Justice League of America #149 - Dec. 1977

Dr. Light returns! (This shouldn't take long)

The Story: "The Face of the Star-Tsar!" by Steve Englehart, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. We open with Dr. Light trying to access the transporter tube that will take him to the JLA satellite, when he is stopped by the new hero The Privateer!

When the JLA shows up, Dr. Light tucks tail and runs away. After a minute or two of arguing with the Privateer, they take after Light, and its the Red Tornado who finds him.

Dr. Light uses a "image-mirage trick" to fool Tornado into escaping, and in the process throws in a dig at Reddy for falling for it. Dr. Light then bumps into a new villain, The Star-Tsar, and they briefly fight before ST runs off.

Meanwhile, the JLA is getting the lowdown on the Privateer, who manages to charm the socks off the World's Greatest Superheroes. So much so that they wonder aloud if they haven't just met their newest member, a comment that hurts Reddy's feelings:

After battling some of the Star-Tsar's thugs, they run into their old mascot, Snapper Carr, who for some reason was in the area and is acting very defensive. Hmm...

The JLA then runs into Dr. Light (busy day for them!), who traps them with a weapon called The Spectriminator, which divides the JLA into different parts of the color spectrum. Green Lantern manages to put himself back together, and they then run into Star-Tsar again, who says he wants to defeat Dr. Light, too, so he helps them find Dr. Light before vanishing.

They grab Dr. Light, knock him out, but then find the Star-Tsar laying unconscious a few miles away. When they pull his mask off, they see that this new bad guy is...Snapper Carr?!? To be continued!

Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Hawkgirl

Notable Moments: I like the Privateer character. You could argue that with Batman and Green Arrow on the team, the Privateer's skills don't add much to the team, but he looks good with them. Had Englehart clearly not had a plan for the character, it mighta been cool to see him join.

Dick Dillin's work was hardly what you'd call flashy, instead it was reliable and comforting, due to its sheer consistency (sometimes--a lot of time, actually--I think comics need more of that). But once in a while DD would pull a rabbit out of his pencil and come up with a really cool shot:

...you rarely saw the Flash from this angle, and I think it's one of the best representations of how the world looks to Barry Allen.