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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.
One of my all-time favorite issues, because, of course, it is the rarest of JLA stories--it centers on Aquaman, even if it seems like he's dead inside(don't believe it).
The Story: "The Great Identity Crisis!" by Martin Pasko, Dick Dillin, and Frank McLaughlin. We are told that this is an "Untold Tale From the JLA Casebook" that opens with the JLA kicking the butt of some giant ice creature. Just another day in the DCU.
Since they are near Superman's Fortress, they take the creature there for safekeeping. After the JLA departs, we see the creature changes shape, easily escaping the cage.
This mystery man then picks up some Amnesium from Superman's armory and shoots a ray gun through it, wiping out the memory of the JLAers civilian identities. He remarks that it won't work on Superman, and Aquaman doesn't have a secret ID, but he has other plans for them.
He then fires at them again, scrambling their memories, so they falsely remember who they are(Green Arrow thinks he's Ray Palmer, etc.). Superman and Aquaman notice the guys are acting funny, so they decide to trail them.
While in the deep, dark ocean depths, Aquaman comes across a Lantern Fish, but we see that the fish is a decoy, a trap of the villainous...Dr. Light! The fish explodes, and Aquaman is presumed dead.
Meanwhile, the various JLAers(Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Batman, Atom) fall prey to deathtraps that, were they who they think they are, could've escaped!
Dr.Light, holed up in the Fortress, starts putting his master plan in place(involving mirage doubles and other fun), the JLAers show up, having escaped the deathtraps! Light is confused, but at least he killed Aquaman, right? Wrong!:
Anyway, it turns out tha Aquaman, under his rarely-used civilian identity of Arthur Curry(and looking quite Plaid Stallion-y in the process):
...found Oliver Queen and Ray Palmer and helped them out of their jams. Superman rounded up Batman, then Flash, who then saved Green Lantern, and now they're all here!
Dr. Light activates his mirages, as well as wrapping Supes in some kryptonite rings. Aquaman uses Superman's cape to round up some of the mirages, and then to save Flash(who is being trailed by some anti-matter mirages and will kill him if he stops running away from them) by having Barry vibrate through the cape, which traps the evil duplicates, causing them all to explode.
They then gang up, disarm Dr.Light, and save Superman. Supes then crushes the Amnesium, and they all make a promise to exchange their secret IDs with each other so nothing like this can happen again!
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Atom
Notable Moments: Martin Pasko, I owe you a drink.
Obviously, as a kid, I simply loved this issue(and I'm not the only one), since not only does Aquaman get a lot to do, but he comes up with a way out of Dr.Light's plan, and its his idea how to save each of the JLAers individually. And, other than the one brief scene involving the lantern fish, none of it takes place in the water, underscoring a belief I've always had about the character--you don't need to write water-centric stories to make Aquaman an effective, impressive hero.
Judging by Green Arrow's duds, this story takes place after JLA #75, which wasn't all that long ago. The story is unusual for the fact that the JLA satellite is never shown.
The nifty cover is by Mike Grell, who had drawn the cover to JLA #117 and had also drawn Aquaman's solo back-up series in the Spectre issues of Adventure Comics right around this time. As a graphic artist, that pattern Grell uses on the site of Aquaman's tombstone haunts my dreams.
I've had dreams like this, except the JLAers were happy.
The Story: "T.O.Morrow Kills the Justice League--Today!" by Gardner Fox, Dick Dillin, and Sid Greene. Part Two of yesterday's JLA/JSA team-up, it opens with some of the JLA's spouses(Jean Loring, Hawkgirl, Mera, etc.) showing up and planting big wet ones on their partners, which renders the heroes immobile!
Turns out they were anti-matter duplicates made by Morrow in an attempt to get to the other members, where Morrows uses his futuristic abilities to make elements of the JLA Souvenir Room come alive and attack them!
Eventually, its Red Tornado who finds a way to defeat T.O.Morrow, just as his supercomputer predicted might happen!
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman
Notable Moments: In an attempt to rescue the immobile JLAers, Red Tornado calls on the real better halves, figuring a real kiss would undo what the anti-matter kiss did:
...lordy, what a weird panel. Wonder Woman looks totally bored, Red Tornado staring, and the odd, fan-fic-esque feeling you get watching Jean Loring kiss a tiny Ray. *shudder*
The bigger news is that this is Gardner Fox's last issue as writer of the Justice League. Obviously, change was in the air, since longtime artist Mike Sekowsky left just two issues earlier.
As good and enjoyable as it was, Fox's "Monster of the Month" style, filled with mostly interchangable heroes, was starting to look old hat in the age of Marvel and it's very specifically characterized heroes. And we'd see that in the JLA, but soon!
A very fun issue, one of my all-time favorites. I first discovered via the Super Friends treasury comic, that probably had a lot to do with it!
The Story: "Operation: Jail the Justice League" by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Sid Greene. Green Arrow arrives at a JLA meeting to tell them he is quitting the JLA! (While Wonder Woman protests "No one's ever resigned from the JLA!", Flash quietly thinks to himself "Now's the time to call Adam Strange.")
He warns them that some disastrous fate awaits them, and they should all quit superheroing. Surprisingly, the JLA doesn't listen and they all decide to pose as the Emerald Archer to find out just what's going on. While they each fight their respective villains as Green Arrow, they are all defeated and mysteriously change bodies with their foes! Then the "bad guys" are jailed while the real bad guys get to go out and commit crimes.
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman
Notable Moments: This is an extraordinairily fun story--goofy but without the (at times) lugubrious plotting that Fox stories sometimes had.
As the JLAers dress up as Green Arrow, Fox decided to have little ironic distance and just be up front with the readers that Wonder Woman couldn't quite pull it off.
...this is probably the very first time any sort of irony appared in the JLA, after sixty plus issues. Kind of remarkable, really, since comics now are almost all irony.
At the end, all the JLAers and all the bad guys end up in the same place, so of course they decide to beat the crap out of each other. Sekowksky gives us a classic two-page donnybrook:
...Superman really took the easy way out, didn't he? And how humiliating was it for The Tattooed Man that he's taken out by Snapper Carr?
Can the JLA defeat a villain who can become the entire JLA?
The story: "The Triumph of the Tornado Tyrant!" by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Bernard Sachs. A strange creature known as the Tornado Tyrant is convinced it can defeat the Justice League since it has been studying them and even duplicating their abilities by creating anti-matter versions of the JLA. But of course the JLA figures out a way to outsmart the creature!
Roll Call: Superman, Batman Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, The Atom
Notable Moments: Features cameos by Adam Strange, Kanjar Ro, and Dr.Light, as the Tornado Tyrant watches the JLA from afar in their battles. A fun touch.
This issue is also memorable to me because a sequel of sorts was done twenty years later in JLA #s 192 and 193 by Gerry Conway and George Perez. It adds so much to this story with that knowledge in the back of your head.
Another classic villain debuts--the infamous Dr.Light!
The story: "The Last Case of the Justice League!" by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Bernard Sachs. Snapper Carr arrives at the JLA Secret Sanctuary only to find a goofball who calls himself "Dr. Light" there, and he tells Snapper the tale he likes to call "The Last Case of the Justice League!"
Dr.Light uses his Disco Ball of Doom to send JLAers to other worlds--Aquaman to an all-desert planet, Manhunter to an all-fire planet, etc. Luckily, Superman and Batman senses something was up before they were transported, and switched identities, which helps them escape and then rescue the other JLAers.
Roll Call: Superman, Batman Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow
Notable Moments: Another longtime villain makes his first appearance--Gardner Fox was on a Stan Lee-esque run here, where with each issue he was creating a new bad guy that would go on to have a long run as a DC villain.
There's a letter by a Paul Gambaccini, who later became a famous radio and TV commentator and music producer in the UK. He never lost his love of comics though, and was tapped to write the intro to The Justice League of America Archives Vol.1.
