Covering The Allies with the Justice League of America

As mentioned in the Weekly Reading for issue 48, Veitch and Moore had developed a shorthand for their flashbacks by showing the covers of the issues for the stories they were quickly recalling. As these are the closest homages they've done to the DC Universe yet, I though it'd be fun to do a post where we see Veitch's Allies covers and the Justice League of America covers that inspired them. I only caught two of them, so I decided to use the explanations come from the annotations page, which is worth checking out.

The Allies’ first foe was Florax the Dominator, an intelligent orchid from interstellar space who could enslave humans with her scent. Florax is reminiscent of Starro the Conqueror, a giant, intelligent starfish, who was the first enemy faced by the JLA. Starro could produce miniature versions of himself that allowed Starro to control a victim’s mind when the starfish was attached to their face.

This “cover illustration” is closely modeled on the cover of Brave and the Bold #28 (the first appearance of the JLA and of Starro) by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson, down to the lettering style and the Allies logo, which is highly reminiscent of the original Justice League of America logo.

The “Funny Book Federation Decal of Decency” is based on the “Approved by the Comics Code Authority” seal carried by most mainstream comics from 1954 to the late eighties (notably removed for some Alan Moore stories in Swamp Thing).

The “cover illustration” of Allies #16, “Servants of the Soul-Slaver,” is reminiscent of the cover of Justice League of America #3. That cover, drawn by Murphy Anderson, showed the JLA as unwilling oarsmen of a boat commanded by the issue’s villain, the alien tyrant Kanjar Ro of the planet Dhor.

Hulver Ramik the Slaver of Souls, bears some resemblance to the Justice League of America villain Despero, a red-skinned, three-eyed mutant from the world of Kalanor who first appeared in Justice League of America #1 (October-November 1960).

Supreme refers to the “time door” which opened between the forties and sixties allowing the Allies to meet themselves as the Allied Supermen of America. Similarly, starting in the early sixties, the Justice League of America frequently met their counterparts in the Justice Society of America, although their meetings were accomplished by traveling to an alternate dimension, not through time.

In 1961, in The Flash #123, it was established that the heroes of the forties, including the original Flash (Jay Garrick), lived on a parallel world called Earth-Two, while the modern heroes, including Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, lived on Earth-One. The two worlds occupied the same space but vibrated at different frequencies so that they never intersected. Barry Allen, who could control his own internal vibrations, discovered that he could travel to Earth-Two by tuning in its particular vibrational frequency. There, he met his forties counterpart, who in Barry’s world had only existed as a comic book character (it was further suggested that writer Gardner Fox, who had penned most of the Flash’s Golden Age adventures, wrote the stories based on psychic impressions that he received from Earth-Two in his dreams). Later, in The Flash #137, Barry met Jay Garrick’s comrades of the Justice Society of America, who came out of retirement to help the two Flashes defeat the villain Vandal Savage.

Not long afterward, the Justice Society arranged its first meeting with Earth-One’s Justice League of America (in JLA #21-#22), teaming up to fight a group of super-villains from both worlds. This afforded the modern heroes the opportunity to meet their Golden Age counterparts; for instance, the original Hawkman (Carter Hall, the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince) met the modern Hawkman (Katar Hol, a policeman from the planet Thanagar). The JLA and JSA heroes were separate individuals and not different temporal versions of each other; however, several of the JLA members, whose adventures had been published continuously from the forties through the sixties, had counterparts on both Earths. Therefore, there were older and younger versions of Wonder Woman, Robin (whose Earth-Two counterpart was now an adult), Superman, Green Arrow, and Batman.

The “cover” of Allies #21 (“The Cross-Time Catastrophe”) is modeled closely on the cover of Justice League of America #21, which was drawn by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson. That issue showed the first teaming of the Justice League with Earth-Two’s Justice Society of America, in a story called “Crisis on Earth-One!” Its cover featured a banner proclaiming, “Back After 12 Years! The Legendary Super-Stars of the Justice Society of America!”

The Allies’ first meeting with their forties selves is said to have been brought about by the forties villain Doctor Clock and Glory’s sixties enemy the Time Tinker. In the forties, the Justice Society of America had a time-traveling foe named Per Degaton, first encountered in 1947 (All-Star Comics #35), who made four attempts to conquer the world by altering the past. In the most convoluted of those efforts, he time-traveled from 1947 to the parallel world of Earth-Prime in 1963, and then to Earth-2 in 1942, where he attempted to conquer the world with nuclear weapons stolen from Earth-Prime. Degaton ultimately was thwarted by the combined efforts of the Justice League, the modern Justice Society, and the wartime All-Star Squadron, which included younger versions of some of the Justice Society members (Justice League of America #207-#209 and All-Star Squadron #14-#15). Wonder Woman, of whom Glory is a counterpart, had a time-traveling enemy called the Time Master, who first appeared in Wonder Woman #101 (1958).

Supreme remarks that “we met ourselves every year.” Similarly, the meetings between the JLA and JSA became an annual event for more than two decades.

The former Allies recall the Fisherman: a playboy and “angling champion” who became a crime fighter along with his partner Skipper. His real name was Bryce Bristow. The Fisherman is analogous to Green Arrow, a crime-fighting archer who debuted in More Fun Comics #73 in 1942. Green Arrow was playboy Oliver Queen, who became an expert archer after being stranded on a remote island where he built a bow for hunting. Green Arrow’s sidekick was Speedy, secretly Queen’s ward Roy Harper. It should also be noted that DC has a villain called the Fisherman, who also used a fishing pole as a weapon; he first appeared in Aquaman #21 (1965).

The Fisherman joined the Allies after helping them to defeat the Moth-Empress, a “dominatrix” from another world who made the Allies her mind-slaves. Green Arrow joined the Justice League of America in Justice League of America #4 (1961); the cover for Allies #28 (“Minions of the Moth-Empress) is loosely based on the cover of that issue. The Moth-Empress is based on the JLA villain Zazzala, the Queen Bee, an alien monarch from the planet Qorll who could control the minds of others with her “radiation rod.” She first encountered the JLA in Justice League of America (1963).

The cover of Allies #24 is based loosely on that of Justice League of America #9 (1962), “The Origin of the Justice League,” which showed the JLA transformed into trees by an alien meteorite.

The villains the Patriot mentions -- the Basilisk, Ecto-Man, and the Wizard of Blizzard -- each of whom caused bizarre transformations of the JLA, are reminiscent of the villains of JLA #9, aliens from the planet Appellax. The Appellaxians, who took the form of creatures of stone, glass, mercury, gold, fire, wood, and crystal, attempted to turn humans into stone, glass, etc., before they were defeated by the heroes, who decided to join together as the Justice League.

The cover of Allies #37, “The Deadly Daubs of Prismalo the Painter,” is loosely based on that of Justice League of America #1 (1960), which shows the villain Despero playing chess with the Flash. The villain snickers, “I’ve got this game rigged so that every time the Flash makes a move, a member of the Justice League disappears from the face of the Earth!”