Comic Book / Justice League of America (1960)

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Justice League of America is a 1960 comic book series from DC Comics.

The Justice League's original lineup was Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter (commonly known as the "Big Seven", and considered the greatest heroes on Earth by pretty much the entire superhero community). Also appearing was teen sidekick Snapper Carr, who helped the team on their first case against Starro and became an honorary member soon after.

Almost immediately (six issues later), the team started to gradually expand to include Green Arrow, the Atom, Hawkman, Black Canary, the Phantom Stranger, Elongated Man, Red Tornado, Hawkgirl, Zatanna and, finally, Firestorm.

Justice League of America (1960) story arcs include:

• #21-22: Crisis On Earth One
• #23-24: Crisis On Earth Three
• #37-38: Crisis On Earth A
• #46-47: The Bridge Between Earths
• #55-56: The Super-Crisis That Struck Earth-Two
• #64-65: The Stormy Return Of The Red Tornado
• #100-102: The Unknown Soldier Of Victory
• #107-108: Crisis On Earth-X
• #113: The Creature In The Velvet Cage
• #135-137: Crisis in Eternity
• #148-149: Crisis in the 30th Century!
• #159-160: Crisis From Yesterday
• #166-168: The League That Defeated Itself
• #171-172: Crisis Above Earth-One
• #183-185: Crisis Between Two Earths
• #195-197: Crisis In Limbo
• #207-209: Crisis On Earth Prime
• #219-220: Crisis In The Thunderbolt Dimension
• #228-230: Earth Mars War
• #231-232: Family Crisis!

Justice League of America (1960) provides examples of:

• All Your Powers Combined: Issue #31 "Riddle of the Runaway Room!" (November, 1964) introduces Super-Duper◊, a creature created by a crook using strange energy. It has Wonder Woman's head and lasso, Batman's torso, the Flash's legs, Hawkman's Wings and Green Lanterns arms. However, being made from yellow energy means its power ring doesn't work.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: In #152 "2,000 Light-Years to Christmas!", the League must recover three powerful objects that some aliens have lost on Earth; one of them falls in the hands of a little girl who lost her family in a Middle Eastern war and uses it for revenge against the invaders. While there is plenty of action, in the end, the girl is convinced to surrender the object peacefully by Red Tornado. It is later revealed that the objects were actually intended as gifts... for a messiah being born in another world! Oh, and Tornado, who is an android, adopts the little girl as his daughter.
• Auction of Evil: In Issue #8, "For Sale: The Justice League!", a common gangster manages to find a device which he can use to control the JLA members and auctions them off to various crooks to use as aides in committing crimes. Turns into a case of Let's You and Him Fight as well, since basically all of the crooks decided to go for the same target as one of their fellow bidders. In the end none of the heroes actually succeed in stealing anything, as Snapper Carr absconds with the goods himself while everyone else is distracted by the fights.
• Breaking the Fellowship: The final storyline of the title tied in with Legends. In the process, Vibe is killed, Steel mutilated, and Vixen traumatized so much she just quits. The only one left by the end is Martian Manhunter.
• Clone by Conversion: In Issue #9, the Appellaxians, the first villains that the League ever faced off against, in Silver Age continuity (though it wasn't the first story about them published) were seven alien warlords who chose Earth as their battlegrounds for a winner-take-all free-for-all. They each varied wildly in appearance and abilities, except for one: they each could turn any animals, humans (or super-humans) they focused on into loyal, miniature Mook versions of themselves. Thankfully, this also had No Ontological Inertia, so when the aliens were defeated everyone turned back to normal none the worse for wear (it was the silver age, after all).
• Costume Copycat: Issue #5 sees the first scheme of Dr. Destiny, long before he adopted his more famous Nightmare Weaver shtick, involve this, copying Green Lantern's outfit and using gadgets to imitate his powers.
• Covers Always Lie: In #171, where the first Mister Terrific dies, Batman is pointing at Mr. Terrific's killer, with Red Tornado, Power Girl, Wonder Woman and The Flash Jay Garrick behind him. The murderer is Jay Garrick, though he was possessed at the time and it wasn't really his fault.
• Crossover Finale: The series ended with the Legends crossover.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Vibe's death involves him being graphically choked to death, on panel.
• Crystal Prison: In #4 "The Doom of the Star Diamond!", five Leaguers have been imprisoned inside a giant diamond by the villain Carthan.
• Designated Girl Fight: Due to Comics Code standards, Wonder Woman and Black Canary both fought Superwoman even when the other Crime Syndicate members switched around fighting their counterparts. In #29 "Crisis on Earth-Three", featuring the Crime Syndicate of America for the first time, Gardner Fox mostly avoids the common cliche of having the characters fight the mirror versions of themselves. The one exception is Superwoman, the evil counterpart of Wonder Woman, who fights Wonder Woman because they didn't want to show a man and woman fighting.
• Evil Uncle: During Conway's run, Vixen goes up against her uncle, a warlord who killed her father.
• Exact Words: In Issue #8, "For Sale: The Justice League!", villain of the issue Pete Ricketts has the league under his control, and forbids them to use their own emergency signals in case Superman and Batman come back from their own mission. He didn't say not to use each other's signals, though.
• Flawed Prototype: A prototype silicon gun Sandman was testing exploded, turning Sandy into a crazed, towering sand-monster. As a result, Wesley abandoned the gun.
• Genius Loci: Aquarius from Issues #73-74, who's responsible for the death of the Earth-Two Black Canary's husband, is a rogue living star.
• Green Aesop:
  • Issues #78-79 are a two-part story about a race of aliens called the Doomsters, who were originally from the planet Monsan (a reference to the Monsanto corporation) and killed their planet and everything on it with too much pollution. A few of their race survived to thrive on pollution, so their leader, Chokh, plans to colonize Earth by polluting it. It ends with the aliens stopped, but Earthmen polluting as ever.
  • Issue #86 involved aliens trying to steal Earth's plankton to replace their own, which was dying. Superman got them to stand down by talking about it and trying to help as much as they could, but it was their responsibility to change things—-just like on Earth.
  • Issue #90 had the American military lose track of some chemicals that destroyed the Saremites' religious artifact, so they took over Atlantis to declare war on the surface as revenge. The JLA stopped them, but Aquaman lamented the loss of 43 Atlanteans and blamed the land humans for it.
  • In a twist on the usual, Issue #99 had some alien ecologists going to Earth to save its ecology by super-growing alien plants, but it would choke everything so they had to be stopped.
• Hate Plague: In Issue #169 "The Doomsday Decision", an alien being called the Over-Complex causes a plague of rioting across the world.
• High-Altitude Battle: In Issue #134, Supergirl fights alien conqueror Despero over the skies of an alien planet◊.
• Hurl It into the Sun: This is Monty Moran's plan for Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, and Aquaman in Issue #5, trapping them in a rocket ship set on a course for the sun, but J'onn J'onzz is able to use his Super-Breath to eject the rocket into space, thwarting his plan.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Issues #166-168 feature the League swapping bodies with the Secret Society of Super-Villains. No real significance at the time, but the 2000s mini-series Identity Crisis (2004) revealed that this incident led the League to start wiping villains' memories (including Doctor Light, whose personality change significantly altered the character), and brought about severe distrust issues among the members of the League which culminated in the group's downfall.
• Instant Expert: In #224, villain Paragon explicitly has this as part of his power, which was to be better at everything than those within a certain range of him. So he wasn't just instantly instilled with all the powers of the JLA when they were near but he had greater power than they had and greater skill and ability at using their own powers and abilities.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the storyline that led into the Detroit-era Justice League, Aquaman disbanded the JLA and argued that it needed a roster that was fully committed to the team, not a bunch of part timers who had other, more important things in their lives to focus on. This is exactly why writer Gerry Conway disbanded the team in real life, as he wanted to get rid of all the characters who had their own books (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow and Black Canary, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Firestorm) and create a new Justice League that consisted solely of second string heroes he could have complete creative control over, such as Aquaman, Martian Manhunter and Zatanna.
• Legion of Doom: The series occasionally featured the Justice League fighting the evil Crime Syndicate of America (from Earth-3, a good/evil-reversed parallel universe) featuring Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Power Ring, and Johnny Quick (evil counterparts to Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash, respectively). Initially, there were no superheroes on Earth-3, only supervillains, but it was eventually revealed that the heroic scientist Alexander Luthor was a bit of a thorn in the Crime Syndicate's side.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Many of the early stories had the League split into smaller teams to handle individual threats before converging for the finale.
• Let's You and Him Fight: In Issue #70, "Versus the Creeper", a super-hero named "Mind-Grabber Kid" who is jealous from the attention and accolades showered upon the Justice League, tricks a group of aliens into fighting the League by claiming they are a group of criminals.
• Loophole Abuse: In Issue #110, the Guardians of the Universe barred John Stewart from using his power ring to fix up a dilapidated slum. After the Key blew up the neighborhood with a bomb (with its inhabitants having been evacuated by the League), John used the carnage as an opportunity to replace the destroyed buildings with newer, cleaner and safer copies.
• Master of Illusion: Cynthia Reynolds from the Detroit team has the power to cast illusions, which she can use in various ways focusing on invisibility and camouflage. She can camouflage both herself and someone standing close to her.
• Meteor Move: In Issue #134, Supergirl performs one when fighting alien conqueror Despero. First she grabs him and throws him hard enough to put him into orbit◊, and then she flies out of the planet, meets Despero in space and knocks him out with one punch◊.
• Mind-Control Device: Issue #86 has a scientist invent a "re-memory" ray gun — it causes its targets to remember making decisions favorable to the wielder of the device. It's amazingly convenient — he doesn't even have to tell them what he wants, they just come up with something on their own. Naturally, he does just what you would do with such power: steal the plankton from Earth's oceans and sell it to an alien from planet Kalyarna who is looking for a solution to his world's environmental problems.
• More Hero than Thou: In Issues #100-102, in order to stop the Nebula Man, someone must strike it with the Nebula Rod, which will be certain death. Red Tornado does it himself on the grounds that he's a robot, and therefore worth "less" than anyone else. Of course, being a robot, he was rebuilt.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Issue #113 has Sandman realizing he put Sandy through decades of Hell by mistake, and nearly says this phrase word-for-word.
• Near-Villain Victory: A common theme for the one-and-done stories was just how close the villains came to victory.
  • #14 had Amos Fortune capture Batman to act as a proxy named Mr. Memory, who went around erasing the heroes' memories and nearly blowing them up with atomic bowling balls. This plan was only stopped with the intervention of the newest League member, the Atom, who was able to escape and use Green Lantern's Power Ring to help the other heroes.
  • #23 has Queen Zazzala threaten to destroy Earth if the JLA don't find an immortality elixir for her, and they have no choice but to obey since she can detonate the device mentally and kill them with the radiation if they refuse. The League pulls off a last-second victory over her by making it so the ingredients can't be opened, and Green Lantern ensures her device can't be used again.
• No-Sell: Green Lantern and Wonder Woman having difficulty against Sandy. Hal because he's made of sand, which is close enough to yellow for his ring to not effect him, Wonder Woman because he's made of sand. Her lasso just slips right through his body.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: Issue #113 has Sandy, Sandman's former sidekick, supposedly escaping and going on a rampage. It's only after fighting him a little he reveals he wasn't evil; the madness from his transformation wore off a few hours afterwards. He escaped because of an earthquake and was trying to prevent more. He just couldn't speak.
• Opponent Switch:
  • Inverted in #29 Crisis on Earth-Three, the very first story featuring the Crime Syndicate of America. While the first battle sees the male heroes unintentionally switch opponents when their foes move from their initial location before the heroes arrive, resulting in Ultraman vs. The Flash, Owlman vs. Green Lantern, Johnny Quick vs. Batman and Power Ring vs. Superman), in their rematch with the Justice League, the JLAers only win when each member takes on their specific counterparts with a series of Overclocking Attacks.
  • Variant in #153 Earth's First and Last Super-Hero, in which the Justice League is summoned to Earth Prime to deal with a superbeing by the name of Ultraa, and they have to team up to stop Earth-Prime's first supervillain, the evil Maxitron. Maxitron seeks to destroy Ultraa and the League by putting them in Death Traps catered to each of their weaknesses. Unfortunately for him, he's defeated when Green Lantern disguises Superman and Ultraa as each other, resulting in the traps that should have killed them (ultrasonic pounding for Ultraa and red solar radiation for Superman) doing nothing to the latter. In the meantime, Green Lantern overpowers the Tiger-Bear sent after him (and whose yellow fur is impervious to his ring) through sheer guts and determination.
• Overclocking Attack: In #29, "Crisis on Earth-Three!", this tactic is used to defeat four-fifths of the Crime Syndicate (the Justice League's evil twins) in their first battle; Flash gives Johnny Quick extra speed so that he loses control, Wonder Woman lets Superwoman take her lasso knowing her foe can't control it, Green Lantern feeds so much energy into Power Ring's own ring that he can't use it properly, and Superman tricks Ultraman into coming in contact with a vast meteor of kryptonite (Ultraman unaware that Superman is weakened by kryptonite rather than gaining powers from it) which gives him so many new powers he can't use any of them.
• Power Copying: The aliens Mind Robber Kid con into taking out the Justice League in issue #70 have hats that can scan and copy any extranormal abilities their opponents have. They can apparently only handle one power at a time, as Superman's opponent overloads trying to copy each of his super abilities, forcing them to come up with a different solution.
• Power Crystal: Issues #55-56 have four people empowered by mysterious black orbs from another dimension to follow their desires in an unstoppable crime spree. One woman, coveting jewelry in the window store, becomes Gem Girl, capable of using a different superpower from every gem she stole based on gem lore and powerful enough to trounce Wonder Woman.
• Power Misidentification: Issue #18 had a fan writing in to the JLA about a fictional villain he created, the Maestro, who purposely misled the League about his power and trapped them inescapably. After thinking over the scenario, the League realized the Atom was the key to recognizing his actual power—being so tiny, he couldn't hear the music that supposedly made everyone dance, but was affected by the high-frequency signal that was really causing it—and used the knowledge to prepare accordingly and defeat him.
• Remember the New Guy?: Aquaman had "returning" foes debut here, including Dagon, the Sea-Thief, and Cutlass Charlie.
• Ret-Gone: "Crisis on Earth-A" had Johnny Thunder become curious on whether he has a counterpart on Earth-One and ask his Thunderbolt to take him to him. Said Earth-One counterpart turns out to be a crook and proceeds to hijack the Thunderbolt and use his wishes to alter reality in his favor. This included wiping the Justice League out of existence by having the Thunderbolt go back in time and interfere with their individual origins (e.g. preventing Krypton from undergoing the disaster that destroyed it and resulted in Superman being sent to Earth, saving Green Lantern Corpsman Abin Sur's life so he wouldn't give his power ring to Hal Jordan, discouraging Bruce Wayne from becoming a crimefighter by beating up Batman during his first case, interfering with Dr. Erdel's experiment so J'onn J'onzz would remain on Mars) and later having some of his accomplices take Superman, Batman, Martian Manhunter, the Atom, the Flash and Green Lantern's places in the timeline. It takes the efforts of the Justice Society and a defiant Thunderbolt who's all too pleased that his new master's wishes are limited by his exact wording to persuade Earth-One Johnny Thunder into surrendering and undoing his actions.
• Rod-and-Reel Repurposed: In Issue #6, the League investigate a series of apparently impossible museum thefts which turn to have been carried out by an expert fisherman casting a line through the museum window and "catching" valuable artifacts.
• Self-Deprecation: Cary Bates wrote himself into Issues #123 and #124 as a villain. Not a thinly disguised version of himself named Barry Cates, not an alternate universe version of himself, just himself from our universe, where he's a comic book writer (in-story, being transported from our "real" universe to the JSA's Earth-Two made him go insane). Fellow writer Elliot S! Maggin also appeared as a character in the story; he was portrayed in a slightly more positive light (i.e., not an insane villain).
• The Smurfette Principle: When the series started, Wonder Woman was the only female member of the seven founders. It took almost a decade before Black Canary became the second female member (and that was only after Wonder Woman had resigned; it would take several more years before there was more than one woman on the team).
• Space Base: In the 1970s, the League had the JLA Satellite, orbiting Earth.
• Spanner in the Works: In #4, Xandor traps the Justice League in an unbreakable diamond, but is thwarted by the arrival of Green Arrow.
• Superhero Speciation: For a time there was an actual rule that the League could not admit members with overlapping/similar powers. They abolished this when they finally allowed Hawkman's partner Hawkgirl to join.
• Superhuman Trafficking: In #23, "Drones of the Queen Bee!", Queen Bee is introduced running an auction to sell off a brainwashed superheroes from another world.
• Teleporter Accident: One Bronze Age story involved Hawkman and the Flash both getting accidentally composited with an alien creature that had wandered into the transporter with them. They all get sorted out by story's end.
• Transflormation: In #9, the heroes all arrive separately at the site of a strange meteor whose radiation starts turning them into trees.
• Trauma Button: Explained as why Sandman went from his super-hero costume back to the more famous gas-mask and cape look he started with. After what happened with Sandy, he refused to wear the costume any longer due to associating it with his failure.
• Underestimating Badassery: In #134, Supergirl joins the League to help find a missing Superman. They find an alien race called the Krill, who force the Leaguers to fight Despero, one of their worst and oldest enemies. Despero is sent up against Supergirl, and one of the Krills thinks she can't possibly win... and then she trashes him. First she grabs him and throws him hard enough to put him into orbit◊, and then she flies out of the planet, meets Despero in space and knocks him out with one punch◊.
• Unfair Mirror Match: In Issue #13, the JLA face robot doubles of themselves who seem stronger than they are in every way. When Aquaman helps them overcome their doubles, Superman learns that the robots got extra energy from the cheering crowd, so it was never a fair fight.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Issues #55-56 reveal that the seemingly invincible possessed humans have weaknesses to ordinary things, including wood, water, wisteria, and bad jokes.
• Wham Episode: Issue #71 "And So My World Ends..." kills off Martian Manhunter's planet and most of his species, driving him out of the Justice League, and setting the tone for every story featuring J'onn J'onnz to be published after the fact.
• Wizards from Outer Space: The alien in issue #86 comes from a world where they all use magic instead of science for their advanced standard of living. Unlike most instances of magic, the magic they (over)use has a negative impact on the environment.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form:In #42 "Metamorpho Says — NO!", the JLA encounter a monster calling itself the Unimaginable, a creature so far beyond human comprehension that it's effectively invisible.