Customer Reviews

Justice Society, Vol. 1 (Justice Society of America)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
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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!)

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.

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.

I've always been a fan of the JLA and JSA.The 70's stories are the ones I like the best bacause the plots were written so you could read an entire storyline in 2-3 issues instead of today where it seems you have to wait for an entire storyto be published as graphic novels thanks dc for publishin these books

As most of us I read some of these stories like 30 years ago, but now I discovered some others I couldn't read then, and these ones are wonderfully written. You will not find the nonsense reach-as-large-a-market-as-you-can, which cuts any soul from today's graphic novels, but these stories have emotion and consistency, of course only inside the province of fantasy and imagination. The stories are really good, and you will love them, if you had the good luck to know those wonderful characters at least before the unfortunate event known as the crisis on infinite earths.

The Justice Society has always been a favorit of mine and when All-Star was revived in the 70's I relished every issue. Although I enjoy this collection, I wish DC would have just published them as part of the All-Star Archives line, if only so that the books would look uniform on my bookcase.

This is a great collection of the late 1970's series I read as a kid. The artwork and colors are exceptionally good, and they are repoduced flawlessly in this volume. The paper is a thick matte newsprint, like the originals.

The stories are typical vintage comics fare: entertaining, fun for your inner 12 year old. The writing is witty every now and then, terse, and wonderfully over-the-top. Star-Spangled Kid, Power Girl, Green Lantern, Flash, Hour Man, Wildcat, Dr Fate, are all here in their original 40's versions. The enemies are Injustice Society members, and others. My only complaint is that there's a little too much, "If this were happening in Earth-1...". The whole Earth-1/Earth-2 thing is a clunker IMO.

I wish DC would produce more low-cost color reprints like this and the "Chronicles" series. A+

Even though I've only been a Marvel true believe the past decade since I got into comics -- never having even heard of the the JSA except thought the Heroclix game figures recently -- I decided to give this book a try when I flipped through it and found the artwork/production values to be top notch.

I have many recent Marvel TPB collections of 70s/80s issues that never cleaned up the color printing limitations of the yesteryear and was thoroughly surprised by the excellent solid coloring of the panels in this book.

Superficial comments about the visual presentation aside, the stories as very good as well. Yes, they don't have the sophistication of the massive storylines of today, but I agree with the other reviewers here in disagreeing with the Amazon official editorial review -- these are still great stories on their own, even if they are a bit simplistic and sometimes heavily formulaic.

Overall a great collection and intro to the JSA (even though there isn't a "origins" of the team story here).