Previously: We continue to explore the history and membership of DC Comics’ original super-team, the Justice Society of America. When we left off, the JSA had just lost their 1970s solo series, and looked to be relegated to permanent JLA guest-star status. However, someone was about to come along to change that…

After a lengthy career at Marvel Comics in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, writer Roy Thomas must have been excited to make the move to DC Comics in 1981. Despite an amazingly successful career at Marvel, writing practically every book the company published (including landmark runs on AVENGERS, X-MEN and CONAN THE BARBARIAN), as well as a two-year stint as Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, Thomas’ heart had always lay with another: the Justice Society of America. As one of the very first fans-turned-professionals, Thomas and his fellow comic-book fan Jerry Bails had self-published their own fanzine, ALTER EGO, as teenagers, and both Thomas and Bails shared a powerful love for the Justice Society. Now, Thomas was finally coming to work for DC, and the JSA would soon be his.

Kind of.

Rather than jump right into a brand-new, modern-day Justice Society series, Thomas combined his two lifelong interests, comics and history, with a new series set in World War II that would make extensive use of what Thomas would come to call “retroactive continuity.” That is, Thomas would tell new adventures of not just the Justice Society, but practically all of DC Comics’s WWII-era heroes, while not invalidating the comics that were actually published in those years, instead spinning his tales before, after, in between and sometimes during those original Golden Age stories. It’s an ambitious trick to pull off, and Thomas accomplishes it remarkably well, starting with the first issue of his new series, ALL-STAR SQUADRON, written and conceived by him and drawn by Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway.

 

ALL-STAR SQUADRON worked around an appealing premise: In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt organizes all of the United States’ super-heroes (or “mystery men,” as they were referred to in the series) as a kind of homeland guard corps, protecting America from attacks by the Axis powers, as well as working to uncover saboteurs and other intelligence plots against the U.S. This helped solve the central narrative dilemma of a book like this: why wouldn’t the superheroes just fly to Berlin and end the war in a week? (Also helping to explain that was a neat little plot wrinkle, that Adolf Hitler possessed the Spear of Destiny, a magical relic that would convert any hero particularly susceptible to magic to the cause of the Third Reich the moment they stepped into Axis-held territory. Since all of the most powerful characters, such as Superman, Green Lantern, Dr. Fate and the Spectre, were either magic-based or established as being susceptible, it kept Berlin, Rome and Tokyo free of unwanted Allied guests.)

 

Thomas made use of an enormous cast in ALL-STAR SQUADRON, basically every superhero DC published in the 1940s (all of whom were established as living on Earth-Two). While the Justice Society members appeared often as guest-stars, both individually and as a team, Thomas used a mix of characters old and new as his core team, including JSA members Hawkman and the Atom, classic characters like Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle and Robotman, and new creations like a female version of the Quality hero Firebrand.

The success of the ALL-STAR SQUADRON series allowed Thomas to branch out to a second series set on modern-day Earth-Two, this one with an even more direct connection to the Justice Society. March 1984 saw the publication of the first issue of INFINITY, INC., a brand-new super-hero team made up of the children, godchildren and proteges of the JSA.

 

Written by Thomas and drawn by Jerry Ordway, INFINITY, INC., started off with a time-honored tradition in comics, the old “good guys fight due to a misunderstanding” routine. Here, the Justice Society’s emergency meeting is interrupted by a group of young’uns demanding membership, who happen to all be related to the JSA in some form or fashion.

 

Introduced here are the Silver Scarab, son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl; Fury, Wonder Woman’s daughter; Northwind, the half-human, half-birdman godson of Hawkman and Hawkgirl; Nuklon, the Atom’s “nephew”; and Obsidian and Jade, the heretofore unknown (even by him) son and daughter of the Green Lantern. When the kids’ membership request is refused (despite the votes of younger JSAers Robin, the Huntress, Power Girl and the Star-Spangled Kid), the youngsters leave in a huff, just before the JSA receive another, even more unwelcome visitor: their old enemy Brain Wave.

 

Brain Wave was working with another JSA opponent, the Ultra-Humanite, a scientific genius best known for frequently transplanting his brain into different bodies. Together, the two villains manage to expose the JSA to the Stream of Ruthlessness, that mystical river which turns men’s souls to evil, which the JSA first encountered way back in ALL-STAR COMICS #36 in 1947. Now, the JSA’s children find themselves forced to fight their parents and mentors, with much higher stakes than in their earlier playful skirmish.

 

Thomas shows his mastery of both comic-book history and characterization here, in finding what each member cared most about, and how, if given to evil, that desire would manifest itself. For example, Superman’s love and protectiveness toward his home of Metropolis is perverted into his cruel conquest of the city and isolation of it from the rest of the world, a reign that his cousin Power Girl finds herself determined to stop. An even better example can be found in Robin, who finds himself at odds with the Huntress, who risks life and limb to prevent her deluded “brother” from murdering an aged and senile Boss Zucco, the gangster who murdered his parents, now deteriorating in a prison sickbed.

 

The storyline came to an exciting close in INFINITY, INC #10 (under an excellent Jerry Ordway cover that nicely paid tribute to the classic cover from ALL-STAR COMICS #37), in which the Infinitors manage to defeat both the JSA and the Ultra-Humanite, with the help of a reformed Brain Wave and his son, Brainwave Jr., who shut down Ultra-Humanite’s mental powers, trapping him in his gorilla body, and destroy the last remnants of the Stream of Ruthlessness.

 

While Power Girl and the Huntress remain with the Justice Society, the Star-Spangled Kid agrees to lead the young superheroes (including Brainwave Jr.) in their own team, which would be based out of Los Angeles, California.

With ALL-STAR SQUADRON running smoothly and INFINITY, INC. now off to a strong start, the time was right for Roy Thomas to embark upon his most ambitious JSA-related project, a 4-issue miniseries that would summarize and firmly establish the complete history of the Justice Society of America.

 

AMERICA VS. THE JUSTICE SOCIETY (January 1985) is probably Thomas’ most accomplished work with the characters, as he manages to retell practically every JSA story ever published, while still crafting a suspenseful and satisfying mystery. The story opens with a front-page shocker from the Daily Planet, revealing the existence of a diary written by Batman before he died, in which he accuses the Justice Society of being Nazi spies under the command of Adolf Hitler.

 

Soon the Justice Society are taken into custody, pending a Congressional investigation, with the team’s younger members remaining unaccused.

 

While the JSA go willingly under arrest (since no military force on the planet could forcibly take the JSA anywhere), the heart of the team itself is divided when the Congressional hearings begin: while the Justice Society retains Helena Wayne as their attorney (secretly JSA member the Huntress, Batman’s daughter), the Congressional committee investigating the treason charges enlists their own attorney, Richard Grayson, a.k.a. JSA member Robin. (Grayson was hired due to his parental ties to Bruce Wayne, who, in his last days as Gotham police commissioner, had publicly railed against the Justice Society, having given up his own Batman identity after the death of his wife Selina Kyle.)

 

The pieces now in place, Thomas gives us a first-rate courtroom drama, as Helena Wayne defends the Justice Society against these heinous charges by having the JSA recount their complete history, allowing for numerous guest stars and surprise witnesses, including the Spectre, Power Girl and even the surprise witness for the prosecution, longtime JSA enemy the Wizard, all while a conflicted Dick Grayson struggles with his own conscience in siding with the memory of his “father” over his loyalty to his friends and teammates.

 

The story structure also gives Thomas a great opportunity for character moments for some of the less popular JSA members, as they recount their personal triumphs, defeats and failings before the committee.

 

As the hearings progress, it becomes clearer and clearer that one of the committee members has a personal agenda, and while public opinion and the other committee members begin to side with the JSA, Dick Grayson finally decides to do a little investigating of his own on the Batman diary, and eventually discovers that the diary, while authentic, was actually Bruce Wayne’s subconscious way to warn his estranged friends in the JSA about the return of Per Degaton, whom he’d paroled while entrenched in his irrational vendetta against the Justice Society in the ’70s. The JSA shows up just as Degaton is about to kill Dick Grayson, and, knowing he’s beaten, the ancient Degaton takes the coward’s way out, committing suicide.

 

AMERICA VS. THE JUSTICE SOCIETY is Roy Thomas’s best moment with the Justice Society characters. It’s a good thing it happened when it did, because 1985 would also signal the beginning of the end for Thomas’ tour of duty with the JSA characters, in the coming of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. As we’ve discussed quite a few times in these pages, DC’s CRISIS 12-issue miniseries revised and reordered the DC Universe, eliminating the “parallel Earths” concept. As a result, Earth-Two, where Roy Thomas had devoted most of his efforts since coming to DC Comics, was no more, its characters incorporated into the new, unified timeline. Accordingly, JSA members Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman and the Huntress (as well as All-Star Squadron members Green Arrow, Speedy and Aquaman) no longer existed, creating large gaps in the JSA’s history, some of which have only in recent years been remedied. INFINITY, INC. felt the impact as well, as founding member Fury could no longer be Wonder Woman’s daughter, since Wonder Woman, according to the new timeline, didn’t appear until the 1980s. Somehow Power Girl managed to escape oblivion on a technicality, despite her connections to Superman, although numerous new origins and backstories have been assigned her, none of which seems to satisfy anyone. While Thomas struggled to patch all the holes in his now-leaky continuity, another decision was made, one that would seem to put an end to the JSA permanently.

 

Thinking that the demise of Earth-Two made the JSA heroes somehow redundant, the decision was made by DC higher-ups to put them out to pasture, in the one-shot special LAST DAYS OF THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA, by Thomas and artist Dave Ross.

 

Thomas got to indulge himself with one more wartime adventure featuring the old, pre-Crisis JSA lineup, then segued into the result of that battle, as Hitler used the Spear of Destiny to bring about Armageddon, resulting in the end of the world in 1945, which then caught up with the JSAers in 1986. To prevent the end of the world, Dr. Fate transported the JSA to the otherworldly realm of Asgard, where the Justice Society would forever battle in the place of the Norse gods, preventing the end of the world by dying in fierce combat with Surtur and his forces over and over and being forever reborn.

 

LAST DAYS is another strong effort from Roy Thomas, moving and even a touch poetic, but still horribly morose, as we get to see most of the JSA members die at least twice in its pages, and know that they’ve got countless more deaths coming to them. Hurrah.

 

Fully expecting the JSA to be gone for good, Thomas and artist Todd McFarlane even devoted a full issue of INFINITY, INC. to a JSA memorial, as the Infinitors go about the chore of informing the Justice Society’s friends and family of their departure from this world.

 

Even with the JSA issue tabled, Thomas was never able to really recover from the loss of the Earth-Two concept, and the creative quality of both ALL-STAR SQUADRON and INFINITY, INC. suffered greatly. DC decisionmakers seemed to agree, and despite decent continued sales, both series were cancelled by 1989. DC Comics, it would seem, was no longer in the Justice Society business.

However, it takes more than that to put away the JSA. Acceding to reader demands, the Justice Society was pulled out of limbo in the 1992 series ARMAGEDDON: INFERNO, and by August made their triumphant return to their own series in JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #1.

 

The new ongoing monthly by writer Len Strazewski and artist Mike Parobeck, focused primarily on the adjustments of a now senior-citizen JSA in returning to a world that had gone on without them. This, I think, was its downfall. While the characters’ ages naturally need to be addressed, far too much emphasis was given to dialogue of a “back in my day” and “remember when…” nature, and that was from the more youthful members like Flash and Green Lantern. Even worse was the series’ characterization of the Atom, who had become a whining, nagging crank, almost as if Dana Carvey’s old SNL character Grumpy Old Man had become a superhero.

 

The attempt to stress the characters’ unique perspective as senior citizens is understandable, but without another voice to counterbalance it, it quickly became tedious. An attempt was made to vitalize the series by introducing Jesse Quick, the speedster daughter of All-Star Squadron member (and new JSA member) Johnny Quick, but it didn’t help much, as the character was used primarily as a venue for hero-worship of the elder Justice Society members.

 

(Jesse was later used to excellent effect by Mark Waid in his FLASH run.) The series also dwelled a little too much on death and mortality, between Wes Dodds’ (a.k.a. the Sandman) slow convalescence from a stroke, Hourman’s coping with his son’s chemotherapy and the near-constant bellyaching of the Atom about being too old for superheroing. The series only ran for 10 issues, and despite its weaknesses is still well worth picking up, especially for the wonderful art by the great Mike Parobeck, who died far too early from complications of diabetes in 1996.

After a another year and a half, DC editors were out for blood once more, this time ending the Justice Society in the most ignominious manner yet, in the unreadable muddle of a miniseries known as ZERO HOUR. The comic was written and drawn by Dan Jurgens, who’s normally capable of producing far more coherent and enjoyable work than this.

 

Ostensibly intended to further refine the timeline and continuity of the DC Universe, the series revolved around the time-travelling supervillain known as Extant (previously the superhero Hawk from the 1960s series HAWK AND THE DOVE, believe it or not) and his efforts to destroy the very timestream itself. When it becomes clear that there’s bad business afoot involving time travel, the Justice Society gathers and heads into the fray alongside the time-traveler Waverider, who delivers them right into Extant’s hands.

 

Extant murders the Atom outright with an energy blast, then undoes the effect of several different life-extending magic spells and mystical bouts of radiation the team had been exposed to over the years, returning them all to their natural ages, which would be about the mid-70s or so.

 

Just to top things off, he ages Hourman and Dr. Mid-Nite all the way to death.

 

The team is left decrepit, defeated and humiliated, with the team’s two surviving founders, Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, broken and willing to walk away from the fight.

 

Do the Justice Society get a noble death? A heroic death? Nope. They’re just led to the slaughter for cheap narrative purposes, to make Extant, a second-rate villain character with a derivative costume and a horrible name, seem like more of a badass. Is it even effective? Not remotely.

 

Worse, it wasn’t even intended to give a lasting boost to the Extant character, since he’s not even the miniseries’ major villain. As it turns out, Extant himself was merely a catspaw for an even more powerful cosmic villain, Hal Jordan, the fallen Green Lantern now calling himself Parallax, who planned to destroy the entire universe so he could re-create it.

As a company, DC’s opinion of the Justice Society around this time can be summed up in a single panel from ZERO HOUR, as Parallax grinds Alan Scott’s Green Lantern ring beneath his foot.

 

It’s a pretty shameful display. It would be different if all this happened in the service of a great story, but I tried to re-read it before writing this, and I’m telling you, this thing is a train wreck. In the wake of all this, even I thought the Justice Society of America had breathed its last gasp on the comic page.

And man, was I pleased to be wrong.

Previously: We’ve been exploring the history and membership of DC Comics’ Justice Society of America, the superhero team from whence all others came. When last we met, we had just seen the Justice Society’s exit from regular publication in 1951, with more of a whimper than a bang. When they would return 12 years later, however, it would not be with a bang, but a boom. A sonic boom, that is, courtesy of DC Comics’ newly revived Scarlet Speedster…

By 1962, DC Comics had fully embraced its superhero renaissance. Revived and redesigned versions of the Flash and Green Lantern were tearing up the sales charts, and an updated version of the Justice Society, entitled JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, united all of DC’s first-string superhero characters (plus the Martian Manhunter, but that’s another story) in a single monthly team book. With superheroes hot sellers at the newsstand once more, many of DC’s old-time fans from the late ’40s and early ’50s returned as well, and some of them began requesting to see the original heroes from the Golden Age of comics, such as the first Flash, the first GL, and the Justice Society.

Editor Julius Schwartz delivered, first reviving original Flash Jay Garrick in the pages of FLASH #123, “Flash of Two Worlds!” The story, by writer Gardner Fox and artist Carmine Infantino, introduced the “parallel Earths” concept to DC Comics, which allowed the original 1940s versions of their characters to exist separately from their modern, then-current 1960s counterparts. Once it was firmly established that Jay Garrick lived on Earth-Two, which was separated from new Flash Barry Allen’s Earth-One by a different vibratory frequency (a satisfactory enough bit of pseudo-science), it was just a matter of time before the rest of Jay Garrick’s teammates came out of retirement. And come out they did in FLASH #137 (June 1963), in “Vengeance of the Immortal Villain,” again by Fox and Infantino.

 

Here the two Flashes reunite to investigate mysterious skylights appearing over the cities that just happen to be the hometowns of former Justice Society members (or their corresponding locations on Barry Allen’s Earth-One). When the final beam of light appears over Jay Garrick’s hometown of Keystone City, the Flashes race to find the source of the beam. In finding it, Garrick is ambushed by another machine which traps him in an impenetrable cube, which then flies into the air toward an unknown destination. Barry Allen manages to free Garrick from the cube, angering the man behind the scheme: Vandal Savage, the JSA’s immortal enemy from the Injustice Society, who we see has already imprisoned JSA members Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, the Atom and Johnny Thunder in similar stasis cubes.

 

Savage now takes off the gloves and goes after Jay Garrick personally, but is again thwarted by the two Flashes. Savage then exposes the speedsters to a “will-controller ray,” forcing them to fight each other. The younger Barry Allen wins out, and races toward Savage with the intent to capture him. Just before contact, Allen realizes it might be a trap (thanks to the ever-observant Allen noticing the dilated pupils on the phoney Vandal Savage), and escapes getting cubed himself, after which he frees Jay Garrick and the rest of the JSA, who easily capture Savage.

The now-freed Justice Society realizes it might not be a bad idea to occasionally meet to prevent future attacks from their old enemies, and resolve to return the JSA to active status.

It didn’t take long for the JSA to return in a much bigger way (only two months, as a matter of fact), in the classic “Crisis on Earth-One!” from JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21 (August 1963), by writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky.

In this adventure, the newly reunited Justice Society (composed in this go-round of Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Black Canary and returning founders Dr. Fate and Hourman) face off against their old foes The Wizard, the Fiddler and the Icicle, while at the same time, the Justice League of Earth-One receive a challenge from their frequent adversaries Chronos, Felix Faust and Doctor Alchemy. Little do the JSA and JLA know that their enemies are actually working together (after the JSA’s foes accidentally discovered the existence of the parallel Earths while escaping from prison), with a fairly well-thought plan to escape to each others’ Earths and enjoy the fruits of their thievery without fear of capture, since they’re not wanted fugitives when not on their native Earth. However, boredom soon gets the best of them, and the Crime Champions of two worlds soon begin to run rampant, challenging each other’s foes to combat. When the defeated Justice League is magically trapped in its own headquarters, a tip from the Flash leads them to contact the JSA through a seance, summoning the Justice Society to Earth-One.

With a little magical help from Dr. Fate, the JLA are sent to Earth-Two to battle their own enemies, while the JSA stays on Earth-One to round up their foes.

Despite a quick pit stop in deep space thanks to a trap set by Felix Faust and the Wizard, the united Justice Society and Justice League put an end to the Crime Champions and propose that the two teams stay in touch in case future need arises for their combined strength. Staying in touch wouldn’t be a problem, as nearly every summer for the next 25 years would feature a team-up between the Justice Society and the Justice League in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. The second such meeting took place in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #29 and 30 (August, September 1964), in “Crisis on Earth-Three!” again by Fox and Sekowsky.

This time, the JSA and JLA go up against the Crime Syndicate of the newly discovered parallel world Earth-Three, where much of history happens in reverse. On Earth-Three, Columbus discovered Europe, Abe Lincoln shot President John Wilkes Booth, and the planet’s only super-powered beings are criminals, namely Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring, analogues to Earth-One’s Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern.

 

Lacking a challenge on their own Earth, the Crime Syndicate travels to Earth-One to defeat the JLA (having only recently discovered the existence of the parallel Earths), then heads to Earth-Two to smack down the JSA for good measure. After a few tag-team exchanges, the JLA and JSA defeat the Crime Syndicate and leave them imprisoned in the limbo between worlds, which seems more than a little unconstitutional, but whatever.

The next meeting between the JLA and JSA took place in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #37 and 38, a convoluted tale in which the Johnny Thunder of Earth-One (who’s something of a nogoodnik) takes control of JSA member Johnny Thunder’s magical Thunderbolt, and wishes the Justice League had never existed, forcing the T-Bolt to go back in time and prevent the JLA members’ origins from taking place.

Even worse, after the JSA impersonate the missing JLA members in the hopes of frightening the evil Johnny Thunder, he instead commands the T-Bolt to replace the JLA with members of his own criminal gang, and things just get more complicated from there. Other than the plot that you can’t really follow without a scorecard, the notable thing about this JSA appearance is the return to active duty of Mr. Terrific, who hadn’t been seen as a Justice Society member since his sole appearance in 1945.

Justice Society membership changed for the first time in nearly twenty years with JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #55, in “The Super-Crisis that Struck Earth-Two!”, once more by Fox and Sekowsky.

The plot itself, involving normal citizens from across the globe being transformed into monstrously powerful thieves and vandals by mysterious alien black spheres, is typical Gardner Fox material (which certainly isn’t bad — there’s usually more creativity packed into a Gardner Fox story than you’d find in any 10 comics nowadays). The prospect of a new JSA member, however, was far from routine. Joining up in this issue was none other than the now-grown Robin the formerly Boy Wonder, replacing his mentor Batman on the active JSA roster (although Batman’s total of two JSA appearances hardly qualified him as active). As good as it was to see Robin finally sitting at the grown-up’s table, the question has to be asked: what is the deal with that costume?

Combining the worst of both the Batman and Robin uniforms, poor Dick Grayson is saddled with a horrendous gray muddle, with Batman’s gloves and boots and a godawful yellow Batman cape with a high collar. Not helping matters is Mike Sekowsky’s occasionally, shall we say, creative anatomy, in which most male characters look to have a sofa cushion for a torso.

The JSA membership drive continued the next year in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #64 (August 1968), in “The Stormy Return of the Red Tornado!”, by Gardner Fox and Sekowsky’s replacement on the JLA series, artist Dick Dillin.

Herein, a mysterious caped figure calling himself the Red Tornado bursts into the Justice Society’s headquarters, claiming to be the original Red Tornado from the Justice Society’s first meeting back in 1940, and demanding to reclaim his membership.

Upon later investigation, it’s revealed that this new Red Tornado was actually an android, created by the criminal scientist Thomas Oscar Morrow to infiltrate the Justice Society and destroy it from within. When that plan succeeds, T.O. Morrow sets his sights on the Justice League as well, managing to kill five Leaguers by creating energy duplicates of their spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends and murdering them with an explosive kiss. The Red Tornado, now freed from Morrow’s control, resurrects the Leaguers by gathering their actual significant others and imbuing them with that same energy, allowing them to return their loved ones to life. (Although I’m not sure the Atom’s girlfriend has the right idea…)

Anyway, once the JLA and the Red Tornado have captured Morrow and forced him to revive the remaining JLA and JSA members, the Justice Society acknowledges his heroism by granting the Red Tornado full membership in the Justice Society. (By strange coincidence, that same month would see the JLA’s Marvel competition, the Avengers, also receive an android member in the red-skinned person of the Vision.)

Justice Society membership would actually contract with their next appearance in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, with the departure of the Black Canary to Earth-One to join the Justice League, in issues #73 and 74, by Fox’s successor Denny O’Neil and artist Dick Dillin. While both teams united to face the alien creature known as Aquarius, Black Canary’s husband Larry Lance sacrificed his life to save his wife from certain death at the hands of the cosmic menace.

In the wake of her husband’s murder, Earth-Two held too many painful memories for the Canary, so she goes back to Earth-One with the Justice League permanently, leaving her native Earth behind.

(This story, by the way, probably caused more trouble from a continuity standpoint than any other JLA story. First, about 10 years later, was the age problem: if the Canary was old enough to be in the JSA in the 1950s, she should be too old to be dating the Earth-One Green Arrow by about 20 years. That little problem was solved by revealing that she was actually the daughter of the original Black Canary, with her memory erased by Johnny Thunder’s Thunderbolt for some extremely complex reason. Later, when CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS did away with the parallel Earths altogether, the entire notion was naturally junked, and the earlier, somewhat specious concept of mother and daughter Black Canaries suddenly became much more helpful a notion.)

And so the annual Justice Society appearances continued, summer after summer, sometimes used as a device to revive more Golden Age characters, like the Seven Soldiers of Victory (the Toronto Raptors of superhero teams, boasting such also-rans as Green Arrow and Speedy, the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, the Vigilante, the Shining Knight and the Crimson Avenger. When the Green Arrow and Speedy are your franchise players, that’s a bad superhero team.) or Quality’s stable of characters (including Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady and Black Condor), whom DC would dub the Freedom Fighters. It wouldn’t be until 1976 that the Justice Society would once more regain a monthly series all their own, in the pages of the newly revived ALL-STAR COMICS, which picked up where the last JSA appearance had left off, with issue #58, entitled “All-Star Super-Squad!” (Jan.-Feb. 1976)

In the debut issue of the new series, written by Gerry Conway with art by Ric Estrada and comics great Wally Wood, an effort was definitely made to give the old-timers a shot in the arm with some brash, younger members, focusing in the first story on Robin and two new members: the Star-Spangled Kid, freshly brought back from being lost in time since the 1940s and utilizing Starman’s cosmic rod so as to make him a more powerful character, and the newly introduced Power Girl, the Earth-Two version of Supergirl, Superman’s Kryptonian cousin.

However, Power Girl is a distinctly 1970s superheroine, forever spouting about “women’s liberation” and railing against Wildcat for being a chauvinist, all while showing off probably the most cleavage ever seen on a comic-book rack. The revived ALL-STAR COMICS had a respectable little run, notable mostly for Wally Wood’s art and the return of most of the JSA’s rogues gallery, including Vandal Savage, Per Degaton, an all-new Brainwave, Solomon Grundy and more.

The series also utilized the original Earth-2 Superman more than most JSA stories had in the past, with a clear intent by artist Wood to render him in the style of original Superman creator Joe Shuster.

The other lasting creation to come out of the series was the Huntress, a.k.a. Helena Wayne, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, who made her debut in ALL-STAR COMICS #70 (Jan.-Feb. 1978), “A Parting of the Ways!”, by writer Paul Levitz and artist Joe Staton.

The Huntress would officially join the Justice Society two issues later, the last new member the group would see for quite some time.

With the cancellation of ALL-STAR COMICS in October 1978, the Justice Society feature briefly moved to ADVENTURE COMICS, where it ran for another year. This little-seen and hard-to-find series featured some of the Justice Society’s most significant 1970s appearances, including the death of founding member Batman (ironically not as Batman, but in his civilian role as Gotham Police Commissioner Bruce Wayne), and a flashback to the 1950s, finally answering the question of why the Justice Society retired in 1951, with the team the target of Joe McCarthy’s “Red Menace” paranoia, choosing retirement over being forced to publicly unmask.

By the end of 1979, the Justice Society seemed once more relegated to annual summer team-ups with the Justice League. That is, until probably the Justice Society’s biggest fan came to the rescue to thrust them back into the spotlight.

But we’ll talk about Roy Thomas next week.

With the annual return of the Justice Society to the pages of DC Comics in the 1960s came the return of some of the more obscure JSA members like Terry Sloane, a.k.a. Mr. Terrific, “The Man of 1,000 Talents”!  Mr. Terrific returned in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #37:

And it can be yours! Click here to buy it!

For those who came in late: Last week, we began our discussion of DC Comics’ JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA, the first and original super-hero team in comics. When we left off, we were discussing the JSA’s unique humanitarian approach to war propaganda, unusual for comics of the period. However, that wasn’t the only kind of story being told in the pages of ALL-STAR COMICS…

 

ALL-STAR COMICS #15 (February-March 1943) introduced the first real Justice Society supervillain, Brain Wave, a lightbulb-headed midget with Coke-bottle glasses and mental powers of illusion. The truly strange thing about the adventure isn’t the villain, but a bizarre subplot in which Wonder Woman deduces the location of Brain Wave through letters sent by the other JSA members, and summons all the girlfriends of the JSA members, gives them duplicate costumes and leads them all in an attack on Brain Wave.

 

Whaaat?

This makes no sense. Sure, Hawkgirl’s inclusion is logical if unexpected, but the rest of these girls don’t even know their boyfriends are superheroes, yet here’s Wonder Woman giving away the JSA’s secrets and dressing the girls up in tights and capes, including a woman I assume is Clarice Winston, the ex-fiancee of the Spectre, Jim Corrigan, before he was murdered and brought back to life as the spirit of vengeance. Yet there she sits, in chalk-white tights and a green hood. Unbelievable. We may have discovered why the JSA kept Wonder Woman as merely a secretary for so long.

Naturally, the Justice Society Girlfriend Corps is swiftly captured by Brain Wave, and it’s up to the JSA to save the girls, which they do, while Brain Wave stumbles to what appears to be a grisly death. There’s no sign of how the JSAers are supposed to salvage their secret identities, and unsurprisingly, the incident is never mentioned again (with the exception of a fond attempt to make the story make sense some fifty-odd years later in the pages of James Robinson’s wonderful series STARMAN, but that’s a story for another column).

The war effort/high adventure story pattern continued with the next issue, with the JSA tackling the issue of intolerance, showing how Americans of all colors, creeds and genders were working together to help defeat the Axis.

 

However, it was right back to the superheroics in ALL-STAR COMICS #17, with the return of the Brain Wave, whose fall from grace wound up to be not so permanent after all. Good thing he was wearing that long robe…

 

Here Brain Wave captured the JSA by shrinking them down to a mere six inches tall, and after escaping with the help of Hawkman’s feathered friends, the JSAers have to stop Brain Wave’s crime spree while still trapped at their tiny stature.

The next recurring JSA villain didn’t show up until ALL-STAR COMICS #23, with the introduction of the Psycho-Pirate. Unlike his later incarnation as a criminal who could actually control people’s emotions, here the Psycho-Pirate is merely a criminal mastermind who plots his schemes around emotional themes. Somewhat less interesting. As for the Psycho-Pirate himself, he’s no better, revealed as just a typesetter with a big bushy mustache and a problem with mood swings:

 

JUSTICE SOCIETY membership saw a one-issue surge with the publication of issue #24, when Wildcat and Mr. Terrific are enlisted in a special mission, to convince one American soldier that the war in Europe is a just cause, in “This Is Our Enemy!”

 

The two new members appeared here in ALL-STAR COMICS and were gone again in the next issue, with Wildcat appearing only once more later that year. Who are they?

 

Bill Finger and Irwin Hasen’s Wildcat, a prizefighter who turned to crimefighting to clear his name after being framed for murder, was featured regularly in SENSATION COMICS. Mr. Terrific, a creation of Chuck Reizenstein and Hal Sharp that also appeared in SENSATION COMICS, is a little harder to explain. Mr. Terrific is really Terry Sloane, a prodigy born with absolutely perfect intelligence, recall, reflexes and physical prowess. In fact, everything came so easy for him that he was positively bored senseless by life itself, and was about to kill himself out of depression until accidentally becoming involved with a woman whose brother was caught up in a gang of criminals.

 

Using his abilities to put the boy back on the right track gave Sloane’s life the meaning it had lacked, and he decided to devote himself to his new calling, creating the “Mr. Terrific” identity for himself, including the costume which bore his motto: “Fair Play.” (Which is an odd slogan, in perspective. Unlike most people who have to work and train and study to get where they are, Terry Sloane never had to, since he was just born with it, which is, when you think about it, hardly fair.)

As for the story itself, it’s an odd little piece of propaganda, in which the Conscience of Man (who looks an awful lot like the Blue Fairy from Disney’s PINOCCHIO, if you ask me) takes the JSA members on a trip back through time to accompany an American (who’s unconvinced that the war with Germany is the right thing to do) though a history of German expansionism and conquest. Just in case readers didn’t get the point, at the end the JSA members sum up the situation with a “Formula for a Lasting Peace”:

 

Another consequence of the story is the return of Flash and Green Lantern as full-time members, replacing Starman and the Spectre. Along with the earlier departure of Dr. Fate, most of the ultra-powerful members were now gone, leaving a core team of Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite and Johnny Thunder, a more human, fallible roster that would remain more and less in place for the remainder of the series’ run, with one small change that we’ll discuss in due time.

Another notable JSA “issue story” came in ALL-STAR COMICS #27, with “A Place in the World,” in which the Justice Society tackles the acceptance of the handicapped by each taking on a handicapped youth as an assistant for their latest adventure. In typical Justice Society fashion, after the JSAers and their assistants (including a blind boy, a one-armed boy, a deaf boy and a kid with a neurological disorder who’s in retrospect rather uncharitably described as spastic) solve their cases, they create a new pledge for their Junior Justice Society members to follow:

 

Brain Wave reared his ugly and remarkably large head again in ALL-STAR COMICS #30, “Dreams of Madness,” this time posing as a beneficent scientist so as to trap the Justice Society in his “Dream Inducer,” allowing him to drive them insane through their dreams.

 

The device works like a charm, with Hawkman becoming convinced he’s a thermometer, the Atom thinking he’s a sponge, and so on. As usual, the JSA’s ace in the hole was Johnny Thunder, whose thinking was normally so out of whack that the crazy dreams don’t do a thing for him, and he commands his Thunderbolt to find a way to revert the others to sanity. The T-Bolt’s solution? Electricity, and plenty of it. Luckily, it works, and the Brain Wave and his goons are swiftly dispensed with.

In a move unprecedented in the series, ALL-STAR COMICS #33 featured the Justice Society teaming up against one of its members’ trademark villains, namely the undead swamp monster Solomon Grundy from the pages of GREEN LANTERN. In an issue darker in tone and mood than the usual JSA stories (particularly Irwin Hasen’s art on the climactic JSA chapter), the JSAers split up to track down Grundy, whom they believe has kidnapped Green Lantern, and in fact, after various solo encounters with the creature, the team shows up just as Grundy’s hands are closing around Lantern’s throat with deadly force.

 

Through sheer strength of numbers, the JSA manages to subdue Grundy, and Hawkman comes up with a novel solution: get Grundy off the planet entirely, as Green Lantern does with the help of his power ring, depositing Grundy forever (or so they thought) on the moon.

The Solomon Grundy appearance in 1947 kicked off a stellar bunch of JSA stories in ALL-STAR COMICS, starting the next issue with “The Wiles of the Wizard,” which introduced another recurring JSA opponent, the Wizard, a master hypnotist and illusionist who challenges the JSA to stop a series of crimes he’s plotted, all with the intent of proving that the Justice Society are really con artists and thieves, instead of the crimefighters they claim to be.

 

When the JSA defeats his plots and prove their honesty, the bewildered Wizard, who never expected them to be honest, disappears.

The next issue was even better, with “The Day that Dropped Out of Time,” from ALL-STAR COMICS #35.

 

With a clever script by writer John Broome, the story introduced Per Degaton, a would-be world conqueror who stole a time machine from the scientist for whom he was working as a lowly lab assistant, then went back in time and prevented the invention of all modern weapons, except for the ones he’d managed to save for himself in specially prepared caves that were immune to his muddying up the timestream. It’s a darned good plan, as far as world conquerors go, until Green Lantern and the Justice League manage to travel back in time to the pivotal battle in 331 B.C. and assist Alexander the Great (yes, Alexander the Great) in his battle against Per Degaton and his modern army. The JSA succeeds, and manages to repair the timestream to the point that even Per Degaton no longer remembers his near-complete conquest of the world.

“5 Drowned Men” from issue #36 is notable for several reasons: first off, it boasts the only other appearance of Superman and Batman as active members in a Justice Society case.

 

Secondly, and unusually for the series, the lion’s share of the art was by a single artist, Irwin Hasen, whose clean, cartoony style fit the book perfectly. The script, which involves a stream somewhere in the Southwest called Koehaha, or “The Stream of Ruthlessness,” follows the Justice Society as they pursue five men who supposedly drowned in the “cursed” stream, and as a result went on crime sprees, in pursuit of their basest desires. While the story itself is pretty solid, the real question goes unanswered: what if the JSA members were subjected to the stream of Koehaha? Well, that’s a story that would have to wait about 35 years. More on that later…

Another comics first came in ALL-STAR #37, with the first appearance of “The Injustice Society of the World!”, the JSA’s opposite number.

 

Made up of JSA villains the Wizard, Brain Wave, and Per Degaton, as well as GREEN LANTERN villains the Gambler and Vandal Savage and Flash villain the Thinker, the Injustice Society made a big splash, setting off five different jailbreaks across the country to recruit troops for their criminal army, declaring martial law and seizing control of a small but sizeable portion of the American Midwest. Even more audacious, the Injustice Society manages to take over the nation’s capitol, and after capturing the JSA, puts them on trial, accusing them of being “ringleaders in the plot against evil.” However, a surprise verdict turns the tables on the Injustice Society, allowing the JSA to win out and regain control of the country.

 

As if that wasn’t epic enough, the very next issue set the JSA against an even greater collaboration of villainy in “History’s Crime Wave!”, which pitted the Justice Society against the greatest villains in history: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Nero, Goliath, Cesare Borgia and Captain Kidd. Although the historical haters naturally turned out to be impostors (all the disguises of one man, an insane guard at a wax museum), they did manage to do what no other JSA foe could accomplish: the murder of the Justice Society. In one gruesome scene after another, we see Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hawkman and Johnny Thunder all perish, in what look to be pretty permanent and sometimes grisly deaths.

 

It’s only through the quick actions of Wonder Woman and prospective new member Black Canary that the JSAers are whisked to Paradise Island in time to be resurrected by the amazing Amazon Purple Healing Ray.

 

Black Canary, by the way, was a creation of writer Robert Kanigher and artist Carmine Infantino in the pages of FLASH COMICS. The Canary was the daughter of a police detective who was rejected from the police academy for being a woman, and adopted the guise of the Black Canary as a way to fight crime on her own terms. Black Canary started out as a supporting character in Johnny Thunder’s strip, but quickly took it over, and not long after supplanted him in the Justice Society as well.

 

The Justice Society returned to their socially conscious roots in ALL-STAR #40, with “The Plight of a Nation!”, in which the JSA faced the growing (?) problem of juvenile delinquency. After being alerted of the problem by one of their Junior Justice Society members (the no-good little snitch), the Justice Society sets out to close down the Crimson Claw Gang. You can recognize the Crimson Claw gangbangers by the snazzy claw logo sewn on their purple sweaters. Only the really tough gangs wear sweaters…

 

In figuring out how to defeat the Crimson Claw Gang, the JSA consult their local social worker, who explains the core causes of delinquency, according to late-’40s thinking: malnutrition, mental defect and lack of religion foremost among them, apparently. However, the social worker is willing to assign at least part of the blame to society:

 

Finally, the Justice Society breaks up the Claw gang by forcing them to look into the future, thanks to Wonder Woman’s Magic Sphere, where they see themselves (the entire gang, mind you) sent to the electric chair. Man. That’s a tough judge.

The next issue featured the second and final appearance of the Injustice Society in “The Case of the Patriotic Crimes.”

 

This time made up of returning member the Wizard, FLASH villain the Fiddler, Wildcat’s frequent opponent the Huntress, and Green Lantern foes the Icicle and Sportsmaster, the new Injustice Society doesn’t have quite as lofty goals as the original nation-conquering incarnation.

 

Here, the members are mostly looking to one-up the other with spectacular thefts, such as the Washington Monument, Old Ironsides, the Liberty Bell and Plymouth Rock. It’s not clear what they were going to do with that stuff, especially since there was no eBay in 1948. Despite having their memories wiped by the Injustice Society’s mind-eraser machine, the JSA regains its wits and puts the Injustice Society away with the help of the Harlequin, Green Lantern’s frequent antagonist and would-be girlfriend, and the Black Canary, who is finally sworn in as a full member of the Justice Society.

 

The Justice Society lasted 16 more issues after that, until their final appearance in ALL-STAR COMICS #57 in March 1951. There was no grand finale for the father of all superhero teams, either: with the next issue, the title was unceremoniously changed to ALL-STAR WESTERN, and readers expecting their regular dose of superhero action were instead treated to the adventures of the Trigger Twins and similar fightin’ cowpokes. Hardly a fitting end for such an auspicious series, but not to worry: the Justice Society of America would not be gone for long…

Once the Justice Society returned to the pages of DC Comics in the early ’60s, it didn’t take long for DC to create even more parallel Earths for the JSA to visit, like Earth-3, home of the Crime Syndicate of America, the “evil twin” version of the Justice League.

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One of the few times the Justice Society has graced the screen came in the much-missed and underrated THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD animated series, which did a great job portraying the Golden-Age mystery men as slightly out-of-touch legends:

DC’s had a long history of crises, but this was the first, the concluding chapter of the first meeting between the Justice League and the Justice Society!

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When the Justice Society first met the Justice League, it was a big deal. It changed comics forever.

And you can own that historic issue for yourself! Click here to buy it!