Justice League
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Wikipedia-Article "Justice League"
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The Justice League of America, also often referred to as the Justice League or JLA for short, is a DC Comics superhero team. In most incarnations, its roster includes DC's most popular characters and thus many of the most recognizable superheroes in pop culture.
The original, and arguably most popular, line-up is Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter. The League has also included Green Arrow, Hawkman, Atom, Elongated Man, Firestorm, Zatanna, Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, Plastic Man and dozens of others.
The team first appeared in The Brave and the Bold #28 (1960). Although series featuring the League have occasionally gone stale and been subjected to ill-fated experiments, the team has been fairly popular since inception.
The team's concept was loosely adapted into the cartoon series Super Friends (1972-1985) and more directly into the series Justice League (2001-2004) and Justice League Unlimited (2004-present).
Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the team had also gone by the names Justice League America and Justice League International.
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History
Silver and Bronze age
The original team first appeared in The Brave and The Bold #28 (1960) as a revival of the Justice Society of America (or "JSA") under a new, more dynamic name of "League" and soon gained its own title that same year. The creator was a writer named Gardner Fox, who was inspired by the Justice Society to create a similar, contemporary concept, and who decided upon the word "league" influenced by the National Football League and Major League Baseball. The artist for the first five years of the comic was Mike Sekowsky.
During this period, the team operated from a secret cave outside of the small town of Happy Harbor. They also had a team "mascot" that tagged along on some missions, a teenage sidekick named Snapper Carr, noted for speaking in "hipster" dialect. Snapper had earned this status in the team's first appearance, after helping them to defeat the villain of that story, Starro the Conqueror (a giant starfish bent on conquering Earth).
The JLA comic was initially amongst the most popular of DC Comics' publications, but by the end of the 1960s, it had become overshadowed by Marvel Comics' equivalent super-team, the Avengers, in sales and quality. Various changes were made as an attempt to boost sales; the first of these changes included dropping Snapper as a "mascot." As told in Justice League of America #77 (December 1969), Snapper was tricked into betraying the secret location of the cave headquarters to the Joker, which resulted in his resigning from the team in shame. After this, the Justice League was shown moving into a new orbiting space station "satellite" headquarters (in Justice League of America #78, February 1970). The 1970s would present the team's membership as occasionally varying in makeup and size.
Those involved in producing the Justice League of America comic during the 1970s included writers Cary Bates, E. Nelson Bridwell, Steve Englehart, and (longest of them all) Gerry Conway, while the art chores were primarily handled by Dick Dillin. The JLA comic had a brief spike in popularity in 1982 when artist George Pérez stepped in following Dillin's death, but the commercial success was short-lived.
In 1984, in an attempt to emulate the success of DC's most successful comic at that time, The New Teen Titans, an editorial decision was made to have most of the regular members leave the team, to be replaced by young unknowns. It was also decided to have the team move from its orbiting satellite headquarters into a new base located in Detroit, Michigan. This move was highly unpopular with readers, who dubbed this period of time the "Justice League Detroit" era. Created by Conway and artist Chuck Patton, this version of the Justice League was eventually disbanded by writer J.M. DeMatteis and artist Luke McDonnell. The final issue of the original Justice League of America series was #261.
Modern age
The team was rebuilt in the 1987 company wide crossover miniseries, Legends. This new team was given a less America-centric mandate than before, and was dubbed the Justice League International (or "JLI" for short); the new comic was written by Keith Giffen and DeMatteis, with art by Kevin Maguire. This new and very popular series added a quirky sense of tongue-in-cheek humor to the stories, with an occasional slant toward excessive silliness.
In 1989 Secret Origins #32 updated the JLA's classic origin from Justice League of America #9 (1962). See more below in "Origin of the JLA".
The Justice League titles expanded to a total of five by the early 1990s: Justice League of America (formerly Justice League International), Justice League Europe, Justice League Task Force, Justice League Quarterly, and Extreme Justice. By the 1990s, however, with the departure of Giffen as writer, the humor prevalent in the early JLI-era had disappeared in favor of more serious stories, and as the commercial success of the series faded, each of the titles were cancelled.
In 1997, a new Justice League series titled JLA debuted, written by Grant Morrison and with art by Howard Porter and John Dell (though the new version of team first appeared in the miniseries JLA: A Midsummer's Nightmare, written by Mark Waid and Fabian Nicieza). This series, in an attempt at a "back-to-basics" approach, used as its core the original and most famous seven members (or their character successors) of the team: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash III (Wally West), Green Lantern V (Kyle Rayner), and the Martian Manhunter. Added to this core roster was the character Plastic Man, as well as a new headquarters for the team, the "Watchtower", based on the moon. Morrison introduced the idea of the JLA allegorically representing a pantheon of gods, with their different powers and personalities. Since Morrison left the title, other writers and artists have taken over, though none with the success of Morrison's version of the Justice League.
In 1999, storytellers Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn, and Barry Kitson re-tooled and expanded the Secret Origins origin with the miniseries JLA: Year One.
In 2003, Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire returned with a separate miniseries called Formerly Known as the Justice League with the same humor as their Justice League run, and featuring some of the same characters in a team called the "Super Buddies" (which parodies the Super Friends). A follow up miniseries entitled I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League soon began to be prepared, though it was delayed due to the events shown in the Identity Crisis limited series.
Also in 2004, George Perez and Kurt Busiek came out with a Justice League/Avengers crossover miniseries, an idea that had been delayed for 20 years due to various reasons. In this miniseries, the Justice League and the Avengers were forced to find key artifacts in one another's universe, as well as deal with the threats of villains Krona and the Grandmaster.
In 2005, a story arc by Geoff Johns and Alan Heinberg called Crisis of Conscience (JLA #115-120) led to the dissolution of the Justice League of America. The breakdown of relationships shown in Identity Crisis reached its zenith. As in the time of the Detroit JLA, the team disbanded again, leaving it to the Martian Manhunter to again rebuild the team, with Superman's blessing. Meanwhile, following his resignation from the JLA, Batman is confronted by his faithful aide, Alfred Pennyworth, who surmises that the reason why Batman was so outraged over the mind-wiping of Dr. Light and other villains (and himself) was that Catwoman may have also been mind-wiped, and this might have been the reason for her semi-heroic nature in recent years, rather than any positive influence from Batman himself.
Later, someone, recognized by the JLA Watchtower's systems as the Man of Steel, blows the Watchtower apart, in the very moment in which the Martian Manhunter found, and was about to tell the others, a connection between the team dissolution, the rise of the OMACs, the intergalactic war between Rann and Thanagar, the creation of a new Secret Society of Super-Villains and the rampage against magic by the Spectre. This intruder is later revealed to be the Earth-Prime Superboy. So, in the beginning of the Infinite Crisis, the JLA will be disbanded again.
DC Comics has announced that the current JLA series will come to an end with issue #125, to be released February 2006. This is one of several titles to be cancelled at the conclusion of the Infinite Crisis storyline, specifically as part of the "One Year Later..." event focused around the upcoming weekly series 52.
In 2004, Morrison teamed with artist Ed McGuiness to produce a miniseries called JLA: Classified. The story involved Batman's efforts to stop Gorilla Grodd's subjugation of humanity while the rest of the core JLA pursued a mission inside a cubical "proto-universe". Since then, the JLA: Classified title has been turned into a regular series; Keith Giffen, Warren Ellis and Gail Simone have all written story arcs.
In 2006, Brad Meltzer will being joining Ed Benes on a new Justice League of America in the summer.
Origin of the JLA
The Justice League's first origin, according to 1962's Justice League of America #9, began when Earth was infiltrated by various competing alien warriors sent to the planet to see who could conquer Earth first, as a means of determining who would become the new ruler of their home planet. Each alien warrior possessed a different power or ability, and attacked a different portion of Earth, which drew the individual attention of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter. While most of the invaders were defeated by the superheroes individually, the heroes themselves fell prey one by one to a single competitor's attack; they soon discovered that only by working together could they defeat the competitor. Afterwards, the group decided that they should form a permanent organization to confront menaces that required a similar pooling of resources, and dubbed themselves the Justice League of America.
In 1989, Secret Origins #32 updated the JLA's original origin for post-Crisis continuity, based on the original origin story with slight differences, most notable being the inclusion of Black Canary, the absence of Batman and Superman single-nadedly defeating the last alien but leaving moments beofre the group arrived. This tale retconned the founding members of the team as being: Flash II (Barry Allen), Green Lantern II (Hal Jordan), Black Canary II (Dinah Laurel Lance), Aquaman (Orin/Arthur Curry II) and the Martian Manhunter (J'Onn J'Onzz). In post-Crisis comics, Black Canary II replaced Wonder Woman as a founding member of the JLA, due to Wonder Woman's 1987 origin reboot, pushing her superhero debut up to the time of the 1987 miniseries Legends. This had the effect of Wonder Woman (in modern continuity) not having been present for any of the pre-1987 JLA stories she originally appeared in.
Related teams
- The Justice League occasionally has worked with its predecessor, the Justice Society of America. Between 1963 and 1985, a popular annual series of teamups between the two teams to tackle some sort of mutual threat was seen. Now that the teams inhabit the same Earth, the JLA and JSA have Thanksgiving dinner together each year, with the location varying year to year between their respective headquarters.
- A team originally formed by the teen sidekicks of a few Justice League members (and thus known as a "Junior Justice League" of sorts) is called the Teen Titans.
Awards
The series has won several awards over the years, including:
- 1961 Alley Award for Best Comic Book
- 1961 Alley Award for Best Adventure-Hero Group
- 1963 Alley Award for Favorite Novel ("Crisis on Earths 1 and 2" in Justice League of America #21 and #22 by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky)
- 1963 Alley Award for Strip that Should Be Improved
- 1963 Alley Award for Artist Preferred on Justice League of America (Murphy Anderson)
- 1973 Shazam Award for Best Inker (Dramatic Division) (Dick Giordano)
Justice League parodies/references
- The Guardians of the Globe: Invincible (comic) references of the Justice League.
- Squadron Supreme as a whole was created as an homage/parody of DC Comics's superhero team Justice League Of America.
- Knights of Justice and Round Table of America (RTA) by Big Bang Comics published by Image Comics, recreate the golden age and silver age of comics.
- Smallville (TV series): At the end of episode 4-05, "Run", Bart Allen (Flash) expresses his desire to create "a club or a league or something" for young people with superpowers. At the end of the episode 5-04, "Aqua", Arthur Curry (Aquaman) asks Clark Kent to join him in a Junior Lifeguard Association. Clark replies that he "isn't ready for the JLA yet".
- The Allies, from Image Comics.
Other media
The JLA comic has been adapted for television numerous times.
- The first television appearance of the League was as a segment in the 1960s animated series The Superman/Aquaman Adventure Hour.
- The longest-running television version of the Justice League was a loosely adapted animated series called Super Friends, which ran in various incarnations from 1972 to 1985.
- Legends of the Superheroes were two live action adaptations of the Justice League that appeared in the 1970s, and saw Adam West, Burt Ward and Frank Gorshin return to their fabled roles of Batman, Robin, and the Riddler (respectively) from the 1960s live-action Batman television series.
- A live action television series pilot in the mid-1990s that was produced failed to sell, possibly a result of the series using less well-known characters to avoid dealing with licensing issues surrounding Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.
- Cartoon Network's Justice League animated series debuted in 2001 and lasted for two seasons. In July 2004, the original series was replaced by a successor series, Justice League Unlimited. Both of these are extensions of the DC Animated Universe, continuing the continuity begun by Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond.
- Recently, Smallville (TV series) presented by the WB Television Network featured appearances of members of the justice league in two episodes. The first episode is Run (season 4, episode 5) where you see a young The Flash and the second is Aqua (season 5, episode 4) where Clark Kent meets Aquaman. In Run the young Flash finishes the episode by telling Clark he is going to search for others like them, setting the table for an eventual Justice League.
See also
Official links
- Cartoon Network's official site
- The JL Watchtower @ toonzone.net
- Justice League: The Animated Series @ World's Finest
- Justice League: The Animated Series @ JLAnimated.com