scans_daily

I've been a little critical of "decompressed" story writing---saying in six or seven issues that which should be said in one or two..

I've also been critical of the latest changes in Superman, making him just a somewhat stronger action hero, almost powerless, the loss of the Clark Kent identity, etc...

But it's only fair to point out--the best thing is a balance. Let's look at the other side--an interesting, but VERY compressed story, by Gardner Fox, with enough details and subplots for a half-dozen stories..where Superman showed, pretty definitely, who's the toughest JLAer on the team in the late sixties...which considering, at the time, he could move worlds, travel in time, bask in the heart of suns...is not surprising.

Okay, the story STARTS with time-travelling tourists watching what they call "The Last Case of the Justice League", where a tearful kid tells his father he can't believe this is the Justice League's last case. But the father says their history books CAN'T be wrong---and in the Pre-Crisis Silver Age, it was demonstrated several times that you CAN'T change history. (So no reboots every few years, thank goodness.) So THAT's ominious...

(There is a lot I can't show here for space considerations. I'm just going to have to outline some parts of this VERY complex story, to keep for the guidelines for even an old story.)

Then the Key, a JLA villain who was jailed, starts glowing. Because the Key-Weapon that the Justice League had taken from his as a trophy--had been absorbing cosmic rays all that time since the Key's first appearance, to reach the level of power he needed. With it, he can put them under his mental control. (Superman, Batman, and the Justice League as a group made a habit of collecting trophies of their various triumphs. To my knowledge, the Key is the first one to exploit it.)

The JLA try to leave their first headquarters, the Secret Sanctuary, but as they approached the exit, they found they couldn't. GL's ring fizzled, Batman's finger on his laser wouldn't work, both Superman and Batman couldn't built up enough strength or speed to burst or vibrate out, etc. That also meant they were going to start killing each other--when the hour was up.

Niiiice trap.

Then Superman does something tricky. Pay attention, because like most time-travel stories, this is a little...convoluted.

Another rule of DC time-travel is that two versions of the person can't be in the same time-period. So if Superman-now visits past-JLA, the Superman-past ends up with the current JLA.

But THIS Superman isn't under the Key's control!

Notice how in the next part, he doesn't even bother to knock out Batman or Flash. But Atom and GL--both of whom MIGHT be a danger (Atom could shrink below Superman's grasp, and work his way into his brain--Atom beat a super-Superman in another story that way--and GL's ring is an obvious danger. Why Flash didn't vibrate out of Superman's grasp, I'm not sure.)

And how does he beat Wonder Woman and her magic lasso? (Remember, back then, the magic lasso wasn't just a magical lie detector--anybody in its coils had to do as she said!)

He blows her!

(I hope her then-current boyfriend, Steve Trevor, didn't hear of this!)

He gets the others out of the Sanctuary, where they recover their senses--the first command was JUST against leaving the Sanctuary, once they were out, they wouldn't have to fight Superman. The whole group proceeds to the UN, where the Key and his Key-Men were about to attack and take over the world! (No clue how the Key and a small group of admittedly well-armed men with science-fiction weaponry were going to take over the world, but given his long-laid plans and his ability to influence minds, I suspect a lot of the delegates and world leaders were similarly under his control.) Remember, all the JLAers, except Superman-past, will STILL start killing each other at the end of the hour. They've got a time limit.

Still, each of them acquits themselves well against the Key's men. The Key's henchmen make a last stand, and then Superman swoops down--and goes RIGHT PAST the flabbergasted criminals to attack...his friends and teammates...

...For the best of reasons.

Superman than makes short work of the remaining Key-Men, and tricks a cowardly Key, trapped under a pile of bricks and facing one of his own key-weapons about to go off, into releasing the other JLAers from his mental control. (Because, again, when they wake up, the JLAers will start KILLING EACH OTHER.)

The Key evidently didn't have much faith in Superman's code against killing, or at least believed Superman that he would stand by and let the key-weapon go off, rather than save him, if the Key DIDN'T release the others from his mental control.

Superman destroys the weapon, and then says he's going to put the tricky Key in suspended animation in the Fortress of Solitude. (A judge later, thankfully, ruled that as "cruel and unusual punishment" according to a later Steve Englehart story, so that never happened.)

The others come to.

I don't know if the Power Ring can create bonds strong enough to hold the Silver Age Superman (who could literally move the Earth--but then, so could GL) but I know that Tomar-Re, in a later JLA story, stopped Superman in his tracks by recognizing him as a Kryptonian and created Kryptonite radiation with his ring.

Wonder Woman in a later Steve Englehart story was able to lasso Superman and put him under her control.

But in both cases--you're dealing with a being as swift as the Flash but incredibly strong and tough. Just CATCHING him would be a task...

The one who was assigned to kill Superman?

SNAPPER CARR, their wise-cracking, jive-talking honorary member/comic relief.

The cosmic-powered Key Weapon in their trophy room---Snapper was going to take a file and scrape its covering--because underneath its lead covering--it was made of Kryptonite. (Which might explain how the mental control affected Superman.)

The Key had assigned the weakest JLAer to kill the mightiest...using, literally, the least suspicious person.

Okay, okay, that last bit---"cancelled it in the past"--is pretty hokey. But considering how involved the plot was, I'll give Fox a break on this.

Then they wonder which JLAer Superman was assigned to kill. Here, it looks like the Key went for the cruelest decision--instead of killing the next-mightiest hero, either GL or WW, he'd have to kill his best friend in the JLA...

Nice little resolution on how you stop a Superman. With his cooperation, of course.

The bit about the memories being affected by the Key's radiation to take away their memories of these events is VERY "conveniiiient", and makes you wonder why Superman-now didn't disable the Key-weapon then---except that the Silver Age Superman KNOWS that history can't be changed.

Oh, the time-travelling tourists? They had to leave because of a "time storm"---well, when they returned to the future, they realized their idea that this was the JLA's last case was a result of the "time storm" playing tricks with their minds. That the JLA had many more cases to go. Only the kid had remained unconvinced, because he was a JLA fan, and even the time storm's influence didn't fully convince him.

So...how many issues did this highly convoluted, cerebral story fill? How many pages?

ONE issue.

23 pages. Just 23 pages.

These days, that would have been four or five issues at LEAST.

Fox usually rendered "thinking man's scripts". Very low emotional content and characterization (although more than he's given credit for) but highly involved, cerebral strips. Adam Strange, in many ways, was a very typical Fox hero. Here you can see it at its worst AND best.

In my opinion, although a fun story, it was way TOO compressed. There are a lot of emotional scenes that could have been amplified.

And in my opinion, although a fun hero, Superman was way TOO powerful a hero to fit in the JLA at this point in his career, which is why in many early JLAs, Superman didn't join in, busy with "other cases". (It's too bad that J'Onn was the only JLAer who didn't play a part in this story. J'Onn and WW were close to a physical match for Superman, and together they might have been able to overcome him. But then, with J'Onn, a little bit of heat vision on something flammable, and J'Onn's helpless...) I liked Byrne's relative de-powering of Superman, and wish he had done more...

If the current writers had ONLY reduced Superman to his original limits--leaping over tall buildings, vulnerable to artillery shells but not bullets--I would have enjoyed the current storyline MUCH more. (And kept the Clark Kent identity.)

Similarly, if current writers could try to put a LITTLE more compression in their stories---but not go as far as Fox did in this story...I'd enjoy them more. Many "decompressed" stories these days I feel are deliberately making something longer than should be even for dramatic tension.

Still, a fascinating, convoluted story.