Today, we go back 30 years ago, to see when the Justice Society of America was finally allowed to rejoin the Post-Crisis DC Universe.
This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.
This is a fifth week, so I'll go back thirty years, to May 1992 and to see how the Justice Society of America was finally allowed to join the DC Universe after Crisis on Infinite Earths in Armageddon Inferno #4 (by John Ostrander, Dick Giordano, Luke McDonnell, Frank McLaughlin, Bruce Soltoff and a bunch of other artists).
HOW DID THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA END UP IN LIMBO?
As you likely know, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC merged all of its continuity into just one Earth, and as a result, the Justice Society of America, instead of existing on an alternate Earth, were now just on DC's Earth in the past. The problem with that is that (and you'll be SHOCKED to see that this exact same thing happened in 2011 with The New 52) DC decided that it really didn't want to spotlight these older heroes (especially as, since their origins were now tied to World War II on OUR Earth, they were going to be getting pretty darn old), so it wrote them off, but DC also didn't want to KILL them, so in The Last Days of Justice Sociey of America by Roy and Dann Thomas, David Ross and Mike Gustovich, the Justice Society sacrificed themselves to essentially endlessly fight the Norse end times, Ragnarok, in limbo...
This battle would be an endless cycle, with the Justice Society dying, but coming back to life to complete the cycle anew. Doctor Fate felt that this fate was too harsh for the team's two youngest members, so he saved Power Girl and Star-Spangled Kid (and then Spectre forced Doctor Fate to also return to Earth. Basically, all of the characters who had roles in other titles).
So that was the fate of the Justice Society for a number of years. Not dead, but not around.
HOW WERE THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA FINALLY FREED FROM LIMBO?
In 1991, DC tested the waters with a miniseries set in the past starring the Justice Society (written by Len Straszewski and drawn by Grant Miehm and Rick Burchett)...
Then, in 1992, Armageddon: Inferno #1 was released (written by John Ostrander)...
This was in a series of miniseries that followed the 1991 crossover, Armageddon 2001, which introduced a time-traveling character known as Waverider. In this series, Waverider had to fight against this powerful villain known as Abraxis at four different points in time, so Waverider collected superheroes to fight Abraxis at those four points in time.
This, really, was just an excuse to throw together some disparate characters and have them work together and have them drawn by some notable artists, as seen from the splash pages introducing the teams, drawn by Mike Netzer for Hawkman, Hawkwoman and Sgt. Rock and his Easy Company...
plus Arthur Adams drawing a bunch of different heroes...
Walter Simonson also drawing a bunch of different heroes...
and Tom Mandrake drawing a bunch of other heroes...
It is so funny how this miniseries just seemingly randomly has eight pages by Arthur Adams in it...
Anyhow, Abraxis was winning and Waverider was stymied. He needed a fifth group to be able to attack Abraxis, but Waverider couldn't take anyone else from Earth, so Spectre suggested using the Justice Society, who were in Limbo. Waverider agreed and temporarily paused Ragnarok so that the Justice Society could take on Abraxis...
The JSA defeated the villain...
And they then returned to limbo and everyone was bummed...
But then Waverider revealed that he simply swapped Abraxis with the Justice Society in Limbo and the JSA were now back in the DC Universe!
They would soon get their own title, which I might write about in the future. I really loved seeing the JSA return to the DC Universe, even if this miniseries was a bit of a mess overall (Ostrander did his best to make it make sense, but it was really just sort of like, "Hey, awesome artists, want to draw any superheroes you feel like?).
I also love how the Mike Netzer cover for the issue with the JSA's return has them all looking like jerks to the modern superheroes. "FINE, we'll save your butts. GOD, we HATE you! You're such LOSERS!."
If you folks have any suggestions for June (or any other later months) 2012, 1997, 1972 and 1947 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at [email protected]! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.
