The Seven Soldiers of Victory are a group of characters bound together in the Golden Age on Earth-Two, where the Justice Society hang their hat and their roll call has some familiar names.
Green Arrow and his sidekick Speedy and the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy are four that we have talked about previously which leaves us three new heroes to introduce. Just remember this is Earth-TWO.
The Crimson Avenger is Lee Travis, a newspaper man of the late 30s and early 40s in the Golden Age. He first emerged as a shadowy figure skulking in the background to dole out justice to those who needed to be stopped and were unable to be stopped by conventional means. The Crimson Avenger is a striking figure in his early costume evocative of the pulp heroes of the day, but eventually will adopt a red and yellow costume with a sun motif on his chest that is more evocative of a traditional super-hero costume.
Crimson Avenger is assisted by an able Asian martial artist named Wing. One of the Crimson Avenger’s trademark move is appearing from the midst of a cloud of crimson smoke. Crimson Avenger despite his athleticism is a normal human being possessing no super powers… for now.
Sir Justin was More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
There comes a time in comics when socially relevant stories will creep into what many people consider “funny books.” The most notable of these from the DC Comics stable is from the title Green Lantern/Green Arrow by Denny O’Neil as writer and Neal Adams on art duties.
Well, Batman has Robin right? If Green Arrow is an analogue of Batman, it would follow that he would have a sidekick as well, yes? In fact, our entire conversation tonight is about the original five sidekicks and the character that ties the new story in New Teen Titans with the past is this character, Speedy.
Roy Harper became Green Arrow’s sidekick ages ago and is almost as old as Robin is in DC lore. Eventually all the sidekicks at the time would team up in Brave and the Bold for adventures. Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad at first, then joined by Wonder Girl, and finally Speedy joined the Terrific Teens in this issue below..
The issue of Green Lantern/Green Arrow was published in 1971, a year that has already seen the civil rights movement be fairly victorious, woodstock has happened, hippies are all over the place and not just in Haight-Ashbury, yet Dr. Frederick Wertham and the self-imposed regulatory committee of More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
Ahh, it’s good to be back home. I had a great time on vacation and now it’s time to dig into some plot points regarding our heroes in the Justice League of America.
When you regard continuity in a comic book universe, there are several ways to stage a story that does not fall chronologically into the greater continuity. The first is the “flashback” often referred to as the “untold” story or tale. Then there is the “What if?” genre, where you can tell stories about these characters, but that these particular stories are separate from the regular continuity of the characters…such as Clark Kent landing in Russia vs. the U.S.A., interesting concept, but it’s not the way the origin plays out for the “real” version of the character.
When juggling the myriad characters in a team book, it is important to keep in mind that your “A” tier characters are going to bring in the money, but really the main changes to those characters should take place in their own books and let those changes later be reflected in the team book. For the “B” characters, changes can occur in the team book as there is no regular place that they appear outside of a More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
Now, we’re here on Earth-Two and the counterpart to the JLA is the JSA. Not only the counterpart, but also the predecessor of the JLA. Back when I started collecting comics characters used to be numbered by order in which they appeared, so the original Green Lantern was Green Lantern I but he was from Earth-2. I am not going to do that here.
If any hard core comic book fans are reading this, I probably just moved to the heretic column. Oh well, I’ve been called an abomination before, and it will happen again, so bring it.
What I am going to do is typically use the character’s name and their real name to distinguish which character that we are talking about.
For the five heroes that kept being published from the Golden Age through to the Silver Age…
- Superman
- Batman
- Wonder Woman
- Aquaman
- Green Arrow
Only three of them joined the JSA. Wonder Woman was the secretary and Superman and Batman were honorary members. Neither Aquaman nor Green Arrow joined the JSA. Additionally between the Golden Age to the Silver Age no significant changes were made in the character regarding name, origin, powers, m.o., etc.., While some of these may have evolved over time there was not a distinct change that occurred More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
So.. you’re thinking to yourself.
“The Royal Flush Gang? You have GOT to be kidding me.”
Nope. The Royal Flush Gang. Interesting premise and over the years the writers tend to get more inventive with them and because they are villains, they are more changeable than our heroes. They are a natural team in a world populated with Brainiac, Cheetahs, and Jokers.. well, could this card themed group really have been far behind?
The Royal Flush Gang employ weapons based on their card motifs. Spade shaped grenades, illusion scepters, lasers, hypnosis, and they ride flying cards. Come on, Flying Cards! It’s like surfing!
Aquaman and Firestorm open up our adventure on the open seas, where Aquaman is giving Firestorm a test. While Firestorm is a JLAer, he’s still the rookie and so the other Leaguers try to help him along a bit with his training. Unfortunately, the two JLAers are ambushed by people wearing outfits that look like playing cards and they are riding playing cards. Weird, huh?
Before long, many JLAers fall to the Royal Flush Gang. Superman. Wonder Woman. Green Arrow. All the JLAers who are zapped by the Royal Flush Gang’s weapons go into a sort of debilitating coma.
We eventually get to More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
Okay, well in the second JLA story I ever read, it was a very simple done in one story which featured JLA members Superman, Flash, Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman, and Black Canary versus a misunderstood hero that has been around and been not an enemy of the JLA for the most part, but is a character that tends to let his naivety get in the way of his ability to do good things.
Ultraa is the hero in question, the man with the bright red hair and purple outfit.
And as you can tell, he packs quite a punch.
Now, this story is fairly simple, Ultraa duped by a con man named Joe Parry is tricked into helping Joe commit some robberies and the JLA gets involved as the police can’t handle Ultraa. Ultraa realizes at the end that even though Joe offered him friendship it was not worth his soul and recants. All is forgiven, for the most part.
Now, the REAL juicy part of this story is that Ultraa is not from the Earth that our heroes are from, but instead is from an Earth designated Earth-Prime.
Okay, here is where we get our first piece of DCU Cosmology.
There are multiple Earths in the DC Universe, all are vibrating at slightly More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
Well, the JLA is reunited and they break off into teams to go beat the bad alien conquerors into submission, so let’s get to it, shall we?
Team One: Batman, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Zatanna take off to fight the Crystal Creature, the Wood King, and the Mercury Monster in the woods of the Vermont forest.
The Appellaxians are already battling each other as Superman and Hawkman swoop in to break it up. The Wood King sticks his roots into it again and manages to grow an offshoot that catches Hawkman. Superman avoids the sneak attack and collides with the Wood King and smashes him into so many splinters. Unfortunately Superman failed to think ahead and the Wood King’s sap was full of Green Kryptonite.. (when will he learn?) Wonder Woman uses her golden lasso to pull Superman out of harms way of the other aliens while Green Arrow uses a saw arrow to trim the root still choking Hawkman.
While this drama is going on, Zatanna has encased the Mercury Monster in a bubble of super heated oil causing the monster to evaporate. Mercury boils at 357 degrees Celsius, so make a mental note, do not tick Zatanna off. More >
Posted by Darren in Comics
VERSUS
Well a few interesting things here right off the bat. (You did get the pun notice in the last post, right?)
Batman is apparently so bad ass that two new JLAers need to go find him. Not Superman or Wonder Woman, but Batman. What does this tell you? This tells you that we are not dealing with the campy Batman that I was first introduced to via Adam West, Burt Ward, and Yvonne Craig on the classic 1960s Batman TV Show.
Secondly, we have our first relationship depicted in comics. Sure everyone knows about Lois and Clark and most people know that Colonel Steve Trevor has a thing for Wonder Woman, but here we have two costumed individuals aware of each others identities that are explicitly boyfriend and girlfriend.
The final thing to point out here is that there are a great deal of similarities in Batman and Green Arrow.
Both are Millionnaires – Billionnaires depending on the story you read.
Both had sidekicks (more on that later).
Both use “gimmicks” with a motif. Batman has his Batmobile and Batplane. Green Arrow has his Arrowcar and Arrowplane.
Both are merely human with no extra special powers, it is their skills that keep them valid heroes in the hero game. While More >
Posted by admin in Comics
Of course, after the Justice League of America (JLA) began back in 1960 times have changed and new characters were added to the mix of the original seven.
Green Arrow – The Emerald Archer. Oliver Queen was a millionaire who was on a yacht when he was tossed overboard (on purpose or accidentally) . Ollie landed on a deserted island where he taught himself archery in order to survive. Upon returning to the main land and civilization, Ollie kept using his unsurpassed archery skills to fight against injustice.
The Atom – The Mighty Mite. Physics Professor Ray Palmer discovered a chunk of white dwarf star matter that could shrink items for a time, unfortunately everything he shrank turned unstable and exploded. Forced to use this technology to save a group of college students, Ray discovered that for some reason his body did not turn unstable. Donning a size changing belt and gloves to control his size and weight Ray became The Atom. The Atom is married to a lawyer named Jean Loring.
Hawkman – The Winged Wonder. Katar Hol is a police officer from the planet Thanagar. He and his partner/wife, Shayera, came to Earth in pursuit of a shape changing criminal. Once on Earth More >
