Single Issue Review: Justice League of America #15

As the story begins, the US is testing a "Star Wars" weapon:



Yet another example of Gardner Fox being ahead of the curve on technology. The satellite base containing the cannon in the sky is filled with reporters and military personnel including Diana (Wonder Woman) Prince and Clark (Superman) Kent. Suddenly the satellite comes under attack and the pair have to save other people. Superman observes that some strange force is yanking the atomic cannon away from its base, but he and Wonder Woman are too busy to follow it.

Barry (the Flash) Allen observes the cannon being aimed at the tallest building in Central City (the Wilmoth Skyscraper), and hurriedly changes into his fighting togs. Using his super-speed to gather up the tenants of the building he empties it before the cannon can fire:



After the cannon is fired once, Superman and Wonder Woman arrive. Although nobody seems to be operating the big gun, it fires again, and Wonder Woman diverts the missile into space with her lasso. Since they can't stop whoever's firing, they destroy the cannon itself. To solve the mystery, an emergency meeting of the Justice League is called. They learn that similar incidents are happening elsewhere:



The JLA split up into teams. Green Arrow, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter journey to Japan, where they discover a giant stone idol watching the heavens. The idol smiles when it sees an atomic missile headed for Tokyo. At first, J'onn J'onzz plans to use his super-breath to blow it out into space, but the idol reacts quickly:



Fortunately, Green Arrow is able to use his parachute arrow to get the missile to land harmlessly in Tokyo Bay. Aquaman prevents another attack on the city by an underwater stone idol. However the three of them are captured by the idols and apparently about to be killed, when suddenly the stone giants disappear.

Meanwhile, Superman, the Atom and Wonder Woman have traveled to Brasilia, where they also discover the giant idols. The weapon the giants intend to use on this city is acid rain (once again, Fox is ahead of the general public):



The Atom manages to get into the rain-maker and destroy it, but again at the end of the segment the three heroes are captured by the stone giants, who suddenly disappear.

The final JLA team consists of Green Lantern, Flash and Batman, and they head to Central City, where they find a pair of stone idols trying to destroy the local skyscrapers with an earthquake machine. Green Lantern holds up the building with hands projected from his power ring, while Batman and the Flash go after the idols:



Pretty bad perspective there; obviously Batman is supposed to be far behind the Flash, accounting for their difference in size. The giants capture both of them, but at the same time, GL destroys the earthquake machine. Once again, the idols grab all three heroes, but quickly disappear. However, they take Green Lantern's ring with them for study.

We learn that the giants are actually scientists on another Earth, one that is one minute ahead of ours. Due to an atomic explosion on Earth and a cobalt explosion on their world, the time differential between the two worlds is decreasing, and when they reach synchronicity at three separate cites (Brasilia, Tokyo and Central City):



Green Lantern has ordered his power ring to bring him, Batman and the Flash to the stone giant's world after reading their minds for five minutes:



But it turns out that the giants have sabotaged their cities so that in the event of an alien invasion, they will be destroyed. Fortunately GL realizes this in time and decides to simply fix both worlds so that they are again one minute apart (nice to have a power ring that handles this sort of complex stuff with just a thought). And in the end, the JLA realizes that the stone giants were just like them, only different:



Nice sentiments by Wonder Woman, and the call for tolerance is pretty early; this issue is cover-dated November 1962. If anybody has any idea what Snapper Carr was saying, let me know!

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Tracers: Batman and Superman in the JLA

Julius Schwartz tells a famous anecdote in Man of Two Worlds, his autobiography, about how in the early days of the Justice League of America, Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff refused him permission to use Superman and Batman in their stories, and especially on the covers. They were reportedly worried about overexposure of their characters. As Schwartz tells it, he was getting congratulated by Jack Liebowitz on the success of the JLA when Liebowitz, DC's publisher, asked him why he didn't use Superman or Batman in his stories. When Schwartz explained, Liebowitz exploded with anger that Weisinger and Schiff didn't own the characters, DC did, and that he now had permission to incorporate them into the JLA stories, which Julie did with alacrity.

The first part of the story certainly fits; although Batman and Superman had cameos at the end of the JLA intro story in Brave & Bold #28, they were not featured on the cover, and indeed did not appear on a JLA cover until #10:



Okay, so here we go; JLA #10, Mr Liebowitz gives him the nod, and Schwartz responds with a cover featuring Batman and Superman, end of story, beginning of Dark Knight and Son of Krypton in JLA, right?

Uh, no. Superman and Batman next appeared on the cover of JLA #19, and there, they were used as bookends for the rest of the League:



After that, Batman and Superman popped up on #21, but neither of them appeared on the cover of #20, #22, #23, or #24. At that point the series did change quite substantially, featuring Batman and Superman very prominently on almost every cover.

So it would appear that Schwartz got his permission from Liebowitz around the time that JLA #25 was being planned; prior to that Batman and Superman had appeared on only three covers; after that, they were generally featured prominently on virtually every cover, and of course around the same time (as JLA #27 was published) Schwartz took over the editorship of Batman and Detective Comics.

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The Five Most Important DC Comics of the Silver Age

This is not really a hard thing to work out. First, of course, is Showcase #4, the comic that started the superhero revival that is probably the biggest aspect of the Silver Age. To give you an idea, during the 1950s, DC Comics published 3,397 different comics, of which 849 were superhero-oriented (including Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen). In the 1960s, DC published 3,579 different comics, of which 1,629 were superhero-oriented. The return of the Flash kicked off that surge.



Next up is Adventure #247, which introduced the Legion of Superheroes:



The Legion was one of DC's best features during the Silver Age. The combination of a futuristic setting with super-powered characters proved irresistable to readers of the time and provided seemingly endless plot possibilities.

The third major DC comic of the Silver Age is Brave & Bold #28. Now that DC had brought back Green Lantern, DC combined him with the Flash, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman and Aquaman into a fighting team called the Justice League of America. This served as a marketing gimmick for the individual magazines featuring those heroes (although at the time both Aquaman and Martian Manhunter were backup features in Adventure and Detective respectively), but it also apparently sold very well on its own, leading Marvel Comics' head honcho Martin Goodman to instruct Stan Lee to create a superhero team, which of course became the Fantastic Four.



The next major DC comic of the Silver Age may not be as apparent as the others, but it's a key to understanding the appeal of the superhero titles during this era:



Prior to this, DC had reprinted almost none of their older stories. Superman Annual #1 gave recognition to the fact that comics had a back story that it was important to understand in order to get the most out of current issues. It also represented a promise from the editors to you, that if you didn't know the back story, DC would fill you in over the years with reprints of their older tales. DC did a phenomenal amount of reprinting in the 1960s and early 1970s. Even Marvel got into the act once their comparatively recent tales were old enough to attract new readers.

The final major issue is obvious:



In the very first appearance of the Flash in Showcase #4, we learned that Barry Allen had read comics featuring the Jay Garrick Golden Age Flash. So it seemed only logical to pair the two up. But there was a problem; Jay Garrick (the gentleman on the right) had been a fictional character only on Barry Allen's Earth. The solution hit upon by Gardner Fox was to postulate an alternate Earth, called Earth-2, where the Golden Age superheroes had reigned.

This opened the door for a slew of Golden Age/Silver Age crossovers, about which I have a post planned for the future. It also created numerous headaches for DC's editors as time wore on, but that was not apparent in the 1960s.

Other comics that were crucial to the Silver Age DC, but perhaps not as critical as these:

Showcase #22, featuring the origin of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern. Lost in the memory of the Silver Age is the fact that it took three years after Flash's debut issue for DC to bring back its second GA hero in a new form. After this the pace quickened, with Aquaman, Atom and Hawkman all getting new launches.

Detective #225, with the first appearance of the Martian Manhunter, which actually predates Showcase #4. However, MM was a new character, not a rebirth of an old one.

Detective #327, with the "New-Look" Batman. Certainly the Batman TV series had a huge impact on DC Comics, but it is hard to say that this really spawned the show. Indeed, it is arguable that far more influential was Batman #155, which started the practice of bringing back Batman's Golden Age rivals (in this case, the Penguin).

Action #242, with the introduction of Brainiac. This is arguably the beginning of the Silver Age Superman under Mort Weisinger, although his name would not appear as editor for another few months. Weisinger's tenure running the Superman books was extremely influential, as he standardized the looks and mannerisms of the characters and presided over a substantially more serious hero than had been the case in the past. Superman in the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps influenced by Captain Marvel, had a touch of whimsy to it. Under Weisinger most of that was gone (with the notable exception of the Lois Lane series).

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