BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #161

On that same trip to that Ronkonkoma Stationary store, I also picked up he next issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, the first post-implosion issue. This was an issue that had been built up to in the background for a while now. You see, on the letters page, editor Julie Schwartz had been running a poll asking readers which character from the DC stable should next join the Justice League. Reportedly, the balloting wasn’t even close. A huge number of fans came out in support of Zatanna, the mistress of magic, daughter of the Golden Age hero Zatara. And so, with issue #161, writer Gerry Conway and artist Dick Dillin dutifully began a story intended to inaugurate Zatanna into the group. But the readership didn’t exactly get what they had been clamoring for.

See, a lot of the appeal of Zatanna for the audience was her mode of attire, her dress sense. Prior to this, she’d run around in a modified version of her father’s gear, with a cute little top hat, a tie-and-tails, and fishnet stockings. It’s a safe bet to say that some who read these comics fetishized that outfit. But when Zatanna turned up in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #161, she was attired in a completely new costume–one that was pretty basic and not especially attractive. And certainly not fetishable without some serious effort. The letters page across the following months would run a few letters from upset readers who had supported Zatanna’s induction but who couldn’t stand her new outfit. But to no avail–that costume stuck around for several years and the fishnets were a thing of the past.

The issue opened with the League assembled and taking the sort of vote that they’d done a number of times in their past–to induct a new member. Now, in a few cases such as this one, it’s not until after the vote is taken and ratified that the team even bothers to check in with the proposed applicant and see whether they’d like to be a member of the Justice league or not. There’s an assumption that anybody would be thrilled and honored to join such an august body. Which, of course, makes the heroes look like raging egotists. Anyway, Zatanna pops up in her new duds to make it perfectly clear to the League that, despite their good intentions, she has no desire to join their group.

Zatanna makes her feelings plain and then departs–leaving the bewildered Leaguers to all go their own ways. All except the Atom, who remains on monitor duty, and Green Lantern, who hides in the shadows and proceeds to strike the Tiny Titan down. It swiftly becomes apparent that the person posing as Green lantern is an impostor–he doesn’t know how to recharge the Power Ring nor can he locate the Power Battery. So he cannot use the weapon to bolster his own power. Meanwhile, Zatanna uses her sorcery to enter the dimension of Ys, a land of magic, on a quest to free a captive held in an ancient castle therein. Her thoughts indicate that she left a cryptic warning for the Justice League in her words and hopes that they can puzzle it out. As she nears the castle, she’s felled by an ordinary arrow shaft which is shot into her shoulder as she passes overhead. As she falls to the ground, we see that the one imprisoned in the castle is Hal Jordan, Green Lantern.

Meanwhile, realizing that Zatanna wasn’t using her typical backwards-spoken spells, Batman has gone to speak with her father, Zatara, who tells the Caped Crusader that pretty much everything that Zatanna told the League was incorrect–the reverse of what is actually true. Armed with this information, Batman summons a League squad together, and they discover that the Atom has been zapped by Green Lantern. The team pursues the fake Lantern to Cambodia, but the Red Tornado, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Atom and Batman are no match for the being in Green Lantern’s skin, who blasts them all with magic. Elsewhere, in Ys, Zatanna has managed to summon allies to get her out of her current jam, and she’s thereafter able to liberate the true Green Lantern from confinement and paralysis within the castle.

And now, the villain of the piece makes himself known. It’s the Warlock of Ys, who had battled Green Lantern and Zatanna years ago while she was questing for her missing father. Turns out that, upon his defeat all of those years ago, he was able to cast a spell of transference upon Green Lantern that would slowly work on Hal Jordan, until the two of them changed places. Since that’s happened, the Warlock first hoped to use his foe’s Power Ring to restore his potency, but being unable to recharge it, he instead has renewed himself at a mystic hotspot in Cambodia. He’d also cast another spell preventing Zatanna from using her reverse magic or from warning her friends of the Warlock’s return. Now, he no longer needs the Power Ring, and foolishly casts it aside…

…allowing Green Lantern an opportunity to, in the space of a panel, reclaim the ring, recharge it at the Power Battery that is always stationed nearby to his person and then clobber the Warlock of Ys with a power-ringed punch. Writer Gerry Conway at this point takes a second to do some Roy Thomas-style retconning, explaining away a decades-old mistake where Zatanna once described her foe as the Warlock of Dis as being an outgrowth of his influence over the two of them. It’s unnecessary and self-indulgent, but this kind of thing was like manna to me when I was a young reader, so I ate it up. And the story then closes with Zatanna now eagerly accepting the League’s earlier offer of membership. Something like three pages had to be cut out of this story on the fly in order to make it fit into the new shorter post-Implosion length, but it didn’t suffer too badly from the cuts. As a kid, I don’t think I even noticed anything amiss.