Justice League of America #240 - July 1985

A blast from the past for the JLA!

The Story: "The Future Ain't What It Used To Be!" by Kurt Busiek, Mike Sekowsky, and Tom Mandrake. Early morning at S.T.A.R. Labs, Temporal Research Division (of course they have one of those), we see two scientists, named, er, Fred and Daphne, discover something amazing--a human figure trapped in the timestream!

They use a handy (very handy) machine to get information on this time traveler, "viewing" events from his life, and they learn this man is Dr. Phineas Quayle, one of the world's leading physicists.

One day, in 1932, he came home to find an armed man waiting for him, who demands money! Dr. Quayle is no easy mark, however, and he quickly knocks the man upside the head with his umbrella, knocking him over.

But the doctor is also a kind man, and offers the disheveled man a meal and a few bucks to tide him over.

The man accepts, but Quayle realizes something bigger must be done, something to help all the people in the grip of this countrywide depression. He decides to build nothing less than a time machine, to go into the future, find a solution to the depression, and bring it back to his time!

He actually succeeds at this, landing in the mid-1960s. Scenes of an assassinated president, campus unrest, and riots in the streets horrify him. How did all this happen?

He determines its because of all these so-called "super-heroes":

A malfunction with his time machine makes Quayle realize he cannot return to 1932, stranding him in his horrible new time.

He can, however, look into the future, and sees that things only get worse--an endless war in Southeast Asia, a president who resigns in disgrace, and this "Justice League" living in an orbiting satellite, like overlords. Enough!

He decides to fight the JLA in their own terms, as a supervillain, Dr. Anomaly!:

He then goes about capturing each of the JLAers, using weapons derived from the future. In short work he captures Superman, then Aquaman, then Hawkman, then Batman, condensing them all and placing them in tiny colored jars!

The rest of the JLA arrives at their Secret Sanctuary, wondering where everyone else is. Suddenly Anomaly attacks them in their own HQ, and the JLAers seem no match for him!

The Flash tries to run rings about Anomaly and trap him in a super-speed vortex, leading to this hilarious pay-off:

...I love how GL and Wonder Woman don't even bother to help as their friend hurtles past them.

While the others try and stop Anomaly, we see the Superman jar start to wobble, toppling itself over onto the floor, where it cracks!

Anomaly's lab explodes, as we see the trapped JLAers, now reformed, burst forth! Anomaly is trapped, realizing even he can't fight them all at once. He only has one option--to disappear into the timestream!

Back with Fred and Daphne, who reason that Anomaly didn't follow a specific path in the timestream, so he couldn't be followed. But that left him stuck there, until an explosion rocks their lab, and there before them is...Dr. Anomaly!

Anomaly gets his bearings--its 1985--and says if he is to save the world, he "better get cracking!" He disappears once again.

Fred and Daphne are stunned, and leave their lab. Over the course of this, the two have let on they have feelings for one another, so they decide to have dinner and talk about...the future.

Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman (all in flashback)

Notable Moments: I am of two minds about this issue.

First, its a delightfully charming story, capturing a lot of the goofy fun of the 60s JLA stories, but with a modern slant. And having the JLA's original artist, Mike Sekowsky, return to the book after almost 20 years was an ingenious touch.

My only problem is, I think they couldn't have run this at a worse time. The new JLA was a wobbly contraption at best, and they had just finally wrapped up the last loose end (i.e., the departure of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Flash). Now was the time to plunge straight into a new JLA-only tale, one that might've helped establish these new heroes are the rightful heirs to the JLA legacy.

Instead, we get a jokey story, featuring nothing but the biggest names in the DCU. As a reader at the time, I felt like the new JLA's momentum--such as it was--was stopped dead in its tracks.

Coming to think of it, this would've made a great issue of JLA: Classified.

Justice League of America #232 - Nov. 1984

The second part of the JLA/JSA team-up as they take on The Commander!

The Story: "Battlegrounds" by Kurt Busiek and Alan Kupperberg. Picking up from last issue, the two sets of heroes split up to try and take on the assaults of a mysterious being named The Commander.

While Superman, The Flash, Starman, and Dr. Mid-Nite return from an alternate dimension with their young charges' father in tow, Dr. Fate, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Green Lantern have just defeated a horde of demons that appeared outside the Pentagon.

Dr. Fate has all the demons trapped in a giant mystical black blobby thing, and says he needs a mystic pentagram to contain their evil. Since there's a pentagram already on hand, he decides to bury the evil under it, an idea that tickles Supergirl:

Finally, the other heroes arrive, except not as they planned...this time, Superman, et al are on the attack!

Acting as if possessed, the heroes try and fight off their friends without doing permanent harm. At the same time, the kids' father wakes up, still under the control of the mysterious Commander.

One of the kids, a young girl named Vicky, tries to pull her father out of his "trance", but it doesn't work. She tries to get her siblings to help out, but their brother, Ian, is disgusted with this whole thing, and refuses.

Wonder Woman finally ensnares the rogue heroes in her Magic Lasso, telling them to cease hostilities. It works...for the moment.

Ian finally realizes that whoever is controlling his Dad has to be eliminated if he ever wants to settle up with him, so he joins forces with his sisters. They then combine their abilities with the heroes, which is enough to rend The Commander out of their Father's body!

The heroes think this means the Big C has had to go back to his own dimension, but Dr. Fate isn't so sure. As usual, Dr. Fate is right about these kind of things:

The Commander gives the hero a classic Super-Villain Back Story, featuring tales of conquest and how he managed to defeat everyone he could find, until there was no one left to battle!

When he met up with the mind of the old man, he used him as a portal to this new dimension, where the promise of new battles await him!

As you can imagine, the heroes don't take too well to this. As Dr. Fate and the kids try and open up a portal back to his own dimension, the other heroes team-up and try and knock him into it.

He's almost defeated, but refuses to give up. Just then, the Monitor, who has been watching all this from his satellite, peeks in on The Commander. That distracts him just a for a moment, but that is enough for him to be knocked back to his home dimension!

But The Commander refuses to go, so instead he ruptured his own form, and the portal itself, sending the heroes hurtling through different dimensions! While protected by Green Lantern's power ring, they see glimpses of things that don't quite make sense...to them:

The heroes orient themselves when they see the Crime Syndicate, still in their inter-dimensional prison bubble, and head home to Earth-1.

The JSA says goodbye, and then Mr. Champion and his kids, still with some of the powers they received from The Commander, take off as well, on an inter-dimensional vacation.

Superman doesn't think that's a great idea, but Flash insists all is well, and challenges him to a race back to the satellite!

Roll Call: Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash

Notable Moments: That little cameo by the Crime Syndicate was a nice, if sorta nasty, touch--these poor saps are stuck in this little bubble, for all eternity, basically.

There's a lot of crazy mystical mumbo-jumbo going on in this issue, so I bet my summary is a bit confusing. It reads better, trust me.

As I said with Part 1, this was the last JLA/JSA team-up, at least in the form we all recognize.

Around this time, DC released its second DC Sampler book, featuring our first glimpse of all the all-new Justice League:

...its interesting to see that there were changes made to the new JLA very late in process--in this image, Vixen is wearing a mask, Gypsy's green eye make-up is much more pronounced, making it look more like a mask, and Vibe is colored much darker than he ever was in the regular JLA book. Hmm...

Justice League of America #231 - Oct. 1984

The final JLA/JSA team-up...at least, as we knew them.

The Story: "Family Crisis" by Kurt Busiek and Alan Kupperberg. So where the heck have Superman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash been during the Martian Invasion? We're about to find out!

This issue opens narrated by an unknown being, as it surveys the history of Earth...cavemen, baseball, Batman, the Eiffel Tower, I Love Lucy, advertising...all of it.

We see this being hone in on something called "the League" and we find Green Lantern deep in space, the Phantom Stranger wandering a dimension beyond understanding, and Ray Palmer on a search to find a lost city.

We also see many of the other members of this "League" heads toward Earth as it prepares to meet up with the strange spaceship heading towards the East Coast...and less then a few moments after that, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and guest-star Supergirl arrive:

Suddenly three...children(!) arrive, claiming to need the Justice League's help! The JLAers agree, and they all disappear together.

They arrive on Earth-2, in time to see their JSA friends under attack by a group of...flying monkeys? The JLA pitch in, of course:

This strange narrator takes stock of all the heroes, deeming them all to be "obstacles"...except for Dr. Mid-Nite, whose paltry powers seem insignificant compared to the rest of his fellow heroes.

Suddenly, the flying monkeys disappear, replaced by the giant visage of a man, who demands absolute surrender!

Turns out this this man is the kids' Father, and they tell the heroes that one day, their fatherm, while working for the FBI, suddenly vanished without a trace. He then reappeared in the same ghostly form, talking gibberish about bloodlines and great power.

The kids learned that when the three of them are together, they have amazing powers, and they can seemingly "follow" their father's trail. Dr. Fate has them divide up into teams to try and find the place where the next "attack" (that the kids' father warned of) is going to take place.

One of the kids makes a random comment about the Pentagon, and the heroes, not having a better idea, head there. When they get there, they discover a horde of demons!

Meanwhile, the other group of heroes arrive in an alternate dimension, where they discover a fantastic domed city. When they make their way in, they are met by a machine that calls itself The Commander, which flashes a light at them, causing them all to live out their deepest fantasies:

...oops, looks like Dr. Mid-Nite isn't quite so useless!

The doc throws one of his blackout bombs that wakes the others up, and they find the kids father, hooked up to the weird machine. They grab him and take off, heading for home.

The other heroes defeat the demons at the Pentagon, and as they await their friends' return, we learn that this is all part of The Commander's plan! To be continued!

Roll Call: Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash

Notable Moments: Is it me, or was Supergirl written as a more interesting, captivating character just before she was bumped off? She's a lot of fun here, kinda making jokey asides during all the action. I would've loved to have seen this Supergirl maybe join JLA Detroit!

The Dr. Mid-Nite bit is a great moment; he's dismissed early on but ends up being the only one who can save Superman, Flash, and Starman! Pretty good, no?

The JLA logo gets a face-lift as of this issue, the first time in about fifteen years.

We'll be a little out of sequence tomorrow, since we'll be talking about the second part of this story in JLA #232, instead of Justice League of America Annual #2, which came out this same month.

Instead, the second Annual will be covered on Tuesday, to be followed by an all-new JLA Satellite interview with...Gerry Conway!

Justice League of America #224 - March 1984

Who is Paragon? Let's find out!

The Story: "The Supremacy Factor" by Kurt Busiek, Chuck Patton, and Dick Giordano. We open on an outdoor cafe, where Clark Kent, Hal Jordan, and Oliver Queen are meeting for lunch.

Ollie notices that Dinah, who was also supposed to be there, is late. Where is she?

Well, as we see, Dinah, in her guise as Black Canary, is about to stop a mugging, except...the victim is not exactly helpless. She sees him, clad in a trench coat, take on the muggers--all of them--at the same time!

Things quickly get even stranger, when the muggee starts doling out a beating far beyond what's necessary, and Canary steps in just as this guy is about to kill them.

When Canary tells him to stop, we see he's wearing a mask, and he quickly turns his attention to her. And she learns within seconds that she isn't any match for this guy, even with her Canary Cry!

Miles away, Clark Kent hears Dinah's cry, and alerts his friends. They take off, just in time to save Black Canary from taking a real beating at the hands of this strange man. I love the way this sequence is laid out by Chuck Patton:

...Superman knocks this guy off his feet, but when he takes a pause to look after Canary, he takes on one the jaw, sending him skyward!

Greens Lantern and Arrow arrive, but not before the bad guy had gotten away. Superman returns (mentioning "...happy to report the Ozone Layer is still there", a great line), but with a piece of this mystery man's coat in his hand, containing a clue.

Back at the satellite, the JLA does some investigating, and Firestorm's other half, Martin Stein, recognizes the note found as containing "Transubstantive RNA Coding", which has had great strides made in it by a Dr. Joel Cochin.

Green Arrow wants to head off and bust some heads, but Black Canary stops him, providing us with a beautiful close-up:

...Patton and Giordano make a great art team.

Anyway, Arrow, Canary, and Firestorm find Cochin's house, and its unusual in that all the windows and doors are shuttered, with no way to see in.

It doesn't take long until Cochin reveals himself, in his identity as the supervillain Paragon, who explains he has found to a way to absorb superpowers from people near him, and turn them back on the original owners!

He makes quick work of the three heroes, trusses them up, classic supervillain style, and tells them his ultimate plan is have a machine he's built eliminate 90% of the world--those he deems "inferior"--leaving him to rule the rest!

The other JLAers show up, smashing their way in, but it gives Paragon more power. It isn't until Black Canary figures out his powers work within a certain proximity, so the JLAers use their abilities from a distance, keeping Paragon without power.

He's left groggy and weak from repeated blows, until Black Canary gives him a boot in the face. The end.

Or is it? The JLAers wonder, how are they going to keep this guy in jail?

Roll Call: Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Red Tornado, Firestorm

Notable Moments: Another fine fill-in; its revealed that Paragon's super-smarts are inborn, making him a rarity, a mutant in the DC universe.

As I said above, the combo of Chuck Patton and Dick Giordano is excellent; Giordano adds a nice edge to Patton's pencils. Too bad this was their only collaboration.

This is Green Lantern's last appearance as a member of the JLA; events in his regular title around this time (being exiled by the Guardians, then replaced full-time by John Stewart) kept him out of the book for extended periods of time.

Eventually, when the rest of the "old" JLA is officially purged from the team, Green Lantern is given a one-line mention, officially ending his time with the League.