Roll Call Profiles 1 Green Arrow & Batman

And bringing the team home, here's the two "non-powered" members. I kept Batman until the end because I knew all the kids knew him (from the then-current Tim Burton BATMAN movies). These are two of my favorite characters, but I have to say I don't particularly like how I drew either of them here. My Green Arrow was always hit or miss (pardon the pun) and this one isn't very good. Likewise, my Batman tended to be a mix of Jim Aparo & Neal Adams, and this static pose just doesn't work for him (or me). Oh, well.

Coming up next...the actual Roll Call for Number Five, featuring the profile cards I used for the next year (1992).

Roll Call Profiles 1 Hawkwoman & Martian Manhunter

For some reason I always thought of Hawkman and Jonn Jonzz in the same way. Maybe it's because they were both rocking those crossed-chest bands. Maybe because they were both aliens on Earth trying to make it a better place. Maybe because they were both so striking visually. I don't know, but I always figured they would sit around the JLA HQ and talk about what planets they knew and what aliens they had both run across.
Maybe that's why I put Jonn and Shayera together on this page. I do remember thinking I had to balance out the men & women and I also remember thinking I had to balance out the colors...on the left page would be GL & Flash, green and red, so on this page would be the yellow and light green and red and blues...a nice balance. As it were, I believe I did a bang-up coloring job on Martian Manhunter. Whenever I took an extra bit of time on coloring I liked the results.

Now let's talk about what I ended up doing to Hawkwoman, shall we? I think that I must have added the crossed chest bands because I intended to alter Hawkman in two DC Comics' JLA stories into Hawkwoman (I used these butchered stories in numbers 2 and 4). Also, I always thought that the point of those straps were to keep Hawkman's wings on...so if they aren't there, how are Shayera's wings staying up? I never did figure that out...! The really weird thing for me is why I added bracelets to her look. Maybe in lieu of gloves? Something to make her arms more interesting? I really have no recollection right now.
If it makes you feel any better, I eventually re-designed her and got rid of the straps and the bracelets. It may take a while, but I eventually realize when I have made a mistake, haha! 
I eventually got better at drawing the wings, too. :-)
 

Roll Call Profiles 1 Green Lantern & The Flash

Continuing our original Roll Call portraits, after three of the Super Friends and Black Canary I teamed on one page those two Silver Age icons, GL and Barry Allen. Yes, it's John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan, but you still have to admit you can't really beat those Gil Kane designs and colors. There's a reason these characters were best friends before Green Arrow got all up in Hal's face...haha!

Roll Call Profiles 1 Superman & Black Canary

Continuing the original Roll Call pages that I featured in numbers 1 thru 4, here is Superman and Black Canary. Not much to add as way of introduction except to say that of all the JLAers, I find Superman to be the most difficult to draw, and Black Canary to be the easiest. I don't know why...maybe I'm confused as to whether I should be shooting for a burly Wayne Boring type or a sleek Curt Swan look? I can never get Superman's hair twirl right and that throws his whole face off. Also I had many troubles with his darn "S" shield. I eventually took the time to practice practice practice it, but here you can see it's a bit more round than I would have liked. As for Black Canary...dull, but done well, IMHO. :-)

Roll Call Profiles 1 Wonder Woman & Aquaman

These are the FIRST pages of the FIRST Roll Call profiles I ever did. They are circa November 1990.

In the first four issues of my bilingual JUSTICE LEAGUE I featured a one-page list of all the then-current League members. I started off with ten, and tried to use all of them in each story. However, because I figured that none of the Japanese audience knew any of these characters besides Superman and Batman, I also added profiles that would run in each issue. For the first four issues, I used these, two per page. I of course led off with two of my favorites, Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

These made their debut in Number One, printed in December 1990. They ran through Number Four. A year later, in December 1991, they were replaced with what I called Roll Call cards. Instead of the list as shown here, I simply showed the heroes' portraits. Kind of like the "roll call heads down the side of the cover" that JLA did in the late 60s, haha.

You can see that I didn't use the characters' logos yet. And I was writng in standard US comic-book conventional fonts, ie in all-caps. The Japanese found this hard to read, so after number 5 I switched to "literary" conventions of small and capital lettering.