Comic Book Memories: Justice League of America issue 106 & Weird War Tales issue 14

Anyone that reads this blog will know that I have treaded this road before but the older I get the more I seem to have to rely on certain triggers to remember events from my past. Of course I don’t need a back issue of Superman to remember those big lifechanging event no, it’s those little inconsequential events that seemed so unimportant at the time but now mean so much more to me that I crave. One such trigger event happened to me last month when I was driving to the town I used to live in around the early to mid-1970’s to help a family member move some (52!) heavy slabs . As it was early I thought I would stop off and get coffee and cakes for them so on seeing a coffee shop I parked outside the shop and as I got out of my car I was hit by an overwhelming sense of Déjà vu. As it turned out I had taken the exact same trip nearly 50 years ago with my dad in 1973. On that day in June 1973, my dad had driven me to school but for some reason we had arrived early and he suggested that we go for a cup of tea at this very same coffee shop. Of course the shop had changed a lot since then as it was now a very trendy upmarket coffee shop, back in 1973 it was a pretty basic (but nice) tea-room with a newsagents attached to it. Anyway, after my dad and myself had our tea I was pottering around the newsagent where I spied the above issue of JLA (along with Weird War issue 14) which my dad bought for me.

Back to 2022, and after I had completed my slab lifting I drove home and immediately headed to the loft to look out my 49 year old copy of JLA 106 (my copy of Weird War isn't the same one my dad bought me in 1973) and to try remember that day in more detail. It's amazing what memories an inanimate object can stir up as on opening the pages below I remember that this day in June 1973 was the last day of school before we broke up for the summer holidays, someone at my school nabbed my copy of Weird War, it was also my best pal Jim’s last day at this school as he had moved to a different town, and best of all I remembered the great chat and laugh I had with my dad at that tea room and seeing his big toothed smile. I still miss that big smile of his, but at least I can see it again in my mind’s eye when look at JLA 106.

This story always seemed to me to be DC's attempt to make the Red Tornado into their version of the Vision. And while it was a pretty decent comic for its time DC's attempts here were miles behind the stories that Marvel were telling in the Avengers. Still for all that I always enjoyed the JLA comics at this time, they had a charm and excitment of their own that has always appealed to me.

In the story itself, following the exploits in JLA 105 the Red Tornado is caught up in an explosion that hurled him from Earth-2 into Earth-1 where he is voted in as a Justice League member. Now possessing facial features that he believes were melded for him by a blind hermit ( when in fact it was all a ruse by his evil creator T. O. Morrow) the Red Tornado takes on the secret identity as John Smith, and goes looking for a job where he meets an employment counsellor Kathy Sutton and they soon become romantically involved. The Scarlet Witch and the Vision this is not.