Hmm, we've caught the JLA at a slightly busy moment...The Story: "Under the Moons of Earth!" by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. We open with Ray Palmer and Jean "Trouble" Loring on an evening out, talking about their upcoming marriage.
While Ray is still torn over whether to tell Jean he's The Atom, he notices something a little odd...there are two moons in the sky! I'm no astronomer, but I don't think that's right.
The sudden appearance of two moons causing all kinds of disastrous events to occur, like earthquakes and erupting volcanoes. Red Tornado, on JLA Monitor Duty, is overwhelmed with all the requests for help.
Luckily Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman arrive, and head off to help out. Meanwhile, Batman meets up with Reddy in India, where they are spied upon by two mysterious aliens.
The two aliens then try and steal radioactive rods inside a nuclear plant. Batman tires to stop them, but one of them bursts into dust when hit, and the other escapes.
Supes and Lantern head to this new moon, where they run into a whole armada of aliens. After a quick fight, the leader of aliens surrenders, but tells the heroes that if they move this moon out of its new orbit, everyone on it will die!
The JLA continue saving lives, and there's a nice moment where Red Tornado drops into the ocean, exhausted from stopping an undersea volcano from going off. Batman makes sure to save his friend:
Meanwhile, Reddy and Bats run into more aliens on Earth's surface, including the one with the stolen nuclear rods, which he admits will be used to destroy all life on Earth! Once Batman gets them away from him (this is Batman, after all), he tells Supes and GL what he knows, and they demand the truth. What's going on here?
Turns out this new moon is actually from the past, who ended up getting knocked into the time stream because of a masive war they were fighting with a neighboring moon. They were afraid of telling the JLA the truth, but the JLA surprises them by saying they're willing to help, but moving the moon into the far future, solving everyone's problems!
The issue ends with Reddy ruminating over the fact that all this destruction could have been avoided if the aliens had just been honest. "When you expect the worst", Reddy says, "you usually receive it."
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Atom, Black Canary, Elongated Man, Red Tornado
Notable Moments: All the JLAers appear in this issue except the Hawks. Odd. (Although this was the same month the Halls started fighting in the Rann/Thanagar War, as detailed in Showcase #101, so maybe they were a little busy!)
A fun issue, and one of the gigantic scope that comics used to have all to itself until movie special effects caught up. This issue feels like one of those super-fun Irwin Allen disaster movies of the 70s.
3 comments:
Wow, this seems like a really awesome issue! I really like that buddy moment between Reddy and Bats. Bats may be a stick in the mud, but he knows who his friends are!
Also: Damn you Rob! You will NOT get me to collect JLA...
This was the first issue of JLA I ever had bought for me. I was only 3 and a half at the time! I know by that point I had been watching the Super Friends religiously, but I'm not sure if I had picked up the comic yet. But this was definitely my intro to folks like Reddy and Ralph. I definitely remember the Batman/Reddy exchange. I stil have part of my dog-earred copy of this, I need to get one with a cover!
Chris
The good old days when Batman had friends and smiled and wasn't just a total a-hole.
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