The Justice League of America

The Justice League of America is one of the most recognizable teams in comics and for good reason. As a team they have been around since the 60s and they have had many live action and animated appearances. DC generally is really good about their animated work so there is lots to pull from so as we go through the history of this team I will not only be recommending comics but I will also be recommending animated movies and of course the TV shows. No live actions. Zack Snyder is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Justice League, you can try and blame Joss Whedon but there was no fixing that script. So here we go.

The first appearance of the team in full was in 1960 in 28th issue of The Brave and the Bold. This new team was meant as kind of a revival for the Justice Society of America which was a different configuration of heroes and did continue to eventually exist in congruence with the Justice League but that team will be a separate history lesson.

We of course start with the holy trinity of DC comics; Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. These were of course DCs biggest sellers and as such were perfect to headline a new team. The rest of the team's makeup was often lesser known heroes whose sales could benefit from being in the same book as the big three. This really started as a book that was meant for cross promotion. The success of the Justice League title is directly responsible for the creation of Marvel’s Avengers and the Fantastic Four. Before this time there were really no successful team comics after the Justice League was created it became one of DCs highest selling books leading to much more team creation from both companies.

In the 80s the company really leaned into using the team to bring together more obscure characters. In the League’s second annual, released in 1984 the teams make up was completely absent of A-listers. The main focus now being on characters like Vixen and Martian Manhunter. The big three didn’t re-enter the picture until 1996. The purpose behind this was that the big three obviously had their own titles and keeping up with a cohesive continuity between solo and team adventures was just a bit too much. Hilarious to think on now as DCs multiverse system is one of the most convoluted things on the planet.

In the late 80s to mid 90s DC tried to expand the team's reach by de-centering America and creating spin-off teams and books with Justice League International. The team essentially set up embassies all over the world. This was short lived and was quickly canceled due to a lack of sales.

In 1996 the team was revamped back into a single title bringing back all of the original members and giving them more cosmic villains. After this change it went back to being DCs best selling title. These were the good days…then DC decided to hard reboot themselves…again into what was deemed the New 52 Era. In case you didn’t know pretty much everything to come out of New 52 was bad. We don’t talk about it. Fans hated it so much and with so much vitriol DC rebooted again just a few years later.

New Justice, Infinite Frontier, and Dawn of DC are all soft reboots that took place between 2018 and now….yeah 3 soft reboots in 6 years. DC has been a mess for a while. Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good individual titles but their inability to keep an overall tone or continuity has been reflected in their sales. Hence the continuous reboots.

All that said, let's highlight the good; These are all collections that have several titles combined in them but are great pictures of what the team should look and function like. I will start at the very beginning with Showcase Presents: The Justice League of America Vol.1 from 1960-1962 the collection was published in 2005 and is literally the start of the team. Showcase presents continued to run collections but my favorite volumes are 1, 4 and 6. Next up is Crisis on Infinite Earths…NOW this whole storyline was written with the intention of cleaning up DCs convoluted and horrendous multiverse, the writers themselves could not keep these alternate earths straight so they wrote a story in which everything was lit on fire and then organized, that's this. Do I think that it's an exceptionally good story? No. Do I absolutely hate that they took a writing correction and made it a live action crossover event for TV? Yes. But I think it's a landmark for DC and if you want to get to know the history of the Justice League and feel a little more connected to DC as a whole then I think it's required reading. This is where we get into the “Infinite” storylines now some people are going to hate these but their wrong so we are going to go with Infinite Crisis, I will recommend the Omnibus but they are expensive so the regular collection will still tell the story you're only really missing out on some of the build up.

That said, we've already talked about my love for DCs animated universe so please everyone go watch the animated Justice League and Justice League unlimited series. But also Justice League War, Injustice, and The New Frontier. There are a million movies. Those are the specific ones I will always champion, some of the others are also really good. This is just my shortlist of awesome.

Warworld is the newest one and I haven't watched it because at SDCC the screening for that and Invincible’s Atom Eve special was at the same time and I chose Invincible and I’d do it again. So I will watch soon and get back to you on my thoughts for that. But I think there are a lot of amazing Justice League stories that are buried and hidden beneath a whole lot of terrible Justice League stories. So starting at the beginning is actually always a safe bet and DC makes it really easy. Their online comic book database is infinitely better then Marvels, especially when it comes to back issues and just finding anything. So go read (and watch) some Justice League!