Justice Society of America: World's Greatest Heroes?

He's also due to write a limited series starring the Shade. I think the JSA franchise is in safe hands for awhile...

DC's Eddie Berganza has made an official announcement about the JSA's return, saying that "it will be everything you want, but not what you expect".

Just reread my last post, and was somewhat saddened to recall the general feeling of optimism that accompanied it. Oh Eddie, why did you deceive us...

On a slightly less depressing note: any other fans of the Mike Parobeck run, here?

A big YES! This was a great run. Great stories. Great art. Characters were in check. There was respect to the JSA's history. The JSA was portrayed just like a post-Crisis should have been. It's probably my favorite of the post-Crisis JSA books.

I loved what was done to the characters especially Johnny Thunder, Wildcat and Atom. Johnny's feeling out of place with even Peachy Pet grown and not needing him (nice touch) and finding Kiku (whatever happpened to her?) as the last Bahdnesian. I loved the relationship between Wildcat and Atom -- grumpy old super-heroes!

I liked the costume updates. Atom returning to his cowl and Hawkman's new design were nice touches.

I felt the creative team was very respectful to the series and characters and to their histories. It's a shame it got pulled -- damn you Mike Carlin!

I had a soft spot for those redesigned Atom and Hawkman outfits, too. And I loved how Al was drawn, as this stocky little old guy, balding and with a 'tache. He and Wildcat were the perfect team. "OK, so I still have a super power. Sue me".

It was actually selling pretty well when it was cancelled, wasn't it?

Yes, it was and Carlin was an idiot. He didn't like Strazewski's writing or Parobeck's art. No one was interested in old farts and Parobeck's art. THEN Grumpy Old Men is a box office hit and Batman the Animated Series took off on TV. The title was ahead of its time. He cancelled it after the 3rd issue and then Zero Hour!

It deserves to be collected! And I still consider Libby a JSA member ... even if it didn't get developed!

Me, too. The introduction of the Quick family and Hawkgirl into the JSA was long overdue (though I guess Shiera really joined in Last Days of the JSA). I'm surprised this series hasn't been collected, really. It seems a natural candidate for it.

It reminded me of the Mr. & Mrs. Superman series. That's another one long overdue for a collected edition!

Oh, that was great! I used to pick up Superman Family just for that series. A couple of years ago, Marvel published a huge hardcover book, costing about £70, which reprinted every single appearance of Captain Britain between Alan Davis redesigning him and the formation of Excalibur. I'd love it if DC one day published a similar book collecting every significant Bronze age JSA related story, including Mr & Mrs Superman, Huntress, and the Power Girl issues of Showcase...

I have a question. Which ending do you like better for the JSA? Last Days of the JSA or Justice Society Infinity? Last Days gave the heroes a send off. It made them heroes to the end (even if it's all looped and Norse gods and crap). But they're gone. The facsimile Earth-2 had the JSA and Infinity, Inc. still alive and well, albeit a little strange, but kinda nice.

I think I'd have to go with Last Days. And much as I liked a lot of what was done with them after their return, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, I wish that had been the real end for them, not the mess that was the final run in 2011.

tony ingram wrote: On a slightly less depressing note: any other fans of the Mike Parobeck run, here?

Why, yes! I didn't catch it as a kid, but I recently got the entire series for 25 cents an issue. It's more than a little distressing to read that it was selling well, because in the comic itself they actually said that it wasn't and that that was why it was cancelled. Just HOW long has DC been lying to us about matters pertaining to the JSA, anyway?

At least 26 years; they claimed Crisis on Infinite Earths was necessary because the old DC continuity confused readers, but in fact it was because the writers and editors couldn't be bothered to keep the details straight.

26 years is my entire life. They have been lying to me my entire life. I think I need to lay down. . . .

Sam_Vimes wrote:26 years is my entire life. They have been lying to me my entire life. I think I need to lay down. . . .

Well, not to you personally, I'm sure. I think it's called 'spin', at least in British politics...

tony ingram wrote:

Hourglass wrote:I gather this is how Justice League started out right?

The Justice Society were the original superhero team, founded in 1941

tony ingram wrote:(it was eventually revealed in a late 70s story that they were called together to save Britain from invasion and asked to remain together to protect the home front by FDR).

tony ingram wrote:They were disbanded in 1950,

But three of them were showing their faces, and three of the others had flimsy disguises that wouldn't fool their nearest and dearest — or even their greengrocer — if they appeared on national television.

Flimsy disguises always work in comics! Anyway, Wonder Woman disguised herself with glasses as Diana Prince, Black Canary wore a blonde wig and supposedly looked completely different without it, and Flash (though it doesn't look like it) actually vibrates his face at super speed so that his features are always slightly blurred. Which always sounded to me as though it would give you a headache, but never mind.

I'm sure you'd look completely different in a blonde wig.

The success of glasses as a disguise can only be explained by both Kal-El and Diana having latent telepathic abilities that only work to give the people who know them targeted prosopagnosia.

Lucy McGough wrote:I'm sure you'd look completely different in a blonde wig.

The success of glasses as a disguise can only be explained by both Kal-El and Diana having latent telepathic abilities that only work to give the people who know them targeted prosopagnosia.

I think you're underestimating how gullible people can be, sometimes.

People can't be that gullible or there wouldn't be so many criminals out there. It takes a certain degree of intelligence to be a criminal.

Also, is Lex Luthor gullible?

Lucy McGough wrote:People can't be that gullible or there wouldn't be so many criminals out there. It takes a certain degree of intelligence to be a criminal.

Also, is Lex Luthor gullible?

I think Lex simply couldn't believe someone as powerful as Superman would want a civilian identity. He judges people by his own standards, after all.

If he thinks everyone in the world is like a little mini clone of himself, how on Earth does he function? There are people with Asperger's who aren't as restrictive as that!

Lucy McGough wrote:If he thinks everyone in the world is like a little mini clone of himself, how on Earth does he function? There are people with Asperger's who aren't as restrictive as that!

He's basically oblivious to other people, I think.

Maybe he's, like, actually a psychopath. I read somewhere that you have to be a psychopath to succeed in business.

Lucy McGough wrote:Maybe he's, like, actually a psychopath. I read somewhere that you have to be a psychopath to succeed in business.

Or as a supervillain, I would think.

Lucy McGough wrote:I'm sure you'd look completely different in a blonde wig.

The success of glasses as a disguise can only be explained by both Kal-El and Diana having latent telepathic abilities that only work to give the people who know them targeted prosopagnosia.

Actually, there was a story (ages ago) where Superman's glasses gave him a sort of super-hypnosis to make people see him a bit differently.



Hey, it was the 1970s . . .

I still have that issue. Turns out everyone saw Clarkas this deeply unattractive wimpy little guy with a face only a mother could love. Which made it rather unlikely he'd have been picked to be a TV news anchor, I'd have thought...

tony ingram wrote:I still have that issue. Turns out everyone saw Clark as this deeply unattractive wimpy little guy with a face only a mother could love. Which made it rather unlikely he'd have been picked to be a TV news anchor, I'd have thought...

Well, we weren't quite as badly into the pretty-boy newscaster hunks phase in the early 1970s (but it had started). "Mature" and "professional" still carried a little bit of credit.

MajorHoy wrote:

tony ingram wrote:I still have that issue. Turns out everyone saw Clark as this deeply unattractive wimpy little guy with a face only a mother could love. Which made it rather unlikely he'd have been picked to be a TV news anchor, I'd have thought...

Well, we weren't quite as badly into the pretty-boy newscaster hunks phase in the early 1970s (but it had started). "Mature" and "professional" still carried a little bit of credit.

"Professional"? Every time something newsworthy happened involving Superman, the bloke disappeared!

MajorHoy wrote:Actually, there was a story (ages ago) where Superman's glasses gave him a sort of super-hypnosis to make people see him a bit differently.

See? At last, a credible explanation!

Lucy McGough wrote:

MajorHoy wrote:Actually, there was a story (ages ago) where Superman's glasses gave him a sort of super-hypnosis to make people see him a bit differently.

See? At last, a credible explanation!

"At last"? It was well over thirty years ago!

I'm currently stuck in the nineteenth century thanks to The Mayor of Casterbridge (which is a jolly good book, you philistine).

Lucy McGough wrote:I'm currently stuck in the nineteenth century thanks to The Mayor of Casterbridge (which is a jolly good book, you philistine).

Yeah, Thomas Hardy was right up there with Beatrix Potter, Edith Nesbit, and Dr. Seuss.   

Lucy McGough wrote:The Mayor of Casterbridge

Forced to read it in high school, and I liked it. Although that doesn't always work. They almost killed my love of Shakespeare, and I likely will never be able to read Green Mansions.

MajorHoy wrote:

Lucy McGough wrote:I'm currently stuck in the nineteenth century thanks to The Mayor of Casterbridge (which is a jolly good book, you philistine).

Yeah, Thomas Hardy was right up there with Beatrix Potter, Edith Nesbit, and Dr. Seuss.   

Oh, go away

Mbast1 wrote:

Lucy McGough wrote:The Mayor of Casterbridge

Forced to read it in high school, and I liked it. Although that doesn't always work. They almost killed my love of Shakespeare, and I likely will never be able to read Green Mansions.

I still blame having to read him for 'A' level English for ruining Hardy, for me.

tony ingram wrote:

Mbast1 wrote:

Lucy McGough wrote:The Mayor of Casterbridge

Forced to read it in high school, and I liked it. Although that doesn't always work. They almost killed my love of Shakespeare, and I likely will never be able to read Green Mansions.

I still blame having to read him for 'A' level English for ruining Hardy, for me.

I "read" (well, actually was suppose to read, but faked it) Dickens, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald in high school and hated them. Then, in college, I had a course where I read The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises and enjoyed them because I didn't have as much other work to also do and the pace / discussions were quite different. Later even found I loved Charles Dickens and read some of his novels at least twice.

High school can be the death knell for appreciation of literature.

tony ingram wrote: . . . but later reassembled after the debut of their successors, the Justice League.

tony ingram wrote:The League and the Society then had a tradition of annual get togethers which lasted for years.

(I believe they're up to Vol. 6 in the tpb collections . . . )

tony ingram wrote:It was originally established in the sixties that the JSA and the rest of the Golden Age characters lived on the parallel world of Earth 2, while their modern counterparts lived on Earth 1,

Being a fan of the Earth Two crowd, I was always vaguely resentful on their behalf for that numbering. They came first, they should have been Earth One!

MajorHoy wrote:High school can be the death knell for appreciation of literature.

Not for me. I read it under the table when I was supposed to be working

Maybe Earth Two was "Earth: the new, improved version." You know, Earth 2.0 kinda thing. Earth One was the beta version.

Lucy McGough wrote:
Maybe Earth Two was "Earth: the new, improved version." You know, Earth 2.0 kinda thing. Earth One was the beta version.

That's actually an idea I like.

I aim to please.

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[quote="tony ingram"]Being a fan of the Earth Two crowd, I was always vaguely resentful on their behalf for that numbering. They came first, [i]they[/i] should have been Earth One![/quote]

Barry Allen figured it out first and I guess he got naming rights.

AAAAGGGGHHHHH, not again!!!!

I never liked that bloke.

This is the first mention of the term "Earth One" (Barry's Earth) anywhere and so, by default, Jay's is Earth Two. I'm not sure when a character within a story referred to the Earths in this manner though.

now why did that work and not the previous post!!! This is maddening.  Not to mention frustrating!

I now want to reread those stories...

What's wrong with Barry Allen? Is it the bow tie?

Lucy McGough wrote:What's wrong with Barry Allen? Is it the bow tie?

I think it's more the fact that for years (after he died) everyone acted as though he was this great inspirational figure, whereas I'd always just found him uptight and rather boring.