One of my favorite JLA covers by Neal Adams--I especially like the color contrast between the heroes and the regular people. Plus we have Mera!The Story: "The Last Survivors of Earth!" by Mike Friedrich, Dick Dillin, and Joe Giella. A spaceship heads towards Earth filled with people who call themselves...you guessed it, the last survivors of earth!
We cut to Carter and Shayera Hall, and Hal Jordan on some sort of expedition. Shayera discovers a mysterious stone tablet, and she tries to decipher it, a bolt of energy comes from the sky and knocks her out!
Hal signals the JLA, and, for once, all of the members(plus Mera) show up. Aquaman explains weird things like this have been reported all over the world, all of them having to do with the legends of a pacific continent that sank beneath the waves. The JLA splits up to investigate, but soon after GL is felled by the same mysterious energy that knocked out Shierra!
Meanwhile, Green Arrow is noticing that Batman and Black Canary seem oddly distracted, and he doesn't like it! He tries to pull Dinah off with him, but she blows him off and has a talk with Batman. This where they discuss "the kiss" (JLA #84), and Black Canary says Bats is...ugh..."like a brother" to her. Batman sucks it up, and walks off, but the caption informs us "The seed of bitterness is planted in the Batman this day!" So we have Dinah to thank for all the grim n' gritty Batman stories to date.
It turns out in the three spots around the world, it is "ordinary" citizens that inadvertantly eliminate the problem by destroying the three tokens left there by the beings in the spaceship--a medallion, a stone tablet, and...well, I'm not exactly sure what happens at the end here. The ship tries to grab an ordinary beach bum, he somehow throws a wrench into the ship's controls...I dunno, I read it like three times and I couldn't quite figure out what happened!
All I know is, each of the JLA thinks the others eliminated the threat, until they compare notes and admit they don't know what happened, either! Aquaman says they'll write this case up as...unexplained!
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman, Black Canary
Notable Moments: Mera doesn't really play any part in this story...she shows up at the beginning and at the very end. Still nice to see her.
This story feels like a companion piece to JLA #57's "Man...Thy Name is Brother!" in that it contrasts the superheroic goings-on with the just-as-important action taken by regular humans, and ones of diverse ethnicities at that.
1 comment:
I LOVE this cover! I remember seeing it before I actually got this issue, thinking, Cool, Mera is a guest star! I was a tad disappointed to see that she didn't do anything, but atleast she hung out. I guess Aquaman didn't want to leave her alone too much after she had gone missing for so long. I would have liked more appearances of her, Hawkgirl, and Robin, just for continuity's sake...Still, she sure does look good standing with the World's Greatest Super-Heroes...!
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