W: Gardner Fox
P: Mike Sekowsky & Carmine Infantino
I: Benard Sachs, Joe Giella, & Murphy Anderson
Pub: DC comics
Price: $16.99 USD
Reprinting Stories from: ‘Brave and the Bold’ #28-30, ‘Mystery In Space’ #75, and ‘Justice League of America’ #1-16.
Reading these comics gave me a new appreciation for ‘Fantastic Four’. According to legend, Lee and Kirby created the Fantastic Four when ordered to make a team book to compete with the successful ‘Justice League of America’. What they created was a family first and a super-team second. That interpersonal element made the characters more interesting and opened up new possibilities for the stories. Character-driven drama became an indispensable part of the team books that followed. ‘Avengers’, ‘X-Men’, and later, ‘Legion of Super-Heroes’ and ‘Justice League’ itself featured interpersonal conflicts as exciting as the fight against that month’s villain.
Unfortunately, that drama is completely absent from these early ‘Justice League’ issues. I didn’t get any sense of character from these stories. Reading their solo stories from the same time period shows us what these heroes were like individually, but none of that shows when they come together as a team. It’s like they put aside everything unique about themselves except their powers to fight a common enemy. The team often breaks up into randomly chosen groups of two and three to fight the enemy. Friendships, rivalries, and favoritism never come into play. These are 7 people who happily come together in the name of law and order to fight the good fight. Simple, yet boring.
And speaking of simple, these comics were literally written to be self-contained single-issue stories. Even the two-issue tale of Felix Faust and the three demons! Nothing drives that home more than reading three or more of these comics in a row. Every issue reminds us how Aquaman can’t be outside water for more than one hour; how Green Lantern’s ring can’t work against anything yellow; how Superman is vulnerable to magic and Kryptonite. It’s not long before you start to wonder if the comics were written for people with no memory retention. If you read ‘Justice League’, you probably read at least one of the characters’ solo series. And if you did read ‘Justice League’, you’d know all of this from previous issues! A little reminder every few months is all you need. We didn’t need to be beaten over the heads with it!
The stories follow the same pattern as the Justice Society stories from the Golden Age. Not surprising, since Fox wrote most of those too. Threat to Earth appears, team breaks up to fight pieces of it/henchmen involved/search for important items, then reunite at the end to strike the final blow. And there’s always one member who provides the answer or whose unique power enables him to save the day. Ho-hum.
Even compared to other comics from the same time period, these comics come up short. Mike Sekowsky’s pencils are clear, but bland; much less interesting than Murphy Anderson, Joe Kubert, or Carmine Infantino. The stories are packed with so many descriptive captions and expository dialogue reading them is a chore more than a pleasure. And although we have time traveling, trips to space, parallel worlds, the JLA on a man’s fingers, and people turning into wood, it never seems to be as fantastic or bizarre as Silver Age Superman stories. Nor is there the sense of high fantasy from SA Green Lantern comics.
The first issues of ‘Justice League of America’ are exactly whet they meant to be: stories about popular heroes fighting foes big enough to threaten the entire world and more. Problem is, they’re much more interesting when they’re fighting separately.
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