Favourite Comics: Justice League of America Issue 94

Justice League of America issue 94 was released in the US in November 1971 but as US comics used to take (at least) 6 months to arrive on our shores it wasn’t until around May 1972 that I first spotted this issue on my way home from school. My normal routine before heading home after school was to pop into some of the newsagents in the town just to see if there were any new US comics on sale as titles seemed to appear on the spinner racks out of the blue. On this day on entering the local RS McColl’s newsagents I spotted JLA 94 and upon seeing that the cover was by my all-time favourite artist Neal Adams, I quickly handed over my 7p and stuffed it into my school bag for later consumption as I ran to catch the bus home.

The splash page of this issue is a superb Neal Adams creation that requires that you spend time taking in the facial features of the League of Assassins leader before turning the page. Sadly Adams only provided 4 pages of art in this issue (and the cover) providing a framing sequence of sorts between the pages of the regular JLA artists Dick Dillin and Joe Giella.

The story by Mike Friedrich is a good solid tale where the Green Arrow is pitted against Merlyn an archer and a member of the League of Assassins who is tasked with assassinating Batman. Of course as can be seen from the cover Deadman makes an appearance (a character synonymous with Adams) who had learned of the planned attempt on Batman's life and had taken over Aquaman to warn him.

Favourite Comics: Green Lantern / Green Arrow issue 85

When Green Lantern / Green Arrow issue 85 hit the newsstands around August 1971 I wasn’t even aware that there was a Green Lantern comic being published, let alone that it was considered to be the hight of comic books as an art form. However, that all changed around mid-1972 when I was reading a 1971 issue of Superman and noticed the Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) awards page showcasing the talents of Neal Adam and Denny O'Neill. From that day forward my comic book ambition was to track down a copy of Green Lantern / Green Arrow.

As it turned out I never managed to track down a copy of the Adams /O’Neill Green Lantern / Green Arrow title until around mid-1977 when I was on a weekend break with my parents to Blackpool where I spied a copy of GL/GA issue 85 in one of the many comic book stalls that populated Blackpool at the time. Now it has to be said that in 1977 your average kid / teenager (in Scotland anyway) probably wasn’t that aware that there was a drug problem despite our own damaging relationship with alcohol. My knowledge of narcotic drugs at this time was restricted to media reports that only evil perverted criminals took them. GL/GA 85 certainly opened my albeit young eyes to why some people turned to drugs.

It's difficult to get the full effect of this storyline viewing it through todays eyes. The story itself avoids overpowering the reader with the total futility and desperation of drugs and its true effects on the body, finances, relationships and society but you can tell that O'Neil and Adams were really trying to portray this within the confines of the medium at the time. Issue 85 for me is the storyline that made the O’Neill / Adams run famous with stunning and at times controversial art. Even by today’s standards the cover of a teenage boy shooting up on heroin is both powerful and shocking.