JLA #11
Fox/Sekowsky/Sachs
'One Hour Till Doomsday'


wildfire2099 ... This is one of my favorite stories in the early days of the Justice League of America. Thanks for reviewing it.

Odd, especially when you consider that he'd created a duplicate ring for Pieface in his solo title *twice* by the time this JLA issue came out.

Cei-U!
I summon the boo-boo!

Which was pretty much the practice for the first 20-25 years of the medium.

JLA #12
'The Last Case of the Justice League'
Fox/Sekowsky/Sachs



Plot: Snapper is at a 'fish-catching' (not fishing, fish-catching) contest when he gets buzzed by the Justice League... only to find Doctor Light! He needed to do his villainous monologue, so he called Snapper to listen to it.

He explains how he has mastered light, including a little science lecture on atoms and electrons, and how he managed to force Aquaman to summon the team into a trap. He froze the JLA in place then sent them to worlds they would surely die in... Aquaman to a desert planet, GL to a yellow planet, etc.

He then freezes Snapper (not sure why, as he specifically summoned him to get the story out), and leaves. Luckily, Superman and Batman were teaming up before the call, and Supes saw the trouble, so they switched costumes to foil the plot.

Once Superman (dressed as Batman) hops around through dimensions to save everyone, the get back to base and free Snapper, and find out Dr Light is going to get some light related trophies before he conquers the world, so it's split up and conquer time! We get a nice little lesson about the Colossus of Rhodes as well (one of the trophies).

Each team encounters Dr Light and defeats him, but at the first stop he seemingly kills Green Lantern. Back at base, they realize they have 3 Dr Lights, and one of them cackles that they are just holograms, and the real Dr. Light is about to throw a switch to brainwash the whole world!

Luckily, Green Lantern didn't actually die, he did his 'turning invisible and having a light image of himself die' trick he's done in his own book to try the Dr. Light hologram and trace it back and capture the REAL one. Day Saved!

Notes:

-2nd time in a row that we have an identity switch as the main plot point, and the rest of the team was completely saved by Green Lantern... I feel like they should have saved this one a bit... having them back to back wasn't good.

- Why on Earth would Green Arrow fly a yellow plane?

- Having Flash imprisoned on a planet where he can't get his balance was clever. For Batman and Green Arrow, they were a stretch. Green Arrow was on a planet where wood was all magnetic.. not sure why that was so bad. Batman was one one with upside trees and rocks made of water.. the horror! I guess the idea was that he bat-stuff wouldn't work... but it was a stretch.

- Aquaman already feels useless, and then you have to make him weak, too? At least have Dr. Light torture a whale or something to make him talk. OTOH, having a dolphin speak to distract Light in the fight was pretty fun, even if it didn't really make any sense.

-I've very happy that Snapper didn't save the day, that would have made me angry.

Plot: D
History: B+ (1st Dr. Light, iconic cover, one could say this is the 1st lead in to Identity Crisis!)

JLA #14
'Menace of the 'Atom' Bomb'




Plot:  The league is voting on a new member, and they all vote for the Atom, but no one can remember who he is?   Luckily, GL's ring does, so they send Martian Manhunter to investgate why they've all forgotten him and decide to come back in a couple days.

Meanwhile, they all go and fight their own villains, who all have de-memorizors, provided by Mister Memory, and all forget who they are.   Atom, who was blasted earlier (apparently the weapon also makes others forget you, unless you've taken a pill of some sort.. DC Science!), runs into the J'onn just before he gets blasted, and is so startled he accidently shrinks down to microscopic size, which somehow gives him his memory back.


Meanwhile, the bad guy tells his crook assistants to go do whatever, and he decides the best way to defeat the league is to put the Atom is a gas filled ball that will explode when it hits something.   Yeah.   No particular explanation as to how that could work, or why the League can't just move.  

Anyway, Atom saves the day (including a cool visual where he uses GL's ring to restore everyone memory).. the bad guy is... Batman?!?  Not really, of course, since this is 1962 and not 2002, but damn!   I was thinking 'what?  Batman was a manipulative a-hole way back then? '.. then it turns out not only not to be the case, but that he was caught too, and has no idea where the bad guy is.

Luckily, Martian Manhunter can see some sort of radio signals, and easily tracks the bad guy, who turns out to be Amos Fortune, escaped from prison with new tech.  Atom gets a small chair and a radio for joining, and everyone's happy.  Pretty fun intro to the Atom if you can ignore the overly goofy parts.

Plot: B-
History: B(Atom joins)


Notes:
-Another action figure cover.. sigh.   This one they're literally bowling pins, which is kinda funny.

- No helpful science in this one (which is good, because there was some real bad stuff here)

- What they did have were several notes referencing Green Lantern comics.  Strange.. since there wasn't for the Atom (Who one would assume was joining to help his sales), or anyone else (all of which had a same 1-2 pages of fighting one of their villains

-I thought it really strange all the villains were sad they couldn't defeat their rivals without the de-memorizor.. since win do supervillains want to fight fair?  Guess it's a 60s thing.

- If you didn't know better, this story makes it seem like the Atom is always 6 inches tall... kinda weird.   Why does he need a mini hover chair, when he can just be regular size for the meetings?

-  Superman was almost totally absent... he just popped in for the victory story.. 'in the phantom zone' was the excuse this time.

I hear what you're sayin' there, but I don't feel like it was particularly surprising or momentus that the Atom joined... maybe it was at the time, but in hind sight it seems more like 'its about time!'

Anyway, I accidently skipped this one, and I'm sure glad I noticed.. I think it's my favorite so far.

JLA #13
'The Riddle of the Robot Justice League'

Plot: The League is doing there thing, and they all suddenly disappear. This isn't the first time we get a solo page for each hero, and I kinda like it. Seems like a great way to advertise the solo books, too (though, for some reason, there's no references.. why not, 60s DC marketers!). Some are pretty pedestrian, but a couple of them are great. Batman and WOnder Woman are doing a charity acrobats demonstrations (only in the 60s...).. can you imagine that in a comic now? Aquaman is stuck in a cave, and is actually relieved he gets zapped away, which is priceless. If anyone wants to try to prove a 'Aquaman is useless' theory, this is a issue to reference (more later). The best, though, is Superman (who rarely does anything in the book).. He's visiting Jimmy Olsen, who tells him he wants to make someone disappear with his mind. Big Blue mocks him about it, then Jimmy wiggles his fingers at him and he vanishes! Fantastic!



So, after everyone poofs into another Universe, a little energy puff works them about the Skarn, who apparently go around to different universes and suck the life force out of them, so the League has to stop them. Apparently, they are invinsible because they have a robot that makes doubles of anyone that attack them, and the robots always win.

The league goes off to fight themselves, and it turns out that it's not really a fight, but a variety of contests in an arena, sorta like superhero medeval jousting. So, no fight to the death, and no reason for any consequences, basically a Superhero Super Bowl (complete with fans)

Oh, and Aquaman, well, the Skarn don't have water (that's some real bad science there, but I digress) so GL makes him a bath tub so he can watch (I guess helping isn't an option) and 'coach'



Then we get the contests, which all go badly for the heroes until Aquaman's tub floats over and he spouts 'encouragement' (mostly stuff like 'Superman, you're behind! Go Faster!' Or Wonder Woman! Yank Harder!) and they win.

In the process, Superman figures out the aliens were powering up the robots extra (not sure about the logic there.. universe destroying aliens are supposed to play fair?). No real point to that other than righteous indignation, but hey, that's OK. The League then races around the planet to find out where the life force sucking device is after destroying the robot that makes the duplicates (apparently, the Skarn have no other defense). Aquaman sees they are not worried (he still just hangs out and watches, no searching for him, even though it's clear his GL made bath tub moves around), and correctly logics out that the machine must be IN the arena.. which it is. They do some crazy vibration thing (because smashing it is boring!) and doom the Skarn universe to slow death. Everyone is very excited..there's even a space parade!

The End.

Notes:

-So many things to think about... from Aquaman in a tub heckling to the Justice League literally destroying a whole universe and being happy about it. Sure, it was a bad universe, but still... Why hasn't Geoff Johns based an event around one of them surviving and coming back to get revenge? That would be epic!

-The Skarn are basically anti-Guardians.. they're little yellow guys with giant heads.

-The logic of having a race so evil and technologically advanced that it can suck the life force out of parallel universes having an arena for good guys to fight them in is so very Silver Age it hurts. SO good!

- There were no less than 3 science footnotes in this one.. in an issue where they tell us there can be intelligent life with no water. Oh, Irony. But yet no marketing footnotes when we see Speedy, Pieface, and JImmy Olsen... Stan Lee would have noting the crap out of those 1st 6 pages.

- Speaking of the beginning with Green Arrow and Speedy. 'Handcuff arrow' Ok, so gimmick arrows are silly and impractical at the best of times, but this one takes the cake.. it's actually just a regular arrow with a pair of handcuff draped over it. Somehow the amazing skill of Green Arrow (which clearly includes telekinesis) not only keeps that on the arrow shaft, but somehow gets them to go onto the crook and lock shut without anything else happening. Speedy hit the shot no problem.

Plot: A+ (so bad it's amazing.. I really want to know what Hoosier thinks of this one.. seems like his kinda story)
History: D (never mentioned again, it seems)

I would think loooooong and hard before exposing my children to the Silver Age Supergirl.

Weissinger was a genius and as an adult I appreciate his stuff with equal parts genuine respect for his creativity and horrified fascination. But he was not a happy or mentally well man, and that definitely bled over into the stories he edited. And the hardest thing for any parent to do is give the "Superman is a dick because his editor was kind of a piece of shit" speech.