Retro Review: JLA Top 5 - Obsidian Age

As Joe Kelly's JLA ran began in 2002, the team ran into powerful magic users in separate, seemingly-unrelated incidents. Kyle Rayner started having nightmares and visions that showed the JLA dying in battle. With unprecedented planning and foresight, Kelly used his first eight issues to set up the central storyline of his run, a story called "Obsidian Age" that took the team through the lowest lows and highest highs they ever faced. At its darkest point, Superman's skeleton and a mocking note served notice that the team was dead. The population of Atlantis was enslaved. We see Wally West captive with his neck broken and legs amputated, and then the whole team dies in battle. After that happened in the past, a seemingly-undefeatable witch in the present is about to make the Earth fall into the Sun. It's bad. It's very bad.

This sets up a finale when a staggering number of heroes in a greatly-expanded roster go on precisely the winning streak that saving the day requires, everyone playing a key role in a victory that cheats death several times, gives half a dozen characters arguably their finest moments, and then finally moves the Earth. There's a pause before the finale where a ghostly, undead Kyle Rayner tells Nightwing, "You're doing a hell of a job, by the way." It's impossible to reach that moment unmoved by the sentiment behind it.

But it began with the preparation earlier in Kelly's run. After the JLA had tangled with a Central Asian ruler/magician named Rama Khan, the story begins in earnest when two powerful opponents representing ancient Mexico and an unspecified Native American culture materialize at Disneyland and use their combined magic in an attempt to kill the JLA. They nearly succeed when Batman awakens from a spell that is supposed to keep any human asleep, and Kyle Rayner arrives in time to blindside the attackers, who escape where Atlantis used to be. This begins a mystery in which the JLA begins to search for Aquaman on the spot where Atlantis has, apparently, disappeared into the past. With Batman and Kyle expressing strong misgivings, they go 3,000 years into the past, and then things turn sour.

Kelly divides the story into parallel narration of the past, in even-numbered issues, and present, in odd-numbered issues. While the Big Seven plus Plastic Man gradually realize they are in over their heads in 1000 BC, a new replacement team led by Nightwing faces existential threats in the present, eventually realizing that their problems and the disappearance of the main JLA are related.

The split narration makes it all a mystery for readers to unravel, too. We know the JLA is missing before we know they are dead, and we know they are dead before we know why. The invocation of time travel makes it a little hard to unravel even at the end, but the flow of events goes like this:

In 1000 BC, a malevolent Atlantean sorceress named Gamemnae unites forces with Rama Khan, the forerunner of the Central Asian mystic whom the JLA had encountered in the present. Rama Khan in 1000 BC has visions of a seven-headed destroyer from the future. This is interpreted as being the JLA, but will eventually prove to be Gamemnae herself. The two of them gather a team of rather formidable super-beings from around the world and prepare to lure the JLA into the past and ambush them. Rama Khan and other members of the team do so believing that the JLA really is evil. Gamemnae, however, does so to facilitate her conquest of the Earth and manipulates the rest of the "League of Ancients" into eliminating the JLA for her.

Aquaman and the citizens of modern day Atlantic travel into the past as a refuge from the "Our Worlds at War" crisis. Arthur the first to fall, trusting Gamemnae before he is turned into a disembodied water wraith trapped in a pool. Then she raises the underwater city back to the surface and leads the ancient Atlanteans in enslaving the modern-day Atlanteans. Two of the League of Ancients travel to the present to battle the JLA, which succeeds in luring them back to their time, and into a very well-prepared trap.

In the past, the JLA covertly investigate Atlantis, trying to avoid walking into a trap. However, when they think they understand the situation, they do not, and the League of Ancients has mutilated the Flash in a separate ambush before the other heroes make their appearance. Behind the scenes, however, the Native American magician Manitou found out that Batman was unharmed by a weapon that could not harm a just person, a discovery that begins to win Manitou over to the JLA side. This is too late, however, for the rest of the team, who go down hard in the face of Gamemnae's perfect battle plan. Martian Manhunter is lit afire, Plastic Man shredded, and Superman physically beaten to death. Kyle Rayner is the only one who wins his matchup, using his ring to save Atlanteans who seem to be his enemy; this is the act of mercy that definitively brings Manitou to the JLA side, and in a brilliantly ambiguous moment, Kyle allows Manitou to rip his heart from his chest as part of a magical spell that's necessary for the league's resurrection.

With the JLA dead, Gamemnae turns against her allies, absorbing them into her own body with magic, which gives her the sum of all of their powers, all but that of Manitou, who hides the spirits of the JLA in Kyle's heart for three thousand years.

In the present, Gamemnae, now hideously monstrous, absorbs Tempest and Zatanna before the new JLA shows up in force, and she begins to pick them off, too. President Lex Luthor nukes the battle site, appearing to kill the heroes even while Gamemnae is unaffected. And after that bleak point, everything turns around.

Kyle Rayner, who has survived as a combination ghost / power ring entity for three thousand years, uses his ring power to save the new JLA, who put Manitou's plan into action. Nightwing declares, "I don't know jack about magic, but I do know people. If Gamemnae does have a weakness, it's her strength. It makes her confident, and will blind her." That observation is the pivot in the confrontation. Nightwing's people skills, his ability to lead the replacement JLA, ultimately turns the tide against a villain so powerful that she is basically a god.

The six dead JLAers bond as ghosts on the spirit plane, with Batman playing the chess master, directing Manitou to animate them as skeletal forms that are immune to Gamemnae's magic, and as the undead JLA begin to fight the witch, Kelly unveils some of his best dialogue…

Gamemnae: What good are a handful of shades against the force of Earth's gods?!?

Batman: You're about to find out.

[...]

Firestorm (to Manitou): I didn't think it was possible… but you actually made Batman scarier.

Attacks by the undead Superman and Wonder Woman manipulate Gamemnae into using her magic to bring the Leaguers back to life, while Batman whispers, "The chess match has begun. Force the move."

Meanwhile, the replacement Justice League under Nightwing try to find a way to beat Gamemnae. Jason Blood sacrifices himself in order to liberate Zatanna from Gamemnae, the Atom makes himself too small for magic to affect him, and the demon Etrigan and a Kelly creation named Faith lead a delaying attack before Firestorm uses his matter-transmuting powers to connect the pool confining Aquaman with the sea, in effect giving him command over the entire ocean.

At this point, with the teams in the past and present both at impressive levels of power, they win a double battle against the sorceress, with Manitou's magic, Aquaman's power, and the resurrected JLA beating her into submission.

Kelly uses the extremely traumatic events in the story not as a gimmick to impress the reader but as a means of bringing out the personalities of the characters. And so, we're not asked to believe in Wally West's nobility because he is running fast, nor even because he is risking danger. We feel it when he's being held by his broken neck, legs amputated, at the mercy of a merciless enemy, and he tells his comrades, trying to save their lives at the cost of his, "Run. Please. Just run." J'onn's death transforms Plastic Man's zaniness into fury, driving him to suffocate Rama Khan and yell, "You like burning?!? How about the burning inside your lungs as they choke for air?!? LIKE THAT?!?!" Superman tries to reason with the League of Ancients even as they try to kill him. Firestorm and Zatanna are frustrated by not knowing how their powers can be used to beat Gamemnae, then figure it out at the last minute. We see Kyle Rayner grimly whisper, "Be alive, be alive" before falling silent when he sees that every one of his teammates is dead.

And it hurts. It hurts Kyle and it hurts us. Seeing the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash die is a shock, one that might be a cheap stunt if handled differently. Joe Kelly, yes, brings them back to life, cancelling out those deaths as he certainly had to do, but he uses the death-and-resurrection to achieve a grand narrative payoff in the rich characterization it allows.

Kelly gets it. Death in comics isn't a moment for the writer to step back, quit writing, and hope the penciller can imitate Michelangelo's Pietà. Death isn't a moment at all. It's a process, an event, a beginning rather than an ending. Kelly wrote a story around the JLA's death, but it's neither cheap nor lazy. It's a tangled story that started setting things up twelve issues before their deaths and kept unspooling the consequences for several issues longer. It's obvious that he worked not only smarter but also harder than writers usually do, and the result was what I consider probably the finest Justice League story ever written.

Rikdad's JLA Top 5 Stories (in chronological order)
Steve Englehart – No Man Escapes the Manhunters
Steve Englehart – The Origin of the Justice League Minus One
Grant Morrison – New World Order
Grant Morrison – Rock of Ages
Joe Kelly – Obsidian Age

Retro Review: JLA Top 5 – Rock of Ages

Things start off dire, then get much worse. Then more powerful and ominous players enter the story, then almost unimaginably powerful beings, and the stakes become even higher, the consequences infinitely bleak, and salvation almost unimaginable. Then, the heroes battle back from so many disadvantages that the reader has almost lost track of what it takes to stave off total destruction, much less get back to square, but they have more resources than we could have imagined, and by the end, the world is remade and the dead resurrected.

On the cover of JLA vol 3 #10, Grant Morrison calls this story "the ultimate JLA epic." That claim is made with some justification. A team of evil JLA counterparts, equal to them in power but committed to death and destruction, is only the starting point of "Rock of Ages." There, an earlier JLA story might have climaxed, but for this story, it is only half the prologue. The evil seven counterparts are merely hard light constructs, powerful physical bodies controlled by the minds of seven more familiar villains such as Lex Luthor, Joker, and the Mirror Master. There, an earlier JLA story might have concluded, but Luthor's plan was deeper, based on the tactics of corporate takeover. Luthor believes the JLA doesn't even see the depths of his plan, and we see that he is right – until much later, we find out that Batman was playing an even larger game, large enough to outflank Luthor's design.

But this is merely a distraction from the real threat. We soon find out that, unbeknownst to Luthor or anyone else in the present time, the Injustice Gang's attack on the JLA is destined to fail, but to set in motion a chain of events that will end with Darkseid conquering the Earth and subjugating all humanity to degradation and slavery, now and forever. We see a future in which Superman is dead, Wonder Woman is a fugitive, and the power of the Justice League has been rendered insignificant in the face of Apokolips' assault. This future, when it is seen, makes Luthor's attack seem, by comparison, like a mild inconvenience, and yet either would be sufficient to destroy the Justice League, and nobody who sees the scope of the combined threat is in a position to act to stop it.

It goes like this: Luthor has a plan to destroy the Justice League, and Batman – or rather, Bruce Wayne – has a counterplan that can beat it, with Luthor's two moles inside the Justice League being trumped by Batman's three moles inside the Injustice Gang. And with neither of Luthor's moles actually loyal to him, Batman wins the chess game three pieces to none. Check and checkmate. With Superman and Martian Manhunter running the maze of the Joker's mind and escaping a deathtrap, and Batman's three plants inside Luthor's plot playing their parts, the JLA wins. Superman destroys Luthor's secret weapon, an artifact called the Worlogog made by the New Gods. A happy ending except that Aquaman, Green Lantern, and the Flash discover that the Worlogog's destruction preordains Darkseid's conquest of the Earth. An evil version of Metron who was created by Darkseid in that dark future travels back to ensure that it all comes to pass. In effect, the evil future timeline has arranged to create itself.

In the present, Luthor is compelling, written as well as he's ever been written. An eloquent internal monologue explains how he sees himself as noble in his opposition to Superman. Luthor later attempts to blackmail Aztek into submission, explaining to him that he's compelled to serve Luthor because of Aztek's belief that he must survive in order to oppose a "shadow god," and that the argument is compelling even though Luthor doesn't believe in such a thing, because Aztek does. It's later in the story when the reader can see that Darkseid is the shadow god, and Aztek is correct: His future counterpart does indeed help defeat the true shadow god, and he's not the only hero to best a god. During the battle on the Injustice Gang's satellite, Plastic Man uses his unique power to defeat the magic of a Greek goddess; when she calls him "Dionysus," Morrison is developing his thesis that the DC superheroes truly are a pantheon, an idea that climaxes at the end of his run when a foe who kills gods cannot beat the JLA.

Beating gods becomes a habit in "Rock of Ages." Batman tricks the corrupted Metron into making himself human so that the caped crusader can take him out with a sucker punch. The Atom deduces that light can penetrate an Apokoliptan force field and uses that fact to defeat Darkseid from the inside of his brain. The waylaid trio of Aquaman, Green Lantern, and Flash deal with the superbeings of Wonderworld, endure Darkseid's occupation of Earth, and live to ride Metron's chair back to the present, where a split-second telepathic message relayed by J'onn to Superman pulls off the critical save in the last moment, and undoes a future where Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all died along with the world's liberty – a scenario that foreshadows Final Crisis, right down to Darkseid zapping Batman with the Omega beams. Back in the real timeline, one wish on the Worlogog brings back to life the civilians whom the hard-light JLA duplicates killed in the story's opening scene and just like that, every bit of bad done in the story is undone.

No reader sees the alternate timeline featuring Darkseid's conquest of Earth and believes that the DCU will come to that end, but Morrison puts the JLA into such a deeply-nested pit of misfortunes that the difficult road they travel to salvation is virtually impossible to foresee, so the reader is drawn into the predicaments and watches with admiration as the superheroes work their way out of it, miracle after miracle. If "Rock of Ages" isn't the ultimate JLA epic, it certainly belongs on a very short list.

Coming up next time, the last on the list of my five favorite JLA stories, which is perhaps the best of them all.

Retro Review: JLA Top 5 – New World Order

The phrase "New World Order" is used to describe a new society which may be, variously, either a dream or a nightmare, heaven or hell. The first story in 1997's new JLA monthly written by Grant Morrison used that title to denote an alien invasion that would subject humanity to tyranny, but it also, with a wink, referred to the new version of the Justice League, one which Morrison did his best to make into the ideal of a superhero team.

The opening scenes of the story interweave several ongoing events, with an alien spacecraft approaching the White House as members of the previous Justice League pack up to make space for "the A-team." In sly, understated fashion, Morrison notes that two superheroes with fire-based powers have gotten sick, a clue as to the identity of the story's villains. When they arrive, however, the Hyperclan and their leader, Protex, portray themselves as Earth's new benefactors, and they immediately go to work improving the planet as part of a darker plan to earn the support of Earth's human population before trying to destroy their superheroes.

Neither the readers nor the JLA trust the Hyperclan, who launch a surprise attack or two even while they continue to win over the Earth's population with massive projects like cultivating the desert. Soon, they use mind control as well as good deeds to further their P.R. assault on the JLA's primacy. When the all-out attack begins, it is vicious, with groups of 2 and 3 Hyperclan members taking out equal numbers of JLAers, leaving them all captured and incapacitated – or so it seems – except Batman.

JLA #3 is perhaps the pivotal issue in the development of the Bat-God concept of Batman. In a sequence that is intercut with the struggles of the rest of the JLA, Batman delivers an internal monologue describing how the Hyperclan believes that he is their inferior when he is actually their superior. He breaks into their headquarters, and takes down four of the super-powered beings, at first patiently listening to their boasts, then taunting them before revealing that he knows that they are Martians, and that their weakness is fire. In a brilliantly-written scene, when one of the Martians says that he can't harm them with one lit match, he replies, "Maybe you're right," as he flips the match through the air to the floor, whereupon it lights gasoline upon landing, disabling the Martians at once. Throughout the issue, various characters cheerlead Batman's victory, a captive Superman smirking when Protex yells out in panic, "Batman! Batman! He's only a man!" and later calling him, "The most dangerous man on Earth." Finally, when Batman appears, dragging four subdued Martians behind him, Kyle Rayner comments sarcastically, "Only four of 'em, Batman? You're slowing down." Morrison not only shows Batman winning the fight, he also shows those who know him expecting him to, and the Martians being proven fools in their multiple proclamations of Batman's limitations. Now consider the narrative effect of this: Batman not only wins a fight; he wins a fight against super-powered beings despite his lack of powers. He not only beats one of them; he beats four. He not only does so in this one specific instance; it is the outcome his JLA peers expect. And, it is not only one writer's plausible interpretation of Batman; the contrary viewpoint is put into the mouths of fools and shown to be folly.

So, while Morrison's showing us the superiority of Batman as a fighter, he also shows off storytelling techniques far superior to those shown in the vast majority of earlier comics, and much of what's come since. He doesn't merely state things about the heroes; he develops them thoroughly. And, he doesn't merely repeat the statement; he shows it from all sides: With action, with narration, from multiple points of view.

Elsewhere, Morrison shows his skills in a scene depicting the Flash joining Green Lantern in defeating one of the Martians. As Kyle contemplates all of the ring-powered forms he can use to beat his opponent, Flash states, in one panel, "Hold that thought." In the next panel, the Martian is surrounded by dozens of previously unseen burning candles, and Flash continues speaking with, "There, candles. Your move." Compared to earlier traditions of narration, this is wonderfully spare and wonderfully effective. A 1970s Barry Allen comic, like a 1940s Jay Garrick comic, would have been absolutely bound to describe exactly how the Flash had obtained the candles, exactly why, and the exact nature of the result. Morrison knows that the reader doesn't need that. If Aquaman or Blue Beetle were the hero in that situation, it would be bizarre, and unexplainable. When it's the Flash, any reader minimally familiar with the character can write the explanation in their own head: Obviously, he ran somewhere, obtained the candles, lit them, and put them in place faster than any other character could perceive. Obviously, he did so because fire weakens Martians. Obviously, it makes Kyle's task an easier one. Morrison spares us the unnecessary details, and so the reader has the more active and vivid experience of providing their own explanation. It also provides us with an impression that the more tedious explanation would have cost us: A realization that other characters witness the Flash's operations as a kind of magic, the results coming in an instant, with no middle steps visible. With the simple use of streamlined narration, Morrison takes stock of the fact that JLA readers have by and large grown up since the Seventies and don't need every detail spelled out for them. The effect is to create excitement not only about the Flash, but also about the new kind of storytelling.

The cast of "New World Order" is new, but also very old. In the DCU between COIE and Infinite Crisis, this group had never before served together, but it is exactly the same – if one lists the heroes by name ­– as the original JLA from 1960, but with Wally West and Kyle Rayner taking the place of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan. Morrison makes the most of the substitutions: White Martians try to use Hal's yellow weakness against Kyle, and he exults in not having that weakness. And, Wally reaches deep into his memory of Barry to dredge up some scientific knowledge so that he can employ Einstein's special relativity to give one Martian a knockout punch. And again, we are given notice that the characters are new and better than those we had before, and the writer is also more adept than his predecessors. And the villains, too, are not novel. We should not regard as sheer coincidence that Morrison's choice of villain for his first JLA story is the same as Engelhart's in the last installment on my top five list.

The common people (of Earth) are pivotal to the plot and larger theme of "New World Order." At several intervals throughout the story, the relationship between superheroes and the general public is discussed. First, in the derision with which the White Martians discuss Batman's humanity. Later, Protex, in an effort to demoralize Superman, tells him that regular humans fear and hate him because of his power, and that he also despises him because they are inferior to him. Superman counters that they believe in him, and he believes in them. After losing in battle, Protex makes a desperate plea to have the JLA join the White Martians in ruling the "maggots" who are humanity. Here, the story breaks with convention by having the JLA turn to ordinary humans to win the most critical portion of the war, capitalizing on the Martians' weakness to fire; one panel shows ordinary people holding up lit lighters in bold opposition to the Martian invasion. This proves to hold off the Martians until the JLA can perform the mop-up operation. In a final dialogue, the JLA discuss the relationship between themselves and humanity, and Superman summarizes it thus: "To catch them if they fall." Yet there is another statement about humanity: The JLA end the White Martian threat by placing them in the lives of ordinary humans, hypnotized to forget their original identities. Ordinary people figure large in Morrison's JLA run, also saving the day in the final story of the run. This is a theme he also considered in Flex Mentallo, a year before "New World Order."

But for all that Morrison celebrates the common person, and Batman as a representative of our race, he puts a keener focus on the extraordinary qualities of the Leaguers than the decades of writers who came before him, showing a gift for making their powers seem less like an amplification of human abilities and more like magic. He celebrates their excellent as something ultimate, something in their definition, absolute invincibility, as though it were a rule of the universe that the Justice League win. This run opened up with "New World Order" and it served notice to the readers that something remarkable had begun.

This story was published 20 years after the previous installment on my top-5 list, but the next selection in the list came very shortly after this one.

Retro Review: JLA Top 5 – Origin of the JLA Minus One

Earthquakes take place after tectonic plates have pushed against one another for a long time, building up tension in response to movement far below. Finally, the tension becomes too great, and something snaps.

15 years after the JLA's origin was first told in JLA #9, Steve Englehart rewrote the history book, offering an entirely new origin which asserted that the earlier version was just a ruse.

The JLA #9 story, by Gardner Fox, posited that the seven original JLA members independently battled seven Appallaxian aliens who invaded the Earth, each with the power to transmute living beings into some material such as gold, glass, or mercury.

After five encounters that stuck to an almost perfectly formulaic script describing five one-alien-vs-one-hero battles, the heroes united in various combinations to take on the last two Appallaxians, ending with a meeting that put all the heroes in the same place at the same time, whereupon they formed a team.

Englehart's later version of the JLA origin, in JLA #144, reveals that the heroes' real first meeting was several months earlier, to stop a different alien invasion – by White Martians. Englehart's story has Superman and Green Lantern reveal in 1977 to non-charter-member Green Arrow that the JLA had offered the Appallaxian tale as a cover-up of the more politically-sensitive Martian invasion and that the JLA had pretended, to their non-charter members, that the first published mention of White Martians in JLA #71 had actually been the second time that the JLA had encountered Commander Blanx and the other evil Martians.

At first glance, this all seems very busy and plot-heavy. Why bother replacing one alien invasion story with another alien invasion story, creating layers of claim and counterclaim? Subsequent versions of JLA history have taken sides, with the Appallaxian origin being cited by a couple of later writers, and the White Martians resurfacing elsewhere. Did Englehart's origin serve only to complicate the history for no good reason?

In fact, Englehart's story is superb – more entertaining than the original, more mature, and deeper than it looks. While Fox's story used a highly formulaic structure that he had developed for Justice Society stories in the Forties, Englehart's gives numerous characters privileged roles in an intricate plot offering social commentary and a grand statement about DC continuity. J'onn J'onzz is the character most pivotal to the plot, as he is being hunted somewhat privately by his fellow Martians. The Flash is the first terrestrial superhero to enter the fray, and who escalates the conflict to a larger set of superheroes. Superman's fame and power are celebrated by the story as he is the greatest among not-quite-equals. Green Arrow kicks off the framing story, as he detects the inconsistency in dates that indicates that the Appallaxian story must be false. But perhaps the key character to it all is Green Lantern, as the unnamed "one" in the title of the story, "The Origin of the Justice League – Minus One."

Both the dates and the singling out of Hal Jordan point to Englehart's higher purpose in this story. While DC Comics had a concept of continuity that formed only gradually as the Silver Age went by, Englehart used JLA #144 to impose his notion of a deeply interconnected and shared universe. He did this by making an executive decision on how dates should be interpreted in DC stories. He has his characters in 1977 refer to explicit dates in the late 1950s for various moments in their careers. While this implies that the heroes are much older than they obviously seem to be, this is excused by Englehart and an editor's note from Julie Schwartz as the way time works in the DCU – young men can have a history as young men going back a couple of decades and we shouldn't worry about the details of why they didn't age. This is a controversial interpretation, and one that DC writers have come to reject, but one must admire that Englehart had any vision at all for how continuity should work, instead of the indifference that seemed to guide questions of continuity from 1938 up through the Seventies. Just a few years later, DC's creators would begin to scrap much of their existing history in COIE, but Englehart began an alternate approach, writing old stories into current continuity, resolving contradictions with deliberate creative decisions. And so, Englehart addressed the glitch in Hal Jordan's debut and the JLA origin story by writing a special story, referring to Jordan in the title, that explained the discrepancy. Englehart made a declaration in this story that publishing dates could be considered absolute dates within the DCU, so that Superman or Batman might refer to their adventures using the same month and year that a fan could see on the cover of their old comics.

How seriously did Englehart take this approach? JLA #144 is full of panels where a character refers to an adventure in their past and Englehart/Schwartz append asterisked notes indicating the issue in which these adventures took place – and they are all correctly chosen from the right month according to cover date, setting the JLA origin story right at February, 1959, the same month that Barry Allen first appeared in the Flash title, after his initial appearances in Showcase. This is because the origin in February 1962's JLA #9 claimed that their origin had taken place 3 years earlier. Englehart has many of his heroes (or in Superman's case, a TV news anchor) note what they were doing in their recent past, and draws all of these details from early 1959.

He also includes a much bigger cast – the people investigating the case of the White Martians includes not only the six original JLA members (plus Robin and a pre-power-ring Hal Jordan), but also Congorilla, Plastic Man, the Blackhawks, the Challengers of the Unknown, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Robotman, Roy Raymond, and more. Along the way, they accidentally run into Adam Strange and Rip Hunter while looking for Martians. Why? Because all of these – Lois and Jimmy included – were all the stars of features in early 1959. DC didn't have a seriously consistent cross-feature continuity in 1959, but Englehart, in 1977, retroactively declared that they did. 9 years before splash pages in COIE showed off DC's new post-Multiverse lineup onstage together, Englehart put DC's old (but retroactive) lineup onstage together.

And it's not only DC's minor players that appear in the story: There are other nods to the culture of the times. Characters in the story are aware of the War of the Worlds radio broadcast and scare, and the White Martian invasion generates some of the same hysteria. In this story, as in the real world, H. G. Wells' story is fictional, but Orson Welles' broadcast is real. This is precisely the reason why J'onn J'onzz is feared for his Martian origin, and that fear is the reason why, Englehart explains, the JLA's true origin had to be covered up until the public got over the initial panic. He also notes the Red Scare of McCarthyism and the anti-comic-book rhetoric published a few years earlier as Seduction of the Innocent.

When I read JLA #144 for the first time, I was certainly aware that some of the non-superhero characters were from older comics, and that I might presume that the rest were, too, but I had no way of researching that. It was clear that Englehart was capturing a past era of comics, but it is only now that I see what a tight work the story was, from the assiduously-researched issue numbers to Lois Lane's distinctly 1959-ish attire.

What stands out even to a reader who had never picked up a 1959 comic (when Englehart was 11, and before I was born) was that the White Martian origin was a really good story: White Martians hunt down J'onn J'onzz. The Flash tries to help but cannot, so he enlists the help of Superman, who is joined by Batman and Robin. Then the word gets out that people with special abilities are needed and DC's whole lineup splits into teams trying to find the many bad Martians along with the one good one. Ultimately, the chase leads to the launchpad of an early U.S. space rocket (another nod to 1959) and Superman's heat vision, playing on the Martian weakness to fire, ends the threat.

JLA #144 wasn't merely a very good story; it was a vision of how DC's entire universe fit together. Taking, in effect, an editorial pencil to the stories from his childhood, Steve Englehart showed a way forward that could have kept DC's first four decades as part of one seamless continuity going forward. What it took was hard work – the willingness of writers to thumb through old issues and turn those stacks and stacks of older stories into a single, coherent narrative, weaving it together as Englehart did. It might have been something more than a big mess to discard when COIE came around. It might have been a legend.

Somewhere between the little-kid stories of the Sixties and the gruesome artistry of Alan Moore, there is a place for comics that celebrate their tradition without irony. Steve Englehart scripted it to perfection in JLA #144.

The first two selections in my five best JLA stories came only a few months apart. The next choice will come after a big jump ­– two decades later.