Well.

It seems as if we've tickled a nerve or two, here.

The usual tsunami of e-mail responses have already begun to inundate the secretarial pool, here at the offices of the world-renowned CheeksCorp (our slogan: "There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Today's Comic Industry That a High Colonic Wouldn't Cure"); the usual fusillades of fragrant verbal bouquets; inquiries; page requests; proposals of marriage...

... and -- this time out -- some trace elements of (can this even be possible...?) disagreement, as well.

The appropriate number of highly-trained killer ninja assault teams have already been dispatched, even as we speak.

I'll simply say this on the matter, before pressing on:

"Ti sekat erom naht a ecin riap fo smag -- ylgnilaeppa dehtaehs ni tenhsif sgnikcots, ro esiwrehto -- ot ekam a elbaiv retcarahc. 'Sdrawkcab gniklat' si a diputs; sseltniop; dna gniyonna lairotcua noitatceffa. annataZ, erofereht -- ni ym elbmuh noinipo -- dluohs eb deppirts; nevahs; desuod ni ydoolb elbbik; dna def ot a kcap fo dezarc, gnivrats dna yllaciteneg detatum sffitsam. Dna I dluohs eb dewolla ot hctaw."

Your Mileage May Vary, of course.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #123 ("Where On Earth Am I?"; October, 1975; Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin, co-scripters; Dick Dillin, penciller; see cover reproduction, at top of page) is one of those rare comics possessed of the unique ability to polarize a room of otherwise complacent fans into two warring camps, near-instantaneously. (... and it doesn't even have Zatanna in it.)

Half of any given fannish assemblage will dote on the thing, oohing and cooing over all the self-referential little "in" gags and whatnot; while the other half, in turn, will roll their eyes; make sour faces; and mutter darkly, re: the storytelling perils of Fanboys-Turned-Pro self-indulgance.

Given that this site entry is, after all, entitled: "HALL OF JUSTICE... OR: HALL OF SHAME?"... it shouldn't take a Mycroft Holmes to figure out which team's jersey I'm wearing, this time out.

The shamelessly narcissistic wanking (read: "story") opens up with a scene of (then-) Justice League of America co-scribes Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin (that little "!" being yet another one of the latter's cutesy little auctorial "quirks," back in the day; God alone knows why, really) lolling about the office of agitated DC Comics editor Julius Scwartz. [See panel reproductions, below]

"B.O. Schwartz is what they call me," the harried editor huffs. "It stands for Be Original! When either of you has an original idea, it'll be time for me to retire!"

[SIDE NOTE: actually, if all of my friends and co-workers started referring to me as "B.O."... I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the letters stood for "Be Original," myself. I'm just sayin', really.]

Here, of course, is where the sainted (and deservedly so) Mr. Schwartz strayed, uncharacteristically, into the realm of cardinal error.

You see: he specifically emphasized the modifier "original."

He never said Word One about the damned thing actually having to be any bloody good.

Quicker'n you can scream "More Kool-Aid, Reverend Jim! For the love of God -- !", the tepid twosome have rifled through the shallow closets of their own auctorial invention and dredged out that old FLASH comics stand-by, "the Cosmic Treadmill": a device by means of which one might speedwalk from one "alternate Earth" to another.

"Holy Bazongas!" Maggin exclaims. (I imagine that line, alone, merits a reasonably severe ritual flogging. Maybe even two.) "You mean that dumb story was true --? That... thing really is a link to Earth's One and Two?!"

Well: if -- as the philosphers counsel us -- "Truth is Beauty; and Beauty, Truth"... then things get downright ugly in a great, honking hurry, as a hapless and panicky Bates (in a sequence which would not have seemed much misplaced within the storytelling framework of, say, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET SCOOBY-DOO) "runs away with himself" while standing upon said treadmill...

... and promptly vanishes.

Only Page Three, by this point... and, already: one simply senses that it will all end in suffering, and tears.

The luckless Bates materializes on Earth-Two -- homeworld of the fabled Justice Society of America -- and promptly bumbles his way into a set-to between E-2 heroes Johnny Thunder and Robin and a carload of petty gunsels.

"I know where I am," the startled Bates realizes, upon witnessing the aforementioned super-heroic tableau. "... and I also know there's something crummy happening to my mind! Something I can't control!" Something which the readers of this particularly crummy comic had already long since divined for themselves, I dare say.

Utilizing a sudden and unannounced ability to molecularly rearrange inanimate objects, Bates transforms the thugs' getaway car into a rocket ship, allowing them to make good their escape.

"Hey," the smirking Bates muses, in sudden epiphany. "I could get to like life on Earth-Two enough to stay! I'm a genuine, card-carrying super-villain!" (Makes sense to me; he co-wrote this mess, after all. I figure that, alone, oughtta be good for an audition with The Secret Society of Super-Villains, at the very least.)

Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch: fellow JLA scribe Maggin -- in an (ostesibly) plucky attempt to locate his vanished pal and pensman -- also activates the Cosmic Treadmill... only to end up, scant heartbeats later, on Earth-One (home of the more familiar Justice League). After a similarly forced "chance" encounter with a super-hero (Aquaman, in this instance), the glib and desperate scrivener fast-talks the frankly dubious Sea King into granting him an audience with the League assembled.

"You better talk fast, Bonzo!" resident team archer Green Arrow snarls. "If this is some half-baked story --!"

"No -- no, no!" Maggin stammers. "It's completely baked!" (Oh. Help. My sides.)

As the jittery young Boswell recounts his tale, the Emerald Archer growls: "If this dude were making any sense, he'd talk just like me!"

"I do talk like you!" Maggin replies. "I mean, you talk like me! I write your lines modeled after my own speech patterns!"

(This, of course, comes as nothing less than sheerest revelation to those of us who'd long believed that infinitely superior comics scribe Dennis O'Neil was the chiefest agent and Mover Prime behind the long-since established characterization of DC's "Oliver Queen." I imagine it came as no less a short, sharp shock to the good Mr. O'Neil, as well.)

(I believe it was DaVinci who is widely reported as having once confided, to a fellow artisan: "When I steal [from another artist]... I leave my knife." In much that same spirit of recompense, then: I think Elliot Maggin owes Dennis O'Neil a sixteen-piece starter silverware set.)

"If you agree to go home right now," the Batman murmurs; "I, for one, will consider leaving all your bones intact. If not -- "

... then (I suppose) we're simply stuck with this really rotten comic book, instead. (Oh, Batman... Batman: the one time we really needed you to be a grim, sadistic psychotic...)

During all of this, in the storytelling meantime: back on Earth-Two, the (now) spandex-clad Cary Bates is utilizing his newfound godlike abilities to attack the members of the Justice Society. (Along with the aforementioned Johnny Thunder and Robin: Dr. Mid-Nite; Hourman; Wildcat; and Wonder Woman.)

No. Absolutely not. You do not not not want to see Cary Bates in skintight spandex. Filthy, degenerate animals.

After handily trouncing this (it must be admitted) low-wattage assemblage, a smirking Bates surveys his fallen foemen and muses:

"Somebody once told me adventure writers are just closet felons, deep inside... must've been right."

Given that said utterance is coming from a man tarted up like an ambulatory suicide note from Liberace's rumpus room: I wouldn't bet the family farm that "felon" was really the word following "closet," in this particular instance.

Not that there's anything... you know... wrong with that. I'm just sayin', is all.

(No, dammit. You just can't, is all. You'd all be scarred for life, and then I'd have your parents to answer to, wouldn't I? Just take my bloody word for it, you lot.)

Another shifting of scenes, and we're back in the Justice League's satellite headquarters with Elliot's Mess. The heroes have finally tumbled onto the current inter-dimensional whereabouts of the vanished Bates, and have resolved (for whatever reasons) to track down and forcibly repatriate the big goober.

Rearrange the deck chairs yet again: and we're back on Earth-Two, witnessing a malefic meeting of those notorious Golden Age stinkers: The Injustice Society of the World. (Who -- as you'll notice, from the reproduction, above -- even have their own jaunty, colorful banners, with which they gaily bedeck their villainous headquarters. Betcha they've got an official Injustice Gang "Fight Song," as well. And a nice, "chatty" newsletter.)

Spin the storytelling wheel one more time (this story changes directions more often than Clinton's, a la Lewinsky), and we're back with the JLA (plus Maggin), as they touch down on E-2 terra firma. There's a quick (and fairly pointless) knock-down versus the aforementioned Injustice Gang -- who are attacking an aircraft carrier, for no particularly lucid or compelling reason -- which is decisively resolved in the JLA's favor.

Regarding their readily-vanquished opponents, an eerily calm Aquaman observes: "The Sportsmaster appears quite dead..."

"So is the Icicle," the Batman agrees. "Though I don't see how... there's something very odd about his head, though!" Which -- given that he's standing right next to Maggin, at the time --

... nah. Too easy.

A cursory examination of the Injustice Gangsters reveals them to be, in fact, the lifeless, gussied-up forms of the same half-dozen JSAers, mentioned earlier.

In other words: Aquaman, the Batman, Black Canary, Flash, Green Arrow and Hawkman have just bumped off six members of the Justice Society! (D'OH -- !!)

This segues us as painlessly as possible (given the circumstances, I mean) into the events of the following month's JUSTICE LEAGUE #124 ("Avenging Ghosts of the Justice Society!"; November, 1975; the exact same perpetrators as the last time out).

We are treated (you'll simply have to supply the Voice-Dripping-With-

Heavy-Irony thing yourselves, at this point; Unca Cheeks is too busy plunging 18" stainless steel knitting needles straight through both eyes, just at the moment) to a scene showing the spandexed Cary Bates knocking off an armored delivery car and emptying it of gold bullion(!).

"It's Cary Bates," an innocent passer-by shrills. "The arch-fiend who's been terrorizing the earth!"

No. They're mine. Get your own needles, dammit.

The villainous Bates has thrown in his loutish lot with the real, live costumed baddies of Earth-Two's "Injustice Gang... and: said anti-social assemblage (Bates and the Gangsters) reach the joint conclusion that the Justice Leaguers (who are still milling aimlessly about on E-2, feelin' all guilty and whatnot) are too dangerous a collective "loose end" to leave all a-dangle. Therefore: they settle upon a suitably nefarious EEEvil Master Plan, involving the abduction of --

... Elliot (S!) Maggin.

I am very much afraid, O, My Best Beloveds, that this will require the briefest of agonized glimpses at the hellish sight of Cary Bates, In Spandex.

I am so very, very sorry.

While Bates is capturing and securing the relentlessly motor-mouthed Maggin in (don't take my word for it; it's right there, to the left of this sentence) a magickal "word balloon," a vaporous, unseen presence observes, and ponders: "How much longer will I remain a silent witness to this chicanery?" (Hey... the line forms on the left, fellah.)

Baited thusly, the (still) guilt- stricken Leaguers are lured into final, fatal conflict with Bates and the Injustice Gang. And, yes: I know precisely how idiotic that sounds, thankyouverymuch.

Unbelievably (especially considering that they're battling against foemen of such decidedly lesser caliber as, say, the Sportsman and the Fiddler), the Leaguers begin toppling over like so many cheap plastic dominoes versus the villainous onslaught.

"Oh, no!" the horrified Maaggin moans, a helpless spectator to it all. "There's a reason [the JLA] isn't throwing punches in the right places! [They're] suffering guilt pangs from killing [the JSAers]!"

This is all too much crass, concentrated (not to mention calculated) imbecility for even God Almighty, Himself, to be decently expected to countenance...

... so: enter The Spectre.

("Vaporous, unseen presence"... remember?)

In an example of deus ex machina so brazen as to actually (almost) elicit involuntary gaspings of awe, the Ghostly Guardian asks God, basically, to Take It All Back, Dead Super Heroes-Wise.

"ASK NO LONGER, MY SON," He-In- Whose-Sight-This-Comic-Is-Offal thunderously proclaims. "... FOR YOUR REASONS ARE GOOD, AND YOUR HEART PURE... I SHALL CONSIDER..."

(Y'know... I don't claim for even so much as a nano-second to be, like, a Talmudic scholar, or nothin'...

(... but: isn't all of this just really, really... whaddyacallit... shaky, theologically-speaking? I mean: don't most people who pray for God to spare the life of a loved one have "good reasons" for doing so? "Yeah, yeah... so she was your stinkin' mother. So what, f'mysakes? You think I just go around raising everybody's mother from the freakin' dead? Huh? Huh -- ?!?")

(I'm just sayin', is all.)

(Please don't... y'know... kill me. Mister God. Sir.)

Allowing the last wheeze of poisonous vapors to escape this storytelling beachball, then: God resurrects the sextet of dead spandexed guys, and -- together; for the greater glory of the Almighty -- the JSAers and the JLAers all gang up on the seriously startled super-villains, two-

to-one.

Okay... I'll grant you: it doesn't sound all that holy and noble, phrased like that.

At the tail-end of our hellish little four-color hegira, the self-styled Cisco and Pancho of the comics-scripting game -- Maggin, and the now-fully-rehabilitated Bates (apparently, he was really acting all, y'know, stinky and suchlike because of a magic spell cast upon him by one of the vanquished Gangsters) -- are abra-kadabra'd back to their proper place in the time/space continuum.

(No, no. Other than The Really Bad Place. Silly, silly readers.)

"By now," Johnny Thunder's magickal "Thunderbolt" djinn smirks, "they've got a story to write for that Julie editor they mentioned!"

Yeah. Right. And if my grandmother had four wheels... she'd be a Dodge Rambler.

This concludes our merry little sojourn through the Justice League wing of our ever-expanding "Hall of Shame" museum...

... and (I'd like this noted for the record, if you please): not once did I even mention "the Blue Beetle"; "Lobo"; "Wally Tortellini"; or the wretched phrase "BWAH-ha-ha."

See? I can too Play Nice With Others.

The Justice League "Hall of Shame": PAGE ONE

The Justice League "Hall of Shame": PAGE TWO
The Justice League "Hall of Shame": PAGE THREE