JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #96 (1972)
by Mike Friedrich & Dick Dillin
cover by Neal Adams
There’s a distinct lack of Justice League in the Villain Origins retrospective. That’s because most of the time the just end up fighting either generic alien invaders that have a single appearance, or supervillains that have debuted in solo books.
They do have a supervillain that SHOULD have turned into a menace for the entire DC Universe on the same caliber of Darkseid but who, for whatever reason, stayed obscure.
Starbreaker, the Cosmic Vampire who DRINKS STARS INSTEAD OF BLOOD.
We begin with Superman flying in a rather awkward pose towards the planet Rann, where cosmic hero Adam Strange has his space adventures. Strange won’t appear until later and has almost no role in the story.
That’s where he finds fellow heroes Green Lanter, Flash and Hawman having their asses handed to them by mechanical ants.
They may look like rejects from a Metal Men story, but those ants are no joke: even Superman is not strong enough to break them!
That’s because this takes place after the “Sand Superman Saga” that supposedly greatly reduced Superman’s power (although the stories were WILDLY inconsistent on that)…
…and the ants are powered by red sun energy.
However Superman finds out the ants are remote-controlled, and he manages to scramble the transmission.
That was a neat scene! Always great when Superman gets the chance to solve problems without throwing punches.
But let’s move to the real reason why I’m reviewing this: the Leaguers explain to Superman that they found themselves on Rann for completely unrelated events, and they ran into the ants dispatched by Starbreaker. Who is apparently quite famous among Green Lanterns.
And already Starbreaker is being hyped up. Not only he’s very powerful himself, not only he has an army of robot ants at his disposal, but he uses said ants to THROW PLANETS INTO SUNS.
Interestingly, Starbreaker doesn’t drink stars directly, but he has spaceships to help him with the task. And even more worryingly, he feeds both on stars and FEAR.
Yeah the Galactus parallels are hard to ignore, but they’re mostly superficial.
If anything, Starbreaker is much worse than Galactus because he’s straight-up evil.
In the first issue, the Justice League doesn’t even fight him directly: he simply creates duplicates of himself.
Superman wasn’t the only DC hero to get his powers reduced in this period: Green Lantern had the same problem.
Flash, on the other hand, has no such excuse. I guess we have to believe Starbreaker can think faster than the guy who can run faster than reality.
Which is a bit hard to swallow considering he falls for Green Lantern’s trick of pretending that his ring is out of juice.
Particularly insulting considering Flash was CLEARLY still protected by Green Lantern’s power.
The two heroes haven’t teamed up for quite some time, now that Green Arrow is Hal Jordan’s go-to guest star following the celebrated O’Neil-Adams run.
Oh just kiss already!
Superman is not having as much luck, though.
You may think it’s because Starbreaker makes use of red sun radiation, but apparently there’s magic involved in the mix.
Hawkwman is there to help Superman, contributing… uhm… not all that much.
I feel like this might have made sense if we spent at least a single panel explaining Starbreaker’s magic powers.
Adam Strange shows up just in time to watch the Starbreaker duplicates being teleported away.
Starbreaker is NOT happy about this.
So Starbreaker re-absorbs his duplicates and decides he’s going to deal with the Justice League all by himself. On Earth.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #97 (1972)
by Mike Friedrich & Dick Dillin
cover by Neal Adams
We interrupt this story of a cosmic vampire to reprint the origin story of the Justice League.
No, really, that’s what this issue is mostly about.
But there IS a framing device, which is just nuts: the Justice League is terrified about Starbreaker coming to Earth.
I kind of sympathize with them feeling a bit useless against a foe who can fight Superman, Flash and Green Lantern… but come on, this is ridiculous.
Despite having revenge as his next goal, Starbreaker also has the time to make demands out of a random alien planet. This scene goes nowhere, but I had to mention it because it gives us the best look at Starbreaker’s AWESOME throne.
But yeah, Starbreaker is loose on Earth now. And unlike his duplicates, he’s a real powerhouse.
I’m just saying, instead of having Darkseid be the big bad of a giant crossover for the hundredth freaking time, maybe give Starbreaker a chance.
This makes the Justice League depressed, and it’s Hawkman of all people to hype them up.
So the Justice League decides to watch a video about their origins.
Which wouldn’t be a bad thing on its own, except this is happening while Starbreaker IS MOVING THE EARTH CLOSER TO THE SUN.
So that leads into a full reprint of Justice League of America #9, which is a story for another time.
But apparently that’s all was needed to decide to fight Starbreaker again.
Naturally Batman is the one to come up with a plan. Since Starbreaker also feeds on fear, maybe he could be defeated by “positive feelings”.
Ah yes, one of the classic vampire weaknesses next to crosses and garlic.
And then, out of absolutely NOWHERE, Golden Age hero Sargon the Sorcerer shows up!!!
Also known as “Not Dr. Fate”, “Discount Dr. Occult” and “We don’t have the rights to Mandrake”.
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #98 (1972)
by Mike Friedrich & Dick Dillin
cover by Neal Adams
Yes this is suddenly all about Sargon. Despite the fact that Starbreaker is ON THE PLANET and that, again, EARTH IS MOVING TOWARDS THE SUN.
I love how the possibility that this is actually historical figure Sargon of Akkad is brought up: would it REALLY be out of place in the DC Universe?
Also, Flash mentions that Sargon was a hero “back when we were kids”, but he fails to mention that Sargon should be from Earth-Two and not Earth-One… which is just baffling, considering Black Canary IS FROM EARTH-TWO.
The heroes lose even more time trying to fight Sargon, who is actually here to help them against Starbreaker. And he’s reached the same conclusion of Batman.
That’s a bit awkward; it would’ve made more sense if Sargon had been the one to suggest this possibility.
The key to defeating Starbreaker is apparently to go on a fetch quest to recover copies of the magical Ruby of Life that Sargon uses for his magic.
So this is already a long review and most of this has NOTHING to do with Starbreaker, so I won’t go into the details of the fetch quest.
But I absolutely must mention that Black Canary turns out to look exactly like the wife of a South American dictator…
…and the locals are dumb enough to believe it’s actually her.
Eventually the magic gems are gathered and powered up with random alien technology.
Not to mention the Psycho-Emotional Translators™ created by the Atom.
Charged up by Sargon’s magic, the Justice League resumes its attack on Starbreaker… who is able to send them into other time periods.
So basically Starbreaker can do whatever the plot needs.
The heroes are charged with so much good vibes that Hawkman can BEAT HIM UP WITH A PIECE OF WOOD.
Yeah maybe that’s why Starbreaker never rose to Darkseid-levels of fame. I don’t see Darkseid being nearly choked out by Black Canary, even if this is just a duplicate and not the real deal.
I know Green Lantern is a billionaire, but does he always have a silver arrow just in case?
The real Starbreaker, however, now has to deal with a positively furious Superman.
This makes Starbreaker scared. But if fear is his weakness, there’s only one Leaguer who can take him down.
And so we end with Starbreaker being taken into custody by the Green Lantern corps.
But there’s one last bit of utter ridiculousness: the reason why Starbreaker randomly decided to send his enemies to other time periods? That was the Atom’s plan!!!
Okay leaving aside the fact that Flash should really have a talk to Reed Richards about that magic stuff…
The Atom was able to “implant a magical suggestion” because he knows biology!?
AND he knew Starbreaker would be able to send them to other time periods despite not demonstrating time powers before their final attack?
Sounds legit.
I would make the usual joke about how the Guardians of the Universe are terrible at their job, but they managed to hold Starbreaker from 1974 until 1992!!!
Interesting letters: I also always found it weird that the team called itself Justice League OF AMERICA when it had an international, and often interestellar/interdimensional, base of operations and membership.
Historical significance: 2/10
All things considered, Starbreaker is quite a minor character.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
We are technically past the Silver Age at this point, but that doesn’t stop the absurdity. Extra points for the multiple WTF involved in Starbreaker’s defeat.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
What a missed opportunity. The beginning is very solid: the fact that Starbreaker’s robots and his lesser duplicates give such a hard time to the JLA heavy hitters do wonders in making us feel that the real deal is going to be one heck of an opponent.
Unfortunately the rest of the storyline seriously drops the ball by continuously going into various tangents, from the reprint of the origin story to the fetch quest.
There’s also the problem that Starbreaker’s powers are way too vague and ill-defined.
Ridiculous Flash feat of the day
How close is this to the modern character? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I really don’t know enough about Starbreaker to make the call.
Apparently he’s mostly a Green Lantern villain these days?
Sounds like a waste.
He is a fantastic concept, so I’m still baffled at his lack of impact on the DC Universe.
Starbreaker’s lack of impact may have been due to the character design. Whereas Darkseid and Galactus had original and memorable designs, Starbreaker looks like a stereotypical vampire with some sci fi trappings. He reminds me of Evillo from the LSH.
Green Arrow (not Lantern) had at this point lost his fortune, so affording a silver arrow is even more of a stretch!
This story belongs to the time-honored tradition of “make it up as we go along and see if we can stretch a one-issue story into three.” Also, “make it modern by having the heroes use words like ‘jiving’.” Stories such as this may explain why DC started to lose ground saleswise to Marvel in the early ’70s.
Grant Morrison has redefined Starbreaker as the adult form of a Sun-Eater, which is a terrifying concept. If Starbreaker could be depicted that way by a more accessible writer than Morrison, he would finally join the ranks of A-list villains.
I also always found it weird that the team called itself Justice League OF AMERICA when it had an international, and often interestellar/interdimensional, base of operations and membership.
The real-life reason, of course, is that the JLA was intended as a riff on the Justice Society of America. But, it’s still a reasonable name within the fictional conceit of the series. Let’s examine the seven charter Justice League members:
AQUAMAN, the BATMAN, the FLASH, and the GREEN LANTERN were born American citizens, and all but the Sea King operate out of American cities.
J’ONN J’ONZZ, WONDER WOMAN, and SUPERMAN were not born American citizens (the Man of Steel could be considered a naturialised American of a sort, as the United Nations awarded him a honorary citizenship of all member nations early in his adult career, as seen in “The Story of Superman’s Life”, from Superman # 146 [Jul., 1961]). However, they all primarily operate out of American cities.
As for the first three regular members to join the League, the GREEN ARROW and the ATOM are Americans operating in American cities, while HAWKMAN, not American, operates out of an American city.
This is why it’s called the Justice League of America. At least, that was the rationale provided by JLA editor Julius Schwartz in his response to a letter from a reader printed in “The JLA Roll Call”. (I’m not at home, else I’d provide the issue number.) And I agree with it.
Wow, that really is a ridiculous plot. But great material for you to review! Thanks for the review as always. I imagine it’s a lot of work to crop the images and write the text, so thank you for sharing and allowing us to share in the fun.
Disagree on your assessment on JLA villains. There are plenty of recurring villains specifically made for the League. If think the two-parter JLA 10 and 11, which introduces both Felix Faust and the Lord of Time would make a great villains origins. I personnally consider it a high point of the Gardner Fox run. Other villains include Amos Fortune, the Royal Flush Gang, Despero and Dr Destiny, especially since the latter has undergone such a radical transformation from his origins.