Catching up with Classic Justice League from the 80s

In my ongoing campaign to reread and rewatch and generally re-experience the media I liked when I was a teenager, I've hit on a new campaign since returning home from London, and have started rereading my old comics.

I don't exactly know what the impetus for this was, except that while I was in London this winter, I was taken by a craving to read my old Justice League comics, in particular. One factor that I can identify is Tim Ferriss's latest book, Tribe of Mentors, in which he interviews a number of famous people about their routines and what-not; one of these people said he re-reads his old Archie Comics before bed, to keep in touch with who he was as a kid, and this appealed to me too - it's just interesting that I seized on my old Justice Leagues and not, say, X-Men.

"Justice League #1". Greand Comics Database Project

Anyway, I had a look at some of the collected editions at the Forbidden Planet, but they didn't have the first volume on the shelf, so I bided my time until I could get home, and when I did, one of the first things I accomplished was to bring the box of Justice League comics out of my dad's garage.

They've been sitting there for a few years, at this point, as I moved my comics to his place in around 2002 or 2003, but they'd been sitting around for a bit longer, as I hadn't read them since high school. The nice thing is that I managed to box them roughly by title, so I have my classic JLA comics, going from the 1960s all the way to the end of the first book, as well as the Giffen-DeMatteis JLI books and the Grant Morrison-era JLA. There are a couple of other oddities and things I stuck in there at random, but the box is dominated by Justice League.

I've spoken before about the pleasures of reading old comics, or more accurately the ads, and I'm experiencing that again now. Because I started with Justice League of America #45 (the first appearance of the "classic" villain Shaggy Man), I was able to see how these ads changed between the 60s, 70s and 80s. For one thing, ads in early issues were a lot more likely to be comic strips themselves - the late 70s and early 80s featured ads with DC heroes using Hostess Twinkies and the like to foil villains, which is achingly naff, if you think about it, but also strangely charming.

(Incidentally, for American readers, here's the definition of naff, which is a word you really only find in the UK)

The other thing that's interesting is seeing how well the books themselves hold up. I actually think the last few years of the JLA weren't that well-written, especially when DC decided to jettison the marquee characters (i.e. the ones that people cared about and wanted to read) in favor of under-powered newcomers like Vibe, Gypsy, Steel and Vixen, and move them to the mean streets of Detroit. That lineup didn't last very long, but I remain intrigued by the fact that the Arrowverse shows on the CW have resurrected all of them, along with a bunch of other obscure DC characters, and actually made them fairly cool.

But the main event for me is the JLI era, because it's fair to say that those blew my mind when I discovered them in middle school. I was a couple years into my first comics mania, having gone first through Disney books featuring Carl Barks's Donald Duck stories, and then having discovered Marvel through Claremont and Lee's run on the X-Men (specifically the end of their run, as Chris Claremont left after a couple issues and Jim Lee left after that to co-found Image).

But among this box of random comics I'd received in the mail was Justice League America #33, which featured Guy Gardner using his ring to tickle Kilowog. I didn't know who these characters were, but I clearly responded to the humor and the art (this was Adam Hughes's first big gig, and he'd just started it two issues prior), and quickly snapped up all the back issues I could find. That led me into the never-ending labyrinth that is the history of DC, and I've been hooked since.

©DC Comics, 1989

It's worth noting that this incarnation of the league wasn't very iconic either. There were some big-hitters, like Batman and Wonder Woman, but also a lot of second-stringers like Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, who anchored their own books at the time but are mostly forgotten now. But, in contrast to the Detroit League mentioned above, this team had good stories - what's forgotten now, when people talk about the "Bwah-ha-ha" era of the Justice League, is that Giffen and DeMatteis started out telling really grounded stories, where a big concern looming over whatever the JLI did was the politics of the Cold War.

The second and third issues, for example, feature some obscure heroes (based on Marvel's Avengers, it turns out) coming from an alternate dimension to try and save Earth from itself, by destroying all of its nuclear missiles. It's maybe not as deep a treatment of this theme as, say, FX's The Americans or Sundance's Deutschland '83, but it's also not completely stupid. And I think that's one of the key things I loved about DC's books from the 80s.

What I'm finding on this reread is that some of the "hilarious" banter is a bit forced, but I also remember that as the books went on they could still tackle serious stories, like when Despero came back, or in both of the storylines that featured the Extremists.

So overall I'm happy that I've dug these old comics out. It's appropriate given last year's Justice League movie (which wasn't amazing) and given the renewed popularity of DC's deep bench, particularly those characters from the 80s. And to return to the point I made above about ads, it's also fascinating seeing mentions and ads for what would turn out to be era-defining comics, like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. There was a lot more experimentation going on at the time, which is what also led to the runs on Sandman, Animal Man and Swamp Thing that gave us Vertigo comics.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but this run on Justice League has to count as one of the things that made me want to be a writer. It was the first time I, as a comics fan, really appreciated the writing of a book, which led me to other well-written comics and to good writing in general.

Anyway, now that I've developed a taste for it, I'm planning on checking out the other series I loved at the time, which was the rebooted version of the Legion of Superheroes that Keith Giffen was plotting at the same time that he was doing Justice League. And from there, who knows what other delights I'll find...?