Robin Wildman

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This 2015 volume contains a sampling of stories from across seventy-five years of the Justice Society, ranging from the first original story of the team in All Star Comics vol. 1 #4 (Mar./Apr. 1941) up to its then most recent incarnation in Earth 2 #6 (Jan. 2013). Some of them are redundant with material I already had, but it was a good source for stories I would not have otherwise have read. I'll review those ones here, but also point out where you can find my comments on the other inclusions.

All Star Comics vol. 1 #4, 37, & 55
These are three classic JSA stories. All Star #4 wasn't their first adventure—but it was their first adventure as a team. The first three issues of All Star had the JSA regaling each other with tales of solo adventures; this one has them all working together, though though do the traditional thing of splitting up to handle their own aspects of the case, and the individual parts are even drawn by each character's usual artist. All three are Golden Age comics: more interesting for what they do than the crude way in which they do it. But I did enjoy the sprawling nature of All Star #4 in particular; it's a whopping sixty pages!

Justice League of America vol. 1 #21-22, 30, 47, & 82-83
Of course, you couldn't have a Justice Society history collection without JLA #21-22, the story that reintroduced them as denizens of Earth-2 during the Silver Age. But I don't really get what the other ones are doing here; I didn't really enjoy them when I originally read them in the various Crisis on Multiple Earths volumes, and I didn't enjoy them here. It would have been better to use some of the stories that tap into the idea that the JSA has its own history where characters can really grow and change, like JLA #171-72.

Adventure Comics vol. 1 #466
This is the Silver Age version of the JSA's disbanding, which I already reviewed as part of All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever, and which was also included in Justice Society of America: The Demise of Justice.

Justice League of America vol. 1 #193
This fourteen-page backup serves as a prelude to All-Star Squadron. It probably reads weirdly on its own, to be honest, but if you're going to read All-Star Squadron afterward (and I did), it provides excellent context for issue #1. If A-SS is ever collected, I imagine this will be included, but there's no sign of that thus far.

All-Star Squadron #67
The post-Crisis origin of the JSA, which I already reviewed as part of All-Star Squadron. I would have preferred to see an actual A-SS story, but this is fine.

Justice Society of America vol. 2 #10 / All Star Comics vol. 2 #2 / JSA #25 / Justice Society of America vol. 3 #10
A number of modern age revivals and/or flashbacks that I've already reviewed: the 1990s one, an installment of The Justice Society Returns!, an issue of JSA (included in JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two), and an issue of Geoff Johns's second Justice Society revival. For every single one of these series, I would have picked something else. I was glad to see the 1990s revival here, because it's often overlooked... but surely the first issue would make more sense than the last. The installment of The Justice Society Returns! included here doesn't even make sense in context, much less out of it; literally any other issue of the event would have been better. The JSA issue is part of a tedious crossover with Hawkman; there surely must have been a better option. And the last inclusion here is from another big event, Thy Kingdom Come; I would have picked Johns's last issue on the series, "Happy Birthday Stargirl!"

Earth 2 #6
I mean, I guess they had to include some issue of Earth 2 here, and someone must like it, but this just confirmed to me that everything I suspected about the series was true. This has character names from the JSA, but making them contemporary characters battling the apocalypse means they lose everything that makes the JSA interesting and enjoyable.

Overall, a pretty mixed bag, to be honest. Some necessary inclusions, but some pretty questionable ones, too.

The Justice Society and Earth-Two: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »… (more)

A well rounded collection of Batman stories from the character's 75-year history. I was pleasantly surprised by how many comics in this collection I had never read before. As a big Batman fan, I thought I had read most of the "classic" stories, so that was great for me.

This collection also makes for a good introduction to the character. There are some misses, but they are still interesting from a historical perspective -- seeing how the portrayal of the character has changed over the years.

I should note that I read this concurrently with the Joker 75-years collection and I think that improved the experience. There are no Joker stories in this Batman collection, so if I'd read it alone I might have felt like it was missing something.

Also, there's just something fun about holding a hefty book of comics!… (more)