Last Days of the Justice Society
Cover Date: July 1986
Released: 24th April 1985
In my copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths Marv Wolfman declare that he didn’t kill off the JSA in the Crisis, and he’s right this is the book that killed the team and boy what a crazy ride it is!
But as I’m apparently still not done with getting irked at Crisis fallout we get one doozy of a retcon. For we start with the JSA gathered at the graveside of both Helena and Dick Grayson. But I hear you say, metaphorical reader, Robin survived that disaster, didn’t he? Well according to this no! Even worse we don’t find out how he died during the crisis, just that between the last scene we saw him in and this funeral he somehow died. Also, the funeral mentions all the other JSAers that have been lost between their start and (then) current day. We also get the obligatory info dump about Infinity Inc and the sudden influx of new members.
The plot starts off simple enough, Hitler has the Spear of Destiny, a clever way that was used to explain why Supes didn’t sweep into Berlin and stop the war straight away. Well now Hitler is using the spear to trigger literal Ragnarok, the WW2 JSAers fly to Berlin to try and stop this but are all taken out one by one. Hawkman and Batman get to him but too late as the entire planet is engulfed in fire killing everyone on the planet. And we’re not even halfway through the comic!
Going back in time the current JSA find out that Hitler has basically started off Ragnorok and through magical shenanigans, the gods and heroes aren’t there to fight the battle. Of cause, the superheroes are heroes that choose to fight in the place of the lost Norse figures…
Look most of the rest of the comic is a massive fight against the forces of, for a better word, evil (or at least destructive) with the JSA broadly taking place in the fights against these foes. Apart from pointing out Power Girls highlights, mostly snapping the jaw of Fenrir, I’m not sure I can explain adequately explain a fight that really should be in widescreen with a heavy metal soundtrack!
One by one the enemies are defeated but it comes at the cost of the members of the JSA but when the battle is won, and Hitler is defeated, it all starts up again. It seems that the JSA need to keep fighting Ragnorak for all eternity of the Earth will once again be doomed. The older heroes, the issue pointing out their age repeatedly, seem happy with this sacrifice and kick Power Girl and Star Spangled-kid back to now.
We then get a little coda with Infinity Inc, as the fallout of all this is still far from over…
I’m not sure what to make with this comic, when it’s common to kill off an older character to make a younger one look “cool” (as has happened to the JSA), keeping the fighting for something is a nice change of pace. But the battle being eternal kind of blunts the heroic sacrifice a little, these heroes aren’t going to get a moment’s peace instead just constant fighting. That and the way comics were done back then meant we couldn’t have the massive widescreen art pieces this bonker plot really needs.