Tag: Justice League

The Justice League at 60, Part Two: Setting The Standard

Tom Bondurant continues his look at the different eras that have defined the Justice League with an overview of the team’s early years.

Check out part one in this series here!

On or about Dec. 29, 1959, newsstands received new issues of 10 comics series. Next to the four different Archie Comics titles and two Prize Comics romance series were four DC books: Sugar & Spike #27, Detective Comics #276, Strange Adventures #113 and (cover-dated February-March 1960) The Brave and the Bold #28. Like its fellow DC series Showcase, B&B had switched to rotating features and had just concluded three issues’ worth of the spy-centric Suicide Squad. Therefore, dominating B&B‘s cover this month was the title of the newest feature, Justice League of America.

Thanks to Strange Adventures #113, Starro the Conqueror was not the only tentacled menace on that day’s newsstands; but he was the only one being fought by a quintet of familiar superheroes. Martian Manhunter had been around for a few years in Detective; just a few days before, DC had published new issues of Flash and Wonder Woman; and on New Year’s Eve, readers would find a new Aquaman tale in Adventure Comics #269. The relaunched Green Lantern was the newest of the group, having concluded his three-issue tryout a month or so earlier, in Showcase #24. (GL’s solo book wouldn’t start until May 24, 1960.)

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The Justice League at 60, Part One: Eight Eras

With the team’s first appearance arriving in December of 1959, Tom Bondurant looks back at the different eras that have defined the Justice League over the last 60 years.

The Justice League of America debuted on Dec. 29, 1959, in the pages of February-March 1960’s The Brave and the Bold #28. Therefore, since we’re in their 60th anniversary year, and since the feature is going through yet another transition, it’s a good time for a retrospective. This is an overview, so subsequent posts will examine each League era in more detail.

Although the JLA wasn’t the first all-star super-team – the Justice Society of America turns 80 on Nov. 22, 2020 – it casts a very long shadow over those which followed. Everyone from the Avengers to the Zoo Crew compares and contrasts with the League in one way or another. Indeed, there may not have been a Marvel Comics if (as the legend goes) its publisher hadn’t wanted a series to capitalize on the popularity of Justice League of America. Nevertheless, those groups’ successes have turned the League into something of a default. The Teen Titans are younger, the Justice Society is older, the X-Men are persecuted, the Defenders are ad hoc, etc. Over the years the League has tried its own various tweaks in attempts to stay relevant; but ultimately it’s reverted to the mean – a group of the “World’s Greatest Super-Heroes,” matched against comparable threats.

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What Are You Reading? | Stargirl, the Beatles, psychics and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has checked off their ‘to read’ list lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately.

This week’s edition is ripe with not only nostalgic looks at the past, including some that go all the way back to the 1940s, but also at the future of comics by the bright stars of today and tomorrow.

Let us know what you read this week in the comments.

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What Are You Reading? | Detective, Uncanny X-Force and more

See what the Smash Pages crew has checked off their “to read” list lately.

Welcome to What Are You Reading?, our weekly look at what the Smash Pages crew has been reading lately. In this week’s edition, we take a look back at Rick Remender’s opening salvo on Uncanny X-Force and the first Batman collaboration between Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, among other comics. You can play along in the comments if you’d like.

Now here we go …

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Rest in peace, Martin Pasko

After a career that spanned comics, TV and animation, the writer/editor passed away at 65.

Martin “Marty” Pasko, a writer and editor whose career span decades, has passed away at the age of 65, multiple sources have reported, including his friends and colleagues Paul Levitz and Mark Evanier.

During his long career, Pasko worked in many creative and editorial capacities, with much of his career spent in the comics industry and animation. His love for comics, though, started before that, as a fan and frequent contributor to letter columns.

“Marty connected with comics originally as a letterhack, with Julie Schwartz pinning the label ‘Pesky’ Pasko on him,” Levitz said on Facebook. “Whether commenting on the latest comic he read, the events of the day in politics, creative theory, or just making conversation, Marty had one of the sharpest wits of our generation, and opinions…oy, did he have opinions. I learned from him, learned by arguing with him, and took joy in ample helpings with the hamburgers or Chinese food we shared over the decades.”

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What Are You Reading? Justice League, X-Men and more!

See what the Smash Pages crew has checked off their “to read” list lately.

Welcome once again to What Are You Reading?, our weekly journey into the center of our reading lists. This time around, hear about Tom’s endless trek through old Justice League issues, Shane’s adventures with 1990s X-Men comics and my own scattershot batch of comics.

And as always, tell us what comics you’ve been exploring in the comments.

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Kevin Maguire covers the ‘JLI Omnibus’

Old friends reunite in the cover image for the upcoming collection.

Artist Kevin Maguire brought his signature style to the Justice League in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and along with Keith Giffen and J.M DeMatteis, redefined the team in the Post-Crisis DC Universe. Now their humorous take on the team is getting the Omnibus treatment, and Maguire has shared the cover to the massive book:

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Comics Lowdown: Trolling the trolls

A cartoonist gets his career back, manga and kids’ comics are booming, and a con veteran offers advice for first-timers

Trolling the Trolls: Your bizarre read for the day is Emma Grey Ellis’s account of the strange career of Ben Garrison, a libertarian political cartoonist who became a sort of real-life Pepe the Frog after alt-right trolls started altering his cartoons to include Nazi imagery and seeded the internet with fake stories:

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