JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #78-79 Feb-Mar 1970

"I'm disgusted with you, Justice League!" yells a masked figure dressed like a cowboy straddling a heavy motorcycle, "How can you quit Earth at a time like this!" Behind him, Black Canary and Green Arrow are ascending within a huge transparent tube to what looks very much like the rotating space station from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Meanwhile Green Lantern and Hawkman await their turn at the entrance to the tube. Batman and Superman are striding towards it. 

What is being referred to as the "time like this" Just why does the Earth need these superheroes so much? In the extreme foreground of this dynamic Gil Kane cover we see outstretched hands, and the face of a person either dead or unconscious. In the background people are collapsing while factory chimneys spew out noxious plumes of acrid black smoke...

The story in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #78 which concludes in #79 deals with a topic which in the 21st century we are all too familiar with: pollution. It's troubling to see that as long ago as 1970 a mainstream comic was dealing with an issue which like so many others has never gone away. The cover of #79 is even more alarming. This time it's the JLA themselves who are collapsing and gasping from breath. A fearsome alien towers over them as a struggling Superman cries out unambiguously, "Stop the deadly pollution or no one on Earth will be left alive!"

The writer of course is Denny O'Neil and you can check out my recent blog entry on GREEN LANTERN #76 for my thoughts on the way O'Neil handles another equally modern concern-- poverty, and its related social injustices. As with that title the character most passionate about the main issue is seen to be Green Arrow. Previous issues of JLA have already revealed him to be the character most closely reflecting what I presume to be the writer's feelings. 

Oh, and he's also finding it hard to keep back his own feelings towards the newly widowed Black Canary.

The antagonists in this story are known as The Doomsters, an alien race from the Sirius system intent on spreading pollution throughout the galaxy. The source and extent of the danger is not apparent for some time-- it takes a character who reveals himself to be a former crime-fighter known as The Vigilante to fill the JLA in on what he knows. 

Working as a night watchman in a newly established factory he'd become concerned at the levels of pollution it was producing. He soon discovered the troubling truth of the factory, that its sole purpose was to produce poisonous waste. It's a bold and troubling idea, an exaggeration of what happens in the real world in order to make a serious point about the inevitable downside of a manufacturing industry dependent on processes that produce so much toxic waste.

While Superman and the others elect to investigate Sirius and the factory itself, Green Arrow chooses to follow a more conventional route and take his concerns to the city's authorities. For me part of the reason Green Arrow is the most interesting character in the JLA is that from my minimal reading so far he is the one most grounded in the real world (despite his somewhat ridiculous costume). The aptly named Jason Crass is revealed to be the worst kind of politician-- detached and prejudiced, and totally corrupt. 

Denny O'Neil reveals the politician's antipathy towards the younger generation earlier when he is sighted at a charity dinner condemning Green Arrow as a "bearded beatnik". In his meeting with GA he is seen to be as deceitful as today's climate change deniers, dismissing concerns as "a lot of bunk". There are clear hints here in the writer's mistrust of authority figures of what will follow in the coming months in the GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW storyline. And just like those political figures we endure today, Crass is the sort of disingenuous narcissist who belittles those with dissenting voices with playground-level insults-- in the flashback at the start of #79 he brands Arrow a "weepy loudmouth".

The clash with the 'tin-hearted politico' is an opportunity for O'Neil to move from the storyline's specific problem to the world's more general ones as an enraged Green Arrow voices the conservationist's concerns about polluted air and water. Again it's hardly subtle, but impassioned and intended to resonate with the readership of the day in the hope that they will grow up environmentally aware.

In GREEN LANTERN #76, Arrow admonishes his green-suited buddy for protesting that he is only doing his job by drawing a comparison with the Nazis. O'Neill has a dejected looking Arrow here saying something similar to the security guards removing him from Crass's office. Clearly it's a concern of the writer's, reflecting on the excuses given by purported agents of law and order when acting in defence of the indefensible. O'Neill draws the link with something which had only happened some 25 years previously at the time of this story's publication. Again, it is shocking that a further fifty years on and little seems to have changed in terms of the most powerful being the ones who receive the most protection and service by those 'only obeying orders'.

O'Neill softens the impact somewhat as the incident is replayed in #79. This time the guards voice their own dissatisfaction with Crass is stronger terms and Green Arrow avoids the comparison with war criminals. Did his editor feel O'Neil had overstepped the mark in his previous script? Or did the writer sense he had been rather harsh on the security guards wanting instead to focus on the impotence so many of us feel in the face of unashamed corruption? Either way Arrow sounds the required note of optimism that siding with the good is the right option.

Over the next few pages the JLA investigate the factory, part of which turns out to be a rocket ship. Artists Dick Dillin and Joe Giella keep the action moving swiftly, decorating the frames with streams of polluting vapour and smoke. 

Meanwhile, rather conveniently, Superman and Green Lantern reach a distant planet called Monsan where they learn from a dying inhabitant what the alien aggressors are up to. Hmmm... pretty lucky, eh, to have found the one guy prepared to help them moments before he gives up the ghost? Anyway, I'm prepared to forgive and take it in good faith that it's just storytelling shorthand to keep things moving. It's no more ridiculous than the average 70's episode of DOCTOR WHO and I'll tolerate little criticism of them. 

One powerfully simple frame shows the factories of that world spewing out deadly waste. 

The alien character relating the planet's history comments that at the same time its inhabitants "gloried in our industrial might", ignoring scientists' warnings. Again in a savagely prescient detail we learn that their protests were ignored by their government. It's a great panel, depicting that world's politicians showing a range of expressions-- angry, bored, smug, disapproving.

The next sickening frame shows the outcome for the planet's people. The comments on what happens to a planet when it is "murdered" strike an all too familiar chord.

Rather than stop the pollution, the planet's leader chose to biologically alter the population itself. It's a worrying thought, that those who lead us and can never admit their own mistakes would sooner inflict further damage and suffering on the rest of us than back down. 

The effect on Monsan is to turn the populace themselves into monsters with notions of empire-building across the galaxy. It's a grim outcome, and again it is impossible to ignore parallels with power-greedy leaders content only when they have spread their influence and poison far and wide.

When the threat is finally eradicated O'Neill adds a bittersweet coda. Green Arrow confesses his feelings to Black Canary who feels it's still soon following her husband's death to move on. But she adds a note of optimism for him, suggesting she may soon warm to his advances. Then looking back at the smoke still pouring from the city's factories Arrow is clearly still troubled by humanity's own attitudes to pollution, suggesting that while the alien threat might be gone the problem still remains. It's a beautiful pair of frames to close the story. There is no triumphalism at defeating the aliens and saving the Earth, instead a warning that the Earth remains in danger from ourselves. 

What a shame that the impact of such stories in 1970 was insufficient to positively influence that generation of young readers in large enough quantities that somewhere along the way me might have ended up with pollution being less of a threat all these years on. That too many are content "just obeying orders", serving and protecting those who profit most from our compliance.

Sermon over.

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Additional:

I omitted to include this moment showing the arrogant politician Crass at the moment when the insurmountable threat to humanity is made known to him. I don't think it needs any comment really, do you?

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