|
Post by zaku on Aug 30, 2022 2:54:15 GMT -5
The [JLA/JSA team-up] I just read is pretty good! It's sort of a locked-room mystery where the locked room is the JLA satellite. And the murder victim is Mr. Terrific! I respectfully disagree. The "Death of Mr.Terrific" Justice team-up from JLA # 171-2 purely illustrates why it's virtually impossible to write a valid mystery for a book with so many super-powered characters. Unless the writer wants his head to explode, in crafting a mystery involving the Justice League and/or the Justice Society, he has to choose the members participating much more carefully than Gerry Conway did for JLA # 171-2. With the line-up Mr. Conway did use, there is no reason why Mr. Terrific's murder shouldn't have been solved in five minutes. Superman could travel back through time, and as an invisible phantom could observe the events leading to Mr. Terrific's death. Either of the Green Lanterns could order his power ring to "rewind" time so the heroes could have observed what happened to Mr. Terrific. Dr. Fate's magic could probably accomplish the same thing. Hawkman or Hawkgirl could have used the absorbascon to glean the necessary information from the guilty mind. Once suspicion turned to the members of the Justice teams themselves, it would have been a simple matter to have each member submit to a brain scan by both GL's and Dr. Fate. (Multiple scans, in case the murderer was one of the Lanterns or Fate) That's not to say that a true mystery could not have been fashioned, even taking these factors into account. But the story as written failed to do that. I remember when I read it, I began to scoff over the scenes of the Batman and the others trying to solve the mystery without resorting to any of the techniques I just mentioned. It's difficult to appreciate a writer's mystery when I can fathom solutions far quicker and using obvious methods that didn't occur to the writer. And if I remember correctly the culprit wasn't even really captured in the story. They had to wait (googling) Spectre Vol 3 54, a POST-Crisis story!!!
|
|
|
Post by badwolf on Aug 30, 2022 9:22:58 GMT -5
I know early on in this thread, the question arose as to why it sold well. As a kid, If I saw a team book, I would think "Well, I could buy Superman for .35, Batman for .35, Flash for .35... Wonder Woman, pass. OR I could buy Justice League for .35 and get all of them together!" Kid logic. But, seriously, I think that was a factor in it's sales. I don't remember if it was a conscious thought for me but when I bought DC books it was almost always a team book. JLA or New Teen Titans.
|
|
|
Post by zaku on Aug 30, 2022 10:32:23 GMT -5
Superman could travel back through time, and as an invisible phantom could observe the events leading to Mr. Terrific's death. Sometimes I wondered why the Superman Pre-Crisis didn't use this method more often when there was a mystery to be solved. Yes, the IRL explanation was obviously that most of the stories would end in just a third of the pages. But in-universe? "Oh Gosh, I wonder which of my enemies has concocted this death trap!" Uh, a quick time travel and you will know?
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Aug 30, 2022 14:20:23 GMT -5
Superman could travel back through time, and as an invisible phantom could observe the events leading to Mr. Terrific's death. Sometimes I wondered why the Superman Pre-Crisis didn't use this method more often when there was a mystery to be solved. Yes, the IRL explanation was obviously that most of the stories would end in just a third of the pages. But in-universe? "Oh Gosh, I wonder which of my enemies has concocted this death trap!" Uh, a quick time travel and you will know? Or, just go back in time and prevent the crime in the first place.
|
|
|
Post by zaku on Aug 30, 2022 15:36:34 GMT -5
Sometimes I wondered why the Superman Pre-Crisis didn't use this method more often when there was a mystery to be solved. Yes, the IRL explanation was obviously that most of the stories would end in just a third of the pages. But in-universe? "Oh Gosh, I wonder which of my enemies has concocted this death trap!" Uh, a quick time travel and you will know? Or, just go back in time and prevent the crime in the first place. Pre-Crisis rules about time travel were clear: you can't change past. And if you travel in a periodo where you exist, your time-travelling self will be a ghost. Science!
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Aug 30, 2022 15:38:24 GMT -5
Or, just go back in time and prevent the crime in the first place. Pre-Crisis rules about time travel were clear: you can't change past. And if you travel in a periodo where you exist, your time-travelling self will be a ghost. Science! Except for the Superman movie. Which, okay, wasn't a comic, but was pre-crisis. Anyway, gotta love comic book science.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Aug 30, 2022 15:50:35 GMT -5
Pre-Crisis rules about time travel were clear: you can't change past. And if you travel in a periodo where you exist, your time-travelling self will be a ghost. Science! Except for the Superman movie. Which, okay, wasn't a comic, but was pre-crisis. Anyway, gotta love comic book science.It got me through med school.
|
|
|
Post by zaku on Aug 30, 2022 15:50:56 GMT -5
Pre-Crisis rules about time travel were clear: you can't change past. And if you travel in a periodo where you exist, your time-travelling self will be a ghost. Science! Except for the Superman movie. Which, okay, wasn't a comic, but was pre-crisis. Anyway, gotta love comic book science. Yep, what a cheater. Just for reference, time travel rules explained by the Man of Tomorrow himself!
|
|
|
Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 31, 2022 12:55:59 GMT -5
I bought the black and white Showcase and it was quite boring. I then bought the Omnibus that's in color to see if it was a little better. The color helped it but it doesn't compare to the Silver Age Avengers from the same time. Consider this- this title was bi-monthly until the mid 70's. That tells you that it was never a good seller. Comichron has sales figures for JLA taken from Statements of Ownership from the 60s. 1961 335k 13th (after Uncle Scrooge, Superman, Superboy, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Tarzan, Batman, Action, World's Finest, Adventure, Archie and Turok) 1962 340k 11th 1965 389k 11th 1966 408k 10th 1967 386k 12th 1968 316k 19th 1969 233k 27th DC didn't include sales figures in most of their Statements of Ownership for 1963 and 1964.
|
|
|
Post by Icctrombone on Aug 31, 2022 14:21:42 GMT -5
Ok. I wonder why they didn’t make it a monthly ?
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Aug 31, 2022 14:37:12 GMT -5
Ok. I wonder why they didn’t make it a monthly ? Good question. DC never had more than a few monthly titles in those years. Maybe it had to do with distribution arrangement and number of titles that DC could put on the stands each month? It must have been popular, because for a few years there, a JLA annual also came out in November.
|
|
|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 31, 2022 14:44:12 GMT -5
Ok. I wonder why they didn’t make it a monthly ? Good question. DC never had more than a few monthly titles in those years. Maybe it had to do with distribution arrangement and number of titles that DC could put on the stands each month? It must have been popular, because for a few years there, a JLA annual also came out in November. It likely wasn't a distribution agreement because the company that distributed DC's comics was also owned by Donenfeld and Leibowitz. I'm guessing there's multiple factors including press availability, work load for creatives and the fact that periodicals sold better in some months than in others. Keep in mind that Mad Magazine in the mid-70s sold at least twice what the best comic book was selling, but was still only published 8 times a year. So there's clearly some factors favoring that schedule.
|
|
|
Post by dbutler69 on Aug 31, 2022 16:06:06 GMT -5
I’ve got the first Showcase volume of the Justice League from the library and I am reading selected stories. It reprints the three tryout issues and JLA #1 to number #16. These are pretty bad. I have no intention of reading all of them. The tryout issues and JLA #1 to #6 are reprinted in the first volume of the Archives, and I’ve had that out from the library a few times. I will probably re-read the first Amazo story and the first Amos Fortune story. Because the stories are so dire, I decided to restrict myself to a few selected issues among those that I’ve never read before. So I read the two-part story with the demons Abnezegar, Ghast and Rath (which is also the first Felix Faust), the first appearance of Dr. Light and the one where they are auctioned off to the gangsters. I also read the story where Amos Fortune turns out to be the mystery villain, and he’s gathered together some former foes of the JLA members. Hector Hammond and the Pied Piper are OK, but the Green Arrow’s chosen villain is a guy named Dr. Davis and for Aquaman, they chose the Sea Thief, who I’m not sure ever actually appeared as an Aquaman villain outside of this story. They don’t even have a villain for the Martian Manhunter. I guess his rogues gallery was pretty slim. Yeah, these are really bad. I bought the black and white Showcase and it was quite boring. I then bought the Omnibus that's in color to see if it was a little better. The color helped it but it doesn't compare to the Silver Age Avengers from the same time. Consider this- this title was bi-monthly until the mid 70's. That tells you that it was never a good seller. I have to agree that 60's Avengers was a lot better than 60's JLA.
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Aug 31, 2022 17:18:30 GMT -5
Ok. I wonder why they didn’t make it a monthly ? DC didn’t have that many monthly titles during most of the 1960s. A lot of the anthology titles were monthly. Action Comics. Adventure Comics. Even Detective, which was allegedly on the verge of cancellation in 1964 but somehow didn’t miss a month until well into the 1970s. Strange Adventures. Our Army at War. Blackhawk was monthly. But the following comics were published eight times a year: Superman Batman Superboy Wonder Woman Flash Green Lantern Jimmy Olsen Lois Lane And Justice League of America. I don’t really know why. I would guess there was a strategy not to glut the market, or maybe comics sold better in the summer (when kids weren’t in school) or in the winter (when kids were stuck at home). Or something like that. But it’s true that DC had a lot of top-selling titles that were published eight times a year. Titles like Superman, Batman, Flash and Wonder Woman were not monthly until the late 1960s or the 1970s. Here’s a link to Mike’s Amazing World for a sample month in 1962 so you can click on individual titles and see how frequently they were published. www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/newsstand.php?type=cover&month=6&year=1962
|
|
|
Post by Hoosier X on Aug 31, 2022 22:46:15 GMT -5
I’m thinking of doing a cartoon in my notebook, featuring Kanjar Ro and his rival dictators from that solar system. And making sketches, thinking of ways to improve them a little bit. They are kind of lame.
First off, I think Hyathis needs some Capri pants.
|
|