TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN: Beware the ides of March, Justice Leaguers

It's true, you can get too much of a good thing so after a whole month dedicated to all things Spider - Man - i I am taking a break with a post I promised my readers to do : another BLACK AND WHITE spotlight post on THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA as I somehow never made a full blown post on the iconic post - Crisis On Infinite Earths Justice League written by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis and illustrated by Kevin Maguire .

Which sounds impossible but so far I have only written about it in other posts about the so - called " Bwa - ha - ha - ha League " and I'm saying the so - called because what a lot of people tend to forget here is that besides all the jokes and slapstick humour there were some really dark things happening and quite a few League members bite the dust during this iconic run. Heck, this post alone starts with a nuclear incident about to escalate into World War III ( and which is only averted because of the sacrifice of a super hero from another universe that was decimated by nuclear war ) then picks up steam as an entire town falls to a mystical being hellbent on dominating the world and going up against the lords of order and chaos and ends with all of earth being invaded by an armada of bloodthirsty aliens. Right, that sounds like the usual fun and games.

The uninitiated comicbook fan who has only been exposed to the Justice League of America in its adaptions into movies or - with a bit of luck - the cartoons may wonder why there is this general misconception that this run was just a lot of jokes and silly moments and why it was and still is so beloved by fans and critics alike ? To answer the question - without repeating what I wrote previously because I am too lazy to go through my dozen of Justice League posts - we have to take a look at the team's history, what the series had been before and what became their focus.

Going back to 1960 the team first appeared in the 28th issue of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD ( this was long before it became a team - up book with Batman ) as an assembly of the most popular heroes at that time.

Patterned after THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA from the Golden Age this was a more modern team to continue the momentum of the Silver Age that had started with revamping such old heroes like Flash or Green Lantern. But despite being more " up to date " the comicbooks were still written the old way which meant the stories focused more on heroes solving crimes than the heroes themselves so they were never fleshed out that much. It also didn't help that the Comics Code prevented the publishers from including anything realistic for decades. Speaking about decades an artist who worked on the title for a long time - he literally died at the drawing board while drawing a page for that title - was Dick Dillin and if you want to get an idea how the Justice League comics were done back then head on over to the spotlight post I did on him in 2023 .

After Dick Dillin's untimely demise George Perez took over the art reigns for a short while but because he had started working on THE NEW TEEN TITANS with Marv Wolfman while he was waiting for a spot on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA to open and that title really hit off he didn't stay long on the book. And I also did a post covering that period of the JLA .

Now as I already explained at length in my post THE DUAL DYNAMICS OF THE DYNAMIC DUO one reason why George Perez decided to leave THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and concentrate his efforts on THE NEW TEEN TITANS is that DC Comics is very conservative with all the Justice League of America members like Superman or Batman and that they are practically " frozen in amber " at a certain age so that Bruce Wayne is never allowed to age beyond the age of 30 or 30 something. While Dick Grayson on the other hand was allowed to grow older, become a more self - assured partner to Batman and even outgrew his status of just the second part of " Batman and " founding and leading his own team and eventually foregoing the Bat - Family all together to become Nightwing.

This was one problem with books like THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA : the company didn't want the heroes to progress and they also didn't flesh them out very much. If you look at their secret identities they only seem to be there to have something that can lead to problems if the villains find out and they never have any big problems like the Marvel Comics characters later had. Superman may have had problems because he left his workplace to do some Superman stuff but it was never like he was going to get fired over it. And Bruce Wayne was super rich so he never had to worry about where his next meal came from or where to sleep.

Also as far as superheroing goes they all were very good at using their super powers and the conflicts came rather from how to work together to beat the villain than from them arguing about how to do things. And if things got complicated you could always count on Superman or another senior member like J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter to lay down the law and decide how they should proceed. This was way before Batman became the smartest guy on the planet and more involved in the JLA.

But all of that was about to change in the aftermath of the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS twelve issue maxi series by Marv Wolfman and George Perez that undid the entire DC Comics continuity up until that point and gave the DC universe a fresh start. Well, almost the entire DC universe as not all books aligned as well as they were supposed to. The Justice League has gone through many iterations throughout the decades in an attempt to change with the times - with varying degrees of success - and just before the Crisis the League had disbanded and Aquaman left their base in the Justice League satellite ( if I recall right it had exploded by that point ) to form a new League with some new and young members.

In Detroit of all places. Not that I have anything against Detroit it's just not the glamourous place one imagines the Justice League would pick for a fresh start. Anyway, by the time of the Crisis this team was already in shambles with most new members either dead or severely traumatized so it was time for a new beginning and like THE SUICIDE SQUAD the new team was introduced in the LEGENDS mini series with art by John Byrne .

At that time John Byrne was doing double duty on ACTION COMICS and SUPERMAN and while both Superman and Wonder Woman worked with the new Justice League of America to defeat the bad guys in LEGENDS Superman didn't join the team while Wonder Woman appeared in the first issues of JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and then left, never to be seen again on the roster until much later. The thing is the higher ups at DC Comics didn't want their big guns like Superman, Wonder Woman or Hal Jordan to be in another book besides their own to prevent continuity problems. The only concession they made was that Batman was allowed to be on the team - since he is always in a dozen different books anyway - and Wally West would be in JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE as the new Flash .

So the new team didn't get big Justice League members like Superman, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Green Arrow, Flash, Aquaman or Hawkman.

Instead they had Batman, J'onn J'onzz, third stringers like Black Canary, Captain Marvel ( the original Fawcett Comics character ), Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle plus later new members like a very reluctant female asian version of Doctor Light and Booster Gold.

Faced with the dilemma of having to content without the popular Justice Leaguers the writers decided to buck the trend of grim and gritty comics that was going on at the moment and instead ask themselves what would really happen if all the best and most powerful members of the Justice League just left and much like Captain America's cooky quartet the fort was left to the minor leaguers who now had to fend for themselves and fill some very big shoes. In a time when everybody was trying to make comicbooks ultrarealistic and grim they also tried to make it real but more in the way of exploring how unreal it would feel for these heroes to be suddenly thrust into this kind of responsibility without having great power. There is already an inherent comedic element in that situation and the cherry on top was the superb art by Kevin Maguire who could show what a character was thinking even when they didn't say anything.

Okay, I guess that's enough of an introduction for newer comic readers and I hope my ramblings were halfway coherent and entertaining for more experienced comicbook afficionados. What I want to say in short is this Justice League went in a completely new direction that had more than a few surprises up its sleeve and there was nothing like it before nor will there be nothing like it again. There were some mini series after it like FORMERLY KNOW AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE or I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT THE JUSTICE LEAGUE but all in all this series was one of its kind.

One last thing, regular blog visitors might be suspicious because so far I haven't mentioned Power Girl which I always do when I am talking about JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE and it's not like I am not tempted to. Especially since I came across some very impressive artwork of her even if it might be what you call more " adult oriented " and may get this post a NOT SAFE FOR WORK restriction if I use any other picture than the one below.

But the thing is that I already included all the usual Power Girl stuff in last year's Bart Sears birthday post so I am good. That's not saying that she might not appear in the bonus section. Let's get to the good stuff.

bwa ha ha ha

justice stuff

justice links

justice videos

murphys law

giffen

omnibus

legends

breast music reactions

lex luthor

buffed league

back up

tv movie

indianer jonas

pam would have been a great power girl

power girls

canary

Staying with real life Power Girls, initially I didn´t want to make an a GIF for Chanel Renee Jansen because it takes so much time but the way she unapologetic shoves her big melons in your face left me no other choice.

Daimn, her dress doesn´t leave much to the imagination to begin with but Chanel makes sure we get a good eyeful and her giant - sized double airbags almost fall out. These puppies were made to pump boners dry !

helden

unmade movie

and god created woman from 1988 with Rebecca De Mornay same title as the 1956 french film with Brigitte Bardot - which all of my spanish speaking followers can check out in the spanish part of this bonus section - also by the same director Roger Vadim who also directed Barbarella with Jane Fonda and Into the Night with Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer