BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #165

Brevoort History of Comics

I didn’t know it at the time when this issue first came out, but this would be the final issue of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA edited by its founding editor, Julius Schwartz. He remained the last connection point with the series’ origination, and his aesthetic definitely influenced the direction and the flavor of the comic for close to twenty years. That said, I hadn’t really been loving the last couple of issues with their focus on the search for Zatanna’s mother, so Julie’s departure likely wouldn’t have been seen by me as a big problem. Still, it was Julie’s DC super hero books that had gotten me into comics in the first place, so there’s a certain sadness to seeing him pack it in on one of his formative titles. From here on in, he’d primarily be working on the Superman books.

I think that I really wasn’t wild about the job that writer Gerry Conway had been doing on the series. But as much as anything, that feeling stemmed from Gerry’s choice of story-subject. And in terms of providing a situation that could challenge the entire Justice League at this point, plus satisfy the requirements of editor Schwartz, that had to be a daunting thing to do on a regular basis. But as a reader, I hadn’t found any of the issues released in the last year or so very memorable–to the point where I barely recall them at all before writing one of these pieces. So something, some spark, was missing here. I still liked the solid work that artist Dick Dillin did on the series, though. His pages weren’t always elegant, but they were functional and he was able to juggle the enormous cast. Plus, his visual style had defined the title when I first got on board with it, so like a bit of comfort food, Dick’s Justice League always felt “right” to me, even when the material that he was illustrating wasn’t especially memorable.

This issue opens with the League being confronted by the Highlord of an ancient sanctuary hidden in the hills of Turkey, the place where Zatanna’s mother hails from. It’s a reclusive city of sorcerers–think of Attilan, the citadel of the Inhumans over at Marvel and just make them all magical and you’ll get the idea here. They’re not happy that the League has entered their territory, especially because they’ve come to find Sindella, the woman whose essence is being used to power their whole city through the medulla Jewel in the tiara that she wears. Highlord orders his forces to attack the League, and despite putting up a decent fight in the opening pages, the heroes are all overwhelmed by magic that doesn’t obey the natural laws of physics, and so are swiftly overwhelmed.

Meanwhile, back at the JLA’s satellite headquarters, Green Arrow and Red Tornado, who have been left behind, have located footage of a three-page-long infodump on the inhabitants of the Secret City. Turns out that they’re an offshoot of humanity known as Homo Magus–again here, think Inhumans but with magic. It turns out the reason why the Homo Magi have retreated from the world is that their people become entirely too easily smitten by regular old human beings, and if a mortal and a mage should produce a child, that child only has a small portion of the same command of magic that their sire did. In other words, Homo Magus was slowly being driven to extinction through interbreeding with the larger population of Homo Sapiens.

Back in the Hidden City, Zatanna and Zatara have been reunited with Sindella, but she appears to be in a walking trance, unable to interact with them. This is taken care of in short order as Zatanna shatters the spell which holds her mother in such a state. And it’s here that they learn about the Medulla Stone and also the fact that Sindella has been used as the power source for the City for so long that she doesn’t have much life left. The Highlord’s hope is to stick the thing onto Zatanna and keep on ruling as he has. Fortunately, while the imprisoned leaguers are unable to break free of their prison, having sat through that enormously long backstory, Green Arrow and the Red Tornado have come as a cavalry, digging into the cloaked city by way of the Tornado’s cyclonic rotations. But the two of them are no match for the City’s guardians either.

The Red Tornado is downed and thrown into the same cell as his fellow Leaguers, while Green Arrow is able to retreat and escape. But the League turns things around at this point when Wonder Woman reasons that her magic lasso may still retain its potency in this mystic realm. She uses it to grab one of the guards ,and the League avails themselves of his keys and liberates itself. So the battle is joined once again, but it’s green Arrow, who now joins his teammates, who points out that these fights haven’t been all that they’ve seemed. Since the Homo Magi become instantly infatuated by regular mortals and that hasn’t happened yet to the League, the things that they’ve been fighting must be magical constructs of some sort. At this point, Sindella, having had enough of this borderline-nonsensical story, uses the last of her own magic to shatter the Medulla Stone, thus depowering the Secret City and causing the Hidden Ones to retreat back to the shadows, lest they become hopelessly enthralled by contact with the outsiders.

As the combatants that have been tussling with the League all fall apart, they are joined by Zatanna and Zatara, carrying the dead body of Sindella. They reveal that destroying the Medulla Stone also ended Sindella’s life, and Gerry tries to make a sad close out of this–but it simply doesn’t work. We’ve been given no reason at all to really care about Sindella, and Zatanna grieving for a mother whose existence had never been mentioned in fifteen years didn’t really do the trick either. So this whole story is something of a dog, a painful issue for editor Schwartz to go out on.

The letters page reveals that Julie will be moving on, replaced by Ross Andru as the new editor (as had already happened over on THE FLASH.) The page also includes the yearly Statement of Ownership, which gives us a hint as to how well the series had been performing the previous year. It tells us that JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA had been selling 136,191 copies on a print run of 281,018, giving it an efficiency rating of 48%. Not really terrible for this era, but it does mean that two copies of every issue were being printed and shipped in order to sell one, with the remaining copy being sent back for credit and destroyed.

Published

19 thoughts on “BHOC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #165”

  1. Or as I thought of them when I read about them in that The Official Justice League of America Index as DC Comics counterpart to New Salem [ Fantastic Four#185-186 ( August-September 1977 ) ] and the Witches of New Salem [ Which FF Annual#14 ( December 1979 ) revealed weren’t all witches. There was a soothsayer, a succubus, leprechaun there too ] — I hated when New Salem and its people ( especial Agatha Harkness ) were destroyed and killed.

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    1. I decided to take a look at Gerry Conway’s other work on Justice League of America on comics.org’s site ( I wanted to compare what was going on in JLA with the Avengers during the same time period ) and discovered he co-created the prototype to post-crisis Superman’s demonic enemy and night club owner Blaze ( Angelica Blaze her alias ) [ Action Comics#655 ( July 1990 )] in JLA#179-180 ( June-July 1980 ): The Satin Satan ( Sabrina Sultress allegedly possessed by Sataroth, daughter of Satanni — her eyes were red after her exorcism ) owner of a discotheque The Studio. She could be identified as Blaze and that would give Blaze and her unnamed mother real names.

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  2. IMHO Conway’s JLA run was a clunker from end to end. Granted having just read the first 60 issues I can’ honestly say the series started from a strong point.

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    1. I liked the part of the run Len Wein edited, with art by George PĂ©rez, Don Heck and (toward the end) Chuck Patton. I thought they were all better matches for Gerry’s approach than Dick Dillin, workhorse that he was. And Len’s approach as editor was pretty solid, too.

      When I was pitching JLA fill-in ideas to Len, he told me, “These pitches are all pretty solid Gardner Fox JLA stories, but that’s not what I want. I want Roy Thomas AVENGERS stories.” So I came up with a Roy-type premise and he bought it. Clearest editorial direction I’ve ever been given.

      But I wish Don Heck could have lasted longer on the book. No shade meant toward Chuck, but I thought the Conway/Heck combo had a really nice chemistry, and it suited the book well. Though I imagine the sales weren’t great, so they had to make a change.

      Back then, I wanted more Heck JLA and FLASH. These days I wish they’d given him UNKNOWN SOLDIER and JONAH HEX.

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      1. You know, I don’t remember Heck’s JLA at all…I think I must have dropped the series by the time he took over. I’ll have to dig up some of those issues and see if they work better for me.

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      2. There’s a multi-part Royal Flush Gang story in their run that’s a delight. Had Gerry put as much into making individuals of the next set of villains, in the Mucro-World (if I remember correctly), they might have become useful recurring characters, instead of being immediately forgotten.

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      4. Love the Don Heck JLA era especially when he was inked by Tanghal. A great time for the title IMHO and during that era also some Perez issue sprinkled in.

        The 195-197 was perhaps the greatest JLA/JSA team up rendered to perfection by Perez.

        Then 207-209 all penciled by Heck was a ground-breaking multi-title JLA/JSA/All-Star Squad crossover. and IMHO far more enjoyable, not to mention fun, read compared to Crisis on Infinite Earths.

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      5. @Rift Corbitt. I liked Romeos’s inks more over some artists’ work than other’s. I thought it had a dulling effect over Buckler’s drawing. But I agree that his inks looked good over Heck’s stuff. Juiced it up. .

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  3. I wasn’t a huge fan of Conway’s JLA either…although I admit that part of that was just me being mad that anyone had taken the place of Steve Englehart (and given that Conway had ALSO been Englehart’s replacement on Avengers a couple years earlier, I doubly resented him!). Looking back, they certainly weren’t the worst comics ever written, but I have to agree with Tom that the storylines just weren’t that compelling. I also take his point, though, that writing one of these big team books is a daunting prospect under the best circumstances.

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    1. I think the main problem with JLA was how static it was. Between the changeless lineup and Dillin’s serviceable but lackluster art the title just kind of trudged along. Then when the lineup did finally change in Annual 2 it did so in the worst possible way.

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      1. im n okt a big fan if Conway’s writing. But it wasn’t the “Aquaman & the Outsiders” JLD r hg at started to sink the book, it was Gerry’s HH handling of it.

        He kept telling us through the characters that they were inferior, so we believed it. Who wants to read about a team that sucks, & knows they suck?

        If he’d had the same roster come out swinging, stumble but still move up & earn our enthusiasm because they were competent & proving it, it could’ve succeeded.

        If I was to pick a new JL, J’onn, Vibe, Vixen, & Zatana would all have slots.The JL are “the world’s greatest superheros”, so write them like they are. Make us believe it.

        I’m convinced it doesn’t need to be majority “Big 7” characters. They just have to have sufficient power & competency. I’d leave my fave character Batman off the team. No non-metas.

        And add a new Black, female Captain Comet. And the Kimi Dr. Light, but using a name Morrison used for another character, Glimmer. Those 6 plus Superman for the 1st year could work well. And then switch up the roster. Supes could drop out, bring someone else in.

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  4. Just a general note about this issue: I’m certain Conway knew as he was writing it that it was to be Schwartz’s final issue as editor, so it was quite appropriate that the serial should especially feature Zatanna. Schwartz is credited as the co-creator (with Murphy Anderson) of Adam Strange, the only DC character Julie is officially recognized as a creator. Now, Adam got many storylines in the run of the JLA, but Julie and Murphy (off the record) co-created Zatanna in the pages of Hawkman #4. It was a nice tribute to let that final arc be the conclusion of Zatanna’s Quest to find her parents over the span of so many years.

    Well, if Roy Thomas created Wolverine, Julie deserves his role with Zatanna every bit as much.

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  6. This was my era of JLA collecting. The first issue of JLA I remember buying was #147 with the JLA/JSA/Legion crossover. I probably had some random issues prior to that. With 147 I got a four issue stretch, which included the final two Englehart issues. There were some gap months with assorted JLAs in my convenience store hauls.

    Another three issue block was #’s 159 – 161. I was intrigued by Zatanna’s arrival since I’d never seen her before. Due to the whims of newsstand distribution, I missed the next three issues, including the one mentioned here. I started back with #166 and was hooked. Gerry Conway was the writer of my JLA youth. Between ages 7 and 10 I gobbled up everything I could find from issues 166 to 184. I picked the wrong time to stop collecting comics since that was right as Perez came on board.

    I’ve since gone back and read the entire JLA run. Probably as much from nostalgia as anything else, I still hold those issues in high regard. I especially still get a kick out of the Secret Society of Super-Villains three parter that began in #166.

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  9. Most of Conway’s JLA stories lacked much in the way of creator enthusiasm. Even his stories for SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER VILLAINS showed more personality. The exception was the six-seven issues he did with George Perez, and the change seemed so dramatic to me that I wondered if Perez was feeding Conway ideas, though Perez was not so credited as I recall. But when I encountered Perez at a con sometime in the nineties, I have a dim memory of asking a question on those lines and I think he denied adding story content. But I still think *something* changed.

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  10. George had good buzz from his FF &:Avengers runs. Maybe Gerry realized the potential & upped his own game. At that point “JLA” had a writer, artist, & editor who’d done well-received work for Marvel. Gerry &:Len maybe more than George right then.

    Maybe Len was helping Gerry with story ideas with George joining them- if Gerry didn’t see the increased potential George brought, I doubt Len would’ve missed it. He was likely instrumental in getting George on “JLA”.

    But I think it’s safe to suggest that George quickly became their equal in stature, impact, recognition, &: reputation. A few years later, for many readers, George surpassed them.

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