Key Comic Book memories – Justice League of America #99 – by Ian Baker

 Key Comic Book memories – Justice League of America #99 – by Ian Baker

 

I’m sure that many of us reading this can remember the experience of first reading or buying key comics in our collections. For some reason, some issues have special nostalgic value, or the artwork and story was so pivotal that they hold pride of place in our memories, burnt into our synapses for easy access in the memory banks. For me, JLA #99 (June 1972 cover date,  by the distinguished team of Mike Friedrich, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella) occupies that rarefied space. “Hold On!” I hear you say – “Those gentlemen are certainly talented, but really…..JLA 99…is memorable..????”.

 

It was the last Thursday in May 1972, and as any 12-year old British comic collector in the 1970s worth his salt knows, that was the day that the new DCs appeared in the spinner racks of newsagents across the land, usually representing a random selection of the comics published in the US six or more weeks earlier, and transported in the holds of ships across the Atlantic to receive their T&P stamp of approval.  As inhabitants of Portsea Island, one of the most densely populated areas of England, yet close to maritime distribution hubs, my friends and I were blessed with many newsagents and second-hand shops carrying American comics.

 

                                

 
  So on Thursday May 25^th 1972 my Dad had picked me up from school and dropped me close to the top of Festing Rd in Southsea, where I could easily cross over (using the pedestrian Zebra Crossing) to the newsagents Churchill’s on the opposite side of the road. [ The photo above, taken some years earlier than the 1970s, is the best that I can find showing Churchill’s partially obscured by the trolley-bus.] The spinner rack was always placed close to the large front window pane, so a new comic delivery could be easily seen across the street.

  

Such was my enthusiasm to get to Churchill’s that I dodged between two parked cars to cross the road (rather than use the crossing) only to be immediately knocked down by a woman on a blue Moulton bicycle, and into the path of on-coming vehicles. Myself, the woman and her shopping bag went sprawling on to the road, and it was only through luck that we did not sustain injuries beyond cuts and grazes.

 

Rather shocked, I continued across to the shop, where the only comic of interest on the spinner rack was JLA #99 (I had already picked up the classic gems Batman #242, Brave & Bold #102 and Detective #424 on sale that month from Gardiner’s newsagents further along Albert Rd). I remember that the comic had a predominantly brown cover, and that it was somewhat creased from either water damage or from being over-stuffed into the spinner rack. The artwork did not involve the holy trinity of Neal Adams or Irv Novick or Jim Aparo, but , hey, it was another comic for the collection, and Batman was featured in the story.

 

                                                    

Looking at JLA #99 now, it is a perfectly serviceable issue touching on the socially-relevant subject of the need for maintaining the balance of Nature conservation vs Man’s construction. 

An Alien race visits Earth with their own plant seeds in an effort to restore balance to the ecosystem, but ends up causing unanticipated destruction with the seeds of alien fauna. The JLA, led by Green Lantern, comes to the rescue by planting more Earth-based plants, and then tell the Aliens to go home and let Earth deal with Earth’s own problems! The story is a bit preachy but looking back from a vantage point of almost 50 years, the issues discussed are just as relevant today. 

 

Interestingly, JLA #99 was to be the last hurrah for themes of social relevance within the pages of Justice League of America, and was in fact the swansong for “relevance” across the entire DC line, a concept that had tentatively commenced with the New Wonder Woman #78 in Sep/Oct 1968, and peaked in 1971 with the publication of the famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow “drugs” issues which resulted in plaudits from New York Mayor John Lindsay.

 

I’m convinced that if this issue of JLA had been drawn by Neal Adams and inked by Dick Giordano, it would have been a worthy companion to their run on the recently cancelled Green Lantern/Green Arrow, but the workmanlike artwork and unimaginative panel design of Dillin and Giella does little to enhance the story’s impact. 

 

The writer Mike Friedrich expands on themes of Earth suffering from pollution that Denny O’Neil, Dick Dillin and Joe Giella had themselves presented in JLA stories from 2 years earlier (JLA #78 and #79), but the lack of continuity between those stories and JLA #99, and lack of reference to the social issues targeted in the GL/GA run by O’Neil and Adams, represents a lost opportunity for a more cohesive approach to addressing these important topics.

 

                                              

 

In the final panels of JLA #99, Green Lantern effectively tells the Aliens to clear off and mind their own business. Friedrich asks the reader at the end “As the Aliens depart, Earth starts its collective breathing again – air that will be breathable…FOR HOW LONG?”. 

 

But once the Aliens had gone, and DC had determined that “relevant” stories had little impact on comic sales, there is no evidence that Green Lantern or the JLA ever bothered on following-up on protecting Earth’s ecosystem!