{"id":13791,"date":"2015-07-03T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=13791"},"modified":"2015-07-01T19:28:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T19:28:00","slug":"justice-society-of-america-the-bad-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2015\/07\/03\/justice-society-of-america-the-bad-seed\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Society of America: The Bad Seed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Bill Willingham<\/strong>, Matthew Sturges<\/strong>, Jesus Merino<\/strong> & various (DC)
\nISBN: 978-1-4012-2714-2<\/p>\n

The Justice Society of America<\/strong> was created for the third issue (Winter 1940\/1941) of All-Star Comics<\/strong>, an anthology title featuring established characters from various All-American Comics publications. The magic was sparked by the simple expedient of having assorted heroes gather around a table and tell each other their latest adventure. From this low-key collaboration it wasn’t long before the guys – and they were all white men (except Red Tornado<\/em> who merely pretended to be one) – joined forces on a regular basis to defeat the greatest villains and challenge the social ills of their generation. Within months the concept had spread far and wide\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

And so the Justice Society of America<\/strong> is rightly revered as a true landmark in the development of comicbooks. When Julius Schwartz re-energised the superhero genre in the late 1950s, the game-changing moment came with the inevitable teaming of the reconfigured mystery men into a Justice League of America<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

From there it wasn’t long until the original and genuine article returned. Despite many attempts to revive the team’s popularity however it wasn’t until 1999, on the back of both the highly successful rebooting of the JLA<\/strong> by Grant Morrison & Howard Porter and the seminal but critically favoured new Starman<\/strong> series by Golden Age devotee James Robinson, that the multi-generational team found a new mission and fan-base big enough to support them. As the century ended the original superteam returned and have been with us in one form or another ever since.<\/p>\n

This iteration, called to order after Infinite Crisis<\/strong> and Identity Crisis<\/strong>, found the last surviving heroes from World War II acting as mentors and teachers for the latest generation of young champions and metahuman \u00e2\u20ac\u0153legacy-heroes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (family successors or inheritors of departed champions’ powers or code-names): a large, cumbersome but captivating combination of raw talent and uneasy exuberance with weary hard-earned experience.<\/p>\n

And this slim compilation, collecting JSA <\/strong>volume 3 #29-33 (September 2009 to January 2010) details their greatest challenge, how they met it and what resulted from it\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Accepting the necessity of becoming elder statesmen to the next generations of heroes as well as defenders of the right, the already ponderous organisation began inviting ‘Fresh Meat’<\/em> to sign up. Unfortunately as they induct effusive All-American Kid<\/em> and moody teen King Chimera<\/em>, the JSA discover their mystic guardian Obsidian<\/em> has been reduced to an inert egg of dormant ebony energy\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Even as they interview the newbies and probe the cause of the dark avenger’s strange transformation, news arrives of a massive super-villain army attacking the city.<\/p>\n

Exactly how to respond reignites a doctrinal debate between old school brawler Wildcat<\/em> and military martinet Magog<\/em>, but soon the heroes head off en masse, leaving super-genius Mr. Terrific<\/em> to mind the juniors and investigate Obsidian’s condition\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The metahuman confrontation is a trap. An unknown mastermind has gathered an army of super-creeps specially chosen to counter individual JSA-ers and put bounties on all the heroes’ heads\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

As a colossal battle ensues in the heart of the city something strange becomes apparent. Although the brutes, beasts and monsters run amok and mercilessly assault the JSA-ers they actually attack each other whenever teen hero Stargirl<\/em> gets into the firing line.<\/p>\n

For some reason the mystery Machiavelli behind the coalition of evil has specified that if she is even scratched nobody gets paid\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

And as the super-war escalates, back at the JSA Brownstone Mr. Terrific is brutally stabbed by the last person he expected\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Caught completely by surprise the JSA are soon reduced to baffled Stargirl and defiant Jay Garrick<\/em> standing over the battered bodies of their comrades. The first Flash<\/em> is forced to risk everything on the villains obeying orders as he rushes off in ‘Hot Pursuit’<\/em> of major reinforcements and returns almost instantly with Doctor Fate<\/em>: a crime-fighting mage with the powers of a god\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or so the villains believe\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

With the bad guys fleeing in terror the thrashed heroes regroup at their HQ and discover Terrific bleeding out. As magic-wielders and medical doctors strive to keep his fading spark alive, Magog and Wildcat renew their argument about how the team should be run and already-frayed tempers snap\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

‘New Blood, Old Blood, Spilled Blood’ <\/em>sees the medical contingent working miracles to keep Terrific alive as Flash and Power Girl<\/em> begin reconstructing the murder attempt and grilling the few villains they managed to capture. Soon the big scheme is starting to become clear – even if Stargirl’s sacrosanct status is not – and when the reconvened evil army attacks, even the worst possible news about Terrific is not enough to hinder the fighting mad champions in ‘The Worth of a Hero’<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The truth about the traitor comes out in the final climactic clash and even though the greater plot remains unsolved, the resurgent team storms to another astounding against-the-odds victory. However in the rubble of their home and shattered unity it becomes clear that to survive at all the Justice Society has to ‘Split Up’<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

To Be Continued\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Scripted with deft skill by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges and compellingly limned by Jesus Merino – who should be paid a major bonus for keeping distinct and dynamic the hordes of heroes and villains populating this shocking saga – The Bad Seed<\/strong> is another blockbusting epic that will delight the already informed but might well be all but unreadable to anyone not deeply immersed in the complex continuity of DC’s last three decades.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, if you love Fights ‘n’ Tights mass melodrama and are prepared to do a little reading around then you might find yourself with a whole new universe to play in\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2009, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, Jesus Merino & various (DC) ISBN: 978-1-4012-2714-2 The Justice Society of America was created for the third issue (Winter 1940\/1941) of All-Star Comics, an anthology title featuring established characters from various All-American Comics publications. The magic was sparked by the simple expedient of having assorted heroes gather around a table … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Justice Society of America: The Bad Seed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[76,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc-superhero","category-jsa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-3Ar","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}