Meanwhile, at The Hall of Justice

May 26, 2020

Meanwhile, at The Hall of Justice

“Aquaman, you go...talk to some fish!”

I loooooooooove the Justice League concept, but I didn’t always understand it. As a child, the appeal of Super Friends was innate, but something was off. When I finally got into comics and stumbled into Justice League America #47, I was thoroughly lost. No one was recognizable. I tried it a few more times, but nothing clicked at all until A Midsummer’s Nightmare came out, leading the way to Morrison’s revelatory JLA. It wasn’t until JLA’s apex that the Giffen “Bwa-Hahahahaha!” League made sense. There was an article in a Wizard magazine that gave a brief outline of the series. At a convention in NYC, I was able to score the first 13 issues, and get #1 signed by Giffen. Got home, read, and laughed my ass off.

Superheroes are a delightfully absurd idea, and I love them dearly. Having Batman serve as the straight man to all the other B-list heroes was a stroke of genius. Morrison (& Waid) understood that and would incorporate a bit of humor here and there. The series took on a number of different titles. First it was Justice League, then JL International, then JL of America. There was also Justice League Europe, which was renamed JL International. Even further, JL Quarterly and JL Task Force titles were developed. The Giffen/DeMatteis run came to an end and was taken over by Superman writer Dan Jurgens, who wrote it as straight forward superheroics. Superman lead the JLA until he died, then Wonder Woman took over. During WW's tenure as leader, there was another spinoff called Extreme Justice, which I read.

The less said about Extreme Justice, the better. Very Justice, much Extreme.

Anyway, many of the Giffen/DeMatteis characters were reunited a couple of times during JLA, in Formerly Known as the JL, and I Can't Believe it's not the JL.

Morrison’s League got me interested in all the previous incarnations. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to appreciate the stylistic conventions of most comics before 1986. Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns had changed comics so much by the time I got to them. Someone at DC must have recognized that a post-Crisis, post-Zero Hour DCU lacked historical context, because they made a JLA Year One story and various spin-offs. Not enough to fill in the gaps of the Satellite and Detroit eras, though. That’s mostly fine by me. One of the characters’ code names is a Romani slur, and neither DC nor WB in general seems to have figured that out yet (I’m looking at you, CW Flash).

The financial success of JLA paved the way for the other three generations of team books: JSA, Titans, and Young Justice. And there were dozens of spinoff one-shots and miniseries; some good, some not so good.

Morrison’s story eventually ended, and Mark Waid took over. His stories aren’t as bombastic as Morrison’s but they were nonetheless fantastic. Joe Kelly’s subsequent run was also fun. Then famed X-Men writer Chris Claremont reunited with John Byrne and I dropped it like a rock. I really tried, but their styles do absolutely nothing for me. It was then that I realized Byrne was recycling panel layouts every issue. I didn’t stick around after that. I haven’t read an ongoing JL series since, but I do intend to.

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Jeff likes Comics

Meanwhile, at The Hall of Justice

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