Satellite Spotlight: Justice League of America #78-#79

Last month we took a look at Justice League of America #61, by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. It was the first issue collected in Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 4, and I talked a little bit about how interesting that particular volume was, as it contained between its covers the the transitional issues in which the Silver Age slowly became the Bronze Age, how a reader today could pick up this volume and see the characterizations and relationships that defined these characters coming to be, and, perhaps more interestingly, watch writer Denny O'Neil struggle with the conventions of his medium as he tried to tell more sophisticated, relevant stories.

The two-part story that ran in JLoA #78 and #79 is a pretty good example of this phenomenon, as it's chockful of instances of the title's growing pains. In the preceding issue, O'Neil did away with the team's longtime sidekick Snapper Carr and the original Happy Harbor headquarters, and in #78, he unveils their new HQ, making this issue the very dawn of what we now refer to as "The Satellite Era."

So let's take a look at this important moment in Justice League history, starting with "The Coming of the Doomsters," featuring art by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, and a not-terribly-representative-of-the-actual-contents cover by Gil Kane.

I mean, yeah, Vigilante does appear in the story, and the JLA do beam themselves up to their new satellite HQ, but it wasn't to quit earth while people were passing out all around them. If I had paid fifteen cents for this in 1970, I would have been so pissed off! And then I would have gone to visit my dad in high school.

It opens with the sort of purple narration I wish I could say I never see in comics any more: "Night has fallen on Star City...a night as bleak and chill as a dream of death! A solitary figure moves through the jungle of the slums, vigilant, alert..."

This vigilant, alert, solitary figure belongs to Green Arrow, who is frustrated by all the smog, which makes it "like a patrolling in a sack;" he can't see a thing! Of course, it's also night time. That might have something to do with the poor visibility.

The be-goateed hero can still hear though, and the sound of gunshots draws him to a nearby factory, where a night watchman is battling some armed thugs, and doesn't seem to be in need of any help from GA. Nevertheless, our hero decides to shoot a flare arrow up into the air, to "shed some needed light on the smoggy situation," but, unfortunately, it falls into a nearby river, and sets the polluted water ablaze, Cuyahoga River style!

Way to go, hero. Green Arrow calls his more effective friends Superman and Green Lantern, and they put out the blaze. Together the trio fly off, leaving the watchmen running after them with a briefcase, thinking, "They didn't hear!" That seems rather unlikely, since Supermman has super-hearing.

"Dang...I gotta find 'em," his ominous thought balloon continues ominously, "The whole future of the human race may depend on it--!"

Meanwhile, Superman and Green Lantern take Green Arrow—and through him, the readers—through the process of commuting to their new satellite headquarters. Where to find half of a Thanagarian Relativity-Beam System, how it will verify his identity and teleport him to the satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,3000 miles above the United States, showing him a map of the joint, and so on.

I like this sequence because it means that the whole Justice League got together and decided to build a brand new headquarters in outer space and no one even told Green Arrow until it was completely finished.

Just then, the Atom reminds GA that they have to make a public appearance in Star City, and Black Canary heads towards the teleportation cylinder, saying "Will someone descend with me? I'm still spooked by super-scientific gadgets..."

Green Arrow sees an opening:
He's so smooth, it's no wonder she ended up marrying him. Actually, dig how completely unimpressed whe is with him in that panel, despite how intense his face is while he delivers his come-on/joke.

Back in Star City, it's a very slow news days
so the Star City Gazette goes with a headline-only front page, which is lucky for the night watchman, who was looking for the JLA.

Less lucky for him? A car full of thugs with machine guns attack him, but he's able to shoot out one of their tires and make his escape.

Cut to the ballroom of an expensive hotel, where a $100-a-plate charity banquet is being held, featuring the Justice League:
Apparently, this is shortly after Green Arrow changed costumes and grew his goatee, as everyone keeps talking about it.

Superman introduces the League's newest—and prettiest—member:
This story apparently takes place around the time when Superman was still crushing pretty hard on Black Canary.

The crowd calls for a speech, but Canary's just a dizzy dame, how could she possibly string together enough words to deliver a speech?
In fact, she's such a dizzy dame that a halo of dizziness emanates from her head.

Canary is saved from public speaking when the night watchman rushes in, demanding that the League "powwow" with him about "a mess of owlhoot," owlhoots who are right behind him, with guns drawn. The League vanquishes them, and Superman's x-ray vision reveals they are actually robots who are about to self-destruct.

They take the night watchman up to the satellite, and learn that he's really Greg Sanders, the retired crime fighter who used to go by name The Vigilante. Apparently, he got sick of being a cowboy-themed superhero, and decided to move to Star City and become a night watchman for some dumb reason.

The factory he worked at was might strange though. It was always running, day and night, shooting soot into the air and dumping waste into the river. Eventually he learned that the pollution wasn't a byproduct of production, it was production: He was guarding a pollution factory!

He managed to get his hands on some documents, including the formulas for the pollution the factory was making, and a star map.

The team decides to split up, with GL and Superman seeing where the map leads, and Vigilante and the others checking out the factory. Green Arrow decides that rather than do any of that, he'll take the opportunity to tell off the city manager of Star City.

The city manager's second-in-command Jason Crass isn't terribly impressed by Green Arrow's claims that the factory is actually a pollution factory operated by robots at the behest of aliens from the Sirius star system.

Crass (Ha ha, subtlety!) takes the opportunity to make fun of Ollie's beard, making a point of saying he has time to shave, which seems odd, since Crass has a mustache himself.

GA commences with a sermon about pollution, which doesn't have much of anything to do with the sinister alien pollution factory in town: "Man, you are stupid! Look...in some cities the air is so foul that breathing is the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes... And cigarettes are hazardous to health!"

Eventually Crass orders the city hall security guards to put GA in the slammer, although they ultimately let him go, despite his insinuation that they were Nazis.

Batman, Atom and Black Canary take Sanders to "a local western goods shop" where he finds everything he needs to reassemble his costume.
Black Canary tells him he looks very handsome in his costume, which may not actually be a compliment, considering the fact that his costume consists of a mask obscuring most of his face.

"At that instant, many light-years distant," GL and Superman arrive at the fifth planet from the sun Sirius, a one-time earth-like planet which has been changed to "a gigantic trash-can!" What could have caused this devastation, and could it provide a teaching moment about the environment to the kids at home?

Maybe!

At the factory, Vigilante and the gang get captured, put in a big net, and are being slowly lowered into a vat of "bubbling, noxious...death." And that's where the issue ends! With a cliffhanger! Holy shit, is this the end of the Justice League?! Or at least three of 'em, plus Vigilante?!

No. Not it's not, as we discover in "Come Slowly Death, Come Slyly!" by the same creative team.
(This next issue's cover is by Neal Adams though. The focal point is clearly the dying Superman, directly appealing to the reader to stop pollution, but look at Hal in the background: He looks like he's going out big with a death scene he learned in an opera, but that's silly. Hal Jordan would never see an opera).

After a brief recap of the events of the previous issue, we follow Green Arrow as he runs from city hall to the pollution factory, arriving just in time to rescue his allies from the net-dipped-in-a-vat-of-death trap.

Once free, they attack the, um, the Doomsters. Check out this page:
Note how the characters can't simply crack wise while fighting the robots called the Doomsters who run a pollution factory for an alien, but they have to talk about how weird it is to be cracking wise, and justify and rationalize the comic book convention to each other.

Defeated, the Doomsters escape to a portion of the factory which is actually a rocket ship and blast themselves into space.

Even further out in space, GL and Superman finally find a survivor on the ruined planet in the Sirius system. This humanoid alien in on the way out too, but he has time to tell the story of his world and the Doomsters.

Once, the people of Monsan—that's the name of this planet, I guess—gloried in their industrial might, creating goods like crazy. Scientists warned that the were destroying the planet with pollution, but the government didn't pay any attention...until people started dropping dead and the planet dying. The evil leader Chokh (Get it?! Chokh!) used a radiation bath to transform himself and his followers into "Doomsters," able to survive in such an environment. Now they travel the galaxy for new worlds to pollute and conquer.

When that dude dies, Hal considers destroying the planet with his ring, but Superman wants him to leave it as it is, "a monument to mortal ignorance-- and a warning!"

Back in our own solar system, Chokh and his Doomsters seed the earth with pollution bombs that, in one hour's time, will release "total pollution!"

GL and Superman return, beat the shit out of all the Doomsters on their ship-disguised-as-a-factory, but they missed Chokh himself, who attacks the JLA satellite, and gets the upper hand. Waving a gun at them, he demands they open the airlock and throw themselves into space.

The Atom asks Batman to distract Chokh, and shrinks out of sight.

Bats and GA decide to distract the main Doomster with some soap opera shit:
That gives the microscopic Atom the one panel he needs to sneak across the room, enlarge and, ZOKK, punch out Chokh. The alien begs Green Arrow not to remove his mask, but GA does so anyway, and Chokh immediately chokes to death. See, fresh air is poisonous to him! Irony!

Finally, the earth is saved...

...or is it?!

Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America Annual #1

Justice League of America Annual #1 (1983), by Paul Levitz, Len Wein, Rick Hoberg and Dick Giordano

Twenty-two thousand and three hundred miles above the Earth, a handful of Justice Leaguers are in pitched battle against massive, armored aliens that seem to each be as powerful as Superman. While Ralph "Elongated Man" Dibny struggles to hold one, it's fist punches a hole in the JLA Satellite's plasteel walls, and



But it turns out it was all just a dream!



Whew.

Hmm, and it turns out I was wrong about Ralph’s favorite ice cream. But who could have guessed guacamole ice cream? I didn't even know such a thing existed...

Sue offers to talk about his nightmare with him, but Ralph laughs it off and she rolls over to go back to sleep. He stares out his bedroom window, thinking dark thoughts, and worrying that maybe some day someone will get hurt because of his choice to become The Elongated Man. Ha! Like that would ever happen!

Then we cut to...





Hey, when the credit box on the first page referred to Wein as "wordsmith," it wasn't kidding! Man, this is some nice narration. It almost sounds like a poem...

Elsewhere, in a room
Without number
In a place
Without name
A shadowy figure sits before a
Massive Materioptikon
His gloved fingers flying across
The control board as if playing
Some perverted calliope
But his is not a happy song

But who is this shadowy figure? Hobbers' panels slowly tease out his idenity. Why, it's...



...Skeletor!



Alright, alright, Doctor Destiny.

Special guest star Commissioner Gordon notices that Destiny escaped from his cell at Arkham Asylum, leaving an illusion of himself in his cot. Gordon can't reach Batman, who is busy invading Markovia in the pages of the then-just launched Batman and The Outsiders (The Showcase Presents volume of which is totally worth $16.99). So Gordon turns to the League, apparently inviting them all down to his kitchen for a meeting.



No, I guess that's actually the Justice League's meeting room. Hoberg just draws it like a kitchen. Anyway, after Gordon tells them about Destiny, the League decides that they'll split up into teams to search for the villain.

Firestorm, The Atom, Hawkman and Hawkgirl head to a psych-lab at Ivy University, using a Thanagarian cerebrumeter to follow a trail of unusually high concentrated delta-waves.

Using his molecular restructuring powes, Firestorm creates a revolving door in the wall of the building, and a mustachioed scientist immediately shows off his deductive skills:



“Sorry, I didn’t recognize you at first. The hawk-shaped helmet, the giant hawk-wings and the symbol of a hawk on your chest confused me. I thought you might be Batman and Batwoman.”

Destiny's not there, but when he sees that the League is, he uses the Materioptikon to summon green monsters from the dreams of slumbering test subjects to attack his foes.


What, you didn’t believe me this was from 1983?

Fresh out of quips with short shelf-lives, Firestorm manages to awaken the students whose dreams are generating their foes, thus ending the battle.

The Leaguers then show off what good teammates they all are, by all speaking one fourth of the same sentence



Now that's teamwork!

Meanwhile, the all-blonde squad of Aquaman, Black Canary and Green Arrow journey to a Greenwich Village art fair, because several of the artists participating have disappeared.



Note that when alone, the nearest civilians a good twenty feet away, these three Leaguers, all of whom know each other’s secret identities, even the two of them who are living together, don’ use their eal names. Even their nicknames are based on their codenames: "Arrow," "Archer," "Pretty Bird."

Now, one of ex-Justice League of America writer Brad Metlzer’s most obvious and annoying affectations was to always have the heroes calling each other by their first name, whether or not the character's knew each other's real names, or if there were villians around, or if they were out in public, or if no one reading the damn comic knew the characters' first names (See "The Lightning Saga;" surely fewer readers are on a first-name basis with the fantasy Legion of Super-Heroes that Meltzer and Geoff Johns created for the story than people reading the book, right?)

But what's the source of Meltzer's weird habit? Obviously the so-called Satellite Era has had a huge influence on Meltzer; these are the characters he likes most, the stories he references the most and all of the mistakes and continuity gaffes he made tended to come about from him trying to honor this Pre-Crisis (on Infinite Earths) continuity rather than the Post-Crisis continuity (It could even be argued that the sole reason DC rejiggered their continuity in Infinite Crisis was to realign it with Meltzer's vision of how it should be).

But here we have a Satellite Era comic, and the characters aren't calling each other Ollie and Arthur and Dinah.

Back to the story, the Blonde Batallion's investigation goes a lot like that of Firestorm's team. Destiny's not there but he's watching, and uses the Materioptikon to summon something for them to fight, which they do.

Meanwhile, Wonder Woman and The Flash race to Gotham City to search for Destiny, where they meet a surprise guest star...



Aw, come on, Wonder Woman! I was just complimenting you guys on your restraint and discretion regarding your real names, and there you are blurting John’s full name out in public!

(Actually, does John have a secret identity? I remember he made a big deal about not wanting to wear a mask, so maybe he's always been out? Short of one issue in the GL/GA trades, the one in which he first gets his power ring, this is the earliest story featuring him I’ve read, I think.)

Now, why is Flash so unhappy to see him? Why does Barry Allen hate black people?

John makes with some exposition (and refers to his costume as "cockamamie") before conjuring up a gigantic, glowing, green blood hound to sniff out delta-wave radiation.



Is the dog just for show, and the ring's detecting the delta waves? Or did GL use the ring to create a delta-wave detector and put it in the dog's nose or...?

Anyway, I like the fact that Wonder Woman's all, "This should get us upstairs unnoticed," and then they float up the shaft in a glowing green bubble attached to a giant, glowing green blood hound.

Anyway, you know what happens by this point, right? Destiny's not there, but he's watching, summons some dream foes for the Leaguer to fight, and they fight them off.

Meanwhile, Zatanna uses her magic to find Doctor Destiny, thus proving the last 20 pages or so a huge waste of everyone's time. First she and the League leftovers of Elongated Man and Red Tornado magic to the dream realm for their own version of the same scene we've already seen three times.

Then she summons the League, and they splash page their way forward.



I really like the top half of this panel, and the way all the fliers have their own flying style. Particularly John. He really looks like he’s being propelled through the sky by a force, instead of adopthing the gegneric Superman flying pose, and in fact, he isn’t really posing at all, just flying. Heck, that’s how I’d fly if I could fly. Good job, Hoberg!

And where are they splash-paging off, too? Why, to this familiar setting:



Oh wow, no way! It's the Kirby-created Sandman! The one that came long after Wesley Dodds, but long before Morpheus of The Endless! I honestly did not see that coming. With The Sandman and hsi servants Brute and Glob captured, Destiny controls the realm and all the nightmares and dream monsters within it, which he sics on the League.

They beat back the bad guys, however, and are closing in on their nemesis, when he decides to fight dirty, and thorw sand in their eyes



And not just any sand, but "The Sandman's somnolent sand," which puts them asleep. Ralph's the last one to go down, but he's able to stretch a finger to the eject button on The Sandman's tube, shooting him into the Dream-Stream. Doctor Destiny's all like, "Ha, who cares if I lose The Sandman; I've got the whole Justice League!" So he puts them all in glass collector's cases and gloats.

The Sandman uses his newfound freedom to journey to Earth and wake up a napping Clark Kent, who ripss off his suit to become Superman, and, in short order, they're in the Dream Dimension, kicking ass and opening glass cases:



With Destiny successfully defied, the League and their new ally retire to the Satellite for a post-mortem of the adventure. And then Firestorm pops the question:



Now, I'm sure it didn't occur to Levitz and Wein when they were writing this scene, and it may not even look like it now at first glance, but this is actually a momentous moment in comics history right here. The JLA is asking The Sandman to join their team here and, no exaggeration, which way Levitz and Wein decide to have him answer this question would have had a gigantic impact on the medium's creative and commercial growth.

To back up for a second, I should note there’s no real reason for The Sandman to say no here. He fits in perfectly well, even more so than Elongated Man or Firestorm or Red Tornado, in terms of Justice League worthiness. He's an iconic character and household name kind of hero of hero (Like Uncle Sam, he's a DC-owned superhero whose name alone makes him as familiar as Batman or Superman, even if he's not as popular as a comic book character).

While he's not Kirby's most inspired creation, not even his most inspired DC creation, he's not a bad character. Hes costume's decent and seems to fit in among the rest of the Leaguers, his powers are interesting and unique and, like the vast majority of the heroes on the League at the time, he works far better on a tea than he would alone. His book didn't last very long, but, like Elongated Man or Green Arrow or Zatanna or Red Tornado, eve if he couldn't support a book of his own, he could certainly help support a team book.

Long sory short, Levitz and Wein could have easily made him say yes and join the Justice League.

Now, imagine if he did. Imagine if he becomes a character like Elongated Man, Red Tornado, Firestorm or Zatanna, a member of the League's B-team who is forever associated with the team. That means he’s not in limbo and half-forgotten for the remainder of the '80s, and then, come 1989, maybe he’s joining on the JLI instead of lending his name and an element or two to Neil Gaiman’s dramatic reimagining of him in The Sandman.

Then what? Hard to say for sure, but, at the very least, there's no Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, one of, if not the, best American comic books produced (I once read an article that that said it wasn't just one of the best comics of the latter half of the 20th century, but it was one of the best works of fiction of that period, and I’m inclined to agree).

But the quality of Gaiman's Sandman series aside, it undoubtedly had a huge impact on our pop culture, and a hard to over-estimate one on comics.

Without The Sandman, what would become of Neil Gaiman’s career? Would he have simply taken over Swamp Thing after Alan Moore left? Would he have turned Books of Magic or Black Orchid into a sufficeintly Big Thing to replace The Sandman? Does he find success elsewhere?

What about all the superstar artists that came out of iThe Sandman, finding much bigger and more appreciative audiences than they had before working on it?

What about Vertigo, foundation of which was certainly laid by Moore, Grant Morrison and others, but the spine of which has long been Gaiman's little Sandman universe. It was his Death The High Cost of Living that was the first official Vertigo book. WithoutThe Sandman, is there a Vertigo? (At the very least, there wouldn't be that or the Death book and other Endless and Dreaming related spin-offs, and probably not Sandman Mystery Theater or The Books of Magic or Lucifer and all those The Sandman Presents books.

Without Vertigo, think of all the creators who might not have found their way into U.S. pop comics, or at least not in the same way or at the same level of popularity that they ultimately did—Morrison, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar...

Without The Sandman and Vertigo, does the graphic novel revolution ever get here? Does it just come a little bit later, or does it take a different form entirely? Is it pushed along by manga, and Western companies are rushing to reach this new bookstore audience at the beginning of the aughts?

Talk about a nightmare world! A world where The Sandman joined the Justice League is a world where The Sandman was never published, a world where Vertigo may never have existed, where graphic novels never became the prominent format ath athey are now and AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!



Whew! It was all just a dream. The Kirby Sandman turned the offer of Justice League membership down, and thus entered limbo to be transformed into Gaiman's Sandman at the end of the decade.

It’s a good thing that when The Sandman said that his condition of only being able to leave the Dream-Dimension for an hour at a time would make joining the team impractical, nobody was like, "Oh, that's cool. Aquaman had the same problem with being out of water, and he founded the team, and has been with us for years now."

Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #163

Remember in last month's Black Canary Wedding Planner, when the betrothed superhero duo were chatting with one another, and the name Anton Allegro came up?

I imagine that line of dialogue was a bit of a question mark for everyone, because if you did know who Allegro was, then you knew that not only had he reformed, but that he had died. And if you didn't know who Allegro was, well, then you didn't know who they were talking about at all.

Well, this is who they were talking about—


(He's the one summoning demons of destruction to slay the superheroes as alliteratively as possible. He's not actually ten feet tall, the perspective on this cover is just kinda crazy. Note all the lines drawing the eye towards Hawkgirls breasts though. This one must have flown off newstands).

Yes, Anton Allegro was the heavy in the Satellite Era classic that we're spotlighting tonight, Justice League of America #163 (1979); "Concert of the Damned," by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin.

As villains go, he's kind of a lame one, but then, so are most League foes (Isn't it odd that, individually, the Justice Leaguers have tons of great villains, but when they band together, the only ones who step up to challenge them are goofballs like The Key, a space starfish and, well, Anton Allegro?).

Allegro has a shock of black mad scientist/mad composer hair, a diabolically pointed goatee and one of the worst costumes the human mind can conceive of. Its skin-tight black spadex, which he wears with a bowtie, mustard-colored pirate boots and gloves, and a huge purple cape which might have been kind of cool, if it weren't for the piano key fringe along the bottom.

His weapon of choice is a synthesizer, which is either so wicked awesome or which he plays so wicked awesome that its capable of, as he expalins on the cover, summoning demons of destruction capable of slaying superheroes. That's not quite as cool as a guitar that could do the same, but it is cooler than a fiddle, violin or a wind instrument, the sorts of weapons previous music-based supervillains used. It's kind of admirable that in '79 Conway was with it enough to give a music-based villain a synthesizer.

Less cool? His successor's 1985 application of the technology into a keytar:


(That guy actually took down Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash Barry Allen. The real Anton Allegro would give his life in a battle against the Soviets to save them.)

But who exactly is Anton Allegro and how did he come to be?

Why would he turn his crazy-powerful synthesizer on the Justice League in the first place?

This is all covered in "Concert of the Damned," which opens with a scene of Green Arrow walking into Oliver Queen's apartment through the front door:



GA is surprised to see someone lying in wait for him. Anton Allegro is apparently surprised to see Green Arrow at all, saying, "Frankly, I was expecting Oliver Queen-- But you, Green Arrow--you'll do quite nicely!!"

"Yes, I was expecting Oliver Queen. But you, Green Arrow, who look an awful lot like Oliver Queen, what with the blond handlebar moustache and weird pointy beard, and who seems to have a key to Oliver Queen's apartment for some reason--you'll do quite nicely!"

A.A. introduces himself, then his fingers, "darting with inuman speed" on the keyboard of "a bizarre electronic accordion," summon three primary colored monsters. The ghostly beasts shrug off GA's trick arrows, and lay him out with a "JAPOW" to the jaw.

Meanwhile, 22,300 miles above the Earth, the rest of the Justice League sit around a table, talking. They have a special guest with them, Zatanna's father Zatara, and the topic is a boring sub-plot from the issue in which the League battled The Shark and his dainty-handed monsters.

Zatanna summarizes:



"Spell of Amnesia," huh Z.? You might want to study that spell yourself. You never know when you might need to cast it upon a teammate who stumbled upon you and your co-conspirators in the act of magically lobotomizing a rapist.

Sudenly, a big red "BLEEEEEE" summons the team away from this Zatara family drama. It's the emergeny signal! On a monitor screen, the head of Black Canary informs the team that Ollie has been attacked. She's bandaged his whole head in gauze and laid him on the couch, and he seems stable, but someone has to go kick his attacker's ass. And that someone is the Justice League! They spring into action:



I love this panel. Not just because it looks like Superman has totally forgotten how to run (not as unlikely as you might think for guys who can fly) and is about to topple over, but because Batman's action pose is so dramatic. I can practically hear him shouting "Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Once the invincible champions of justice have gathered around the wounded Oliver Queen's couch, the bearded Leaguer recounts his first encounter with Anton Allegro.



After listening to him rant for five panels, Queen was beginning to suspect that A.A. was something of a nut, and was looking for a way to let him down easy, when he looked out the window and saw something that demanded his attention:



A group of men wearing strange uniforms were using a laser tank to rob a bank. These sorts of super-crimes always seem so weird to me. To rob a bank, you really only need a gun, or the threat of a gun. A tank seems a bit like overkill. And a laser tank? Where did they get it? Did they invent a laser gun and then mount it on to a customized tank? Did they build the tank themselves as well? It seems like if they had the skills necesarry to build something like that , there would be easier, more legal ways to make money than bank robbery. Hell, just sell the laser tank. I bet you could get a lot of money for one of those.

It's worth noting that by DCU standards, using a laser tank for a simple bank hold-up isn't really that big of a waste of fantastic technology. I mean, consider Flash's rogues gallery, with their freeze rays, weather controlling wands and Mirror Master's mastery of mirrors. Those guys could make millions working for the U.S. military. Mirror Master could completely revolutionize communication and travel. And yet they devote their genius and/or resources on pulling off the sorts of crimes that anyone with a blackjak and/or pistol could do just as easily.

So anyway, Ollie pushes Allegro out the door, promising him a check to tide him over, and, just before slamming the door on him, gives him some free advice: "Do yourself a favor--and get a job!"

Allegro curses him, but Ollie's mind is already elsewhere. That rampaging tank requires the attention of a man who can shoot arrows at it, so it's time for Green Arrow to appear on the scene:



Yes! I love Green Arrow costume changes! Look! He had his whole costume—boots, bow, quiver full of arrows and all—on underneath his business suit! And you couldn't even see a bulge or anything.

Also, look at what he's holding in his left hand, and what he's shrugging off his right shoulder. Apparently he was wearing two identitcal suit coats one on top of the other. I guess the offices in The Queen Building get pretty chilly.

And then, it happens.

Ollie fires a tuning-fork arrow he's been experimenting with to shake the tank to peices, and Allegro gets caught in the blast.



Now I know Ollie's the superhero here and Allegro's the supervillain of the piece, and that we're supposed to root for the former and hiss the latter, but, I've got to say, Allegro seems to have pretty good reason to hate Green Arrow, if not Oliver Queen.

I mean, he's walking out of a meeting, minding his own business, when a masked vigilante employs an experimental weapon against a tank in the middle of a crowded public street, a weapon that caused permanent, incurable deafness in Allegro, a musician, who's whole life is devoted to the production of beautiful sounds.

Naturally, Ollie felt bad about it, and paid Allegro's hospital bills and apparently kept sending him checks (until he lost his fortune), but Ollie insists that it was a "freak accident." An accident, sure, but c'mon Queen, no one put a gun to your head and made you shoot your experimental tuning-fork arrow at that laser tank.

So Superman picks the wounded Ollie up in his arms (revealing that Ollie is still wearing his quiver full of arrows on his back...which he'd been laying on. Man, Canary is the worst nurse!) and flies him up to the satellite to recvoer.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan power rings up a giant tuning fork , which is able to track the frequency of Allegro's music of madness. With his friends in a big green bubble, he swoops towards--



Wait, what? Massachusetts? Star City is in Massachusetts? Really? Really? I honestly had no idea. I always thought it was somewhere on the west coast, I think because I just assumed it must have been somwhere near Seattle, if that's where Ollie relocated to later. Massachusetts. Huh. Does that explain Ollie's liberalism then? Is he just your typical Massachusetts liberal? Or should I say Taxachusetts liberal? Eh? Eh? Hawkman knows what I'm talking about...

As for the last ten pages of the book, Allegro's music demons totally take out Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl and Black Canary. Zatanna and Zatara have some boring conversations about why her costume keeps changing, and what's up with her mom. And Superman and Batman pull the old robot double trick on Allegro to save his hot ex-wife's life, which brings us to the blurb for the next issue, "Murder By Melody!"

I'm missing the next 19 issues of the series, so I have no idea what happens, but none of the Justice Leaguers seem to have been murdered, as they're all still around and available to have meetings in JLoA #183.

Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #156

Justice League of America #156 (1978); "The Fiend With Five Faces," by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin

Dateline: Honolulu, Hawaii

An exhasted, weakened Aquaman stumbles out of the ocean and heads for downtown Honolulu. He hails a cab, and takes it to The Bristol Building.



Hey, have you ever wondered what movie star Aquaman looks like?


Wow.

We never learn why the cabbie continues to assume the soaking wet guy wearing Aquman's costume and talking about teleporters and the Justice League is Steve McQueen, nor do we learn why Aquaman volunteered the location of a secret teleporter tube to this total stranger, or why the Justice League didn't put one of them in Atlantis or the ol' Aquacave. No time for any of that, because there's an emergency brewing.

Once on the satellite headquarters of the JLoA, Aquaman asks Ralph Dibny to summon the other Leaguers. The call goes out, finding many of the other heroes right in the middle of somethin.

Black Canary, for example, is in Star City, battling The Boxer Bandits…



…and her mortal enemy, math:



Ray "The Atom" Palmer, meanwhile, is hanging out in a park with his finacee, Jean Loring, with quite a lot on his mind:


Uh, yes. If you’re going to marry someone, you should probably let them know pretty much everything about you. Or, at the very least, the broad strokes. Like whether you have any superpowers, for example, or have a costumed alter ego and have to attend meetings in orbiting space satellites once a week.

The only Leaguers who are unaccounted for are Flash and Green Lantern, who are busy investigating some weird plant growth, and find an even weirder culprit behind it—


Yikes! Dude, if you’re going to wear a leaf loincloth to cover yourself, you might want to avoid standing in the treetops and talking to people who are below you like that.

He gets the drop on them both using his crazy plant powers, capturing them both in vines.

Meanwhile, the Joker tries to steal a painting, seeking to distract the guards with clowns and Hostess Fruit Pies, but he apparently took his sweet time stealing the painting, as they had time to enjoy the real fruit filling and the light, tender crust and catch up to him.



Now, couple things here. First, this story seems to deviate from the pattern of all other scenes of DC supervillains being undone by Hostess Fruit Pies. See, usually the pies distract the villains from their perfidy with their real fruit filling and light, tender crust. But here, the Joker uses the pies on the crowds and police to distract them while he commits a crime, right? But the pies obviously don't really work, because the cops still catch him. Did he just take his sweet time stealing the painting? Did he overestimate how long it would take the cops to eat Hostess Fruit Pies and continue with their patrol of the museum? Or was it all part of his plan, all along? Were those pies all fille not with real fruit filling, but deadly Joker venom? I assume we'll return to the subplot later.

The other thing worth noting is that the last panel in this scene contradicts clearly established continuity regarding the Joker's feelings about Hostess Fruit Pies. In JLoA #147 he flatly turned down an offer of delicious Hostess Fruit Pies, thus revealing himself to be insane and thus, in all likelihood, the Joker. So which is it DC—does the Joker like delicious Hostess Fruit Pies or does he not like delicious Hostess Fruit Pies?

Anyway, back to the Justice League. Once assembled around the table, Aquaman relates his tale. It seems he was swimming along, minding his own business, when a volcanic island with a crazy living statue atop of it straight up rose out of the sea


The statue focused its ten pairs of eyes on him and unleashed a volley of eye beams. There was a flash of light and a thunderous "Zzzzzarom!" and then he lost consciousness. He lay on the ocean floor for two weeks, tended to by his sea subjects, who were responding to subconscious commands to keep him alive.

I don’t know if that’s cute or gross. Maybe a little of both.

When he awoke, he swam straight to the nearest teleporter tube, conveniently placed on top of a very tall building on land, and went to alert the League of the powerful five-faced fiend he had encountered.

Suddenly NATO calls and is all like, “Justice League! Halp! Some of our guys are fighting some Warsaw Pact guys, and we’re using ancient weapons and they’re using super-futuristic spaceships and lasers! You’ve gotta help us sort out this temporal crisis, or at least switch it so our guys have the good stuff!”

Recognizing some kind of time anamoly and/or magic hoodoo, the League responds to these multiple threats by doing what it does best—splitting into smaller teams!

This shit is so serious that The Phantom Stranger, who was then a member of the team whenever he felt like it, finally decided to deign the other Leaguers with his presence.


He joined Batman, Red Tornado and The Atom to investigate the island that Aquaman told them about. On the way, Phantom Stranger shows off his super wing-walking powers.

Once they arrive, Batman warns Red Tornado to stick with the others,


but the android is intent on setting destiny up for a punchline: “No way could a column ever collapse on me while my back was turned!”

Inside the temple, the heroes encounter some sort of intangible guardian demon, which the Atom takes care of by punching its molecules. How does taht work? I don't know, but he says it's simply physics, and since he's a physics teacher and I'm not, I'm in no position to challenge him.

On another front, The Elongated Man, Black Canary and Superman have traveled to Eastern Europe, and just as they arrive, Supes’ acid really starts to kicks in…


Sure dude. A black unicorn. Whatever.

Oh no wait, no there really is a black unicorn! And astride it is a dude who appears to be Gehngis Khan wearing a power-suit designed by Jack Kirby. He says his name “may be Ku, War-God of Ancient Oceania,” and using his magic sword, he kicks the crap out of Superman! Ssshham!

Meanwhile, the other two Leaguers encounter another, even weirder-looking guy—

Canary’s flesh crawls at the mere sight of his costume. And considering the fact that she looks at Red Tornado's costume every single day, that's really saying something.

This strange figure is Rongo, Jester of Oceania, one of five gods of that ancient civilization who was trapped in the five-faced statue, as he exposits to Canary:

Tangora the Wise, the guy who looks a little like Oliver Queesn, is the one who imprisoned them in the statue, and he himself is currently imprisoned in the temple while the other four run amok. Or other three, anyway. I'm not sure where Mauri the Love-Goddess is at.

Meanwhile, Superman uses his super-brain to outwit and defeat Ku, the Stranger uses his magic to free Tangora, Hal Jordan outwints Tane the Nature-God (no, seriously!).

But what of Rongo, well, Black Canary uses her feminine wiles to seduce him and, then, when he's guard's down, to hit him at point blank range in the face with her sonic blast:

Dirty pool, Canary, dirty pool.

Freed by the Stranger, the head god puts them all back in their temple and sinks the island.

Back on the satellite, Ray realizes that this adventure wasn’t just about Earth being jeopardized by ancient gods, it was really all about him:

When he asks his fellow Leaguers whether he should keep such a big, huge important secret like his being The Atom from his wife or not, they all say different things.

Batman advises keeping it secret…because if there’s one thing Batman knows, it’s how to sustain a relationship. Flash tried going the whole lying-to-his-own-wife route, but ended up telling her in his sleep. Hal says to go ahead and tell her: “Trust Jean! She may be the only person you ever can trust completely," he says.

Adding, “Hell, don’t just tell her your identity, tell her all of ours too! And the identity of Batman’s current sidekick, and the identities of any and all future sidekicks he might someday have! What harm could possibly ever come of it?”

What does Ralph Dibny have to say of the matter?

Oh really Steve McQu—I mean, Aquaman. You don't think Ralph would have it any other way? Well, let's check back with him in 27 years or so, huh?

So what's it going to be, Ray?

Aw man, this issue leaves us hanging. It's to be continued in “’Till Doom Do Us Part,” the next issue, which I don’t have.

Well, whatever happened, I’m sure the Palmers ended up living happily ever after…