Where the heck is my Justice League?!?The story: "Earth--Without a Justice League!" by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Bernard Sachs. The Earth-One Johnny Thunder--who's even a bigger jerk than Snapper Carr--commands the Thunderbolt to rid Earth-One of superheroes, so he goes back and time and does just that. Done and done!
The JSA tries to impersonate the JLA and defeat Johnny and his Thunderbolt, but it doesn't work and the evil Johnny creates a new JLA, made up of bad guys! To be continued!
Roll Call: No JLAers appear in this issue at all, only JSA members Atom, Dr.Fate, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Mr. Terrific!
Notable Moments: The sequence where the Thunderbolt prevents the creation of the various Justice Leaguers is classic--why didn't half the supervillains of the world think of this? And the Batman sequence is especially wild:
...I love Sekowsky's gloss on the Bob Kane Batman, and Bats' thought-balloon in the second panel is so hysterically deadpan I can't tell whether Fox was trying to be funny or playing it totally straight.
Yeah, "I've devoted my entire life to becoming a vigilante, but I didn't expect to actually get hit! That's it, I'm done with this!"
ReplyDeleteHa, sorta' ridiculous. Still, this was a pretty good story, and I thought it held up better than most SA tales.
For a looong time, this was the earliest issue of JLoA that I had, purchased for a dime at a flea market. I loved this ragged beast and re-read it over and over again. The bad part is that I had to wait almost two decades to find and buy #38 to finally find out how it ended!
ReplyDeleteI know it looked better because Batman was actually in his costume (for the first time) & Sekowsky did a great job of channeling Bob Kane's original. But even when I read it for the first time back in 1965, I thought wouldn't it have even more effectively prevented Batman's creation if the T-Bolt had stopped Bruce Wayne's parents from being killed. More humane for young Bruce Wayne, too. lol
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