That is the skinniest Superman I've ever seen!The Story: "Peril of the Paired Planets" by Denny O'Neil, Dick Dillin, and Joe Giella. Both Superman and Batman are felled by some mysterious affliction! Hawkman calls Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Black Canary off leave for help, but the answer to their problems lies on...Earth-2!
Meanwhile, on Earth-2, Red Tornado runs into a spaceship(how do Reddy's powers work in airless space, again?), whose alien passengers knock him out with a laser. They talk of a plan to build a new planet, and to do that, you need energy--energy from two planets, so they rewire Reddy and send him into the void between Earth-1 and Earth-2 and use him as a sort of magnet, drawing the two worlds together, ever closer...
Then on Earth-2, Superman and Dr.Mid-Nite have the same thing happen to them that happened to the Earth-1 Superman and Batman, and when the Jay Garrick Flash falls, so does the Barry Allen one!
Thanks to Red Tornado, people start to see the other-Earth duplicates of themselves all over, causing panic! As the JSA tries to figure out what to do, our three hard-traveling heroes return to the satellite to help. Atom deduces there's some sort of mysterious connection between the two Earths, causing all this trouble.
Black Canary assumes its her, and comes to the conclusion that to solve all this...she must cease to exist! To be continued!
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow Atom, Hawkman, Black Canary
Notable Moments: Ok, I understand Aquaman was off on his quest for Mera, but this is ridiculous. When Superman and Batman are knocked out, Hawkman makes a point to say how low-power the JLA is, so he calls GL, GA, and Canary off leave. At no point does he mention Aquaman. What the heck was going on here?
The first thing I always think when I re-read this issue is, "Batman's Earth 2 counterpart is Dr. Mid-Nite? Really?" It gets even muddier when, iin the next issue, the Earth 2 Batman makes a brief appearance!!! As story ideas go, Black Canary thinking she's some kind of link between the worlds is a good one, but that is the only highlight in what I consider to be a pretty stupid story.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've always been bothered by Dr. Mid-Nite's substitution for Batman. Heck, E2 Robin would have made more sense. When we finally get to see the Earth Two Batman, he's jus sitting with his arms folded, as if to say "Hmmph. Replace me with Mid-Nite, will ya?!?"
ReplyDeleteChris
It wasn't so much that Batman was replaced by Doc Midnite - but if you re-read, Dr. Midnite was attacked, and it was his closest counterpart on Earth-One who was affected - Batman. Not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteThis issue was also one of those issues that I had the first part of and never saw the ending until years later. I hate those. Talk about cliffhangers!
This was the first issue of JLA i'd ever purchased -- or, at age four, more likely "had purchased on my behalf" -- and therefore i shall brook no besmirchment of its merits! This was not only my introduction to the Justice League AND Justice Society -- but, at age four, to the concept of PARALLEL WORLDS -- something that completely BLEW MY MIND back then and kinda still blows it to this day ((if you go to youtube and search on "norb" and "foe" you can see my weird five-minute student movie kind of influenced by said blown mind)). I have a twin on a parallel earth??? And if the dimensional barriers are properly eroded, what happens to him might happen to me??? WHAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH! I also personally thought it was neat that Batman was Dr. Mid-Nite's doppelganger on Earth-1. It didn't make any SENSE, of course, but it was COOL and FREAKY and reverberated with its own manner of inscrutable rightness, i.e., "well, it must make sense somehow, or they wouldn'tve printed it!" The panel where Creator2 observes the big screen of the full JSA membership remains perhaps my all-time favorite comic book panel, ever, and nobody could ink cowls like Joe Giella. I think this was Denny O'Neil's masterpiece, and i'm GLAD that dopey orange Aquaman wasn't around to throw off the visual feng shooey of the whole affair ((that guy could've gotten his walking papers after "The Doom of the Star Diamond" IMO, though he does have pretty rad cartoons)).
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