JL #14, "The Story of the Justice League!" FORWARD

Last issue, you may recall, Hawkman and The Elongated Man were inducted into "my" Justice League in what I consider to be one of the worst if not THE worst story I ever wrote! So...if you missed it, you literally didn't miss much. The framing sequence was ten of the world's greatest super-heroes sitting around. No, you read that right. All they were doing were talking. Blah!



Well, since I don't suppose we can get any worse than that, what do you suppose I have in store for you this month? Well, how about....more sitting around talking!? :-)

In fairness to my original idea, last issue and this one were supposed to be book-ends to explain the DC Universe to all of my Japanese students who had no idea who The Teen Titans were (for example). Also I was showcasing possible guest stars and possible villains that I wanted to know held enough interest with my audience for me to work into actual stories. The execution of this admittedly noble idea is where we had our break-down.

I was on a roll here, and not in a good way.

I can talk a little bit more about this story after you read it. Don't get me wrong: it isn't a total waste of time, effort, and space. There are definitely some good things going on here. I just think that it could have been done in less than 42 pages and with maybe a modicum of action, ya know? It's a flawed experiment that is still nowhere near as bad as last issue was....believe me!

The title is a nod to the Japanese habit of taking a title and putting "The Story of" after it. For example, the classic children's book/movie THE YEARLING is translated as "The Story of the Little Deer." So I figured that a story that could be called "the origin of" or "the history of" might as well be called "The Story of..."

On the translation front, I had stopped asking the older woman in my education office to check my Japanese. This issue I went back to my friend Shoko Taniguchi, who was very interested in learning English. That made some of our discussions more difficult because she wanted to truly understand what I was saying/writing. Still, it was a better alternative than not caring at all. So I was happy working with her, knowing I had to give more time to the actual translaton process than I had before. I *was* still looking for easier options, however...

I credit Gardner Fox as the original writer because I stole updated his original JLA origin as well as the Earth 2 JSA stories. However, the Black Canary story was originally written by Dennis O'Neil and the Atom moving to Brazil was in a story by Jan Strnad, but the JLA wasn't anywhere around him when it happened.

I do hope you find some things to enjoy in this issue. I'll be back to chat with you about it in about two weeks.