What better way is there to start the new year than to do a post that is just supposed to be a quick in - between post because you really want to do a follow up post to your last post but you also don't want to have two Marvel Comics posts in a row ? And then this post here almost becomes another George Perez tribute post because that is what always happens.
To go a bit deeper into the genesis of this post, as I said I needed a DC Comics post but I didn't want to do just a follow up to previous DC Comics posts because on one side I like to have a little variety to my posts because that makes it more interesting for my readers but also for myself. And I think that is shows when I am more invested in doing a post so it's better for everyone involved in the long run. The other thing I have to take into consideration is my rather limited picture archive which means that even if I might want to do certain posts I don't always have the necessary material. In this case it was a coin flip between another JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA post and a LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES post and the only reason why I went with the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA is that I am waiting a bit with the LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES post to see if I come across some good material in the next few weeks. Because that's another thing, now I have to wait until I come across some good material. Quite literal. Because I don't know if I have mentioned this but lately when I go looking for pictures and open the results in a new window I can't click on the pictures directly. I have to go below the pictures to the part with the other search results and then click on them and if they open up I can click on the picture. So even if I find a picture I am looking for I can't use it. I have to go to the other search results and follow them in hopes of being led back to the original picture in the most roundabout way. Just another wrinkle the internet gods heaped on me because writing this blog is much to easy as it is. So yes, finding new material is extremely difficult nowadays. That said you are probably wondering why I still went to all that trouble to make this post instead of just continuing the Dick Dillin JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA series with all the leftover stuff. Which would have been a piece of cake and believe me, the next one is already in the pipeline which means I have already figured out - at least to 90 percent - which pages I am going to put into that one. But like I said diversity is the spice of life ( but not the diversity that the cancel pigs out there want to sell you which is either diversity for diversity's sake with no story behind it or something that looks like diversity but in reality is the same character over and over and over again ) so I wanted to spotlight some of the other artists who worked on the title during the Bronze Age. Which of course includes the late great George Perez who took over the art reigns when Dick Dillin died at his drawing board literally while working on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. And it would have been easy to do just a post with George Perez art since he worked on and off on JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA while doing THE NEW TEEN TITANS together with Marv Wolfman which would become their signature series and the book with which they would leave their mark in the history of comics. The funny part here is that DC Comics lured George Perez away from AVENGERS by promising him that he could work on the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA but when he finally made the switch they could not give him the book because Dick Dillin had locked that one down airtight. So instead they offered him this new version of the TEEN TITANS that this young upstart Marv Wolfman was cooking up which turned out to be much more interesting for George Perez because the characters in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA were pretty much trapped in amber and you could not change much. Now the members of THE NEW TEEN TITANS on the other hand had more potential for development especially the ones that were created exclusively for the new book. Which is not to mean that George Perez didn't bring his a - game to JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA since those were the characters he wanted to draw so much that he left Marvel Comics behind. But since he took over the book in the midst of a story the inker he got inked everything in a house style to make the transition not that jarring but on the other hand it didn't do George Perez any favours. That said there was some art by Don Heck that I thought about including in this post but since I have almost no other artwork by him I am keeping that for an upcoming Don Heck tribute post. There are also some pages I didn't put into this post because they are from the famous - or infamous as your mileage may vary - Detroit Era which I still hope to cover at some point. For me that is a very interesting part of the team's history on one side because it is polarizing but also because some of the characters who were introduced during this run clearly have star potential since they have been adapted to cartoons and tv shows multiple times. And because we didn't get much of those books in Germany because the Ehapa Verlag was nearing the end of publishing DC Comics and it would be decades until another publisher like Dino Verlag would bring monthly DC Comics back to comicbook stores and newsstands. I almost bought the omnibus that collects all of the Detroit Era stories but I missed my opportunity and now it either goes for carzy prices or is out of print. Coming back to comicbooks I used to have I bought some of George Perez JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA issues in the original floppy format - of course through my trusty comicbook shop the SAMMLERECKE in Esslingen - right before I buckled down and got the two volumes of the DC COMICS CLASSICS LIBRARY that collect all of his stories. They could have easily put it into one volume but I guess they felt that they were not overpricing these books enough and needed to squeeze even more money out of their customers. Although I didn't care. There was no other book that collected all of the issues and while I now had some redundancies I kept the original issues. Because in some cases the printing in those old issues was still better in the new restored version you could find in those books. I think I gave a few of them to my brother as a present but with the way he seems to have become allergic to comicbooks nowadays who knows if he still has them. I don't know, you raise your siblings, try to teach them the important values in life but after that it's up to them. You have done your part. Coming back to the topic of this post, one of the original issue where the printing was better than in all of the reprints I have seen since then is the 200th anniversary issue which besides George Perez features a plethora of a Who's Who of DC Comics superstars each of them drawing a chapter featuring their signature character. As soon as I started to think about doing this post I knew that I wanted to include some material from this issue and that is also where the idea generated to include some artists besides George Perez. And comicbook afficionados will also know that the story is a callback to the origin story of the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA - which was not in their first issue. Yes, unlike nowadays where they have to spend at least the first six issues of each new comicbook series introducing the various team members in the olden days they had no time for that. Because it was a competitive market instead of one where cancel pigs try to live out their fantasies by inserting themselves into everything they write so they had to hit the ground running. They gave you the best stories they could come up with and if a series stuck around long enough to meet a certain level of success THEN they thought about coming up with an origin story for the team.
by george