JSA volume 10: Black Vengeance


By Geoff Johns, Don Kramer & Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-256-8

New, Extended Review

The addictive super-hero soap opera (originally published as JSA #66-75 of the monthly magazine) stepped into high gear as the younger stalwarts of the team once more went time-travelling: this time back to the immediate post-war years to thwart a plot to prevent the Justice Society from ever coming out of retirement, after the House un-American Activities Commission and Senator Joe McCarthy forced them to disappear in 1951.

But before that engaging time-paradox romp got underway attention returned briefly to the once-rogue state of Kahndaq (see JSA: Black Reign) wherein ‘Prologue’ by Geoff Johns, Don Kramer & Keith Champagne showed the size-changing Atom Smasher having doubts about the efficacy and ethics of the way the newly liberated country was progressing under Black Adam’s reign. Suddenly, he is summoned by mysterious, autocratic Time Master Rip Hunter to save hid erstwhile Justice Society comrades…

Illustrated by Dave Gibbons and James Hodgkins, the scene shifted to 1951 where Fascistic time-meddler Per Degaton was once more attempting to bend reality to his will…

‘Making History’ (art by Kramer & Champagne) revisits a seminal 1979 JSA tale by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton, originally published in Adventure Comics #466 and collected in the second volume of Justice Society (coming soon to this blog) which revealed the reason that the team retired was due to witch-hunts and political pressure from the US government’s House Un-American Activities Commission. Rather than reveal their secret identities the team simply ceased to operate, only coming out of retirement once the oppressive climate abated. Now Degaton was twisting events to ensure his hated enemies never returned…

Hunter’s attempts to stop him have convinced the murderous mastermind to eradicate the 21st century team and all their friends and families before they can journey to 1951 and interfere…

‘Guardian Angels’ and ‘High Societies’ found the hastily assembled rescue team encountering unexpected problems as they worked to counter the Time Nazi, especially for  Mr. Terrific, a brilliant African-American who couldn’t even ride in the same vehicles as his time-transplanted white companions.

A scene depicting how the Ku Klux Klan responded to a black man who wasn’t afraid of them and subsequently got the kicking of their vile lives is a delightfully gratuitous and vicarious joy that still warms my old liberal heart and absolutely stole the show before the timely assistance of two generations of Hourman in ‘Past Mistakes’ turned the tide and the forces of good finally, magnificently triumphed in ‘JSA/JSA: Conclusion’.

The controversial and contentious Kahndaq saga is then resolved with the eponymous three-parter ‘Black Vengeance’ (drawn by Kramer, Leonard Kirk and Stephen Sadowski with inks from Champagne & Michael Bair) as the morally bereft Atom Smasher, once more with the JSA, surrenders himself to a higher justice just as Eclipso and the Spectre begin their combined assault on magic (which formed the basis of the Infinite Crisis prequel series Day of Vengeance: you don’t need to read them to enjoy or understand this story, but it is recommended…) resulting in a devastating conflict that destroys the body and soul of the country and its inhabitants…

This volume is a little disjointed in places as it serves to clear up long running plot-lines whilst asking a few more pertinent questions about US imperialism as seen from the perspective of the citizens of the fictional middle-Eastern nation which was regularly reduced to rubble and collateral damage statistics whenever super-powers and Superpowers came into play.

Despite the prevalent political overtones, this is still primarily a simple hero-fest for fans of the genre, and delivers high-quality escapism for the faithful, although the uninitiated might find the implicit back-story a tad hard to grasp. At this time the entire DC line was gearing up for major changes beyond their Infinite Crisis publishing event and the narrative throat-clearing here allowed everybody concerned a few final dalliances with the World’s First Super-Team before the Big Boom got lowered (and for those last two excellent escapades check out the final two volumes of this graphic novel sequence JSA: Mixed Signals and JSA: Ghost Stories).

A shaky moment in an otherwise superlative series, but this is still a book well worth pursuing and a saga worth reading over and over again.

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