Sunday, January 20, 2008

Justice League of America #68 - Dec. 1968

sgPretty weird cover, courtesy Dick Dillin and Sid Greene!

The Story: "Neverwas...the Chaos-Maker!" by Denny O'Neil, Dick Dillin, and Sid Greene. A odd, shapeless, colorless creature, controlled only by instinct, called the Neverwas(introduced in an all-black and white opening page) transports itself into the heart of Midway City, causing a panic!

Luckily Hawkman is there to try and calm it down, but the creature panics and knocks the Winged Warrior out and then flees. Hawkman then decides to call in the JLA.

The JLA split up, and Superman soon finds it, where he discovers it has the ability to engulf people or objects and send them hurtling across time and space, which the Neverwas does to Superman! Aquaman then tries to fight it, where it retaliates by splitting into two Neverwases!

Finally the JLA regroup, fighting the Neverwases(Neverwasi?) to a standstill. Superman then instructs Green Lantern to collect them all using his power ring, sending them back into the dimension he came from, but with something else--a robot "toy" made from spare parts of buildings, which the Neverwas can use to entertain itself forever, which as the story ends it is happily doing.

Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Hawkman

Notable Moments: A very sweet story--the nightmarish-looking JLAers depicted on the cover is how the Neverwas saw them, which is why he was fighting them. Superman using his powers to build a toy for the Neverwas was a cute touch.

Aquaman plays a large role in the story, with the third act taking place mostly underwater.

For the only time, the cover logo is put in front of a big colored box, like the comics from the 30s and 40s. I wonder why?

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Damian said...

I remember this one. The whole misunderstood monster dealio and Hawkman getting knocked out.

I always assumed Ray didn't make an appearance because the Neverwas would have wanted him to be the toy in which to entertain oneself with forever.

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