Justice Society, Vol. 1 (Justice Society of America) [Paperback]

Paul Levitz (Author), Gerry Conway (Author), Various (Author)

Book Description

Series: Justice Society of America | Publication Date: August 2, 2006

The world's first team of super-heroes, the Justice Society of America, has stood for truth and justice since their founding during the Golden Age of comics.

This first volume in a series of trade paperbacks collecting their classic adventures from the 1970s reveals the JSA's origin and shows what happens when the veteran members of the team welcome a new generation of heroes into their ranks,including Robin, Star-Spangled Kid and Power Girl.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up—Never heard of Dr. Fate, Wildcat, and the Star Spangled Kid? The publisher has a tendency to overestimate the appeal of their B-list superheroes. Especially distressing is the inclusion of small crossover appearances by Superman or Batman, when this book is really about the least-interesting members of the DC Universe. Most comics take a recurrent interest in the haunted or bitter origins of their superheroes, and that's what makes Superman and Batman so appealing, giving them emotional depth and a dark gravitas. But in these stories, the characters are merely all super, all the time, not even seen in their civilian personas, which strips away any potential for reader empathy. Many of the villains are preposterous, even for comics standards. Clearly, this series has not aged well. Despite the flawless page design and artwork, which shows no age at all, and despite a final story involving Hitler and Roosevelt that has some good plotting, most of these tales are rightly forgotten.—John Leighton, Brooklyn Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In the 1970s and some 15 years after resurrecting the concept of the superhero team with the Justice League of America, DC revived the original 1940s superteam, the Justice Society of America. The first of two volumes collecting the subsequent, short-lived series shows the vintage characters, including the original versions of the Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman, retaining a nostalgia-tinged mystique they would later lose through overexposure. The main attraction here, however, is the artwork of legendary artist Wally Wood, which vaults the 8 (of 11) issues in which he had a hand quite above the mundane. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics; Later printing edition (August 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140120970X
• ISBN-13: 978-1401209704
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 0.5 x 10.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,010 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Levitz was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1956, and entered the comics industry in 1971 as editor/publisher of The Comic Reader, the first mass-circulation fanzine devoted to comics news. He continued to publish TCR for three years, winning two consecutive annual Comic Art Fan Awards for Best Fanzine. His other fan activities included editing the program books for several of Phil Seuling's legendary New York Comic Art Conventions,. He received Comic-con International's Inkpot Award in 2002, the prestigious Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award in 2008, and the Comics industry Appreciation Award from ComicsPro (the trade association of comic shop retailers) in 2010. Levitz also serves on the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Levitz is primarily known for his work for DC Comics, where he has written most of their classic characters including the Justice Society, Superman in both comics and the newspaper strip, and an acclaimed run on The Legion of Super-Heroes, a series he's recently returned to write. Readers of The Buyers' Guide voted his Legion: The Great Darkness Saga one of the 20 best comic stories of the last century, and visitors to the site comicbookresources.com selected the same story as #11 of the Top 100 Comic Book Stories of All Time. DC Comics has just issued a new hardcover edition of Legion: The Great Darkness Saga, which made the New York Times' Graphic Books Bestseller List.

Cumulatively, Levitz has written over 300 stories with sales of over 25 million copies, and translations into over 20 languages. As a DC staffer from 1973, Levitz was an assistant editor, the company's youngest editor ever, and in a series of business capacities, became Executive Vice President & Publisher in 1989 and then served as President & Publisher from 2002-2009. He continues as a Contributing Editor, but is now concentrating on his writing.

His current writing projects include Taschen's 75 YEARS OF DC COMICS: THE ART OF MODERN MYTHMAKING, which the LA Times praised for "its colossal ambitions, insights and collected rarities" and the NY Times called "richly conceived history."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't have been more surprised, September 13, 2006

By 

Babytoxie (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Justice Society, Vol. 1 (Justice Society of America) (Paperback)

If you're a fan of DC's JSA, you owe it to yourself to read THE JUSTICE SOCIETY VOLUME 1 trade paperback. Collecting ALL-STAR COMICS #58-67, plus the origin of the JSA from DC SPECIAL #29, this book presents the "modern" pre-Crisis adventures of the Earth-2 Justice Society, with the original members (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Wildcat, Batman, and Superman) growing old and gray, and new heroes (Star-Spangled Kid and Power Girl) joining the team. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much in terms of the writing, but Paul Levitz and Gerry Conway crafted some amazingly tight, fast-paced stories, and the narration is excellent. It's interesting to see how these heroes developed in "real-time" on Earth-2, with Clark Kent becoming editor of the Daily Star, and Bruce Wayne becoming police commissioner of Gotham City, and Dick Grayson now the US ambassador to a more politically-representative 1970s South Africa. These classic characters deal with threats to their personal lives, as well as threats from Brainwave, the Injustice Gang, Vandal Savage, Vulcan, and others.

As for the art... wow! This is a Wally Wood extravaganza. Actually, pencils are primarily provided by Ric Estrada and Keith Giffen, but Wood inks all of the All-Star Comics stories, and his style really comes through. It's amazingly consistent between the different pencilers and looks beautiful. As for the cover by Brian Bolland, well, what more needs to be said? I'm happy to see that DC has a second volume in the works that will collect the rest of the issues in the series. That, along with a reprint of INFINITY INCORPORATED (please, DC?), would be a heaping helping of Earth-2 goodness!

(One more thing: All-Star Comics #58 contains one of the most unintentionally humorous panels I have ever seen, as the Star-Spangled Kid attacks a criminal in his own inimitable fashion. "Chomp", indeed!)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best JSA Comic Collection, August 16, 2006

By 

toddly6666 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Justice Society, Vol. 1 (Justice Society of America) (Paperback)

The JUSTICE SOCIETY: VOLUME 1 is a masterpiece collection that can be enjoyed reading over and over. I'm more of a Marvel person than D.C. comics person, but this is one of the best collections of D.C. comics yet - the 1970s JSA is the best drawn and most entertaining of all the years JSA have existed.

By the way, this collection in VOLUME 1 has already been produced as a small D.C. digest-size book a long time ago. I had it when I was a kid in the 80s, so I assume that it was made in the 1970s or early 80s. Since I have not read this since I was a kid, I'm glad to have found this collection again, since I had no idea what exact issues VOLUME 1 were from.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget What The Editorial Review Says!, June 18, 2008

By 

A. Tucker (Clarksville, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Justice Society, Vol. 1 (Justice Society of America) (Paperback)

That's right, you can forget what the editorial review says about this collection. Contrary to that writer's opinions (and let's keep in mind they are just opinions) many comic book readers, especially those of the 70's when these stories were originally published, don't want to be empathetic with the characters and do want them to be super all of the time. That writer obsiously did not grow up in this time period when people read comics because they were fun, not because the characters had emotional depth because they were fighting drug addictions, sexual confusion, or childhood abuse issues while trying to be superheroes. Also, there were a lot of readers then, just as now, who got sick of DC's big name characters like Superman and Batman. They were both featutred in so many titles you couldn't swing a stick in a drug store (there were no comic shops back then) and not hit one of their books. Lots of readers loved titles like the revived All Star Comics that gave us less popular heroes. This book did feature the Golden Age Superman in several issues and Batman, now Police Commissioner Bruce Wayne. These stories were not great but for the most part they were a good read. They also offer important insight into the transition between the original Golden Age Justice Society of America and the team we have today that bears that name. Don't buy this collection if you are expecting stories written just like today's comics but if you want some solid tales from the 70's you will like these.