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Friday, January 22, 2021

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.

6 comments:

  1. Always like Dick Dillin's art on the Batman tales he illustrated, but I'm not too familiar with much else he did. 7p for a brand-new comic, eh, McS. Those were the days.

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  2. Dillin was a very underrated artist that always provided great artwork to his stories, I always loved his run on JLA. Apart from JLA he drew many issues of World's Finest comics , Blackhawks and some Green Lantern, Atom etc back up strips etc

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  3. Sorry meant to add yes 7p for a 48 page comic was amazing and 7p wasn't a lot of money back then either. Although JLA 94 had 2 golden age reprint stories they were both crackers featuring the original Starman and Sandman.

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    1. Sadly, with shrinking readership of comics, prices have shot up through the roof in terms of the price of them today. If publishers could only start appealing to a mass-market readership again, perhaps prices could come down. In fact, maybe the two things are connected. The best buy in comics at the moment is the True Believers line.

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  4. JLA 94 was a great issue, which I remember buying from Churchill's Newsagents in Southsea, which by my reckoning was Thursday Oct 28th, 1971 (the last Thursday in the month following six weeks after on-the-street date in the US). Did DCs take later to get through in Scotland? Also, we the 48-page (and later 52-page) DCs only 7p in your neck of the woods? We were paying 7 1/2p down south. For my money, that August 1971-Aug 72 period when DCs went to 48/52 pages was the high point of the bronze age. Great covers. Great artists. Great backup stories.

    I remember being thrilled with JLA 94 for the great Neal Adams art, and disappointed by there only being 5 pages of it. I'm afraid that Dick Dillin was not a fan favourite of mine. I think it stemmed from the fact that he continued to draw Batman in that same stocky, short-eared cowl manner he had always done, even when Adams had re-defined the look. Eventually Dillin picked up the new look.

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  5. Hi Baggsey. I thought comics in the 1970’s took around the same time to appear in Scotland as they did in the rest of the UK (maybe a bit sooner down South) but in general comics took around 3 and up to 6 months after the US release date to when they appeared in the shops here. You know it may well have been 7 1/2p Baggsey although I’m sure it says 7p on my copy (the stamp is pretty faded and I used a cover from the web here that was in much better condition than mine) .

    Yeah every time I saw any Neal Adams artwork back in the day I was so excited although like yourself, I was disappointed to find out he only drew 5 pages here especially after that stunning splash page.

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