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Sunday, January 12, 2014

Brave and the Bold #28 - Feb. 1960

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Comics Weekend "Starro The Conqueror!" by Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Bernard Sachs.

It's Adventure Sunday!

After years of being a lone wolf, the King of the Seas teams with his fellow superheroes to fight an earth-shattering menace:
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Aquaman's message reaches six other heroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter. The Man of Steel and the Dark Knight Detective are in the middle of two cases and can't be called away, but the remaining heroes meet up in their Secret Sanctuary, where Aquaman clues them into what has happened:
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Green Lanterns fights one of Starro's minions over the Rocky Mountains, and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter face one over Science City. The Flash does the same in the small town of Happy Harbor, which has been taken over by Starro's mind control, all except one incessantly annoying young man named Snapper Carr. This gives The Scarlet Speedster an idea on how to defeat Starro once and for all:
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...and so ends another adventure for the Justice League of America!

With this humble--yet entertaining--story, Gardner Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and editor Julius Schwartz put into place what would become the cornerstone of the DC Universe, which would evolve over decades into a billion-dollar enterprise.

The Shrine hadn't really covered these first three JLA "tryout" adventures in Brave and the Bold before, and since they fall in between Aquaman's adventures in Adventure Comics, I thought why not keep our chronology complete and cover them here. It's nice that the story opens with Aquaman, even if it meant he didn't get a whole lot to do afterwards. But Gardner Fox would make up for that down the road.

As you can see, Aquaman is still sporting yellow gloves, driving DC historians into fits of rage as they try and clearly delineate which version of the Sea King is which.


7 comments:

Anthony said...

Ah, the classic first JLA story... with the cover that's been parodied a zillion times!

Starro years later traveled from Earth-1 to Earth-C, where he fought the Zoo Crew...

Of course, the JLA are solely Earth-1 regardless of Arthur's glove color. My suggested answer: his usual green gloves were in the wash and he had some yellow ones as infrequently-worn spares? :-p

Richard said...

I often profess my love for Skeates/Aparo... and this blog introduced me to the pairing of Samachson/Daly... and Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon will always have a place in my heart... but that team of Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky is the one that presses all my childhood buttons hard and never stops. I cannot look at this without being transported back in time.

Joseph Brian Scott said...

^I know! I feel like I can smell them.

Earth 2 Chris said...

Ah yes, the yellow gloves. I'm going with Arthur was doing dishes in the Aqua-cave and forgot to take of his Playtex Living Gloves before he left.

Some folks got hung up on Batman's lack of a yellow oval for the first 4 years of JLA stories too, because someone at DC took the easy way out and once said the Earth-One Batman first appeared in Detective #327, along with that yellow oval. This "fact" even made it into Who's Who.

Of course that's bunk...because Batman had been in the JLA for 4 years, and later stories clearly state the JLA exists on Earth-One only.

My head hurts.

Chris

Joseph Brian Scott said...

I really like that panel giving a rare glimpse of the interior of their cave HQ; I think there were only two panels, from the first couple of B&B JLA stories, that showed anything other than the conference table and chairs.

Little Russell Burbage said...

^I know, I was thinking the same thing! It's obvious that Mike Sekowsky put a lot of effort into this first story...my guess is that after the sheer effort of drawing dozens of characters began to take its toll, he'd come across the script "JLA at meeting" and say, "F it, I'm just doing a bunch of talking heads this time!" ;-)

Unknown said...

Viva Adventure Sunday!

And what an Adventure Sunday it is! Those yellow gloves have come a long way from Black Jack into the space age. Frankly, most of the time the old JLA HQ just looked like a dingy cave back in the 60's. But this is one swinging pad. Wonder who stocked the book shelves?

James Chatterton