Back Issue Spotlight #16 Justice Society

[aSh]

Hey just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your spotlight and review of the All-Star Comics revival of the Justice Society. Besides containing the first appearence of Power Girl, this is one of my favorite books for its establishment of the legacy aspects of the JSA.

I do feel that your episode was a tad too critical of the goofiness of the book. As someone who has only been reading comics for 3 years and enjoys reading silver and bonze age books, All comics written more than 20 years ago seem a little goofy in their writing and story telling. I find it charming and stylistic. I also give the book allowences for it's format. They had to tell single issue (and two part) stories with only 18 pages. That is really a small amount of pages to tell an epic story. These stories move and don't ramble. I do agree that both Dr Fate and the Star Spangled Kid had inconsistancies with the use of their abilities and sometimes they were used a bit too conviently in relation to the stories. While character devlopment was slow, it does exist in the series. Sometimes the book can be very heavy handed. But with 18 pages, they can't beat around the bush.

This series shows where the JSA has been and is a great precurser to the begining of Infinity Inc. I wish that you would have also reviewed the JSA Origin story at the end of the Justice Society Tpb. It is still the primer origin story of the JSA. Paul Levitz and Gerry Conway set up many of the JSA concepts (legacy, origins, the Witch hunt that ended the JSA and inspired the Golden Age, and development of the elder statesmenships of the Senior members) that shape the modern JSA book we all enjoy today.

I think that this has been the best back issue spotlight yet. Keep up the good work.

[JohnMayo]

I do feel that your episode was a tad too critical of the goofiness of the book.

I tried not to be too hard on that aspect of the stories. There were a few places where the lack of story logic kind of frustrated me such as in the Camelot story. But overall, I try to accept comics for what they are even if in this case they felt a bit dated.

[HassanT]

Great episode guys. Love the books that you covered but not the books themselves (if that makes any sense).

This trade (along with the Huntress one) is on my growing want list of trades to buy. I love the JSA since I read my first crisis storyline in JLA. That said, based on your comments, I probably put this on the back of my list. Although I became a fan of comics by reading DC, I have found myself not loving the older (pre-1980) DC stuff as much I do the Marvel stuff and your review pretty much nails why.

It was a great idea for DC to publish these trades, but I don't know why they won't publish All-Star Squadron or Infinity, Inc as trades since they sound like they are far superior than these stories.

[JohnMayo]

Great episode guys. Love the books that you covered but not the books themselves (if that makes any sense).

This trade (along with the Huntress one) is on my growing want list of trades to buy. I love the JSA since I read my first crisis storyline in JLA. That said, based on your comments, I probably put this on the back of my list. Although I became a fan of comics by reading DC, I have found myself not loving the older (pre-1980) DC stuff as much I do the Marvel stuff and your review pretty much nails why.

It was a great idea for DC to publish these trades, but I don't know why they won't publish All-Star Squadron or Infinity, Inc as trades since they sound like they are far superior than these stories.

I've got that Huntress trade and it is on my "to read sooner rather than later" list of trades. Actually, now that I think of it, I have probably gotten most of the component issues since I got the trade...

At some point in around 1980, give or take a couple of years, the story telling style at DC shifted. On some titles it did so much earlier than others. For me, the early 1980s was a high water mark for DC. But a few years earlier or a couple of years later and the quality shifted just enough to not be in the sweet spot for me. This is part of why I've kind of decided to have 1977 be my artificial line in the sand for how far back I'll push some of my DC titles for now.

[BobBretall]

I do feel that your episode was a tad too critical of the goofiness of the book.

On one hand I think this is a fair criticism, on the other hand, I think we could have ripped into them far more. These books were from the late 70s and by that time a lot of other books had turned the corner and stopped being so "60s-ish", which is why, I think we mentioned it as much as we did.