Justice Society of America: A Celebration of 75 Years

Justice Society of America: A Celebration of 75 Years

Collection published: 2015
Contents originally published: 1941-2012
Acquired: December 2019
Read: December 2019–September 2023

Writers: Gardner Fox, Robert Kanigher, John Broome, Dennis O'Neil, Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas, Len Strazewski, James Robinson, David Goyer, Geoff Johns & Alex Ross

Artists: Everett E. Hibbard, Martin Nodell, Bernard Baily, Howard Sherman, Chad Grothkopf, Sheldon Moldoff, Ben Flinton, Irwin Hasen, Joe Kubert, Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino, John Belfi, Frank Giacoia, Arthur F. Peddy, Bernard Sachs, Mike Sekowsky, Sid Greene, Dick Dillin, Joe Giella, Joe Staton, Rich Buckler, Jerry Ordway, Arvell Jones, Tony DeZuniga, Mike Parobeck, Mike Machlan, William Rosado, John Dell, Ray Kryssing, Stephen Sadowski, Michael Bair, Dave Meikis, Paul Neary, Rob Leigh, Alex Ross, Dale Eaglesham, Ruy Jose, Drew Geraci, Nicola Scott & Trevor Scott

When I began my JSA journey way back in December 2019, this 2015 volume had been put on sale on Comixology, so I picked it up; it contains a sampling of stories from across seventy-five years of the Justice Society, ranging from the first original story of the team in All Star Comics vol. 1 #4 (Mar./Apr. 1941) up to its then most recent incarnation in Earth 2 #6 (Jan. 2013). Some of it was redundant with material I was going to read anyway, but it was a good source for stories I would not have otherwise have read, and I sprinkled those among the other tales of my four-year Justice Society marathon. I'll review those ones here, but also point out where you can find my comments on the other inclusions.

All Star Comics vol. 1 #4, 37, & 55 (Mar./Apr. 1941–Oct./Nov. 1950)
These are three classic JSA stories. All Star #4 wasn't their first adventure—but it was their first adventure as a team. The first three issues of All Star had the JSA regaling each other with tales of solo adventures; this one has them all working together, though though do the traditional thing of splitting up to handle their own aspects of the case, and the individual parts are even drawn by each character's usual artist. All three are Golden Age comics: more interesting for what they do than the crude way in which they do it. But I did enjoy the sprawling nature of All Star #4 in particular; it's a whopping sixty pages!

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #82
(script by Denny O'Neil, art by Dick Dillin & Joe Giella)

Justice League of America vol. 1 #21-22, 30, 47, & 82-83 (Aug. 1963–Sept. 1970)
Of course, you couldn't have a Justice Society history collection without JLA #21-22, the story that reintroduced them as denizens of Earth-2 during the Silver Age. But I don't really get what the other ones are doing here; I didn't really enjoy them when I originally read them in the various Crisis on Multiple Earths volumes, and I didn't enjoy them here. It would have been better to use some of the stories that tap into the idea that the JSA has its own history where characters can really grow and change, like JLA #171-72.

Adventure Comics vol. 1 #466 (Nov./Dec. 1979)
This is the Silver Age version of the JSA's disbanding, which I already reviewed as part of All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever, and which was also included in Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice.

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #193
(script by Roy Thomas, art by Rich Buckler & Jeremiah Ordway)

Justice League of America vol. 1 #193 (Aug. 1981)
This fourteen-page backup serves as a prelude to All-Star Squadron. It probably reads weirdly on its own, to be honest, but if you're going to read All-Star Squadron afterward (and I did), it provides excellent context for issue #1. If A-SS is ever collected, I imagine this will be included, but there's no sign of that thus far.

All-Star Squadron #67 (Mar. 1987)
The post-Crisis origin of the JSA, which I already reviewed as part of All-Star Squadron. I would have preferred to see an actual A-SS story, but this is fine.

Justice Society of America vol. 2 #10 (May 1993) / All Star Comics vol. 2 #2 (May 1999) / JSA #25 (Aug. 2001) / Justice Society of America vol. 3 #10 (Dec. 2007)
A number of modern age revivals and/or flashbacks that I've already reviewed: the 1990s one, an installment of The Justice Society Returns!, an issue of JSA (included in JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two), and an issue of Geoff Johns's second Justice Society revival. For every single one of these series, I would have picked something else. I was glad to see the 1990s revival here, because it's often overlooked... but surely the first issue would make more sense than the last. The installment of The Justice Society Returns! included here doesn't even make sense in context, much less out of it; literally any other issue of the event would have been better. The JSA issue is part of a tedious crossover with Hawkman; there surely must have been a better option. And the last inclusion here is from another big event, Thy Kingdom Come; I would have picked Johns's last issue on the series, "Happy Birthday Stargirl!"

from Earth 2 #6
(script by James Robinson, art by Nicola Scott & Trevor Scott)

Earth 2 #6 (Jan. 2013)
I mean, I guess they had to include some issue of Earth 2 here, and someone must like it, but this just confirmed to me that everything I suspected about the series was true. This has character names from the JSA, but making them contemporary characters battling the apocalypse means they lose everything that makes the JSA interesting and enjoyable.

Overall, a pretty mixed bag, to be honest. Some necessary inclusions, but some pretty questionable ones, too.

This post is the penultimate in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Power Girl Returns. Previous installments are listed below:

Faster than a DC Bullet: Sandman Mystery Theatre, Part I: The Golden Age Sandman Archives, Volume 1

Having read all of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, I'm going backwards in DC history to read the stories of the other superheroes who have functioned under that name, beginning with one of the first in the 1930s: Wesley Dodds. The majority of these tales come from Sandman Mystery Theatre, but I'll be taking some sidesteps along the the way:

Comic hardcover, 221 pages
Published 2004 (contents: 1939-41)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2010

The Golden Age Sandman Archives, Volume 1

Writers: Gardner Fox
Artists: Bert Christman, Creig Fessel, Chad Grothkopf, Ogden Whitney

This is the only collection of the original adventures of Wesley Dodds as the Sandman. Wesley is a millionaire playboy who owns the Dodds-Bessing Steel Corporation, but spends his nights fighting crime as the Sandman. Why? Who knows; there's no origin story of any stripe given here.

The reason why the Sandman would become such an enduring character can be instantly seen in his visual design. Dressed in a fedora, wearing a gas mask, and bearing a gas gun, he creates a potent and spooky image. One imagines adventures in the dead of night, with the Sandman's expressionless face looming at you out of the darkness. Unfortunately, the stories collected here struggled with capitalizing on that. Two early stories, "Sandman at the World's Fair" and "On the Waterfront," both feature the Sandman swimming, which means he looks goofy, a man wearing a gas mask along with his swim trunks.

Several other early tales are also jarring. "The Three Sandmen" feature Dodds recruiting two comrades from his naval aviator days to dress up as the Sandman to stop an heist in their airplanes. I'm not sure why they even have to dress up as the Sandman, given no one can see their faces in their airplanes! "Island Uprising" has the Sandman knocking out native tribes in the South Seas; hardly a creepy urban vigilante. (Though, oddly for a later Sandman story, "To Hammer the Earth" still features the Sandman battling a man planning to move the Earth out of orbit with a giant radiation gun.) "The Sandman Meets the Face" is probably the story where things finally begin to come together, with the Sandman facing off against deadly criminals in the urban underworld. The story's ruined by its goofy ending, though, where the Sandman runs the Face off a railroad bridge, crowing that it was fun while it lasted. Great, Wesley, glad you find murder so entertaining. It's a shame they kill him off, actually, as the Face has some style and could have made a good recurring villain.

The story where things really do come together is "Lady in Evening Clothes," which introduces the other element that raises the Sandman above your garden-variety superhero: Dian Belmont. Dian is Wesley's love interest, but she's no Lois Lane; Dian is a skilled safecracker who breaks into Wesley's mansion only to find out his secret identity. Raised her entire life by a criminal gang, the Sandman figures out that she's actually the long-ago-kidnapped daughter of the District Attorney, and he reunites them, the two promptly becoming recurring characters in the strip. Though the writer(s) seem to forget Dian's safecracking skills and criminal origins in later stories, she frequently accompanies the Sandman on her adventures, often instigating them by her insistence that he help her investigate a certain crime. She's as much in the fight as he is-- in "The Crook Who Knew the Sandman's Identity" she even dons the Sandman costume herself-- and their interplay is a highlight of otherwise formulaic stories of defeating gangsters.

The art is pretty typical Golden Age comics stuff, often stiff and formulaic, though it gets better as it goes, especially once the artists break out of the two-by-eight grid of the earlier stories, developing more dynamic page layouts. The colors are frequently the downfall of this art, the restrictions of the time putting the Sandman in bright green or orange suits that don't exactly ooze frightening. It's hard to give proper credit to the writers or arists here; not every story has credits, and for some reason, Jim Amash's introduction mentions artists and writers who aren't actually credited in the book. Like many collections of Golden Age comics, The Golden Age Sandman, Volume 1 (there is as of yet, no Volume 2) is fun but lightweight, with glimpses of promise that writers of later eras would capitalize on.