Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Doom Patrol -- Create Your Own Team

Awesome stuff thothkins!

I love the idea of Supergirl in the League, get her a bit more press and relationships before COIE.

And Supergirl and Batgirl on the team would be a great way to add to the Justice legacy of the team!

I like Black Orchid as well ... but from what I know of her she is a bit of an anti hero.

Airwave! yes ... I'll have to look that guy up ... Black Vulcan homage!

Ultraa Supergirl Black Orchid Airwave Jemm ... lots of uber characters just lying around while the Justice League break dances in Detroit.

I guess they really wanted to go edgy or different ... I think from the stories the creators seemed more burned out on the big mega justice league than the readers were.

It would be and was very hard to compete with the successful soap opera style of comics of Teen Titans and the X-Men.

Who's Who on Airwave II




And Who's Who on Black Orchid

There was certainly enough to bolster the JLA when it's core membership began to decline with the loss of Batman, Atom, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen (for his trial).



The JLA had a good thing going where they could focus on the lesser heroes and develop them, while keeping in the big guns. There were a number of letters bemoaning that the big guns were still taking up too much space. SO this was an opportunity to let some of them go, to be replaced by characters who could be developed exclusively in the title.

Conway was already doing a lot of good things with Dinah & Ollie, the Hawks. We had Barry and Zee and there were the Dibny's. But that was thrown away chasing something they couldn't compete with and that they didn't really know how to.

Wolfman & Perez set up relationship triangles with their characters, created stories to suit each of their specialised niches and gave them rich back stories and supporting casts. They all had visual flare and then they added in plenty of angst and innovative villains early on.

In the JLD, Steel and Vixen had the most depth because they came with most of the above. Both have emotionally powerful histories. By comparison, Vibe and especially Gypsy were pretty aimless. Aquaman and Manhunter were cut off from their back stories and cast. Elongated Man didn't get many mysteries and none of Zee's cast appeared for almost two years.

I love how Air Wave's genealogy makes no sense at all. His father is "Larry Jordan" from Earth-2, and somehow he ends up as the cousin of Earth-1's Hal Jordan? How exactly does that work? I mean, I suppose his mother could actually have been a sister to one of GL's parents, and just happened to also marry someone named Jordan. Or maybe there was an actual Larry Jordan of Earth-1, whose identity the Earth-2 version borrowed (perhaps he was deceased or something)? So he'd really only be a cousin in a funky interdimensional sense.

It all started when Commander Steel implored the Spectre to take him to Earth-1 the next time Jim Corrigan was going to have a brave and bold team up.

The Spectre obliged, but Commander Steel wanted to take all of his equipment with him, including specialised power sources.

Unfortunately for Harold was travelling along in his electromagnetic form and got caught in interference generated from those power sources. He was transported across to Earth 1 with the others. Lost, he went back home only to discover that the people there were related to Hal Jordan of Earth 1. Seeing the boy's confusion and loss, they adopted him. Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Black Canary would mentor him in using his powers.

Commander Steel would go on to use his equipment to finish experimenting on his own grandson to create the Steel of the Justice League. A simple tale.

Man... I'm thinking DC should ditch this whole "multiple earths" idea. Have some big Crisis or something that reduces everything to a single Earth, and straightens their continuity out once and for all!

Lake St. Clair is not nothing, and Detroit is relatively close to Lake Eerie, but still, Aquaman, on a team positioned thousands of miles from the nearest ocean? What were they thinking? There aren't any sharks or octopi or whales in the Great Lakes! He needs to be on the coast, specifically, the East coast**, where he can reasonably interact with Atlantis.

I do get the possible desire to highlight that Aquaman is a perfectly viable super-character without the ocean or the whales or Atlantis, because super-strength and toughness is already putting him past Batman and Green Arrow in the 'power' sweepstakes, and might have helped with the muddle-headed notion that he was useless outside of water or that his only power was 'talks to fish,' but the writing wasn't good enough to justify that, IMO.

.

**That said, an aquatic hero on the West Coast or Gulf Coast, interacting with the Pacific or Caribbean could also rock! A Hawaiian hero, or a same-bito (Japanese shark-people!) could be fun.

DC used to have someone patrol all of this, but she was undermined in the '70s following the Warner Bros takeover and then brutally retconned.





If you look George Perez's first set of pencils for the JLA/ Avengers crossover back in the 1980s you'll note that there is a scene where Arthur defects to a team that is going to be on a coast. However, later issue of What If? replaced Hawkeye and Mockingbird with Arthur and Mera as the mentors of the Great Lakes Avengers, showing that this was a location that Arthur was destined to spend time in.

At first I thought you were being facetious, but thinking of some of the actual stories that they invented to solve continuity snafus, this might actually have happened!

The best of both

Black Orchid's got a more supernatural vibe, and doesn't, to me, feel very 'Detroit.'

A Black Orchid series set in New Orleans, on the other hand... Or somewhere else with at least a passing supernatural vibe, like Boston (which is about 30 minutes down the road from where the Salem Witch Trials happened).

That said, if the justification for Detroit's decline turned out to have something to do with supernatural elements, like skinchangers or vampires or spirits of urban decay or whatever, then, yeah, she could rock that out!

Whatever, as long as it's not like the Deadman series set in Nowhere-You've-Ever-Heard-Of* Vermont...

*Population twelve and a dog named Colin.

In Black Orchid's first appearance she takes down a criminal combine that has control of a small town. In her second, she takes down some modern day pirates. In her third she takes down loan sharking gangsters. So, it's fairly small beans in the super hero stakes. The only enigmatic thing in the stories is the orchid herself and there's no supernatural aspects.

So, she may be a better fit for the JLD than you might think.

I've not read her Phantom Stranger back ups, which may be more supernatural. But I was basing my inclusion her first appearances.

Hey... you know who's from Detroit?

Amazing Man!

Oh yeah, the cover with the squadron up against the Klan.

Decades later Amazing Man reached the limit of his powers when he tried transforming himself into a competitive car industry. A heroic but sad end.

You'd think with the state Detroit is in these days, a Justice League: Detroit could be more topical than ever!

Well Conway did say even back then that it was a place that really needed some heroes.

I peeked into the start of the JLD issues:-

As early as #238 we have Steel & Vixen addressing the reader.
Aquaman: You'll recall what the newspapers said, when we announced the new League.
Steel: Who could forget? "How can four second stringers and three neophytes hope to replace even one superman? This new league is doomed to disaster." ...The thing that heats my pot is how those guys were so sure we'd fail, before we'd even gone into battle. What gives them the right?
Vixen: Fear Steel. Fear of change... Pity them, because in their eyes, the past is always more attractive than the future.

Steel had to let us know in the middle of this, Gypsy had officially joined, because we hadn't been shown it. It's a bit heavy handed really, and must have heated a few readers' pots too.

Reader's Letters!:

#230 - Captain Comet, Airwave (wasn't just me then), Supergirl & Mera x2, Krystal Kaa (remember her?), Firehawk, Vixen.

#230 had an ad for J'Emm.

#231 - None - everyone digesting the annual?

#231 - lettercol mentioned the Perez postcards. Just in time before the new league arrived. They had an additional one with the 4 new members on it. Alan Gold says sales weren't slipping and that the new look was an experiment.

#232 - None

Also in #232 -The monitor and Lyla make an appearance. That's how close to Crisis the new League was. Writers were already adding in the Monitor before the new League had appeared in a regular JLA issue. With so much uncertainty over the big gins and everyone else, it clearly cast a shadow over the new league.

One reader mentions Aquaman and the Outsiders - which makes a lot of sense. Another reader refers to Aquaman as A-Man, clearly ruling out Amazing man from also joining to lessen confusion. Yet another reader points out that "when the Titans revamped, they kept three of their key members... not less effective heroes..." Recall the Titans influence on the League's new direction.

#233 - Martian Manhunter

Also: Alan God mentions a project in the works featuring Captian Comet "so I've kept my hands off that character." That worked out well.

#234 - None

Also: Alan Gold mentions the upcoming Red Tornado mini, with the first issue having already been completed. That seems reasonably close to the relaunch to exclude Reddy from the new line up for me (although having one go into the other would have been better and helped sales). The only letter also asks where every other hero was during the Mars war. Something else else I and many others were probably wondering too. Go ahead for next Sword of the Atom had been given to appear in 1985. This is cover dated Jan '85. So you can see how huge lead times can deprive the League of characters for extended periods unless there's good oversight.

#235 - None again. Funny how they disappear after so many letters advocating change in line up.

Also: Alan Gold says that reaction to the annual had been moderate overall. Which probably reflect people willing to give it a go, to see how it developed. "So I think our new JLA is far from a failure so far." This is very defensive based on just the first letters. "Maybe we did goof in places in the annual...I find a number of things I wish we'd done differently." Way to set a tone Alan.


#236 - None (but a letter wondering why some of the others aren't still being used)

Also: Big add for Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's soon, but they still have to tweak the title.


#237 - None (but more clls for some of the old members to bolster the ranks)

Also: The final version of the Crisis title in an ad with the first cover art.

#238 - Guess what? None again.

Also: A second Green Arrow mini series is confirmed. Presumably something they felt kept him out of the reformed league, even early on. Silly.

#239 - A little dip into the story here. Flash, Supes and Wondy return. Conway talks about priorities for changing the league. It's more explained away than explained. the 3 did show up for the Earth/Mars war only to get whisked away. In this issue they're about to go back in time to be there yet again. Not the best way to resolve this one.

In the lettercol Alan God states that there won;t be an increase in the membership for a while. Also, an Aquaman mini is in the works. Readers must have been disappointed not to see some more changes, and wondering if it means Aquaman would also go. Aquaman is clearly happy to have picked up a couple of kids right outside the new HQ to complete his line up. There are further little plugs for the Red Tornado mini and the Atom special.

Vixen is clearly a bit of a hit with a lot of the letter writers. She's very much the stand out character.

Also in #238 one letter writer mentioned an idea for Justice League of the World, including members of the Global Guardians. He also mentioned a new era for the heroes, a sort of retconning. So, roughly seeing how Crisis would pan out and well ahead on what the JLA would turn into. Fire and Ice in the Justice League Detroit era?

Powerboy's J.L.Detroit

Invisible Brainiac's J.L.Detroit

Set's J.L.Detroit

thothkin's J.L.Detroit

Ooh, Air Wave and Shade the Changing Man and Jemm and Mera! Cool.

And, uh, to the left of Black Orchid, it's muscle-bound ginger Fabio, I guess. Clenchy McSquareFace? Plungy McNeckline? Mullet McBulgyBiceps? I don't even...

Still, gotta respect anyone secure enough in their masculinity to have flowing locks, shiny gold accessories, a purple leotard with a neckline that plunges to his manscape and thigh high purple pirate boots!

Mine's

I don't recognize the woman on the far left, or the purple-clad stretchy-girl in the middle. Who are they?

Insect Queen, now that's old-school, and yet refreshingly new! I wonder if a new updated Insect Queen could be somehow tied to Queen Bee? (The alien bug-version of Queen Bee, that is.)