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Post by rberman on Jan 2, 2019 13:47:30 GMT -5
JLA #77 “Snapper Carr – Super-Traitor!” (January 1970)
Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. The Story: Anti-hero sentiment is rising, and Snapper Carr gets rescued from collegiate bullies by a man named John Dough, who convinces Carr that the JLA need to be put on trial for being super. The two men use laughing gas to capture Batman. Snapper lures the rest of the JLA to a stadium full of people, ostensibly for a debate about whether super-heroes are retarding the growth of the human race. But the JLA’s tickets have been impregnated with substances which dull their senses. A riot breaks out, leading to a trial at which “Batman” testifies against the JLA. Batman is unmasked as Dough, who is unmasked as The Joker. He would have gotten away with it, if not for you meddling kids! My Two Cents: This was the first issue of JLA after the departure of original and long-time JLA scribe Gardner Fox. Roy Thomas’ editorial to my collected edition opines that Gardner was forced out for “political reasons.” So in comes Denny O’Neil, just months away from beginning his memorable Green Lantern/Green Arrow run with artist Neal Adams which started with GL #76 in April 1970. Instantly the JLA have a Bronze Era sensibility, debating societal issues and philosophy instead of just punching space monsters. (Edited to Add: I later realized that this is not correct; O'Neil had been writing JLA for a while now.) Even now, Green Arrow and Black Canary are the stars of the show, getting a sub-plot in which she practices her new sonic scream power, can’t keep it from shooting out the back of her head instead of the front (don't ask me how), and then uses that situation to incapacitate Joker while facing the other direction from him. Dinah Lance was a relatively new JLA character at this point and hasn't officially joined yet; Joker doesn't even recognize her. She was from Earth-2, and depending on the writer was either the Golden Age Black Canary looking quite young in the 1960s, or else was her daughter. Anyway, she had recently gained a sonic scream power and was dealing the loss of her husband Larry. This sets her up for the impending romance with Oliver Queen which has been one of her most enduring character details. Already in this issue, Ollie makes a comment about how having Dinah around is "good for morale." You know, for the whole team. He'll be more direct in his feelings just a few issues down the line. Ollie Queen is already the indignant, mouthy social justice warrior we know and love, berating Snapper for wanting to make everybody average rather than special in their own unique ways. The Flash turns into a Greek chorus, cheering/egging him on. Yeah, you tell 'em, Denny! I mean, Ollie! Snapper Carr doesn’t apologize for working with Joker to betray the JLA, saying he wanted to know "who I am!” Apparently “who I am” is a character that Denny O’Neil didn’t want hanging around. It’s always instructive to see which characters get booted the moment a new author takes over for a long-running predecessor. Carr’s stated reasons for leaving seem out of character, but refreshingly there’s no appeal to mind control. He just suddenly hates heroes for being super. O’Neil employs a compressed, in media res narrative style. On page one, there’s already a Marvel-style societal sentiment that superheroes are freaks. On page two, John Dough (John Doe, get it?) is already famous for being completely average. (Yet he fits perfectly into Batman's suit.) O’Neill packs a satisfying story with several implied chapters into just one issue, showing tremendous economy. On another note: Look at the image below. Did college students dress in suits and ties in 1970? Is it a pun that "snapper" is wearing a "turtleneck"? Batman’s comments about a Trump Satellite read differently today than they did back then, when “Trump” was simply a clue to Joker’s involvement. Don't ask how Joker got a giant model satellite installed in some city's downtown, presumably with all the permits, expense, and manual labor entailed in such a feat. It’s hard to argue against the premise that superheroes would become a crutch to society; O’Neill abandons the thought rather than refuting it. If you knew somebody was going to give you a hundred dollars every week, wouldn’t you begin to build your life around that reality? What if it was a thousand dollars? What if it was a hundred thousand dollars? Thread Index (these are the story summaries, not the story titles):
Denny O'Neil Stories#78-79 Vigilante vs Pollution; #80-81 Soul-Stealer and Jest-Master; #82-83 Aborted JLA/JSA crossover; Robert Kanigher Story#84 The Pax SerumMike Friedrich Stories#86 Zappa Steals Plankton; #87 vs The Avengers-ish; #88 Saved by Ordinary People; #89 Harlan Ellison; #90 Undersea Pollution; #91-92 Solomon Grundy; #94 Sensei; #95 Johnny Dune; #96-98 Starbreaker; #99 Plants Growing AmuckLen Wein Stories#100-102 JSA: Seven Soldiers; #103 Rutland Parade; #104 Shaggy Man; #105-106 Red Tornado; #107-108 JSA: Freedom Fighters; #109 Eclipso; #110 The Key; #111-112 Libra and Amazo; #113 JSA: Sandy; #114 Snapper and AnakronusVaried Authors (O'Neil, Bates, Maggin, Conway, Pasko)#115 Korge; #116 Golden Eagle and Matter Master; #117-119 The Equalizer; #120-121 Adam Strange and Kanjar Ro; #122 Identity Crisis; #123-124 JSA: Bates and Maggin; #125-126 Two-Face; #127 The Anarchist; #128-129 Nekron; #130 The Dharlu; #131-132 Sonar; #133-134 Despero; #135-137 Shazam!; #138-139 Adam Strange in the future; #147-148 Legion of Super-HeroesSteve Englehart#139 (backup) Ice villains; #140-141 "Manhunter" parts 1 and 2; #142 Construct and Willow; #143 Construct and Privateeer; #144 Golden Age potpourri and Pale Martians; #145 Count Crystal; #146 Construct and Red Tornado; #149-150 Star-TsarGerry Conway#151 Amos Fortune; #152 Major Macabre; #153 Ultraa; #154 Doctor Destiny; #155 two moons; #156-7 The Fiend with Five Faces; #158 Ultraa and Injustice Gang; #159-160 Lord of Time, Jonah Hex, etc.; #161 Zatanna and the Wizard of Ys; #162 The Shark; #163 Anton Allegro; #164-165 Zatanna origin; #166-168 Secret Society Switcheroo; #169-170 Ultraa's lawsuit; #171-2 Murder on the JLA Satellite; #173 Black Lightning
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 2, 2019 16:37:30 GMT -5
Think this had anything to do with O'Neil's story? ( Meet John Doe, 1941)
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Post by Farrar on Jan 2, 2019 17:08:20 GMT -5
JLA #77 “Snapper Carr – Super-Traitor!” (January 1970)
... Already in this issue, Ollie makes a comment about how having Dinah around is "good for morale." You know, for the whole team... LOL, that line reminds me of what used to be said about Sue Storm in the 1960s, as when when her worth on the FF was (in-)famously compared to Lincoln's mother, or here (below) in 1963's Fantastic Four #12. But in Sue's case the line was written by a middle-aged man born in 1922; whereas for Dinah and Ollie in 1970, one would hope that a young turk like Denny O'Neil would be more progressive. Ah well . Guess the silly dialogue can be chalked up being as in character for Ollie due to his growing infatuation. Anyway, nice job here. I read the JLA Showcase volumes covering these issues a few years ago and am looking forward to more reviews, rberman .
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 2, 2019 17:30:54 GMT -5
Pretty much set up to get rid of Snapper Carr and move on. he does turn up again later and reference is made to this story, in a couple of future stories.
Looking forward to this. My first exposure to the JLA came in the early 100s, with Dr Light, Adam Strange and Kanjar Ro in some of those early stories; and, Dick Dillin was always my JLA artist (until Perez; but, I had a longer history with Dillin). He was never the flashiest, or most lively; but, he was an effective storyteller and he could make everything around the JLA look "real," which helped make the heroes relatable, to me. He was part of why I preferred DC over Marvel, in that period, as I got a steady diet of neal Adams, Dillin, Irv Novick, Mike Grell, and Curt Swan, for that similar, realistic style. It took me longer to warm up to some of the Marvel guys, though Colan was an early favorite and Buscema became one, when I caught some Avengers reprints. Took e a while to warm up to Kirby's more operatic style of the 70s, though discovering his 60s stuff, in reprints, did a lot to elevate him in my eyes. Once I matured a bit and could see what Kirby was doing, I came to love the 70s stuff.
Dillin had a nice run on Blackhawk, though he didn't get to deal as much with the classic wartime adventure, with the Terry & the Pirates pastiches; but, he did get to do the techno battles and some of the goofier stuff.
O'Neil's JLA was decent; but, I prefered Len Wein on the title. I'm so-so on Englehart and liked and hated conway's stuff, depending on which part of his run you discuss. Maggin & Bates had a few good stories.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2019 23:37:33 GMT -5
Wow another JLA thread ... I read about 70 percent of these issues and this is going to be fun.
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Post by chadwilliam on Jan 3, 2019 0:03:01 GMT -5
rberman, I know you have more than enough on your plate right now and I'm certainly looking forward to all of it, BUT since it ties in with the first issue of your 70's Justice League review thread and tangentially with your Morrison JLA thread, I couldn't not mention the fact that Hourman 16 (2000) revisted/followed up on Justice League America 77. A different timeline from the one we're in now to be sure, but it does sound as if Tom Peyer's tale was at least partially designed to address the abruptness of Snapper Carr's betrayal, I thought it might make a nice footnote here if nothing else. Not expecting a review of this issue or anything but it does make it clear that Carr felt tremendous guilt over his betrayal of the team which he still hadn't come to terms with it years later.
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Post by rberman on Jan 3, 2019 0:16:38 GMT -5
rberman, I know you have more than enough on your plate right now and I'm certainly looking forward to all of it, BUT since it ties in with the first issue of your 70's Justice League review thread and tangentially with your Morrison JLA thread, I couldn't not mention the fact that Hourman 16 (2000) revisted/followed up on Justice League America 77. A different timeline from the one we're in now to be sure, but it does sound as if Tom Peyer's tale was at least partially designed to address the abruptness of Snapper Carr's betrayal, I thought it might make a nice footnote here if nothing else. Not expecting a review of this issue or anything but it does make it clear that Carr felt tremendous guilt over his betrayal of the team which he still hadn't come to terms with it years later. Good to know! O'Neill really is committing character assassination just to get rid of Snapper, in a way that would have lit up the internet communities like a roman candle if a writer tried it today. Why didn't Snapper just say, "I've got to focus on my studies and don't have time to hang out with super heroes right now"? Len Wein for one made a point of portraying Snapper more sympathetically when he was writing JLA.
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Post by rberman on Jan 3, 2019 7:54:05 GMT -5
JLA #78-79 “Vigilante vs Pollution” (February-March 1970)Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. Issue #78 “The Coming of the Doomsters”: Green Arrow is introduced to the JLA’s new “fixed orbit satellite” headquarters. Meanwhile, down on the Earth's surface, a rustic-talking gunslinger races to a JLA public appearance, chased by robots disguised as gangsters. When the dust clears, he introduces himself as Greg “Vigilante” Sanders, a former costumed crusader now investigating pollution-spewing factories guarded by aliens. Sanders has nabbed an alien map leading to the star Sirius. Time to split into squads and fight pollution! Green Arrow goes to yell at the city manager for allowing pollution. That goes about as well as expected: the cops are called to escort him out. GL and Superman head to the Sirius star system and find a world “Monsan” that’s been polluted to death. That’s serious indeed! One has to think that O’Neil was picking on the Monsanto Corporation, which was controversial around this time as the manufacturer of the Vietnam-era herbicide Agent Orange. Batman, Vigilante, and Black Canary infiltrate one of the polluting factories. Vigilante acquires two alien guns, which allow him to participate in the fight without violating the Comics Code, but sleeping gas cannisters hidden in his weapons lead to our heroes’ capture. Issue #79 “Come Slowly, Death, Come Slyly!”: Green Arrow arrives in time to rescue them from a net being lowered verrrrrrry slowly into acid, in a scene straight out of the 1966 Batman television show. They chase the Doomsters into a locked room which turns out to be part of a building-shaped spacecraft. The Doomsters change tactics, dropping pollution bombs all over the world. Superman and Green Lantern, returned from Planet Monsan, demolish the Doomster ship. The Doomster leader flees to the JLA satellite, briefly taking Black Canary hostage until he’s felled by a sucker punch from The Atom and then incapacitated by exposure to clean air. My Two Cents: O’Neil is not exactly going for subtlety. On the cover, Superman is literally begging the reader to do something to save everyone from pollution. The alien leader’s name “Chokh” is kind of a giveaway too. Green Arrow gives the city manager an earful, educating young readers about the ecological consequences of industrialization, and the story finale shows that the war against pollution is only beginning. Get activist, kids! Green Arrow is still O’Neil’s favorite. He’s the point of view character whom the others tell all about their shiny new satellite HQ, and several scenes involve his expressions of attraction to Black Canary. The JLA satellite was a fact of life by the time I was reading JLA regularly, so it’s interesting to finally read the story introducing it. Let’s talk about Vigilante for a minute. The first half of this story makes a really big deal out of him, spending several pages building and then relieving suspense as to who he is. But once he’s told the JLA about the aliens, he’s done making positive contributions. Indeed, his main plot point subsequently is that his stolen alien guns are the means of capturing and endangering himself, Batman, and Black Canary. He’s incapacitated several pages before the end of the story and never mentioned subsequently. So why was he introduced? A related piece of data: The final Gardner Fox JLA issue (#76) was heavy on reprints but also included a “Seven Soldiers of Victory” pin-up. It seems to me that somebody in DC editorial was keen on resurrecting these characters and insisted on shoehorning one of them into O’Neill’s pollution story. It wasn’t well done, and as we’ll see, Vigilante’s presence here as a virile man, in the prime of life, is going to cause continuity problems once we get to issues #100-102. Misogyny motif: Superman implies twice in one sentence that Black Canary's main asset is physical beauty. It may seem counterintuitive that a compliment about a woman's beauty could be problematic, but such comments, especially en masse, can be a way of relegating women to passive roles where they just are supposed to sit still as pleasurable objects of the male gaze rather than contributing with their skills. “Heroes are freaks” motif: The bluebloods at a charity event scoff at the opportunity to rub shoulders with elite superheroes. O’Neil tries to justify how Superman and GL can talk to the Monsan alien, which is kind of cute and quaint. He also uses the dialogue on top of a fight scene as an opportunity for the heroes to engage in a discussion of why heroes quip during combat. It’s a pretty surreal scene if you try to imagine this conversation happening during an actual combat scenario, much like the shop talk of Westley and Inigo during the famous “I am not left-handed” swordplay scene in the film “The Princess Bride.” Man, what a great movie. I want to watch it again now. "Right smart for a lady." Ouch! Never mind, Dinah. Just get in the kitchen and look purty.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jan 3, 2019 11:26:17 GMT -5
When you consider how Canary was treated in the GL/GA run, O'Neil wasn't the most enlightened guy in comics. Really, the bronze Age generation, as a group, weren't all that liberated.
O'Neil is from St Louis, MO and would be quite familiar with Monsanto, which is headquartered there. They had a long history in that area, even without Agent Orange. Heck, they had a long history where I grew up, as they are the top producer of agricultural herbicides, used for weed control. Their ads (and Dow Chemical's)ran endlessly on local tv, when I was growing up. I knew the names Lorsban and Rounndup as much as I did Coca-Cola.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 3, 2019 13:47:36 GMT -5
As a longtime reader of JLA by this time (1970), I was thrilled by the sudden attention paid to Green Arrow after he appeared as the new GA in Brave and the Bold 85 because he had always been a favorite character of mine. However, his re-imagination by O'Neil as he became more and more the face of the JLA made me long for a return to his quieter days. And as a liberal kid in those contentious days, I wished that O'Neil's symbol of the progressive point of view had been less preachy, strident and unenlightened.
His attitude toward the other Leaguers was unrelentingly condescending and smug, actually like many another convert to any cause can be, but I don't think O'Neil was going for that kind of subtlety in his characterizations. Witness the similar sledgehammer-like approach to Hawkman, whom O'Neil transformed from a sophisticated science policeman into a caricature of a semi-Fascistic Dirty Harry. Are there characters like that? Yes, but Hawkman wasn't one of them. And the constant "philosophical" debates between him and Green Arrow were mindless and insulting to longtime readers, but also to newer ones, who should have expected better. Both characters sounded like your drunk uncle spouting off at a party about things he knows nothing of.
And that's without even mentioning his execrable behavior toward Dinah Lance. ("Pretty bird?" Really? Bleeechh!) It is interesting how the change from the Fox to O'Neil was seen as a vast improvement. I knew Fox's approach had become, well, stodgy, compared to what other comics, especially Marvel's, were doing, but it was clear that with the switch to O'Neil, the baby went out with the bathwater.
As for the inclusion of Vigilante, of all characters, I was mystified, too. I liked that he was included -- it had been nearly 20 years since he'd last appeared in a comic -- but again, O'Neil botched it. Most obvious to any DC reader, and especially to a JLA reader, where the demarcation between Earths was made clear every single summer, Vigilante was an Earth-Two character! You didn't have to be a continuity cop to realize that. And IINM, O'Neil made no attempt to say that this was the Earth-One Vig, or that he had come over looking for Black Canary, or give any other reason he was on Earth-One. He was working as a security guard at one of the polluting plants. Not even a panel explaining what had happened to either his crimefighting or singing careers.
And it wasn't as if Vigilante had been an eco-crusader back in the 40s and 50s; he was just another Tier Two gimmicky superhero. Nothing wrong with that; I loved seeing Golden Age characters pop up. But not at the expense of blatant violations of what had gone before.
Maybe it was an editorial edict, but it's not as if anything was done with Vigilante after that. It was two years before this ostensible Earth-One version even showed up again. He dropped in here and there over the next couple of years (under different writers and editors), but his appearance in JLA was hardly a re-introduction on the order of the kind given to the Spectre, Starman, Dr. Fate and others in B and B and Showcase a few years earlier.
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Post by MDG on Jan 3, 2019 14:24:01 GMT -5
I gotta wonder about Julie Schwartz's attitude at this time. His basic gimmick-based stories worked pretty well for him for ten or so years by this time, but he could probably see the writing on the wall re: where the audience was going, so was he willing to let O'Neil have a pretty free hand?
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Post by badwolf on Jan 3, 2019 14:33:09 GMT -5
Several years later Vigilante would be one of the features in the giant-size World's Finest anthology series.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 3, 2019 15:35:35 GMT -5
Great topic, rberman. I grew up on this period of the JLA, and as we will see, for comic fans young enough to read the title and still watch cartoons, they were shocked by the mile-wide contrasts between the printed JLA, and Hanna-Barbera's almost defining (unfortunately) version of the team in the awful Super Friends cartoon that would debut in September of 1973, and still convince many in the general culture that the "real" JLA was infantile like that, too. It did not help that DC would actually refer to the comic characters with the "Here Come TV's Super Friends" plastered across several JLA covers from 1974.... ...but getting back to January, 1970... Necessary. The "monster" / "alien" as villain was such a moldy trope carried over from Golden / Silver Age anthology titles and early Silver Age superhero comics, that there was no way it would still play to anyone over 6 years old, not to mention DC could not risk their top team book seeming like an artistic dinosaur next to...just about all other titles. Yes, for all of O'Neil's unquestionable strengths as a writer, his apparent anti-sidekick bent jettisons Carr for reasons that seem out of left field, and heavy-handed. If Carr had harbored any anti-hero / self-identity feelings, its something that should have been threaded (on editor approval) during the previous creative team era. Here, its too on-the-nose that Carr is seen as a remnant of the early, "cheery" days of Silver Age comics that O'Neill and others were Hell-bent on burying at the time. The process had already been set in motion with the evolution of Dick Grayson in the pages of Batman, but that was a natural, expected occurence, not one just dropped out of nowhere to get to the end-game of removing a character as in the Carr case. The irony of O'Neil's "offensive strike" against a lingering reminder of the early days is that "across the street," for Roy Thomas, he was just beginning his love affair with even older concepts with his introduction of The Invaders in the pages of The Avengers #71 just one month before this issue's publication. Yet another contrast between the Big Two at the tiem. Some did. It was boiled down to what university one attended, and the self-image a student had of himself, but it was not widespread, or not anymore by 1970. Its a valid question/concern, but few comics ever address this--and not on any long-term basis, as any attempt to do so immediately presents the argument (and a successful one) that humans are better off without what are essentially flying genies who remove learning from adversity, struggle, faith and living their own lives all to wait for superheroes to provide whatever "miracle" needed. For the comic creator, that's essentially taking money out of his pocket, and they could not have that then or now--not as a regular condition of comics in-universe. JLA #77 “Snapper Carr – Super-Traitor!” (January 1970) Creative Team: Denny O’Neil writing, Dick Dillin on pencils, Joe Giella inking. About the creative team: while O'Neil was a major advantage / boost for the JLA's stories since his start with the title in issue #66 (November, 1968), Dick Dillin was always and ever so difficult to tolerate on a superhero title. Like Don Heck and Bob Brown on The Avengers, Dillin's sketchy, less-than-dynamic approach to the JLA was often jarring, particularly as he bridged the same period Irv Novick brought his darker, dramatic style to Batman, followed by the Neal Adams era (on anything he touched). Seeing Dillin's superheroes next to the work of era-defining artists of that caliber made JLA seem like it--aside from other talents providing some great covers--was never the top tier, genre-shaping comic that it used to be in the early Silver Age. The stories were usually good, but it also required art to work in concert with it, and I felt then that the art never "did its part" or best served a title loaded with DC's best.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 3, 2019 16:23:15 GMT -5
rberman, I think you might be the Michael Jordan of comic review threads.
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Post by rberman on Jan 3, 2019 20:17:38 GMT -5
Great topic, rberman. I grew up on this period of the JLA, and as we will see, for comic fans young enough to read the title and still watch cartoons, they were shocked by the mile-wide contrasts between the printed JLA, and Hanna-Barbera's almost defining (unfortunately) version of the team in the awful Super Friends cartoon that would debut in September of 1973, and still convince many in the general culture that the "real" JLA was infantile like that, too. It did not help that DC would actually refer to the comic characters with the "Here Come TV's Super Friends" plastered across several JLA covers from 1974.... I grew up watching Super Friends and did wonder where Apache Chief was when I started reading JLA comics. I was too young to notice things like tonal difference, or just attributed it to the difference between the two kinds of media.
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