Category: JSA

By Geoff Johns, Lee Moder & Dan Davis (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-84576-595-8

Before hitting it big Geoff Johns started his DC career by revamping the Star Spangled Kid for the 21st century. The original Kid and sidekick Stripesy (an adult) fought crime in the 1940’s, both as a duo and as part of the original Seven Soldiers of Victory. The gimmick was that the sidekick was an adult whilst the literal Kid was the boss and gave the orders. It seemed like a natural development to thrill the children who bought comics and that idea hasn’t been lost here.

Stripesy is Pat Dugan, that same stalwart who battled in the 1940s. He’s still the same guy, more or less (time travel paradox plot – don’t ask – just go with it) and has just remarried. His new wife has a teen-aged daughter, Courtney, who is something of a handful, and is resentful that the new family has upped sticks and moved out of Beverly Hills to relocate to Blue Valley, Nebraska.

We all know what a spoiled brat can be like, but Courtney surprises everybody when her snooping uncovers Pat’s secret and, more importantly, his mementoes. When blackmailing him elicits no results, she steals the Star Spangled uniform to bait him at a party. The costume’s belt is a cosmic power source, which is fortunate, as Blue Valley is the secret base for an evil organisation bent on world conquest.

When the dance is attacked by masked terrorists Courtney manifests super powers and deals with them, but not before step-dad reveals a secret of his own – he’s built a robot battle suit to carry on crime-fighting. Forced to team-up, she learns to be less selfish and he finds that he’s destined to be the “and” part of any partnership.

A light-hearted romp, Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E (the first eight comicbook issues of which are collected here) has a lovely light touch and a terrific spin on the derring-duo theme. The character dynamic as over-protective adult and wilful child discover each other is very often as touching as it is funny and the angst-light action featuring such DC icons as Starman, Teen Titans/Young Justice, Captain Marvel and eventually the JLA and JSA plus a host of villains, aliens and the truly evil denizens of your average American High School make this a very youth friendly series.

© 1999-2000, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

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

The super-hero soap opera (originally published as issues #66-75 of the monthly magazine) steps into high gear as the younger stalwarts have to travel back in time 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 the early 1950s.

This unassuming time-paradox romp serves to clear up a few long running plot-lines, as does the eponymous Black Vengeance sequence that follows when Atom Smasher and Black Adam debate the kind of heroics necessary in the modern world whilst the nigh-omnipotent Spectre attempts to destroy all magic (as seen in such Infinite Crisis series as Day of Vengeance) whilst asking a few questions about US imperialism as seen from the perspective of the citizens of fictional middle-Eastern nation Kahndaq, who are mere collateral damage statistics whenever super-powers come into play.

Despite the seemingly political overtones, this is still primarily a simple hero-fest for fans of that genre, and will deliver high quality escapism for the faithful, although the uninitiated might find the implied back-story a little hard to grasp.

© 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Geoff Johns & various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-192-8

By the time of this collection of stories from the monthly comic featuring the Justice Society of America (issues #59-67) there have been six and a half years of continuous publication, including attendant Specials, miniseries, annuals and general cross-overage with the rest of the DC universe, plus whatever communal backstory the creators have chosen to access in their desperate strivings to bang out the next issue in the modern cut-throat comics marketplace. The advent of the trade paperback collection has given the periodical comic story another bite of the cherry, much as the rise of DVD sales has to cinema studios, but it’s still a tenuous existence for funnybook writers everywhere.

So this book is the result of one of those semi-regular clear-ups when a title attempts to pull together all the disparate strands that have sweetened the narrative pot in the never-ending struggle to keep the readers attention. The “Previously in JSA…” section is three dense pages of very small print. The stories themselves though, are a pleasant change of pace from recent efforts as they, by necessity, focus on the characters themselves rather than the ever-imminent destruction of the country, the planet and the universe.

Over the course of the series various characters have been lost to the vicissitudes of super-heroing and these stories concern the rescuing of some and the re-defining of others. First up is a tale which resolves a long-running grey area in the team’s morale. Stargirl is a fourteen year old girl and she’s been spending entirely too much time with the thirty-something Captain Marvel. Members are beginning to get a little worried. What they don’t know of course, is that the good Captain is also only a feeble teenager, albeit one who magically transforms into the hunky adult crime fighter. Geoff Johns writes and Sean Phillips illustrates a tale that really can’t have that happy an ever after.

A good old superhero punch up is the motivator of ‘Redemption Lost’ as a villain escapes from Hell, reanimating the dead in one last attempt to destroy the JSA. Credits are due to Johns as usual, with Don Kramer, Tom Mandrake and Keith Champagne making the pictures. ‘Insomnia’ clears up plot threads left hanging since the early days of the title and even as far back as the 1980s and 1990s as it attempts to reshuffle continuity regarding the various Sandmans (Sandmen?) as well as the amazonian Fury and the most recent incarnation of the magician-hero Dr. Fate, compliments of Jerry Ordway, Wayne Faucher and Prentis Rollins, over a jam-packed Johns script. ‘Out of Time’ features the final-ish fate of the three people who have been Hourman, and resolves a long, (long, long, long) storyline featuring the inevitable death of one of them at the end of Time, courtesy of artists Kramer and Champagne.

The volume concludes with a tie-in chapter of the braided mega-event Identity Crisis which impacted upon the entire DC continuity. If you followed the tale you know it all begins with the murder of a super-hero’s wife and consequently rewrote the ethical viewpoint of the superhuman community. If you didn’t I’m sure you couldn’t care less, but should at least be informed that this chapter features the JSA science types Mr. Terrific and Doctor Mid-Nite performing ‘The Autopsy’. Geoff Johns writes and Superstar Dave Gibbons draws with finishes by James Hodgkins.

I suppose any attempt to rationalise or simplify continuities is ultimately foredoomed (and yes, that is a shot at Marvel’s Ultimates line and publishing strategy), since once you are two or three graphic volumes into a new run the problems you’re attempting to address start accruing all over again. Even so, writers don’t just make this stuff up. There is planning and there is editorial consultation.

Maybe if creators and publishers acknowledge that the eventual destination of all their labours is a honking great book (as the Europeans do with their Bande Dessineé) in a bookshop or library rather than the airtight caress of a mylar snug in a bank vault or the back-issue bin in the four-colour ghettoes we comic fans build for ourselves, the proper considerations can be incorporated to make graphic novels a more inviting prospect for the casual reader. If not, we can expect to have the current comics publishing phenomenon end as just another closed book for the rest of the world.

© 2004, 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

Geoff Johns, Rags Morales, Don Kramer, Michael Bair, Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-984-0

Super-heroes get all geo-political in this latest compilation of the Justice Society (JSA #56-58 and Hawkman #23-25) as a breakaway branch of members and ex-members invade a Middle-Eastern country to depose a monstrous and tyrannical dictator and liberate his oppressed subjects. This naturally leads to the right-thinking team-mates having to go in and stop them. It is a long cherished tenet of super-hero ideology that the good guys don’t mess with political injustice and make no lasting changes.

The result is the usual punch-up and soul-searching all around, culminating in a portentously inconclusive stalemate while every troubled, heroic stalwart reconsiders his/her/its position. In keeping with the new spirit of realism, there are even some casualties, but they’re only among the “misguided” heroes and probably only to facilitate the freeing up of the brand name for the next round of re-treads/relaunches.

It’s also impossible to escape the rather heavy-handed political allusions to America’s dubious foreign policy adventures, but by fictionalizing such commentary surely the risk exists that one also trivializes it? As ill-informed as many Americans seem, is a comic-book really the best place to air such views? Especially if you can’t even name the countries you’re ‘discussing’?

Glossy, pretty, fatuous and ultimately, rather vacuous.

© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Geoff Johns, David Goyer, Leonard Kirk, Don Kramer & Sal Velluto (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-035-2

As a kid I used to love any appearance of the Justice Society of America, DC’s most popular crime-busting characters from the 1940s. They seemed full of a power that was equal parts Mystery and History. They belonged to that mythical land “Before I Was Born” and their rare guest-shots always filled me with joy.

A few years ago they were permanently revived and I found very little to complain of. As superheroes go the stories and art were entertaining enough, though not outstanding, and certainly not exceptional. With this latest compilation (collecting issues #46 – 55), I finally find myself agreeing with those wise editorial heads of the 1960s who felt that less was more and that over-exposure was a real danger.

In a tired old plot where Darkness-wielding villains black out the Earth and let evil reign free, I finally thought to myself, “Seen It, Done It, Don’t Care No Mo’”.

These are characters that everybody in the industry seems to venerate. Surely if all we’re going to have is the same old tosh that the lesser heroes have to deal with on a monthly basis, we’d be better off stopping now and saving them for genuinely special occasions. I certainly saw nothing here to differentiate between this and a hundred other titles.

© 2003, 2004 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

 

By Geoff Johns, David Goyer, Leonard Kirk & Keith Champagne (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84023-984-0

When they’re producing what their dedicated readers want, today’s publishers seem to be on comfortably solid ground, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh in my judgements. The tale collected as Savage Times is standard comic book fare, well crafted and revolving around a time-bending villain who attacks the venerable super-heroes of the Justice Society of America by travelling into their collective past.

No problem with that. I just question the long-term sense of slavish regurgitation. How many times can even the most dedicated collector swallow the same old things? And how many formats should they be expected to purchase it in? Stuff like this won’t expand the reader base, and shouldn’t be looking for growth not treading water?

© 2002, 2003 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.