bullet.

These eight ‘‘mystery men’’ (“‘super hero”’ as a term had yet to emerge) had formed a team so as to better battle the forces of evil, though their first meeting in All-Star #3 consisted only of the JSA swapping stories of their exploits (maybe they should have been called the Mu- tual Admiration Society). Superman and Bat- man were mentioned as honorary members “too busy to attend’’, and comic relief was provided by two would-be crimebusters who crashed the meeting: the Red Tornado (a burly housewife who, unrecognizably female in her baggy disguise of cape, long underwear, and pot with eyeholes for a helmet, cleaned up neighborhood crime) and Johnny Thunder (a good-natured nitwit who commanded a genie- like, animated pink thunderbolt). The whole business seemed pretty laid-back, but in subse- quent issues of All-Star Comics the JSA went into action against such criminal masterminds as Per Degaton, the Wizard, Brainwave, the Psycho Pirate, and the Injustice Society of the World. There was no shortage of good guys either, and later JSA members included Starman (playboy-astronomer Ted Knight, whose ‘‘ grav- ity rod’? enabled him to harness the forces of heat, light and gravity), Doctor Mid-Nite (a sightless surgeon who could see in the dark and who, with the aid of goggles that allowed him to see in the light, battled criminals with his blind-

ing ‘‘blackout bombs’”), Wonder Woman (the.

amazon adventurer in the star-spangled founda- tion garment), Mister Terrific, (Terry Sloan, a superb athlete and wealthy genius who turned to crimefighting because he’d run out of chal- tnges in life), Wildcat (a catskin-clad prize- ighter turned crimefighter), and Black Canary florist Dinah Lance, who put her martial arts nd moxy to use as a blonde-wigged timebuster). The JSA were a popular group hroughout the forties, and while the members’ ndividual careers varied the team itself lasted ntil All-Star #57 as the decade drew to a close d super heroes largely disappeared in the ‘clining comics market of the late forties and arly fifties. As comics fans know, super heroes came ack into fashion for keeps in the late fifties and erly sixties, and among the first success stories “te new characters who were based on the ‘mes and concepts of various forties charac- 'S (i.e. the Flash, Green Lantern, and ‘wkman), Fans hadn’t forgotten the originals, ugh, and the JSA returned. Inspired by the PW generation of super heroes, the graying but ‘aL JS Aers moved out of retirement into semi- live status, frequently teaming with the mod- lustice League of America and making Pearances in such books as Adventure Com- P and a brief revival of All-Star Comics in the Venties. As the decades passed the JSA got ter (since they had been tied toa specific time We the forties) but continued to appear on am €ven spawning Infinity Inc., a group * YP of the children and proteges of the ts. Still, as the ISA aged, their continued

_ activity seemed increasingly implausible even

for comic books. Rather than see them reduced to codger crusaders, DC gracefully retired the JSA in the eighties by having most of the

surviving members zapped into an Asgardian

limbo where they were locked in an eternal battle to prevent a Hitler-induced Ragnarok from devouring all existence. Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Fans hated it when that happened, and interest in the JSA was sufficient for DC to try and revive the team. So it was that, in a guest star-cluttered deux ex machina of a mini-series called Armageddon:Inferno, the JSA was res- cued from limbo in a series of events too complex to go into here. As a side effect of their time in limbo, the JSAers were physically reju- venated to some extent, trimming off a few decades so that the seventy-something JSAers

now have the appearance of, say, fifty-some- thing folks with the vitality of people even younger than that. The result: the JSA decide to return to action as semi-retired superheroes advising the next generation of crimefighters while remaining energetic enough to go into action themselves whenever the need arises. Therein lies the premise of the new ongoing Justice Society of America series that debuted last summer.

Writer Len Strazewski has carefully bal- anced his presentation of the JSA as elder heroes, portraying them as a force to be reck- oned with while not making them too hard to swallow; for-instance, the Atom gets winded after unleashing his ‘‘atomic punch’’ and Wild- cat’s legs cramp up every now and again. Artist Mike Parobeck portrays the characters as genu- inely older people with various receding hair- lines, wrinkles, and excess poundage all around, butit's subtle, and the characters in general have

a distinguished but vital presence, similar to aging moviestars like Sean Connery. Interms of character, Strazewski makes the JSAers cred- ibly impressive, conveying an easygoing wis- dom and practical ease in action that comes from decades of experience. From the cool and detached Doctor Mid-Nite to the amusingly crotchety Atom the characters are portrayed consistently and with a surprising degree of humanity. The JSA talk and act more like real people than most current comic characters, perhaps because the writer doesn’t have to try to pass off the elder heroes as the kind of flaw- lessly larger-than-life archetypes who domi- nate most comic book casts. Strazewski also blends quite a bit of subtle humour into the scripts, and ever hints of self-aware satire aimed at such golden-oldie comic book conventionsas giant monsters, silly costumes, and melodra- matic villains. All in all, the bookhas often been very enjoyable to read.

Unfortunately, there are problems. One glitch is pacing. While the first and second issues of the series were tightly plotted, subse- quent issues have seemed to wander amidst plots and subplots with very little development emerging from a given storyline. In short, not a lot happens, and the conspicuously slow pacing is a fatal blow in a medium that caters to rather action-oriented stories designed to quickly at- tract and sustain the attention of readers. The series is almost eight issues old and only six of the JSAers have emerged as ongoing cast mem- bers, while the rest of the JSA are scattered here and there in various unresolved or wholly unex- plored subplots. Most annoying is the raw deal handed the Sandman, the token casualty of the otherwise well-preserved JSA: he suffered a stroke in the first issue of the new series and has been largely forgotten since then. Granted, his condition is an element of realism, but its a frustrating waste given the character’s ori ginal- ity and stylishly spooky appeal, and Sandman has long been one of the overlooked gems ofthe JSA’s cast (something DC has apparently rec- ognized with the announcement of the forth- coming Sandman Mystery Theatre ongoing se- ries set in the 1930’s). While the featured char- acters have been well-handled, others have been under-utilized. The few new characters Strazewski has added have thus far proven to be nomorethan annoying distractions: Jesse Cham- bers (daughter of JSA peers Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle) isa likeable enough character but her unoriginal super-speed powers make her nothing more than yet another Flash clone, particulary glaring since she’s hanging around a group whose members include the Flash; even more bothersome is Kiku, a Bahdnesian orphan teen adopted by Johnny Thunder...she basically has ‘‘feisty young thing”’ written all over her, and is becoming very tiresome very quickly. Strazewski would be wiser to concentrate on developing all the various JSA characters them- selves, and while the book has in general been entertaining reading it does suffer from slow

continued on next page

19