Keep politics out of my comics! – Adventure Comics #466

The Defeat of the Justice Society

Adventure Comics #466

Cover Dated: November / December 1979
Released: 23rd August 1979

If there’s any need to how well Kara and Helena work well this is the last appearance of the JSA, apart from crossovers, they’re the only members of the modern JSA to appear in this issue. Even then it’s only a few pages to connect the flashback story of the 1950s JSA.

The issue starts with Kara bemusing that the full team only seems to come together for funerals and Helena comments how alien Power Girl is by pointing out how the JSA is basically a found family, though obviously, the actual term wasn’t in common use yet. She then challenges Kara to a race down the stair who accepts even though she expects to win with superspeed, she even runs down at half speed she’s so confident. But Helena is a Wayne and hence already has a plan, jumping down the stairway and allowing gravity to speed her to victory!

At the bottom of the stair, where for the two the entire flashback plays out, Kara ask about the team disbanding in the fifties. This was when DC weren’t printing supers, except for the big three, so here we get a pretty neat in-universe explanation for a real-world event.

We start with someone from Eliminations Inc offering to help assembled shadowy crime lords, in a smokey room as well, take down the JSA. Basically, this shadowy man offers them their own JSA satellite, but it’s a trap and the robots onboard the satellite attack the JSA. They get trapped in their own plastic cell, as usual, immune to their powers. But by using teamwork they manage to get themselves free and go to confront our mysterious guy at his own place. As it happens all the gang lords are also there and get captured, so far so regular but not the real story begins…

The JSA get subpoenaed to turn up at the skillfully named Combined Congressional Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC in all but name basically). it seems our mysterious gentleman is an agent of a foreign power and the committee wants to know his connection to the JSA. They obviously tell the truth, he was trying to kill them, which the committee dismisses as they couldn’t have technology greater than the US. They then ask the JSA to unmask themselves to the committee which they refuse to do and instead just teleport away. 

Then we flashback to Kara, still at the base of the stairs, and Helena telling the story. At this point, they even make sure to say that it wasn’t the influence of a supervillain, just how screwed up things at the time. We then get the classic coda with the alien Kara admitting that she doesn’t understand Earth and the oh so human Helena agreeing with her completely. 

The JSA has poked into Bronze Age theme’s before, but this is the most blatant that it ever gets. And really its got to be because they knew they were getting cancelled. Though with nothing set up about our mysterious guy it just comes out of nowhere about 2/3 rds into the story. Its also now a pretty iconic part of the JSA going forward and it really cements the team of Helena and Kara, which is where we’ll see Power Girl for the next few years when not in JSA team-ups. For me also the last time I get to use my collected issues of All Star Comic, for quite a while its just single issues.

Still, it’s not the end of the JSA and definitely not the end of Power Girl stories, we’re not even a quarter of the way through everything so far!