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Post by rberman on Jan 18, 2019 6:52:44 GMT -5
JLA #104 “The Shaggy Man Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out!” (February 1973)Creative Team: Len Wein writing, Dick Dillin penciling, Dick Giordano inking The Story: Hector Hammond’s mind-forever-voyaging reads about The Shaggy Man in the JLA case files. That sounds like a fun monster to bring back! So Hammond helps Shaggy break free from his underground prison in Chile, and somehow transports him to the JLA satellite. He defeats the League pair by pair while they are busy at a very important task (see below). Every time he gets knocked to pieces, he just regenerates. The battle knocks the satellite out of orbit, and it falls as far as the skyscrapers of Metropolis before Green Lantern turns it around. Eventually Green Lantern shrinks Shaggy down to finger-size, rendering him importent. I did not know this was a thing GL could do, nor did I expect this to erase Shaggy’s strength. How much do you want to bet we will never see GL do this incredibly useful thing again? Continuity notes: Say what you will about Mike Friederich’s writing. He did introduce a new villain into every story. Len Wein on the other hand is a student of the Golden and Silver Ages—perhaps even a slave to them? The Seven Soldiers story was loaded with Golden Age nostalgia for its own sake (i.e. not building upon it), and the Rutland story was a fanboy homage/cross-promotion starring early JLA foe Felix Faust. And now this issue drowns in references. Hector Hammond, Shaggy Man, the spinning Wheel of Misfortune, The Key’s giant key-gun, Doctor Light’s Light-Wave Weapon, the Gamma Gong… Shaggy gets a proper one page origin recap, but the trophy room items just get name-checked by Aquaman as he gives Black Canary a tour, his hand snugly around her waist… hey, fins off, Mister Married Mer-man! My Two Cents: This story appears to have been thrown together in five minutes. The whole “falling satellite” sequence violates so many laws of physics that I won’t even try to think about it; let’s just pretend Thangarian technology makes it OK. Wein introduces a guffaw-inducing level of verisimilitude when he shows the JLA spending a day dusting their trophies and scrubbing the satellite exterior. Where are the Superman robots when you need them? The Flash is going too fast and doesn’t notice Shaggy until it’s too late to slow down. Huh? Is this a thing? How can he function at all without super-reflexes? It’s necessary to show his power inconsistently, or else he’d be able to solve every problem before anyone else can react. For some reason Hector Hammond is really concerned for the survival of the JLA Satellite. He spends so much energy protecting it that his plan for Shaggy to defeat GL fails. Can anyone explain why? All in all, just too many loose threads to be an enjoyable read.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 18, 2019 8:53:07 GMT -5
"Doughtnut"?? Did he mean "dreadnought" or did he mean to compare the satellite to a doughnut?
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Post by rberman on Jan 18, 2019 9:00:45 GMT -5
"Doughtnut"?? Did he mean "dreadnought" or did he mean to compare the satellite to a doughnut? I'm sure he meant doughnut, referring to the ring around the central globe.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 18, 2019 10:50:47 GMT -5
JLA #104 “The Shaggy Man Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out!” (February 1973)Creative Team: Len Wein writing, Dick Dillin penciling, Dick Giordano inking Wein most certainly built on the Seven Soldiers just as effectively as Thomas when the latter created the Invaders in The Avengers #71--only Wein actually had more to work with in his Seven Soldiers tale overall, along with logically bringing back their 1940s enemy without a trace of "we're doing this just for nostalgia". On the other hand, Friederich was largely a more miss than hit writer for JLA, and when trying to fly under the assumed guidance of O'Neil, he crashed and stumbled with writing as ideologically heavy-handed (actually sledgehammered) as any daily article one might see on Huffington Post, and that handcuffed the work as painfully topical even in the era of their printing. About the cover... Here, we see the Mike Sekowsky Shaggy Man cover (with Murphy Anderson inks) for Justice League of America #45 (June, 1966) and this review's JLA #104 (February, 1973) by Nick Cardy. My, my, how Shaggy Man & the JLA benefitted the next time around. The Cardy cover is not exactly spectacular, but its an undeniably energetic layout taking most of the same basic elements of #45, but actually giving it life. Typical of the great Cardy, no matter what he worked with/on.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2019 11:07:19 GMT -5
The Shaggy Man is one of my favorite characters that the JLA had to face back then; and I find this character had tremendous potential and I just felt that he wasn't utilized properly. Not the best of words here ... you'll know what I mean here ...
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Post by badwolf on Jan 18, 2019 18:45:10 GMT -5
Apart from a cameo in Crisis (where it was ridiculously destroyed by Green Arrow) the first time I ever read the Shaggy Man was when Gen. Wade Eiling made us of it in the modern JLA. It's interesting to contemplate how you'd deal with such a foe. Strand it in deep space or the void...
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Post by coinilius on Jan 18, 2019 22:12:55 GMT -5
About the cover... Here, we see the Mike Sekowsky Shaggy Man cover (with Murphy Anderson inks) for Justice League of America #45 (June, 1966) and this review's JLA #104 (February, 1973) by Nick Cardy. My, my, how Shaggy Man & the JLA benefited the next time around. The Cardy cover is not exactly spectacular, but its an undeniably energetic layout taking most of the same basic elements of #45, but actually giving it life. Typical of the great Cardy, no matter what he worked with/on. Great comparison of the covers, although I would disagree about which one works better - the original Sekowsky image seems far more powerful to me, with a more striking use of colour contrasted against the black background (and possibly some hints of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son in it's depiction of the Shaggy Man). The Cardy version just looks a bit cluttered and overly busy, no doubt an effect made worse by the smaller amount of cover space given to the actual image.
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Post by rberman on Jan 19, 2019 4:48:17 GMT -5
JLA #105-106 “T.O. Morrow” (May-August 1973)Creative Team: Len Wein writing, Dick Dillin penciling, Dick Giordano inking #105 “Specter in the Shadows” (May 1973): Putty-looking men spring from a water fountain at the art museum and beginning stealing the frames but leaving the paintings behind. Ralph “Elongated Man” Dibny and his wife Sue are on the scene. He’s recently been chosen to replace Martian Manhunter permanently in the JLA, so he zips up to the satellite to tell everyone about his odd encounter. The putty men strike three locations at once. Should the JLA split up into squads of two and three? Of course! In each location the JLA stop the putties from stealing a resource (coal, oil, and rubber), and a mysterious man in an overcoat and hat is on the scene while a funnel of wind saves heroes from defeat or death. Elongated Man goes missing in the ocean and is presumed dead. Answering a distress call in the Everglades, the JLA find that Ralph isn’t dead; he followed the putty men, imbedding himself in one of them as a disguise. (This would have made more sense for The Atom.) The putties are quickly defeated this time, but their hivelike base is set to auto-destruct. All attempts to destroy or deactivate it fail. Just when all hope is lost, a whirlwind lifts the hive into outer space, where it explodes harmlessly. Who is this mysterious man who makes these circular wind patterns? Why, it’s Red Tornado! To be continued… #106 “Wolf in the Fold!” (August 1973): Red Tornado survived the destruction of Nebula Man’s giant hand and was found on a mountainside by none other than his creator, T.O. Morrow, who reprograms him to infiltrate the Justice League. Morrow has also reprogrammed Reddy’s JLA signal device to kill the JLA when triggered. Morrow is motivated by a computerized omen of his own impending doom. Reddy encounters some dimension-hopping bank robbers with a “four dimensional” tank that can change sizes. He tries to handle the threat solo, but members of the JLA keep showing up, one at a time, to help him at pivotal moments in the conflict. The JLA get suspicious when they realize that the tank’s operators are wearing the uniforms of Reddy’s creator T.O. Morrow. Reddy takes umbrage at the suggestion that he’s a spy, and stalks off. He takes a secret identity of John Smith (clever!) and falls in love with a woman, Kathy Sutton. Eventually Morrow attacks the city again with flying craft. The JLA disable them but then fall victim to a gas attack that fells even Superman somehow. They seem to perish from the activation of Reddy’s signal device, but nope; they had already noticed and deactivated it weeks before and have just been following Reddy around, waiting for a chance to catch Morrow. But just when that happens, the timer elapses, and to everyone’s surprise, Morrow really does disappear into thin air! Continuity notes: Red Tornado recaps his apparent death in issue #102 and refers to the JLA having “a low opinion of him” in issues #73-74. The death of Black Canary’s husband Larry Lance is also mentioned. My Two Cents: OK, this is obviously the story to which Grant Morrison was paying tribute with the Tomorrow Woman one-shot in his JLA #5. That issue draws many elements from this issue #106. Apart from that, issues #105 and 106 were quite different. #105 was a standard squad-based JLA story which mainly existed to raise the mystery of who the man in the overcoat was, and when we find out that it’s Red Tornado, his reason for hiding from the JLA doesn’t make a lot of sense; it was just a way to provide suspense for the reader. #106 on the other hand was a real bear to summarize since it has so many ideas running around: Red Tornado’s reprogramming, T.O. Morrow’s endless array of weapons powerful enough to kill Superman, the four dimensional tank, the Reddy love story told in very compressed manner, the Medusa ray, and Morrow’s amazing disappearance. I’d like to think Len Wein has a master plan to make sense of that last twist; we’ll have to wait and see. We never did find out the back plot on the putties; apparently they were totally unrelated to Morrow. Wein also cheats with the dialogue. We see from on page eight that the JLA figured out quite early that they don’t want Reddy activating his signaling device. Yet in this panel much later, Elongated Man is thinking as if the signaling device were legit. This is also the second story in a row (counting these two issues as a single story) in which the JLA defeat their foe by miniaturizing him/it, just like The Shaggy Man in #104. There’s an awkward sequence in which The Atom asks for Green Arrow to fire him into one of the putties, then immediately is desperate to get out. I feel like something was lost here in the editing. What is happening with the publication of this series? After the December issue came February, and then the next ones are May, August, and October. Why so few? For some reason Black Canary chose to be on the team with Superman rather than Green Arrow. Trouble in paradise? Note also that Canary is giving instructions as if she is the JLA chairwoman. The gavel seems to pass quickly; it’s been wielded by Aquaman and Hawkman as well in just the past few issues. Wein sneaks in a smidgen of environmental interest with the coal-mining town known as “Desolation,” but he doesn’t really give it a punchline. Red Tornado attempted to travel back to Earth-2 but failed. Why did he think he would succeed when it’s not even the right time of year? Reddy is called “Awesome Android” in one caption. Was he based on the Mad Thinker’s robot of that name which debuted in Fantastic Four #15 (1963)? Obviously Reddy has a lot of thematic and appearance overlap with The Vision; maybe they were both based on the Awesome Android. If Morrow has a Medusa ray and knockout gas that works even on Superman (unless the latter was a ruse), why does he bother with all this Reddy stuff? As common with new writers on team books, Wein shuffles the roster, bringing in Elongated Man and Red Tornado, using these peripheral characters (who don’t have their own books to contend with) to tell the humanistic story – in this case, Reddy as a lonely guy looking for love. Nerds rejoice! As part of this program. Morrow has given Reddy a human-looking face under his robot-looking face. As usual with such helmets (e.g. Iron man’s mask), the helmet and the human head underneath are magically the same size. I was also quite surprised to see Reddy make his home in New York City instead of any of DC’s imaginary cities. Is that a Marvel influence creeping in? The JLA would later end up in Detroit in the mid-80s. #106 is the last issue for a little while to feature an identifying roll call of JLA members on the cover.
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Post by MDG on Jan 19, 2019 12:49:34 GMT -5
Figuring I might be snowed in this weekend, I went to the library this morning and got (among a couple of DVDs) JLA Showcase Presents Vol 5 to catch up on this thread a bit. I read 84, the cover to 85, 86, 87, and 88 in a sitting.
Can't say I'm enjoying them. Everything seems so heavy handed and on-the-nose. I think one reason Marvel's plots and characterization seemed a little more natural is that, with the marvel method, artists were calling the shots and not stuck with having to draw a lot of stupid things so the writer can pontificate.
YMMV
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 19, 2019 15:59:23 GMT -5
rberman , enjoying this thread very much! Regarding the switch to bimonthly publication, I assumed then that the sales had dropped. This lasted for 12 issues, from February 1973 till December 1974. Not only was it odd to see the JLA, which I'd always seen as a DC flagship, reduced to bimonthly status, but it meant that the annual JLA-JSA team-ups came at you fast and furious. The third part of the Iron Hand saga was in 102. Then came a two-parter with the Quality characters in 107 and 108, followed by a solo team-up in 112. Sp between issues 100 and 112, you got 6 JLA-JSA team-up issues. This period was also the onset of the league becoming a Legion; everybody was inducted, and/or re-inducted, and for no other reason I can think of other than to try to create "special" issues. Between 96 and 110, Sargon is named an honorary member (for why?), Phantom Stranger and Elongated Man join, and Red Tornado, and Hawkman rejoin. Too much for the DC varsity squad. Like putting Harold Baines in the baseball HOF. Nice player, but a Hall of Famer? Eh. There should have been an Earth-One analogue to the Seven Soldiers for all the back-ups: Elongated Man, Red Tornado, Zatanna, Firestorm, etc.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 19, 2019 18:45:24 GMT -5
This sequence is so familiar, yet I know I have never read this issue! It must have been recapped somewhere, but I cannot remember. Oh, this is going to bug me...
Edit: Two minutes after I wrote that it came back to me...must have been in JLA #192-193, which revealed the true origin of Red Tornado.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 19, 2019 22:40:26 GMT -5
Reddy was more a Vision analog ,than Awesome Android, though they appeared pretty closely together. Certainly, he was written more like the Vision, by the younger writers who came onto JLA. Robotman predates (the Golden Age version), so that was as much an inspiration.
Reddy becomes a pretty strong presence through this period and a fan favorite.
It wasn't just JLA that was bi-monthly; Detective Comics was also bimonthly, in this time frame.
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Post by rberman on Jan 20, 2019 8:31:37 GMT -5
JLA #107-108 “The Freedom Fighters” (October-December 1973)
Creative Team: Len Wein writing, Dick Dillin penciling, Dick Giordano inking Issue #107 “Crisis on Earth-X!”: Testing a machine intended to facilitate transit from Earth-1 to Earth-2, seven soldiers (Red Tornado, Batman, Elongated Man, Green Arrow-1, Sandman, Doctor Fate, and Superman-2) are instead transported to Earth-X, which is ruled by Nazis. The JLA/JSA troupe is almost captured until the Freedom Fighters come to their rescue. In order to destroy the Nazi’s mind-control machines used to keep the populace at bay, the heroes will have to hit targets on Mount Fuji, Mount Rushmore, and the Eiffel Tower. There’s no deadline for this mission, so surely they can just all go to all three targets, right? Nah, just kidding! It’s time to split into squads! (thirteen pages) Team 1: Batman, the Ray, the Human Bomb, and Dr. Fate take out a Nazi patrol guarding a huge room at the top of the Eiffel Tower (a room I assume doesn’t exist in our world). Inside the room, a giant talking computer manufactures four creatures custom-designed to counter the powers of the four heroes. So the heroes just switch partners and win. Finally, the computer emits a wave that turns off the brains of the heroes, but somehow their reflexes allow their unconscious bodies to complete the mission and destroy the computer. (9 pages) In a not-so-cliffhanger ending, Green Lantern speculates that the missing heroes were teleported to nowhere and are dead. But it’s not very suspenseful for readers, who already know what happened to the heroes. (1 page) Issue #108 “Thirteen against the Earth!”: In a one-page recap, Uncle Sam invites the reader to catch up with the story already in progress… Team 2: Superman-2, Doll man, Green Arrow, and Phantom Lady defeat Nazis atop Mount Fuji, then find another giant computer inside the volcano. Attacking it causes earthquakes that threaten to sink Japan, so Doll Man sneaks inside the computer and rewires it to safely self-destruct. (six pages) Team 3: Black Condor, Sandman, Uncle Sam, and Elgongated Man beat up Nazi guards at Mount Rushmore. They find a big ol’ computer just sitting out in the open atop the Mountain. Weird location, right? The computer blocks them first with fire, then with electricity. Finally, their attacks against it prove ineffective until they realize this computer is just a mirage; the real computer is inside the mountain. OK, that makes more sense! (five pages) The heroes rendezvous at the Freedom Fighters secret base, puzzled that the destruction of the three computers has not ended the mind control of the populace. The JLA/JSA go nuts, accusing the Freedom Fighters of being secret Nazis, and a huge fight breaks out. Red Tornado is unaffected; he realizes the JLA/JSA are under the influence of the mind control ray, and he follows its signal to a Nazi satellite where a robot Adolph Hitler presides, the puppet of the fourth and final computer. Reddy destabilizes the satellite, which falls from orbit into the ocean and is destroyed. Reddy also salvages a device which conveniently allows the JLA and JSA to communicate with the rest of their teams and return to their respective home dimensions. My Two Cents: As with the Seven Soldiers story, the purpose of this tale is pretty obvious: To bring a set of Golden Age characters (in this case the Quality Comics bunch) into the Bronze Age. This story is all about letting the Freedom Fighters show off their powers. The dimension ruled by Nazis was supposed to be called “Earth Swastika,” but DC editorial shied away from that, chopped the arms off the swastika, and dubbed it “Earth X.” The rule about the annual JSA team-up really starts to chafe with only five issues being published a year, and two or three of them being the team-up. This is the first issue in which Superman-2 has the white temples that have come to characterize him since then. The whole mess comes about because Red Tornado was over-eager to test the machine and return ASAP to Earth-2. Green Lantern refuses him, saying that the machine has only been tested with inanimate objects and animals but not humans or whatever Reddy is. So Reddy stows away and messes up the transport. This raises several questions: (1) Isn’t Reddy an inanimate object for these purposes? (2) Is Superman-2 human? (3) It hasn’t been tested on humans yet either, but six of them get to go. (4) Why is Reddy so eager to return to Earth-2? Doesn’t he have a new girlfriend in New York City-1? (5) At the end of the story, the JLA and JSA return home. To which dimension does Reddy go? (Answer: He goes back to Earth-1, thereby destroying the premise of issue #107. But Len Wein reaallly wants to keep Reddy in the mix now rather than wait just a few issues for the next JLA/JSA team-up.)
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Post by rberman on Jan 20, 2019 8:33:54 GMT -5
It wasn't just JLA that was bi-monthly; Detective Comics was also bimonthly, in this time frame. Less than bimonthly even for a spell; 104-106 were released on a quarterly basis.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 20, 2019 9:55:18 GMT -5
JLA #105-106 “T.O. Morrow” (May-August 1973)Creative Team: Len Wein writing, Dick Dillin penciling, Dick Giordano inking The "low opinion" reference was a the best takeaway from this story, as it says yes fans, your flagship group can be less than noble in their treatment of others. Some JLA fans have argued that Red Tornado was in the wrong with his assessment, but his plight as an android only works if the JLA were not helping matters my mistreating/judging him. A matter of sales--title or company-wide as the reason for the move to non-monthly status? One clue comes from The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino: Part of that rise to being dead even with Marvel had been in effect before '74, so if DC was doing well, but the JLA was still not a monthly title, one could reach the easy conclusion that JLA was not a best-seller, hence the publication rate. If that's the case, I can certainly see the reason why, as the title had years of stories that were-to be frank--less than stellar, particularly for a flagship title. I cannot think of another group title of the same age up to that point (i.e. Fantastic Four, The Avengers) that did not live up to its assumed status as a pillar of the company. If the title--in te eyes of readers--was more get together than group having a reason to be, one can see at least one reason why JLA was not a monthly title at this point. Yep---just 4 issues until #111 when the character vignettes return.
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