Monday Memories #34 - Justice League of America #162

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #162 - January 1979

The satellite era League is called to a top secret STAR Labs ("so secret even we don't know about it" as Superman says) where an attack by unknown persons has led to the theft of Compound One, a DNA altering substance. New member Zatanna attempts to determine who was involved by touching an empty canister of Compound One and is psychically assaulted and rendered unconscious. Elongated Man takes her back to the satellite where they meet up with Red Tornado and Zatanna recovers to reveal something:

The rest of the League track down the thief of Compound One (old Green Lantern villain the Shark) but Zatanna, Ralph and Reddy work together to find out who's been messing with her memories. They track down one of the last places she performed with her father and find his bags abandoned, along with their contents.

When they head to the Zatara family home, the house literally comes alive as it's possessed by a banshee and attempts to destroy them, leading to yet another instance of Red Tornado being crushed and broken (Ralph actually says "He's survived worse than this!") Once the house is dealt with, they discover an interdimensional portal with someone trapped inside, and Zatanna thinks she knows who it is. She dissolves the portal to find...

It's all good, nostalgic fun from the satellite era League (easily one of the best to my mind) with the team splitting up to tackle two separate threats, ridiculous comic book science and wonderful sound effects - there's a great BLAMMO when Superman punches the Shark!

This issue leads into the search for Zatanna's mother over the next few issues of JLoA where we discover Zatanna's real origin and meet her mother for the first time and isn't a bad read.

Ah, the halcyon days of the pre-Crisis DCU...