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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 4, 2019 7:39:23 GMT -5
When this one popped up on the stands, I was thrilled. It was a love letter from DC to its past written by a writer unashamed of just reveling in it all. I never then nor since thought of this as Engelhart's attempt to be Roy Thomas, righter of all continuity glitches or thought he was really interested in setting the time-stream right because of the discrepancy between the appearances of two 20-year-old comics. This one was fun, pure and simple; the glitch was just the MacGuffin. I figured Engelhart did it because he could. And that one-page panel of all those 50's-era characters was worth the price of admission, AFAIWC. This story must have been at least a source, if not a direct inspiration for Cooke's New Frontier, with the gathering of heroes famous and obscure, the unexpected cameos, the 50's paranoia, and the mystique of an untold story. PS: Don't you love that Rex can "smell something" on the rocket from where he's standing? And that look on his face... he should be called Rabid Rex the Wonder Dog. Too bad Bathound didn't show up.
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Post by brutalis on Mar 4, 2019 10:14:33 GMT -5
JLA 144 was pure geeking out for me. Tons of glorious guest stars which were interesting and curiosities of which I had seen bits and pieces of or ads for in older comics. It was nice to see the earlier heroes that were more of the action/adventure sort versus the capes and cowls group. Englehart wrote up a fun and thrilling story without devolving into historic fixation and corrections like Thomas would have. Just the right amount of respect and honor making you want to go out and search for the older comics (unfortunately no LCS at the time so nearly impossible to find them) of any sort that featured them. FUN in capital letters!!!
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 4, 2019 11:23:11 GMT -5
JLA 144 was pure geeking out for me. Tons of glorious guest stars which were interesting and curiosities of which I had seen bits and pieces of or ads for in older comics. It was nice to see the earlier heroes that were more of the action/adventure sort versus the capes and cowls group. Englehart wrote up a fun and thrilling story without devolving into historic fixation and corrections like Thomas would have. Just the right amount of respect and honor making you want to go out and search for the older comics (unfortunately no LCS at the time so nearly impossible to find them) of any sort that featured them. FUN in capital letters!!! JLA #144 was fun, but I would not go so far as to say Thomas had a historic fixation. At his best, when he created the Invaders, he was the first writer to successfully build up the Golden Age as a living, breathing world, instead of being seen as the stuff of reprints, or one-shot revivals. He (and Wein after him) laid the groundwork for how old and new should be merged from that time forward, which allows stories like #144's to be possible. On a related note, Englehart--with Thomas as editor--took his own very deep dive into history with the return of the 1950s Captain America and Bucky in that 4-part arc of Captain America and the Falcon issues 153-156 (September - December, 1972), and that dive was fantastic.
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Post by rberman on Mar 5, 2019 9:27:04 GMT -5
JLA #145 “The Carnival of Souls!” (August 1977)Creative Team: Written by Steve Englehart. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: Count Crystal is given immense power by Azgore the Demon so that he can slay the JLA. Things are off to a good (for him) start when Crystal teleports to the JLA satellite and mystically murders Superman. Drunken Green Arrow and Hawkman stagger into the JLA satellite after a night of carousing with Black Canary and Hawkgirl. Uh oh, Superman is dead on the floor! A sobering discovery, literally. Phantom Stranger holds a séance in which Superman's ghost confirms his death and demands vengeance, which sounds like a very Superman thing to demand. Some dark magic is afoot! Clearly the troubles must stem from Rutland, Vermont, that hive of cosplay scum and villainy. Tom Fagan greets the heroes before they head to an abandoned amusement park where Count Crystal drops a cubical universe on them, kills Phantom Stranger and Hawkman, claims Hawkgirl for his bride, and generally is not very nice. Meanwhile in the afterlife, Superman’s soul proves very difficult for Azgore to digest. Once Phantom Stranger arrives in the afterlife, he hides Superman’s soul. This enrages the demon, who storms up to the world of the living to murder Count Crystal. While the portal between death and life is open, Phantom Stranger slips back through, carrying Superman, Hawkman, and… Red Tornado? My Two Cents: This issue was super-absurd yet lots of fun, much easier to write about than that thirty character slog last issue. Don’t mess with dead Superman! Also, Shayera (misspelled as “Shiera” in the panel where drunk Ollie and Katar try to sing the drunk song from the film “Jaws”) wears her amazing plate-sized earrings even when she’s out on the town. Her ear lobes must be made of granite or something. I’d love to see the artist who dares depict her with ear lobe expanders that big. Phantom Stranger makes a really big deal out of the importance of teams having Seven Soldiers, not six. I assume it's a trope of real-world occultism as well, but it gets enshrined into DC lore in contexts beyond the holding of a séance. The cubical universe looks pretty cool. Grant Morrison must have thought so too, because his cubical “Infant Universe of Qwewq” appears in his work on JLA, JLA Classified, and All-Star Superman.
Drunken superheroes eh? Hawkman asks obliquely whether Shayera had sex with Count Crystal during his absence. And the narrator has to explain that Earth girls may be easy, but Thanagarian girls take marriage more seriously. This is not Gardner Fox’s JLA! This issue also begins a brief B-plot about Hawkgirl pushing for membership even though she has the same powers as her husband. These arbitrary rules exist more to keep the stories interesting than for any justifiable in-story reason. If there were twenty Supermen, would the JLA really turn them all away? But they don’t even need one Hawkman, not really, besides looking cool and feathery, so they need some excuse to say “no” to a second one.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 5, 2019 10:14:13 GMT -5
I agree that JLA #144 was great. Lots of fun! #145 was good too, but I liked #144 (and 146) more.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 5, 2019 18:55:58 GMT -5
*sigh*
I love Englehart's Marvel work but, 144 aside, this run never did much for me.
It's been a while but I think it was a little too "DC peg forced into a Marvel hole." I'm not sure why I loved Wein's stuff and liked Conway's run so, but I couldn't get me brain around this...
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Post by rberman on Mar 6, 2019 7:33:19 GMT -5
JLA #146 “Inner Mission” (August 1977)Creative Team: Written by Steve Englehart. Art by Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin. The Story: The JLA fear that Red Tornado’s latest resurrection may be a trick like last time. They start quizzing him on JLA history, and yep, they were right; he knows things he shouldn’t know, because he’s being animated by… The Construct! (Mark III, if you’re counting, which the Construct is.) The JLA incapacitate Reddy and try to figure out what to do next. Phantom Stranger mutters that he really doesn’t know much about machines and quietly slinks away. Wonder Woman takes half the JLA to Paradise Island with her for moral support to watch her use a memory machine without fear that the Construct will take control of it. Scanning her own mind of the time that Construct possessed her, she discovers that the Construct’s lair is in the basement of the World Trade Center in NYC. The other half of the JLA first head to Atlantis, where they too learn about Construct’s hidden NYC base from some Atlantean computer. They head to the basement, but Construct abandons his robot body there just as the heroes arrive. Where has he gone? Red Tornado’s computer mind reboots, free of Construct’s control. He tracks the JLA to NYC and pleads so piteously to be allowed in their club that they just can’t say no, despite the demonstrable security risks of a member so prone to take-over. Superman insists that JLA take a dinner break from searching for this robot menace while he—I am not kidding you – goes to his day job as an anchorman at WGBS for a couple of hours. But wait! Construct has seized control of the terribly dangerous television cameras in the WGBS studios. Oh, and he’s mentally paralyzed hundreds of people, including Superman and half the JLA. But wait again! Red Tornado resists Construct’s control so bravely that Construct burns himself out. Wonder Woman turns a couple of knobs on a radio transmitter at WGBS, and this somehow assures that the radio waves surrounding Earth will definitely never become a sentient A.I. again to threaten the world. It must have worked, since this is the final issue featuring Construct. Hurrah for Wonder Woman, technical genius. Continuity Notes: Red Tornado repeats the memory loss excuse from his last death “as a quick check of #106 will show! – Schwartz the Stickler” My Two Cents: A fun end to the story of the Construct. The title “Inner Mission” is a pun on “Intermission,” perhaps since Marty Pasko writes the next two issues. The covershot of Red Tornado’s robot organs popping out is grotesque. Also, check out that sixty cent cover price! At one point, Superman scans the whole world with his x-ray vision, looking for T.O. Morrow. Maybe he should have looked for Construct that way as well, rather than making the likes of Black Canary search NYC street-by-street? Hawkgirl makes an Exorcist “spinning head” joke. In this issue, she argues forcefully for her membership, with her husband laying down an ultimatum that he’ll leave if she’s not accepted, and ultimately the JLA deem her useful enough to join their snobby club, and he even gets a hug from Wonder Woman and Black Canary.
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Post by codystarbuck on Mar 6, 2019 12:07:48 GMT -5
Read this one back in the day. I always loved Reddy; but, wasn't wild about the Construct. The design didn't help, either.
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Post by rberman on Mar 7, 2019 12:24:57 GMT -5
Issue #146 marks the end of the Bronze Age JLA Omnibus Vol 2. The third volume is being published in May, so I may resume this series then, depending on what else is in the works.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2019 14:59:14 GMT -5
One of these days ... I'm going to read Steve Englehart's Justice League.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 7, 2019 15:41:14 GMT -5
JLA #145 “The Carnival of Souls!” (August 1977)This issue also begins a brief B-plot about Hawkgirl pushing for membership even though she has the same powers as her husband. These arbitrary rules exist more to keep the stories interesting than for any justifiable in-story reason. If there were twenty Supermen, would the JLA really turn them all away? But they don’t even need one Hawkman, not really, besides looking cool and feathery, so they need some excuse to say “no” to a second one. Exactly. That is something that always annoyed me about the Legion of Super-Heroes, even though it's my favorite DC hero. Really? You mean Infectious Lass has a better chance of getting membership than somebody with Superboy's powers? Crazy.
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 7, 2019 15:54:06 GMT -5
JLA #145 “The Carnival of Souls!” (August 1977)This issue also begins a brief B-plot about Hawkgirl pushing for membership even though she has the same powers as her husband. These arbitrary rules exist more to keep the stories interesting than for any justifiable in-story reason. If there were twenty Supermen, would the JLA really turn them all away? But they don’t even need one Hawkman, not really, besides looking cool and feathery, so they need some excuse to say “no” to a second one. Exactly. That is something that always annoyed me about the Legion of Super-Heroes, even though it's my favorite DC hero. Really? You mean Infectious Lass has a better chance of getting membership than somebody with Superboy's powers? Crazy. Don't know if you or rberman have ever read Commander Benson on this, but he weighed in on this a few years ago to clear up this misconception. Scroll down to Myth 3: Hawkgirl Was Originally Rejected as a JLA Member Because of the League’s “No Duplication of Powers” Rule. captaincomics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/from-the-archives-deck-log-entry-40-draft-not-ready-for
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Post by rberman on Mar 7, 2019 16:22:51 GMT -5
Exactly. That is something that always annoyed me about the Legion of Super-Heroes, even though it's my favorite DC hero. Really? You mean Infectious Lass has a better chance of getting membership than somebody with Superboy's powers? Crazy. Don't know if you or rberman have ever read Commander Benson on this, but he weighed in on this a few years ago to clear up this misconception. Scroll down to Myth 3: Hawkgirl Was Originally Rejected as a JLA Member Because of the League’s “No Duplication of Powers” Rule. captaincomics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/from-the-archives-deck-log-entry-40-draft-not-ready-forI hadn't read that. It's less of a myth than a retcon resulting from authorial changeover. No "one member a year" rule is observed by the 1970s. I guess Englehart was looking for a reason to give Hawkgirl's membership bid some tension for a reason other than "we don't like/need you."
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 7, 2019 16:51:20 GMT -5
Exactly. That is something that always annoyed me about the Legion of Super-Heroes, even though it's my favorite DC hero. Really? You mean Infectious Lass has a better chance of getting membership than somebody with Superboy's powers? Crazy. Don't know if you or rberman have ever read Commander Benson on this, but he weighed in on this a few years ago to clear up this misconception. Scroll down to Myth 3: Hawkgirl Was Originally Rejected as a JLA Member Because of the League’s “No Duplication of Powers” Rule. captaincomics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/from-the-archives-deck-log-entry-40-draft-not-ready-forVery interesting. Thanks for the link. As far as what he says about that rule not being part of Legion canon, I'm not sure what he means by canon, but clearly that rule didn't exist in the early days of the Legion, as both Lightning Lass and Lightning Lad were Legionnaires for a short time before Lightning Lass became Light Lass. I believe Superboy #195 is the first issue where that silly rule is specifically mentioned, which I imagine is just to provide some variety in powers, but the Legion is so large and splits up into so many groups to go to various missions throughout the galaxy that the no duplicate rule is especially silly for them.
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 7, 2019 19:00:03 GMT -5
Issue #146 marks the end of the Bronze Age JLA Omnibus Vol 2. The third volume is being published in May, so I may resume this series then, depending on what else is in the works. Well, thanks for taking us on this journey of all of the ups and downs of the JLA in the 70s. Hopefully, you will finish out the rest when the next omnibus is released.
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