BC: JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #110

This next book isn’t one that I ever actually borrowed from my next-door-neighbor Johnny Rantinella. But it was one that I saw over at his house and flipped through extensively–enough so that I can clearly recall several details about it. I had only begun reading JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA with the preceding issue, and would only have been six years old in the first place. All of which is to explain that, not having fully absorbed the story in this issue, I thought it was about the Justice League solving the murder of the genuine Santa Claus, rather than a charity worker in Santa’s garb. In 1973, I was still harboring the illusion that Santa Claus was a genuine entity.

This period during which writer Len Wein was helming JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA is one of my favorite in the title’s history, and not just for nostalgic reasons. After a long stretch of time in which the series had grappled with attempting to be relevant in the wake of the popular success of the GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW series, Len was the first to steer the book back towards its roots as a super hero action-adventure series. He also made good use of the extended nascent DC Universe of characters, adding new members to the team such as the Phantom Stranger, who turns up in this issue as a Deus-Ex-Machina to pull the rest of the group out of trouble. It was very much the classic Gardner Fox/Mike Sekowsky approach but modernized and made a bit more contemporary, and I found it incredibly appealing.

The story concerned the League’s old enemy the Key killing prominent charity Santa Claus in order to lure the team into a series of death traps–the Key himself is dying, and he intends to finish off his foes before he meets his maker. This is also the classic story in which clumsy Hal Jordan slips in the shower and knocks himself unconscious, causing his power ring to seek out the recently-introduced John Stewart to take his place when the JLA alert comes in. (Stewart was referred to in this story as “Black Lantern” for a bit of it, an appellation that thankfully didn’t stick.) Otherwise, it’s an exciting holiday adventure with some good feelings as well as jeopardy and excitement. At the end of it, the Red Tornado gets a new costume, one designed by Wein himself that the character will wear for the foreseeable future. Not everybody liked this look, but as a kid it worked for me, even if it was a bit overdone.

The next story in this classic issue–I loved these 100-Page Super-Spectaculars for their thickness and for the classic tales that they reprinted–was a full-length adventure of the JLA’s predecessors, the Justice Society of America. Or, as I pronounced it as a six-year-old, the “Justice Sotery”, not being familiar yet with the word Society. This was a well-remembered story in which the JSA took on not a mad scientist or criminal mastermind but rather the broad ills that were turning the kids of the day into juvenile delinquents. It was written by future Flash scribe John Broome and illustrated by the trio of Arthur Peddy, Carmine Infantino and Alex Toth, each one taking a chapter, each one a lot younger in their careers. This would have been my first encounter with the Justice Society and I didn’t entirely know what to make of them yet.

The story involves the Justice Society moving against the criminal Crimson Claws gang and getting involved in the lives of some kids who have formed a junior Crimson Claws organization in emulation of the gangsters they hold as heroes. It’s pure B-movie schmaltz, with the Junior Justice Society fan club also playing a role. In the end, Wonder Woman shows the boys what will happen to them if they don’t change their ways with her Magic Sphere, and the kids promise to walk the straight and narrow from then on. This was all definitely a reaction t the increasing popularity of crime comic books in the marketplace at the time this story was first printed, a way for ALL-STAR COMICS to ride that bandwagon a little bit, while simultaneously delivering the sort of pro-social message that had become one of its hallmarks.

The final reprinted story in this oversized issue was the wrap-up to a long serial that had bounced around through the pages of editor Schwartz’s titles back in the 1960s–and which he had been reprinting chapter-by-chapter across the pages of several modern 100-Page Super-Spectaculars. This was “Zatanna’s Quest”, in which the newly-introduced lady sorceress was on a search for her missing father Zatara, who himself had been a featured DC hero dating back to the pages of ACTION COMICS #1. This JLA story brought together all of the heroes who had aided Zatanna in her journey up to this point, including the Elongated Man who wasn’t yet a JLA member, and Batman, who insisted that he’d never met Zatanna but who was so popular thanks to his television series when this story was produced that he had to be included. A previous Batman adventure was amended to indicate that Zatanna had secretly been the criminal witch that the Caped Crusader had encountered in that earlier tale, thus justifying his inclusion.

And in fact, the actual Justice League members aren’t involved in the actual action at all. The story opens with Zatanna appearing before the assembled group in their secret sanctuary to thank them for their assistance, then revealing how she was able to locate and liberate her dad thanks to the assistance of magically-conjured duplicates of the various heroes, the creation of which was only possible due to her earlier encounters with them. It was a long way to go–probably easier and more satisfying all around to have simply had Zatanna request the League’s aid for the final leg of her journey. But, hey, I’m no Gardner Fox, who wrote this story. The art was by the quirky Mike Sekowsky, who was clearly having to adjust his approach for the smaller original art paper that was beginning to be used at around this time. Consequently, his pages in this story are more chaotic and cluttered than usual, as he was still getting used to the available space having drawn so much larger for so long.