Once again the old saying " Posts lead to other posts "rings true as we are shedding light on an underappreciated artist who did the yeoman's working laying the groundwork for one of the greatest and best known assemblages of heroes with special abilities - or just goold old chuzpe.
I'm talking of course about the world famous Justice League OF America with a big emphasis on the " of "part back when the main objective was to defend the home of the brave and the land of the free against all kind of threats be it domestic or abroad, on the planet Earth or out in space.
Because their headquarters were in space and teleporting to the Justice League satellite was easier than taking a bus. Or at least that was how we imagined things would be. I don't want to say the times were simpler because that is always one of the erroneous generalizations of those generations which did not experience all those trials and tribulations.
And I thank the deities that I started my comicbook reading journey at a time when the never ending fight between the forces of good and evil and entertaining the readership was the most important thing. Instead of trying to educate - or better said " conscience bully " - the audience into following the new SJW acceptable propaganda and self inserting yourself into a story while claiming to champion all those important checkboxes like diversity or representation. A time when creators were hired based on the merit of their work and not because of their gender, political views, religious belief, sexual orientation, race or physical shortcomings.
It may be hard to believe for Today's spoon - fed comicbook readership but back then creators had more freedom of expression concerning politics, socio - ecological problems, environmental issues, civil rights, emancipation, generation conflicts, racial strife or simply the human condition in general. It may also be a shock that straight white caucasian jewish males were allowed to write black characters, female characters, american characters, foreign characters, gay characters and vice versa.
Female writers were not relegated to writing just female characters and could write any type of character they wanted. Furthermore none of the many aliens that populated the pages of the four colored entertainment back then were written by actual aliens. Today I am not so sure of that.
Granted, the stories could be a little oversimplified and the way the issues at hand were addressed may not have always been the best plus the writing could be a bit cringe - worthy and hammy. But at least they were honest about it and you feel there were good intentions involved .
Now I will be the first to admit that reading some of these early JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA stories with Today's context can be a little rough.
Back when I had what could be classified as a legit comicbook collection I bought all the trades with the crossovers between the Justice League Of America and the Justice Society of America working my way through it was very hard and it only got better during the latter half of the books.
Now the reason why I bought the trades was there were no hardcover collections of those stories available and I had to resort to the german edition - which came out just a little time later as the german editions always do - because some of the trades went out of print very quickly.
Especially the ones including the issues by the great late GeorgePerez because up to that point in DC Comics publishing history they had only been reprinted in the criminally overpriced DC COMICS CLASSICS LIBRARY : JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA BY GEORGEPEREZ hardcovers which could have easily been collected into one single volume but to charge readers more they split it up into two books. Funny story : as over - expensive as those books were I ended up buying both of them after I had gotten a few of the actual issues at my trusty comicbook shop, the Sammlerecke in Esslingen, and decided that even though they cost an arm and a leg I should just cough up the money and get it while I still can enjoy them.
By the way, the anniversary issue 200 which features guest art by such incredible creators like BrianBolland, GeneColan or JimAparo was not reprinted as good in these super expensive hardbacks as in the later Justice League / Justice Society of America crossover collections or the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA : A CELEBRATION OF 60 YEARS hardcovers.
Of which I can really recommend the latter ones. Granted, most people are disappointed by those books because for some reason they expect THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD or the ESSENTIAL STORIES of a certain character or team when it is just a celebration of the various decades.
Not a collection for people who are trying to get to know a character or team or those who want the best stories in one neat book but rather an appreciation book for seasoned collectors who know them that also tries to include material that has not been reprinted before. And if you leave your preconceived notions of what these books are at the door and just try to enjoy them they are a cool collection of quirky standout stories.
One thing I have to say though : as someone who also tried the german anthology format I prefer the german FLASH ANTHOLOGY to the 75 years Flash celebration book because it includes more stuff about theWallyWestFlash - including one of the best stories of THENEWTEENTITANS by MarvWolfman and GeorgePerez - who is just a footnote in the US book.
And I get that at that time the CW The Flash tv show was all the rage and they were pushing BarryAllenFlash in any way possible but come on DC Comics, are these books not supposed to be for future generations ?
Anyways, these celebration books have a great assortment of stories you won't find anywhere else and it's a good way to have some choice stories in one handy package without having to spend a fortune on back issues.
Which by the way are going for crazy prices right now. Seriously, I never understood this fixation on " key "issues and first appearances over good art, fleshed out characters and memorable storytelling and while I enjoy a lot of YouTube content about comicbook hunting at conventions ( thank god those are back ) it hurts my soul to see that some of the best comic books ever written are only appreciated by Today's audience if some of the minor c - list villains appear in a lame tv show or movie adaption.
Coming back to the A CELEBRATION OF X YEARS books, right now I own two, GREENARROW and SHAZAM and they are nice reads especially if you don't have a vast comicbook collection. I think I like the CAPTAIN MARVEL book better ( for legal reasons DC Comics can't call the original Captain Marvel Captain Marvel without being sued by Disney ) since it has a superb collection of Captain Marvel stories ( it's funny how much better these books are the less material from the NEW 52 and beyond they contain ) and I have to say the colour reproduction in the MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL story is especially mind blowing. If the colours were as crisp as this when it first came out it is no wonder Captain Marvel left the Superman comics in the dust and DC Comics resorted to such dirty tricks like a lawsuit to keep them from getting all of the market shares.
Five years after these books came out DC Comics did some updated 80 YEARS hardcovers but as I have not seen them and I don't have my old hardcovers at hand I can't tell you if it's worth it to buy the new versions if you already have the previous ones. I guess that is somthing everybody has to decide for themselves. I do know that they corrected some of the issues the readers had with the FLASH book - like not enough WallyWest content and not including the best Flash story from that run "Nobody Dies"by William Messner - Loebs and Greg LaRoque - in the new edition.
By the way, DC Comics also released some anniversary books with all new stories so don't get these volumes mixed up or you will be very surprised.
Okay, after this completely unscheduled and unnecessary rant let's get back to the real topic of Today's post. Which is - if you have not already guessed by the title of this post - Dick Dillin ( this is one of the few times where I can get away with using the word dick in the post title ) who drew JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA for an unprecedented 12 years.
His run only ended when he had a heart attack at his drawing desk while working on issue 183 thus paving the way for GeorgePerez . You can say what you want about him but that is what I call dedication to the craft.
Now as usual the genesis of this post lies in another post - namely the second part of our tribute to JimStarlin's , GeorgePerez and Ron Lim's INFINITY GAUNTLET saga - for which I needed a good picture of Black Canary. But since my old picture archive is in binary limbo I had to look for one and that was when I stumbled upon a lot of original art pages of Dick Dillin for JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and also WORLD'S FINEST.
And since I have only posted a few pages of Dick Dillin's Justice League Of America pages in a post from January 2021 where I included all kinds of Justice League Of America material that I could not post anywhere else I thought it was about time to give the man the proper respect.
sticking it to the man