A great cover, courtesy of Dick Giordano--a classic "How did they get themselves into this?" scenario.The Story: "Takeover of the Earth-Masters!" by Elliot S! Maggin, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. Up in the JLA satellite, Aquaman(who is on Monitor Duty) and Hawkman are sharing stories, Hawkman bemoaning that, without his wife Shayera, he really has nowhere to go on Earth.
This conversation is interrupted when they get a distress signal from Central City. Aquaman thinks Flash can handle the situation on his own, but Hawkman insists on getting the JLA involved.
Flash is fighting some weird pink blobby creatures and as he's telling the JLA of this, it(they?) zap him! Superman, Aquaman, and Red Tornado find themselves fighting the thing to a standstill, while Black Canary takes the Flash to the satellite for help.
The creatures seems to adapt and evolve to fighting the JLA, and they zap the heroes long enough for them to escape.
Flash tells the JLAers of some work a local scientist has been doing, and how he contacted a space alien who created the creatures, which he calls Adaptoids. The JLA then disperses all over the globe to fight the creatures, but they defeat the JLAers by converting energy back at them, breaking Black Canary's leg, turning Aquaman into a mer-man, etc.
Hawkman, who was left behind to coordinate with other JLAers, is nowhere to be found. He leaves a note saying he had to go back to Thanagar, which the JLA takes as an act of cowardice:
...oh great, and we just changed the JLA Mail Room header back!
Roll Call: Superman, Aquaman, Flash, Hawkman, Black Canary, Red Tornado
Notable Moments: Elliot S! Maggin's second issue in a row, and his plots are dense and, frankly, hard to summarize. I apologize if some of these issues don't sound like they make a lot of sense.
Aquaman has been playing a much larger role in the JLA as usual, no doubt due to The Super Friends being a big hit on TV.
4 comments:
This two-parter is probably my favorite adventure of all time. I love how all the members are used (eventually) and how it all makes sense (well, in a comic book universe type of way). I'm a sucker for scenes of JLAers NOT being able to respond to the summons, too. Art-wise, Frank McLaughlin was no Dick Giordano, but he was still doing a more than capable job at this point, so the art was awesome. He and Dillin did a great Red Tornado here.
As I was just starting my JLA run at this point, I always think of the Justice League in space, fighting galactic type menaces. I think this is where that implanted memory comes from. To me this will always be the classis JLA line up. The classic satellite League.
George Rears
This was one of the very first JLA stories I ever read. The "Takeover of the Earth-Masters!" 2-parter was packaged with the first Dharlu story in digest form, all under Nick Cardy's classic cover from #102. Helped make me a lifelong comic reader, and still one of my favorite JLA stories.
Apparently, this story was also an inspiration for Alex Ross & Paul Dini's JLA tabloid.
Aquaman is always awesome and should always figure as a key player in the Justice League. 3/4 of the world is covered by oceans! Nearly every inhabited area of the land mass is on or near a body of water!
This is one of the 1st issues I remember reading. (Born in 1974 so it must have been my brother's that I read later.) Great cover!
I didn't even realize the JLA ever met in a cave until much later, and then I never understood why, given all their amazing resources and potential other meeting places (Batcave, Fortress of Solitude, Arrowcave), they would want to meet in a whole new friggin' cave.
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