JLA # 12 "War With The One-Man Justice League!" AFTERWARD

So...what did you think?
Okay, it's no classic ala the comic on the left, but as my amateur comic series goes, I think I did an acceptable job adapting it to my world.

First, I just recently noticed that I switched themes for the two covers for the two parts of this story. In the real JLA comic book the action pose was on the cover of JLA #111 and the "posed" shot was on #112. Mine, of course, were reversed: I had Amazo actually fighting the JLA on number 12 and the Injustice Gang just standing there on number 11. I don't think I thought of that when I did them.

Secondly, obviously I didn't have The Elongated Man as a member whose power was missing, so in his stead I used Martian Manhunter, who has "unique abilities" that Amazo could also absorb. I thought this turned out alright, because it also gave him mental telepathy to verify the heroes' plot later in the story.

Speaking of changing the members around, as I mentioned in the FORWARD, the original story featured The Atom and The Red Tornado. Because I didn't have either of those characters, I switched in Wonder Woman and Hawkwoman. If you've read the original then you can judge whether my choices "worked" or not. In my opinion, Red didn't put up much of a fight against Amazo, so Hawkwoman comes across as more of a challenge to him. And The Atom...he didn't fight Amazo at all, he simply tried to keep the "cure" out of his hands. So I think Wonder Woman was a better choice there, too. but I would be interested to hear if you disagree.

I also liked the different angles and panel sizes I played with in this issue. Besides the whole Aquaman sequence (which is too big to reprint here, go look at it on pages 23-26) I liked the Martian Manhunter stretching scenes (shown above) and the Hawkwoman-takes-to-the-air scene shown on the left. When I re-read these stories as I scan them in I am hit by the good design of things like this. Whether my art is good or not, I do think I have a pretty good "eye." ;-)  

I really liked how I broke up the heroes in chapters and used their logos. In fact, ever since I saw that happening in this 1974 comic I've been a fan of it. So of course I did it in every story that had set "chapters." In this issue, though, because half-wit Batman didn't get to go back

down to Earth, that left his logo out. I had to copy-machine the logos and had Batman's on the same sheet as everyone else's, so I decided that when he made his dramatic debut later in the story....voila, he had a logo. I liked how that worked. It really gave you the impression that Amazo was shocked to see him, I thought. By the way, Batman has had more than a dozen different logos, but my favorite by far is this Neal Adams design. Second favorite is the Carmine Infantino version with the cape pulled up to his face.

Speaking of Batman, as a DC Comics JLA fan, I always thougtht that Batman got the spotlight to the detriment of several of the other members. For example, for a loooooong time in JLA history he and Superman would appear in EVERY issue. I can see this of characters like The Flash and Superman, who have super-speed, but the Batman!?! He's supposed to be millionaire philanthropist Bruce Wayne AND patrol Gotham City. When the heck does he have time to fight Kanjar Ro for the umpteenth time?! Likewise, once characters like The Elongated Man and Red Tornado join the JLA, really, what BETTER things are they doing so that they are missing so many adventures!?! I always thought those two in particular should have would have been at every meeting because, I mean, they're both basically self-employed, right? Ralph

 

Dibny doesn't even have a secret identity. I would have thought he would jump at the chance to be at every JLA meeting. But I digress....my point is, I wanted EVERY member to shine, and since Batman and Superman were already very well known to my audience (Japanese ages 5 to 50) I wanted to play them down. However, here is a story where Batman shows/proves that he is a member for a specific reason: he's awesomely intelligent! So with this story, I think the whole membership had been given chances to shine, and I decided to move on to my first membership drive.

Take a good long look at these top candidates for membership. If you are a fan of the JLA you'll recognize something very obvious: four of the five of these heroes ended up eventually joining the JLA. The question then is, in what order am I going to have them join? Haha, come back next issue to see how I handled that.

And lastly, in the Story of Amazo featurette at the end of the story, I took the opportunity to show my audience that the Justice League had been around a while. I didn't reprint the panel here, but in one shot I showed The Flash in his TV-show themed costume. If I ever included any FLASH TV show episodes in my English Video Library I wanted it established that Barry Allen *did* look like that when he first started. Also I enjoyed showing Hawkgirl in her "original" costume, as well as Green Arrow and Wonder Woman. And of course, John Stewart with an Afro. Haha. (Blink and you'll miss the cameo by The Atom below. He'll appear again next issue.)