But editor Julius Schwartz didn't like the word "Society" - in an interview with him in the late 1980s, he told me that kids didn't know what a "Society" was - but they knew what a "League" was, thanks to the National Football League and Little League - so he made that change.
So they created the JLA, and the team soon graduated into its own title. But there was something Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox and artist Mike Sekowsky forgot: an origin story!
The first issue doesn't bother to mention how the team was formed - it simply existed.
So nine issues into the regular series, they corrected the oversight by telling honorary member / sidekick Snapper Carr (and new member Green Arrow) the story of how they first gathered.
The flashback starts with individual adventures, as each hero encounters a different alien that crash-lands in a meteor - each alien is made of a different substance, including stone, glass, mercury, and wood! The creatures were sent to Earth to wage war - against each other!
The aliens try to build an army by converting the local animals into matching substances, but the individual heroes manage to stop them - until they converge on another meteor, and they're all transformed into walking trees!
It's interesting that the story focused on the five "secondary" heroes - Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter. Superman and Batman are included, but only make a cameo of sorts at the end, though Superman manages to contribute a classically bad pun.
Superman confronts a diamond creature, and using super-pressure he converts it back to coal. Snapper is puzzled - Superman typically could turn coal into diamond with super-pressure - so how did he reverse the process? Superman replies, "Quite simply, Snapper... I simply rubbed the Diamond being -- the wrong way!"
(Well, I laughed.)
As the heroes gather at the end of the adventure, Batman suggests they form a club or society. Flash adds, "A League against evil!"
But there's actually another origin for the JLA - in the late '70s, writer Steve Englehart created a terrific addition to the mythos - but that's a review for another day!
Grade: A-
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2 comments:
That wouldn't happen to be a Giant Sized 12 Squared issue would it? :)
Yep, it was a giant-size issue!
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