The Justice League is one of the most important teams in the history of comics. They were the Justice Society for a new generation, a group made up of DC’s greatest heroes of the Silver Age. The popularity of the League was so great, that Marvel took notice and decided to bring back their own superheroes. Their stories revolutionized how multiverses were used in comics. The group became the home of the most popular heroes in DC Comics, having adventures that no one hero could handle on their own. Over the decades, we’ve gotten to see all kinds of Justice League teams, running the gamut from teams of A-listers to teams of lower level heroes.
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The Justice League’s ups and downs have been almost as interesting as the team’s exploits. It has become different things at different times, with some of the greatest creators of all time giving readers the best Justice League stories ever. Most fans of the book have their favorite runs, but there is one that doesn’t get enough credit from readers and critics alike, despite it being an amazing run: the Joe Kelly/Doug Mahnke run. It had some big shoes to fill and did much better job of filling than most people realize.
Kelly and Mahnke Kept Up the Legacy of Greatness They Inherited
Crisis on Infinite Earths changed the Justice League forever, much like it did to large portions of the DC Universe. The team was changed from a group that had the Earth’s greatest heroes to a team that had a few stalwarts like Batman, Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary with a group of younger heroes. Instead of having massive adventures battling the greatest villains ever, the team’s book basically became a superhero sitcom. DC kept this version of the team around for longer than they should have, and eventually they’d have to bring in the big guns to fix things.
Writer Grant Morrison was given the team, and produced the best Justice League stories of the ’90s. Morrison brought the classic ideas of the League back — the greatest heroes in battle against the greatest threats — and it paid dividends. Morrison’s run would end in the years 2000, and writer Mark Waid was given JLA. Waid’s run wasn’t as popular as the Morrison run, but it still was beloved, lasting a little over a year. Writer Joe Kelly, who had written X-Men in 1997-1998 and was killing it on Action Comics, was teamed with artist Doug Mahnke. They began their run with #61, and the two of them worked on the book together until issue #75, eventually teaming up again for JLA #100 and Justice League Elite.
Their time on the book was defined by the story “The Obsidian Age”, which took the Justice League back in time to deal with Atlantean shenanigans. This story introduced readers to Manitou Raven, an ancient Native America shaman that was a part of the League of Ancients, and his wife Dawn. It built on the old lore of Atlantis as a place of magic and intrigue, and was quite different from any Justice League story in years. It also showed how powerful Plastic Man really could be and had a rare Martian Manhunter focused story that expanded on the lore of the destruction of Mars.
After #76, Mahnke left the book, with Kelly staying on as writer, but would return for JLA #100 and then the twelve-issue series Justice League Elite. These 13 issues brought back the Kelly/Mahnke-created Elite, teaming them with the League to give readers an entirely new look at the Justice League. Justice League Elite is a forgotten gem, a book that took both teams to places they had never been before. It was also one of the first “black ops” major superhero teams in comics. It’s long been out of print, but if you can find these 12 issues, you should definitely get them. It combines the big stakes of the best Justice League stories with a different kind of superhero team, and shows why Kelly and Mahnke’s time with the League was so great: it was out of the ordinary.
Kelly and Mahnke Brought a Unique Flavor to the Justice League
Back when Kelly and Mahnke took over JLA, fans expected a certain kind of Justice League story. Morrison and Waid both were known for going really big, while the artists they worked with, mostly Howard Porter and Bryan Hitch, were known for their clean, shiny art styles. Kelly and Mahnke were completely different from those creators. Kelly wasn’t a Morrison/Waid-style DC genius, but a writer who could always find new aspects of old ideas. Meanwhile, Mahnke’s art had a edge to it, a certain ugly quality that captured the darker sides of being superhero. They were creators whose work was anything but ordinary, and that’s why they worked so well together.
I think one of the problems with JLA during the Morrison/Waid years was that it ran into the same problem that the Justice League had before the two of them took over; namely, that the stories followed the same kind of formula. Kelly and Mahnke tweaked that, taking the team to very different places than they had gone before. At the time, the book began an inevitable fall from grace, which had already begun after Waid took over, but when you go back and read their stories, you can see just how great they are together. They took JLA to new places and deserve their flowers as one of the best teams to work on the group.
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Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
