Justice League of America #147 (1977)
Writers: Martin Pasko & Paul Levitz
Pencils and cover by Dick Dillin
This is going to be crowded: a team-up between the Legion, the Justice League AND the Justice Society.
Both Martin Pasko and Paul Levitz are credited as writers for #147 while only Pasko is credited for #148 “with an assist from Paul Levitz”. So I guess the plot is mostly by Pasko.
A couple of notes to set the scene: in this era the JLA has its headquarters on a satellite, and we are firmly in the multiverse with the Justice Society being from Earth-2.
It’s also kind of weird to see Power Girl hitting on Superman, since she’s technically an alternate version of Supergirl.
I wonder if Superman is thinking about Action Comics #289.
But there’s no time to think about it because SUDDEN GIANT HAND!!!
Told you this was going to be crowded.
Also: poor Golden Age Green Lantern, did they HAVE to specify he went bankrupt!?
The giant hand belongs to Mordru, who has already captured part of the Legion OFF-SCREEN.
Green Arrow is hilariously skeptic when he’s told this is the 30th century.
He was kidnapped by a giant floating hand while hanging out on a satellite with heroes and magicians from a parallel universe, but time travel? That would be just be silly!
To appreciate just how ridiculously powerful Mordru is: he’s able to easily swat around Doctor Freaking Fate, and he STILL points out that he’s not at full power yet!
So you have a guy who is thousands of times more powerful than Doctor Fate, and STILL Superman is able to go to toe to toe with him! Even with his vulnerability to magic!
It’s times like these that makes you realize why they just had to get Superman less powerful post-Crisis.
To recap, this is basically Ridiculously Overpowered: The Comic.
Mordru explains what exactly is going on: he’s after some mystical objects that the JLA has encountered several times, and sent the Legion to get them… but when they didn’t return with the goods, Mordru tried to steal the artifacts himself and somehow that’s why he brought the JLA here.
An interesting detail is that Mordru references being defeated by an uprising; this is presumably a reference to Adventure Comics 370, meaning the idiotic appearances of Mordru in the Superboy era might not be canon. That’s fine by me!!!
I’m summarizing because Mordru talks A LOT and I would otherwise need to post every single page, but basically the story is going to be about Mordru sending members of various teams to retrieve the artifacts for him.
The artifacts that Mordru keeps talking about (the jar, the bell and the wheel) belong to the Demons Three, classic JLA villains who are just about as ridiculously overpowered as Mordru.
We get a tiny bit of JLA lore: their satellite is going to be destroyed sometime between 1977 and the 30th century.
That would be 1985, since the satellite will eventually be destroyed during Crisis of Infinite Earths..
So at this point we are already at page 14: Mordru showed up at page 6 and has been monologuing this massive infodump since page 10. But there is a bit of clever writing: the reason why Mordru didn’t simply kill the JLA is that while Doctor Fate wasn’t powerful enough to defeat him, he managed to put a spell to save everyone’s life!
That’s an interesting and creative use of magic powers.
We now move to the second part of the story: separate mini-missions where the characters from the various teams are mixed.
There’s a cute interaction between Wildfire and Superman, hinging on the fact that Wildfire has never met Superboy’s older self.
Wildfire isn’t as used to time travel as other Legionnaires, but things are confusing for the Justice Society as well.
Considering how limited the role of the Legion is in this story, my guess is that Levitz’s main job was providing Pasko some Legion lore to reference. Unfortunately, he chose Proty’s planet.
Superman gets the idea to have Doctor Fate create an illusion to force the Antareans to shapeshift into something else, so that he can take the mystical wheel relic without disturbing them.
Could you possibly be even MORE patronizing, Superman!?
As we have seen in the Legion book Wildfire is not exactly a great leader, and Saturn Girl makes it a point to spell it out.
“Meanwhile” Brainiac 5 and Princess Projectra are trying to convince some aliens to give them the bell relic, when Batman shows up.
From my understanding this is the very first time Batman meets the Legion, by the way.
The reason why the aliens don’t want to give the relic to the heroes is that it’s scaring off some nasty space dragons, and Batman comes off with a solution.
While making it a point to be condescending towards the Legion (why is EVERYBODY doing that this issue!?).
With Projectra providing a reference for the natural predator of the space dragon, the two Green Lanterns TURN AN ENTIRE PLANET INTO A SCARECROW.
Golden Age Flash and Power Girl don’t team up with any Legionnaire (because you know there aren’t enough members in THE FREAKING LEGION to use!?), but he still manages to be condescending.
They do recover the last relic, and despite a last minute plan to stop Mordru from summoning the Demons Three… he does it anyway.
Told you these guys were just as overpowered as Mordru.
End of part one. Let’s hope the Legion gets to do SOMETHING in part 2.
Historical significance: 2/10
Just on the account of being the first official meeting between the JLA and the Legion.
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
Everyone’s ridiculous levels of power, to the point that terraforming a plant is a casual two panel thing.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
This is a surprisingly densely packed story, despite the fact that when you really think about not a whole lot of stuff is happening. Mordru’s infodump goes on for way, WAY too much: the story really could have used an additional Legion issue to actually show the beginning.
Even when things actually start to happen, though… it’s a bit underwhelming. None of the JLA and JSA members are likable, with partial exceptions for Green Arrow and Power Girl.
The Legion is really underused here, with the repeated points about them being young and inexperienced… despite the fact that most of the things the JLA complains about have absolutely nothing to do with being young heroes and everything with the fact that Superman and Batman seem to randomly know every single plot twist for no reason.
As a Legion fan I naturally enjoy stories with a huge cast, but unfortunately this story really, REALLY could’ve used dropping a few characters!!!
Points for the creative use of Doctor Fate and for the portrayal of Mordru, who is quite a blast this time around. And the artwork, despite being unusually stiff here and there, is actually quite enjoyable.
We are legion
23 Legionnaires
6 reserve members