That title looks pretty ominous doesn’t it?  Well, it is.

The Justice League of America as a title had been struggling in sales, with other group books becoming more popular year after year like Marvel’s X-Men franchise and DC’s New Teen Titans and the Legion of Super-Heroes.  The JLA formula had pretty much consisted of a formula where a bad thing would happen + one or more members would discover the problem independently + hero(es) realize they need help + call in the JLA + problem solved.

While this formula works for a 30 minute episode of Super Friends, as the comics audience matured, so did their need for more interaction in plots.  However the writers of JLA have a unique problem, they cannot really do much to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc.., as those heroes are appearing in their own books where they have major changes originate.

This leaves the JLA writer able to change those characters not appearing regularly or the “B characters”  Green Arrow, Black Canary, Atom, Hawkman, Elongated Man, Red Tornado, and Zatanna.  (Firestorm was still appearing in his own title while he was in JLA).

DC saw what comics readers were attracted to, a group of characters that were more intensely intertwined as a “family” team, and that is something that the JLA just did not afford at the time.  Behind the scenes decisions were being made that would fundamentally change the JLA, in the meantime we get two stories.

Paragon, who could analyze someone’s super-powers, duplicate them, and was better at the original bearer of the powers. This made him a very difficult villain to beat, as was discovered when he managed to capture most of the Justice League.

At the end the JLA take advantage of the fact that it takes Paragon a split second to adapt to new powers, so taking advantage of the superspeed of Superman and Wonder Woman, the League manage to overwhelm Paragon.  Black Canary finally walks up to him and judo kicks him in the face.  This requires Wonder Woman to inform Canary, that this is not how the League operates.  A bit of a nod to the fact that this is a “new” Black Canary (see the last post) and Canary’s response, “still it felt good.” a nod to the fact that times they were changing and our heroes could not remain squeaky clean and remain relevant in today’s world.

The next story was your standard “evil mystic cult tries to bring about armageddon”

After much conflict, three issues to be precise, the JLA wins against this mystic threat to the world.  But something is amiss….

If you’ve been paying attention, you should be asking yourself a big question….

Where are the big seven?

A point that will be the crux of the end of the Satellite JLA era forever.

Next Up:  The War of the Martians and A New League is Born!