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The first superhero team from the Silver Age of comics, DC's Justice League has seen many iterations since its first appearance in 1960. As the original comic book continued and spin-off titles proliferated, talented writers, artists and editors adapted the team to appeal to changing audience tastes.
This collection of new essays examines more than five decades of Justice League comics and related titles. Each essay considers a storyline or era of the franchise in its historical and social contexts.
List of contents
Table of ContentsPreface
The Brave and Bold Beginning of the Silver Age Superteam
(John Darowski)
A League of Orphans and Single Parents: Making a Family
in an Era of Father Knows Best (Louie Dean Valencia-García)18
The Caged Bird Sings: The Justice League of America and
the Domestic Containment of Black Canary (Thomas C. Donaldson)
Social Justice and Silver Age Superheroes (W.C. Bamberger)
Relevance in Wonderland: The Mixed Success of Gardner Fox's
Message Comic Books (Gene Phillips)
A Crisis of Infinite Dearth: Winning Vietnam via the
Never-Ending War on Earth-X (Peter W. Lee)
The Benefits of Doubts: Steve Englehart's Radical Take
Tradition (Jason Sacks)
The Not-So-Golden Age: Gender, Race and Nostalgia
All-Star Squadron 1981-1987 (Ruth McClelland-Nugent)
Gritty Levity: The Giffen/DeMatteis Era of the Justice League (Charles Henebry)
"I'm Batman! Bwah ha ha!" Comedy in the Grim 'n' Gritty
Eighties (Brian Cogan)
Lacking Leadership: The Justice League Europe's Place
the DC Universe (Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and
Leonardo Acosta Lando)
Extreme Transitions: Trends and Trepidations from 1992 to 1996 (D.R. Hammontree)
What We've Got Here Is Failure to Communicate: Trust,
Technology and Fear in "The Tower of Babel" (Nicole Freim)
"Whether we fear we do too much-or not enough":
JLA/Avengers and the Cross-Universe Causes of Conflict (Joseph J. Darowski)
Madwomen: Sexism as Nostalgia, or Feminism in The New Frontier (Jennifer Swartz-Levine)
Absolute Secrets Kept Absolutely: Public Memory and
Forgetting in Identity Crisis (Daniel J. O'Rourke)
The Good, the Bad and the Reboot: Justice League in
the New (Cathy Leogrande)
About the Contributors
Index
About the author
Joseph J. Darowski teaches English at Brigham Young University and has published on comic book superheroes such as the X-Men, Wonder Woman, and Superman as well as on television series such as Chuck and Frasier.
