ratcreature | stumbling in the dark

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stumbling in the dark

I tried to look into the Justice League comics, that is post-Crisis but before the current JLA series, to see what prior JL incarnations there have been, and whether any look interesting, etc. and I didn't even get as far as to look up which titles there were before becoming confused. I knew that at one time the team split into Justice League Europe and Justice League America, but what is this Justice League International? And is there more than one of those? And something with the issue numbers is confusing, too.

* Some research (mostly here and here) later. *

Okay, so in 1987 the series started as "Justice League", the members seem to have been: Batman, Martian Manhunter, Black Canary II, Captain Marvel, Dr. Fate, Blue Beetle II, Guy Gardner, and Mister Miracle.

Then with #7 still in 1987, it became "Justice League International", and there were some changes to the team, Captain Marvel and Dr. Fate quit, Captain Atom, Booster Gold and someone named Rocket Red with various, probably significant, numbers ("Rocket Red #7"? "Rocket Red #4"?) join. That series lasts until issue #25. Then it became "Justice League America" in 1989 but the issue number continue with #26, and the new "Justice League Europe" starts as its counterpart and lasts until #50.

Then in June 1993 the "Justice League Europe" starts to go by "Justice League International" but the issue numbers also continue, that being the reason why the issue numbers of the series called "Justice League International" don't match, but go only from #7-25 and #51-68, which are really two different series/teams. In June 1993 another series/team starts, the "Justice League Task Force" and I'm not sure how that team relates to either of the others (but looking at the descriptions that one has Nightwing in it).

As an aside, these various Justice League teams start to look as complicated to keep track of as the gazillion of different X teams and titles from Marvel...

So basically it's like:

               JLA
JL --> JLI --<         
               JLE --> JLI
                      \?
                       JL Taskforce

Anyway, the new "Justice League International" lasted till September 1994, so I guess Zero Hour had an impact on it? I'm still not sure how the "Justice League Quarterly" title that ran from 1990 to 1994 fits into it. Both the JL Taskforce and the Justice League America series lasted summer 1996. Then in September a "Midsummer's Nightmare" started the lastest JLA series with the Justice League in its current configuration.

I still have no clue which (if any) of these might be worth reading. (I mean, do I really want to know about the numbered Red Rocket guys?) The one comforting thing is that I don't really have to worry about it yet, because I for now I can catch up on the current series first, if I want more Justice League, and that series seems to be straightforward enough, if you don't look at the ton of available specials.

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Okay, I had written you a little history up through JLA #50 and then lj ATE MY POST! ARGH.

So first issue: economics. And not the trite "this is what sells" type. In the mid 1980s the comics industry shifted over from newstand sales to direct marketing and specialty shops. This changed the entire lay of the land, creating a different kind of a consumer who could and would get every issue of a book produced (a hit or miss proposal in the newstand days). Rather than formulaic stories, you start getting a push for continuity. You get writers like Alan Moore and Frank Miller on the scene, pushing the limits of the comics code (and opening the door for Vertigo). This created a lot of strain on the team books like the JLofA, which had to compete with/incorporate established character continuities in solo books and increasing pressure to come up with threats worthy of a team of their status.

So the JLofA (the first series), around issue 230, went through a massive revamp. Their satellite headquarters were destroyed, and Aquaman, then acting chairman, disbanded the League, pointing out that everyone was so busy with their own affairs that there was no point in them being in the League anymore. He then reformed the League demanding that anyone who joined must be able to give the League priority. It ends up him and Martian Manhunter, Batman sort of, and a bunch of newcomers.

The newbies are kids, up and coming superheroes (and pointedly ethnically and racially diverse). They end up stationed in Detroit, and the focus of the book is as much on the internal dynamics of this new team and their relationship to the embattled inner city as it is about anything else.

(LJ has just informed me this entry is TOO LONG, so I'll continue in a new post).

Return market forces - there is serious consumer dissatisfaction. DC gave the new team a couple of years, but finally decided to terminate the title with extreme prejudice. In the middle of a giant crossover, "Legends" (which is more an allegory for the politics of the day than anything else), a massive anti-superhero movement engineered by the Glorious Godfrey (disguised as a character whose resemblance to G. Gordon Liddy is more than passing). The League is more or less driven underground and divided by how to handle the situation. This internal division makes them easier than usual prey for Professor Ivo, who is seeking revenge on the League and ends up killing two members, almost killing a third, and driving another to an extreme situation that causes her to question being a superhero at all. The shattered JLofA closed up shop with issue #261.

Enter the JLI. This is the UN sponsored team, and the start of the BWAH-HA-HA era. The League in these days was a farcical team, squabbling and silly and financed by billionaire Max Lord (a saga unto himself). The initial UN team was in the US, so a JLA, and the huge success of the book as an option to the extreme grim-and-gritty movement of the late 1980s led to "Justice League Embassies" all over the world, with the JLA taking responsibility for the Western Hemisphere and a new, affiliated team, the Justice League Europe, taking over the Eastern Hemisphere. There was a shortlived Justice League Antarctica, but that's a whole OTHER story.

So for a while, the JLI was two books, JLA and JLE. The teams periodically crossed over (often in the quarterlies) but mostly went along their own ways. Around the late 30s of the JLA issues, an occasional serious story line was creeping in, and when the creative team behind the JLI finally was ready to hand in the towel, they did a massive yearlong crossover called "Break Downs." There were more character deaths, possessions, crises, headquarter destructions, etc, and when all was said and done, the JLE and the JLA folded back together into the JLA. It was... not pretty.

For a while, the JLA was answerable to various government agencies, and initially the JL Task Force was intended to be a showcase book - missions would be assigned not to the JL generally, but to some hand picked team from among the by now cast of dozens of Justice Leaguers. The teams would be tailored to the missions, with Martian Manhunter and Gypsy from the Detroit days providing continuity. This was a hit or miss exercise with a rotating cast of writers and artists until Mark Waid took it over midrun and changed it's focus. The team shifted to being training group for potential future Justice Leaguers, with J'onn in charge of the training. The Waid run is good, if requiring a fantastic grasp of canon to follow, and there is a big crossover with JLA called "Judgment Day" that is worth the price of admission. JLTF is wildly uneven, and the Priest run plays fast and loose in redefining characters in ways I'm not crazy about.

Anyway, the JLTF ends up way too focused on a weird space faring mission involving the brain of a L-Ron in the body of Despero and the neverending saga of Triumph being a general prick and finally dies at issue 37. I can't speak to the later part of the second series JLA because I lost interest.

So the second series finally folded in the early 100s, and shortly thereafter we get the Grant Morrison reboot of the current League, coupled with stories like JLA: Year One and Midsummer's Nightmare.

So that's the short form primer. Hope it helps!

Hi, here's (http://captain.custard.org/geo_old/quotes.html) a site with quotes from the Waid and Morrison runs so perhaps you can see what suits your tastes. Morrison's writing is held by some fans to be a high water mark in JLA history, and he did have a very strong run. All of Waid's and Morrison's major arcs are collected in TPB form; you can find them on Amazon.com or maybe in a local bookstore.

Thanks. What I was talking about though in my post were the Justice League titles prior to the current one, which would be the one these quotes are from. I've already decided to collect the current series as I find the issues (I prefer a single issue collection to trades unless the single issues are ridiculously expensive, because I have more fun collecting that way), but wanted to get a sense of what went on before. Still, fun quotes.

Yeah it helps, though I'm not familiar with all the DC characters you mention (also I've never heard about G. Gordon Liddy, but I guess I could google him).

I knew that the JLE stuff was more humorous, but didn't know the JLA was as well. And you know, I have no idea about "Justice League Antarctica" but I bet Animal Man was all in favor of it as long as it was about wildlife and nature protection... I've always wondered how the main DCU titles dealt with Animal Man becoming part of Vertigo and starting a wacky cult and such.

The entire JLI run through "Break Downs" (the Giffen-DeMatteis era) entertained me fantastically, but is not everyone's cup of tea. If you want to get into the JLA, the current run is as good a place as any to start. I wouldn't dive into the earlier runs unless you develop a serious attachment to certain characters (my collection stemmed from a Martian Manhunter fixation). If you're into comics in a cultural studies way and are old enough to remember the Cold War, a lot of the mid-80s stuff has some amazing commentary on the changing world of the Reagan years.

Justice League Antarctica was a dumping ground of sorts for the reformed Injustice League and G'nort and was sort of a parody of itself.

A word to the wise - get started on JLA and really into the barely-there continuity, you're heading down a scary path of comics buying just to figure out what's going on. If you've got an obsessive personality and a willingness to accept the continual flux of continuity as shaped by changing politics in the industry, it'll be fun. If you just want to understand present continuity (realizing it'll change soon anyway because it always does), the current run plus Midsummer's Nightmare and Year One will be plenty.

Happy reading!

Oh yeah, I remember Reagan and the Cold War just fine. As a small kid I found it rather terrifying, I remember a children's books about nuclear war and after 1986 also nuclear accidents, which I guess were supposed to help children to deal with all of this, but still. (Looking back I think that possibly two opposing superpowers had been the safer option after all, but well.) One of my earliest memories of news is of Reagan becoming the US president. I still remember the huge controversy and demonstrations against stationing even more US nuclear weapons here after NATO decided on the twin-track policy in 1979, then of course Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik, the whole peace movement thing that overlapped with the growing anti-nuclear power and environment movement after Chernobyl...

And yeah, I pretty much thought that it's best to start with the current series, which seems to have a more manageable cast too. I just like to have some sense of the bigger picture when I start reading a in "section" of the DCU, even if I don't buy the comics in question right away. Kind of like having a mental map where I can place things.

The Justice League that you are concerned with are all fun stories written during a dark and moody time in comics. I am a huge fan of these and have almost all of them. After Breakdowns, a huge 15 part epic that set up for the writers coming on the Justice League Europe and America teams, the Europe stories were not quite as good but again I have them because I'm a completeist. JL Quarterly was like the Unlimited titles Marvel sold where it had self contained stories by the likes of Mark Waid umongst others and JL Task Force was a covert ops group with variable members up until Zero Hour where they became a training ground for younger JL members(Ray,Triumph,Gypsy...). G Gordon Godfrey was a henchman for Darkseid who was trying to mentally defeat the heroes ala Job from the bible, and Legends is a really good read so if nothing else pick that up it's only six issues. Oh yeah Extreme Justice was a title started in 94 meant to be an Image comics inspired take on the Justice league led by Captain Atom, and i liked it but mainly because I like Captain Atom. Unfortunately some of the plot points towards the end where left dangling, like Max Lord being a robot, and eventually ignored by current DC editors because they said no one read them but I did and so I was angry to say the least about that comment. You can usually find huge lots of these runs on Ebay for real cheap like once upon a time with quarter bins, oh how i long for those days. Oh yeah the rocket red thing, they were Russia's answer to superheroes and there was a group of them only known by numbers the Jl had to accept one to get UN funding and he turned out to be a traitor and they replaced him with the other. Here is the breakdown, no pun intended, of the titles Justice League 1-6, Justice League International 7-25, Justice league America 0,26-113, Justice League Europe 1-50, Justice League International 51-68, Justice League Task Force 1-16(covert ops style),0,17-37 (training) and Extreme Justice 0-18, and Justice League Quarterly ran concurrent with these titles 1-17. These comics were great and they had some of the most insanely funny things ever like the Batman vs Guy Guardner one punch fight, the entire Justice League Europe in a french class, give them a try it can't hurt except maybe your sides and funny bone. My name is Lewis and I happened upon this several year old blog and thought I would argue for one of my all time favorite set of series and I hope you read this and check out some or all of it and what i've said helps and makes sense I'll check back later

Lewis again you should also check out JLA Incarnations a 7 issue mini series written by John Ostrander. It starts from the beginning of the Justice League of America and each issue concentrates on another Era of the league up to JLA I have not read it yet but I will probably get it at some point and I sincerely hope all this info helps if you haven't already found out what I said in the four years since your original post

I've actually read Incarnations, and quite liked it, iirc, even though I probably missed some of the character backgrounds playing into it.

Thanks for this overview. I've read some of these since I first posted this entry, though not all of them. Eventually I got somewhat disgruntled with DC due to its ongoing, perpetual crossover "Crisis", and that made me less inclined to find and read older comics too.

Also here it is harder to find them in single backissues, since they come with additional taxes if sellers even ship outside the US, and there is the international payment hassle, and so on, and the older issues sold here in comic stores generally don't come cheap.

I didn't pick up on you being in another country. let me know where you are and what issues from this run you might be interested in or I can post what I have doubles of and if you are interested we can probably work something out Lewis

Thanks, that's a nice offer, but I currently don't read as much DC as I did when I posted this. I just meant to explain why my reading wasn't all that completist. In the end I read more of the (then current) JLA title that started in 1997 because they were also collected in trade paperbacks and thus more accessible for me, and of the older ones mostly picked up the earlier JLE for Animal Man (whom I really like as a character), and I found JLE quite fun to read. So I agree with you there.

ok well happy reading that is what comics should be about and not over priced 'collectorism' have a good one

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stumbling in the dark

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