Justice League of America #125 - Dec. 1975

No way is Batman gonna approve this membership application!

The Story: "The Men Who Sold Destruction!" by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. We open with Green Lantern apprehending some costumed bank robbers, but GL is stunned when they blast him with an energy charge! This knocks GL out and they get away.

Meanwhile, the Flash is helping the curators at a Central City museum figure out how a priceless statue of Napoleon has been switched with a copy--overnight! As the Flash uses his super-speed to check out the molecules of the copy, it suddenly explodes! Just as Flash is getting yelled at by the curator, he gets a JLA distress signal and heads for the satellite.

When Flash arrives, he is shocked to see the villainous Two-Face there, along with members of the JLA! Flash of course heads to attack Mr. Dent, and ignores Superman's admonition to stop, leading to a great moment where Barry shows Clark what "fast" really is:

Green Lantern finally slows the Flash down long enough to explain that Two-Face is there on purpose. Two-Face tells the JLA his story--a few days ago he was contacted by animated statues of Napoleon, Caesar, and Ben Franklin(!), who offer him unimaginable power...for a price.

Two-Face doesn't give them an immediate answer, and then overhears their plan, which involves saving their home planet by transferring excess destructive energy from their planet to Earth, which, when used, will save their planet and destroy Earth. Dent, compulsive as ever, flips a coin to decide what to do...and it came yp heads! And since Batman was "out of town", he came to the JLA for help.

Aquaman then calls the JLA for help, telling them of a prison break at Oceanside Prison(doesn't sound too bad, actually), which of course involves the weird stone historical figures, as well.

The JLA gets there, and defeats them...a little too easily for their tastes. As they try to figure this out, we see the would-be alien destructors start Phase 2 of their plan, which is to attack Earth with their partners in the plan...the Weaponers of Qward! To be continued!

Roll Call: Superman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman

Notable Moments: Gerry Conway's first JLA story. Of course, he would go on to write a lot more issues of the book.

Two-Face fits uneasily in the JLA world, which I think was on purpose. It only underscores the slightly different world that Batman travels in when he's not on JLA cases.

You may have noticed this odd inscription on this issue's cover:

...well, when I was a kid, I occasionally would "ink" over comics I had, which pretty much just meant adding detail lines to the art. I'm not sure what the hell I was thinking, or why I wrote this on the cover. My Mom never threw away my comics, so I was basically talking to myself here, and ruining some of my comics in the process. I manhandled this book so much that I had to restaple it to keep it together.

I was a lonely, indoor kinda kid. Thank God things have changed (hollow laugh).