’s wedding, with an unusual effect used to identify the various heroes in their civilian finery. My Two Cents: For the first time in a long time, someone else is penciling JLA. Juan Ortiz has a very different art style than Dick Dillin, as seen in unusual framing choices like this extreme closeup of Diana and Dinah discussing Dinah’s desire to get married to Ollie. Ortiz also regularly uses “Dutch angles,” turning the scene 45 degrees off of horizontal.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2019 8:43:21 GMT -5
JLA #157 “Til Doom Do Us Part!” (September 1978) One of my favorite pictures for sentimental reasons and the story is fairly good too.
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Post by rberman on Oct 15, 2019 9:09:50 GMT -5
JLA #157 “Til Doom Do Us Part!” (September 1978) One of my favorite pictures for sentimental reasons and the story is fairly good too. “Ray, why are Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent at our wedding? Do you know them? Are they... in the JLA with you?” (uncomfortable silence)
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2019 10:28:16 GMT -5
JLA #157 “Til Doom Do Us Part!” (September 1978) One of my favorite pictures for sentimental reasons and the story is fairly good too. “Ray, why are Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent at our wedding? Do you know them? Are they... in the JLA with you?” (uncomfortable silence) I like your thinking here ... thanks for sharing it.
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Post by rberman on Oct 16, 2019 9:03:56 GMT -5
JLA #158 “The Super-Power of Negative Thinking!” (October 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: In media res, Poison Ivy and Mirror Master have The Flash and Wonder Woman on the ropes until Ultraa rides in to the rescue. The villains escape, and Ultraa is enraged at the villains’ reckless endangerment of human life. He’s not accustomed to super-villains, you’ll recall, since he came from Earth-Prime. Poison Ivy swears in the name of horticulturist Luther Burbank, who created hundreds of new varieties of fruits and vegetables. In the JLA’s abandoned cave headquarters, a mysterious, giant, and villainous hooded mastermind has assembled a new Injustice Gang comprising Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Mirror Master, the Tattooed Man, and Chronos. They have assembled a device to seize control of the Earth’s energy production. As the JLA deliver pages of exposition on their satellite, Ultraa busts through the walls. He’s convinced that to safeguard humanity, he needs to get rid of both super-heroes and super-villains. He zaps the heroes with a gun that robs their confidence so severely that their powers fail. Ultraa tries his “negative thinking” gun on the Injustice Gang too, but instead of making them lose confidence, it just makes them more negative, i.e. more evil, and they quickly overwhelm him. A mean falcon summoned by Tattooed Man is enough to have Ultraa cowering. The JLA muster their bravery, say encouraging things to each other, and come to Ultraa’s aid. The mysterious hooded villain is revealed as Flash’s futuristic foe Abra Kadabra. OK; it could have been anybody or nobody we knew. Ultraa is embarrassed at having made a mess of things with his rash plan to unilaterally eliminate all super powers. As if the JLA and the Injustice Society were the sum total of super-beings in the first place! Editorial: This issue cuts back from the previous “34 pages for 60 cents” (1.74 cents per page) that JLA has been for a while. Jenette Kahn writes a one page article explaining how DC’s combination of price and page increases (17 pages of main story and 8 of backup for fifty cents) improves value for readers, with 2 cents per page instead of 2.35 cents for Marvel titles (17 pages for forty cents). It’s just one phase of her ambitious master plan, the “DC Explosion.” The DC Answer Man devotes his whole page to touting the DC Explosion as well, showing which back-up characters will appear in which books. A house ad sells the message too. My Two Cents: Just for the record, this issue’s title is a spoof on the self-help book “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. Obviously the book inspired this issue’s super-fight. Conway hopes readers won't dwell on the inconsistency of whether "negative thinking" means "lack of confidence" (as in the case of the heroes) or "malign intent" (as in the case of the villains). I like how Ultraa is renders as truly towering, a good 75% taller than Superman. I was less thrilled when a kick from Mirror Master sent Wonder Woman reeling. She ought to be tougher than that.
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Post by rberman on Oct 17, 2019 7:29:48 GMT -5
JLA #159 “Crisis from Yesterday!” (November 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: The annual JLA/JSA gathering is just small talk for four pages. But then a mystery scientist, the Lord of Time from the year 3786AD snatches five characters from the past, which takes three more pages. Explosive bullets from Enemy Ace’s triplane collapse a building, felling all the heroes, even both Superman-1 and -2. The villains chat about their identities and backstory for a few more pages, then leave the scene. The heroes gradually awaken. Half of them are incapacitated by a mysterious illness. They chase down the villains but fare surprisingly poorly; it seems that their foes have have been granted super-powers by their unknown benefactor from the far future. This is all part of the Lord of Time’s plan. He needs the JLA and JSA to survive this defeat, team up, and destroy his computer before it causes a catastrophe. And what better way to inspire the JLA and JSA to higher levels of heroism than to kick their butts with a bunch of unpowered characters from the past? Well, I can think of lots of ways, actually… My Two Cents: This issue was clearly editorial edict. “It’s time for the JLA/JSA team up, and as usual you need to include a third team of neglected characters. This time use an ad hoc team of poorly selling historical characters from across the DC line.” It’s a bad idea in the first place, and this issue’s plot makes zero sense at any level. However, Conway redeems it somewhat by having lots of character moments sprinkled throughout, as when the Earth-1 heroes privately contemplate how their Earth-2 versions reflect choices they could have made but didn’t. The Lord of Time is another Silver Age villain, having debuted in JLA #10 along with Felix Faust and the Demons Three.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 17, 2019 11:53:03 GMT -5
This is actually one of my favorite JLA/JSA crossovers. It lacks logic; but, I still found it engaging and the character stuff was a big part of it. Plus, being a history buff, I enjoyed having the historical characters. For most, it was my first time seeing them in an actual story and not a house ad or a mention in a column. Meanwhile "poor selling" is not even close to true, for most of them. Miss America was never a big deal and the Black Pirate was one of many back-up features, from Golden Age Action Comics. He wasn't carrying the book, so you can't say he was a plus or a minus on it. Viking Prince was very popular, in Brave and the Bold. Enemy Ace was very popular in Our Army at War. Jonah Hex was one of DC's best selling features, in that period. So, one character who was a low-selling character, one who was a back-up feature and 3 who sold quite well.
Now, yeah, I will say the Lord of Time has never been a particularly good villain and, in a parallel dimension, he starred in the JLA/Avengers crossover (that was the original plan, until Shooter effectively killed the project). The motivations are bad; but, I still like it. I did think it made great use of a mixture of both teams,e specially younger members, like Huntress and Star Spangled Kid (a carryover from the All-Star series).
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Post by brutalis on Oct 17, 2019 13:28:35 GMT -5
JLA #159 “Crisis from Yesterday!” (November 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. So then, with the blue facial coloring here in the closeups, it looks like Shooter could have gone with The Lord of Time being Kang the Conquer in another guise for the JLA/Avengers crossover!?!
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 17, 2019 22:23:23 GMT -5
JLA #159 “Crisis from Yesterday!” (November 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. So then, with the blue facial coloring here in the closeups, it looks like Shooter could have gone with The Lord of Time being Kang the Conquer in another guise for the JLA/Avengers crossover!?! The villains were supposed to be Kang and the Lord of Time.
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Post by rberman on Oct 18, 2019 7:06:54 GMT -5
JLA #160 “Crisis from Tomorrow!” (December 1978)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: The five time-lost heroes, having defeated the JSA and JLA with their new powers, are summoned to the year 3786AD to defeat the Lord of Time’s computer run amuck, The computer defends itself by summoning other time-lost threats, including a Tyrannosaurus, because boys love dinosaurs. The computer wins round one, and the heroes disappear from this story, heading back to their various back-up features (plus Jonah Hex's title slot). Thanks for dropping by! Four members each of the JLA and JSA are back on their feet. They take a ride on the Cosmic Treadmill to travel to the year 3786AD but get waylaid halfway there by a barrier that stymies them for several pages. They break through eventually, but Superman is rendered comatose in the process. On arrival in the year 3786AD, the heroes contend against more time-lost threats summoned by Time Lord’s wayward computer. One by one the heroes fall until only Elongated Man remains. Happily, he’s able to short circuit the computer before it fatally damages the timestream. Everybody recovers from their wounds and goes home. Yay! My Two Cents: Yeah, definitely a half-baked story. The heroes don’t even interact with the Time Lord after stopping his computer from causing disaster. Jonah Hex and the other guest characters are dispatched of in the first few pages and don’t recur at the end of the story. It’s just sloppy all the way through. Oh well, there’s always next month! A reader poll has decreed that Zatanna will be the next new member of the JLA, in a landslide.
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Post by codystarbuck on Oct 18, 2019 23:33:54 GMT -5
Yeah, too bad they changed her costume to that elf thing; never cared much for that one. Classic stage outfit or the later superhero duds were great.
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Post by rberman on Oct 19, 2019 6:20:55 GMT -5
JLA #161 “The Reverse-Spells of Zatanna’s Magic-cigaM” (January 1979)Creative Team: Written by Gerry Conway. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: Heeding the votes of readers, the JLA offer Zatanna membership. But she’s got a new costume, a new pony tail, and a new attitude. She brusquely spurns their proposal! She especially doesn’t want anything to do with Green Lantern for some reason. After the JLA meekly return to Earth, Atom sticks around the station to research why Zatanna might be out of sorts. He’s attacked by Green Lantern! Meanwhile on Earth, Zatanna is attacking a Cambodian castle full of orcs. She does OK at first but gets shot down before she can rescue the captive… Green Lantern? The JLA find Atom recovering from being assaulted. They follow Zatanna’s trail to Cambodia and fight the fake Green Lantern. Zatanna is freed by an army of time-lost soldiers, brought here by a spell she cast before being captured. Then she frees the real Green Lantern. The fake Lantern is revealed as the Wizard of Ys, an old GL foe. After that’s wrapped up, she’s happy to accept the JLA’s invitation to join. My Two Cents: Structurally, this story is very much like one of those Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes in which one of the heroes acts unaccountably rude because of a secret foe who must be defeated through subterfuge. Zatanna no longer casts her spells backwards; now she rhymes like Etrigan, or Isis.
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