To celebrate the release of Justice League (Snyder/Whedon, 2017), DC Comics named November 18 “Justice League Day”. Setting aside all the drama surrounding that movie, this is a perfect excuse to spotlight DC’s top superhero team.
Story Title: “Balance of Power”
Published: June 1974
Writer: Len Wein
Artist: Dick Dillin
Quick Facts:
In the 1940s, All Star Comics birthed the first ever superhero team with the Justice Society of America (JSA), a concept editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox revamped in the late-1950s with the Justice League of America (JLA). Amongst the JLA’s most notorious threats are their supervillain counterparts, the Injustice Gang, who featured an equally eclectic roster of villains and have persisted in trying to destroy the JLA.
The Review:
The JLA’s first encounter with the “Injustice Gang of the World” occurs in “a grimy alleyway in one of our major cities” and finds Hal Jordan/Green Lantern cornering Abel Tarrent/The Tattooed Man (who’s said to sport a “brand-new costume” but isn’t really wearing anything except blue tights and a matching cape). With his back against the wall, the Tattooed Man desperately unleashes a flaming wheel from one of his seemingly magical tattoos, though Green Lantern simply dispels this with a giant fan conjured by his ring and then KOs the Tattooed Man with a giant green fist. However, Green Lantern is perplexed when the Tattooed Man suddenly disappears when he tries to apprehend him and, unable to find any trace of the crook, Hal flies off to meet with the JLA. As for the Tattooed Man, he wakes up on a high-tech space satellite and is greeted by the mysterious Justin Ballantine/Libra, a spirited masked man obsessed with balancing the karmic scales like his namesake and ruling the world in the name of all evil. When Libra reveals his plan to destroy the JLA, the Tattooed Man rightfully balks, all-too aware of the JLA’s might. However, Libra posits that the JLA have only been victorious in the past because their adversaries lacked cohesion and offers the Tattooed Man a spot on his newly formed Injustice Gang, comprised of Carl Sands/The Shadow Thief, David Clinton/Chronos, Doctor Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow, Doctor Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy, and Samuel Scuffer/Mirror Master. Despite being C-list villains, at best, the Tattooed Man is won over by Libra’s plot to share knowledge, experience, and strategy amongst them to defeat their enemies and happily joins.
Elsewhere, on their own satellite headquarters, the JLA (Arthur Curry/Aquaman, Barry Allen/The Flash, Bruce Wayne/Batman, Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman, Ralph Dibny/The Elongated Man, and Green Lantern) discuss how they each recently noticed their enemies disappearing after being defeated. While pondering this, the JLA learns that the Scarecrow, Mirror Master and Poison Ivy, and Chronos, Shadow Thief, and the Tattooed Man are attacking Hollywood, Singapore, and London. Although Green Lantern suggests dividing their efforts, the Elongated Man says they mix up their villains for a change of pace, drawing criticism from the Batman, who’s begrudgingly forced to acquiesce when the others back Ralph up. Thus, Aquaman and Green Lantern head to Singapore, where Poison Ivy has accelerated plant growth around the island using a “device” gifted to her by Libra while Mirror Master reflects sunlight into the sea to boil it. While Poison Ivy chastises Mirror Master for questioning Libra’s true motives, Green Lantern moves to take out Mirror Master’s massive mirror but is forced to improvise because the mirrors are yellow and his ring is powerless against anything yellow. Thus, Hal does the only logical thing and uses his ring to cool the air around the steam clouds caused by the mirrors, which naturally causes them to rain soot over the mirrors, turning them black and allowing Green Lantern to send the mirror into orbit. Naturally. Aquaman has a far easier time with Poison Ivy, easily breaking her vines and destroying Libra’s weapon, before Green Lantern melts Mirror Master’s “special laser mirror”. However, the villains activate hidden buttons that envelop the heroes in a flash of darkness that leaves Aquaman powerless and struggling to breathe and Green Lantern barely able to focus his willpower to knock out the villains. The effort is draining, though, and leaves the heroes easy pickings for Libra.
Over in Hollywood, Superman finds the city being ravaged by gigantic “make-believe monsters” conjured (and easily dispelled) by the Scarecrow. While you may think the Scarecrow is no match for the Man of Steel, Superman is crippled by fear when he’s ensnared by an octosaur, a cephalopod-like creature from Krypton! However, when Superman realises that the monster is powered by his fear, Superman overcomes this and the octosaur vanishes. Yet, when Superman rushes to nab the Scarecrow, he’s also doused in a black light, knocked for a loop, and blindsided by Libra. The Batman, the Elongated Man, and the Flash tackle London, finding Chronos has tampered with Big Ben to make its ringing deafening, the Tattooed Man has caused a panic with a skin-rash, and the Shadow Thief is bringing shadows to life. The Batman easily ends Chronos’s threat by breaking the clock’s hands, pinning Chronos to the wall, and landing an uppercut. The Elongated Man makes equally short work of the Tattooed Man by nimbly stretching himself past a net he conjures and headbutting the villain into submission. In comparison, the Flash struggles with the Shadow Thief, who makes himself intangible and beats Barry with solidified shadows. When the Flash tries to vibrate his atoms at super speed, the Shadow Thief blasts him with the black light (which also envelops Batman and the Elongated Man), allowing Libra to capture the remaining heroes. While celebrating in his human form, the Shadow Thief is caught off-guard by Libra, who knocks him out as well before trapping the JLA in specially designed test tubes aboard his satellite. Libra boasts that this is his “energy-trans-mortifier”, designed to steal “half of any universal energy form” (such as half of the Elongated Man’s stretching powers and half of the Batman’s “razor-sharp intellect”).
Libra reveals that he manipulated the Injustice Gang to capture the JLA to test his machine. Satisfied with the results, he plans to expand the machine’s power to transfer half of the energy contained in the entire milky way into his body, presumably to become a god-like entity. Though only at half power, the Flash desperately vibrates at super speed to try and break his cage, inspiring Superman to turn the red sun projector in his tube to aid his friend. The additional heat does the trick, freeing the Flash right as Libra’s about to pull the lever on his ridiculous machine. Green Lantern and Superman are also freed, though Libra absorbs enough of the galaxy’s energy to wield incredible power. This sees him grow to gigantic proportions, render the three heroes immobile, and absorb additional power until he becomes nigh incorporeal! Though initially elated by the awesome power, Libra quickly becomes overwhelmed with influx of knowledge and ideas, growing larger and less tangible by the panel until he’s ultimately undone by the sheer force of the energy. As Superman and the Flash comment upon Libra’s mad ambition, which ultimately saw him dissipate into nothingness, Green Lantern points out a serious problem as, while Libra may be gone, the JLA are still at half-strength and they have no way of restoring their stolen energy, powers, and intellect! This crisis didn’t last long, though, as the JLA were successfully restored to their full strength in the very next issue by battling Amazo, an android who wields their combined powers.
Final Thoughts:
I was expecting so much more from this story. I guess my first hint that this wouldn’t be as good as it could be was the line-up of the Injustice Gang of the World, which was pretty pathetic, all things considered. On paper, the idea of a bunch of the JLA’s villains banding together is great. Individually, they may have failed, but together they could be a formidable force as they could swap strategies and fill in any weak links between them. Sadly, we don’t get to see this as the Injustice Gang is criminally unpowered and lacking heavyweights like Lex Luthor and the Joker. You know the group’s off to a bad start when the Elongated Man, of all people, is making light of any potential threat by suggesting the JLA tackle different villains for a change, something the Batman scoffs at as it’s an illogical and inefficient decision. Yet, the JLA have next to no problem adapting to the different villains. Sure, Aquaman could’ve easily destroyed Mirror Master’s mirror array compared to Green Lantern, but even then Hal pulled a bullshit solution out of his ass to accommodate for the mirrors being yellow. Poison Ivy was a joke for Aquaman, who would’ve easily apprehended her if he hadn’t been left fighting for his life. Similarly, the Scarecrow was woefully out of his league pitting his fear-inducing skills against Superman. Even earning a small victory by ever-so-briefly scaring the Man of Steel meant nothing in the end, just as Chronos was outclassed by the Batman and the Tattooed Man was left lying by the Elongated Man. The only villain who even remotely came close to victory was the Shadow Thief, and even then the Flash just magicked up a way around the crook’s powers. Indeed, the only reason the JLA was subdued and captured was because of Libra’s mysterious “black light” ray…thing…which robbed them of their powers or disorientated them enough for the masked man to cold clock them and hook them up to his ridiculous machine.
There’s a reason Libra barely appeared following this story: he sucks. His costume is ridiculous, his gimmick is stupid, and his undoing is painfully cliché. Again, on paper, he has the right idea. The villains lack cohesion and require organisation and leadership to stand a chance against the JLA, but we don’t really see any of that. Ooh, he splits the Injustice Gang into teams (mostly). Very original. Libra provides them with gadgets and such, with the black light beam being the most effective, but it’s all a ruse. He abandons the villains once they’ve served their purpose and wants only to test his energy-trans-mortifier ahead of absorbing the galaxy’s energy. We know nothing about Libra, so we have no idea how he built this machine or what he’s capable of, and the machine is so stupid that it’s a genuine surprise that it works. And not in a good way as it makes the JLA look stupid when they’re trapped in this daft test tubes. Libra’s threat increases dramatically as he transitions into a god, but he’s undone almost immediately since he cannot withstand the influx of power and knowledge. While this sees him dissipate into pure energy, it does leave the JLA temporarily weakened, but none of this convinces me of Libra’s threat. If the Injustice Gang had been A-listers like Luthor, Joker, Gorilla Grodd, David Hyde/Black Manta, and Eobard Thawne/The Reverse-Flash, then I might’ve believed their threat. But there was never any question that the JLA would triumph, no real stakes, and Libra was just too boring and corny to be taken seriously. I liked seeing Batman get all pissy at the Elongated Man and that the JLA often used their brains as much as their powers to triumph, but this was a poor debut for their villainous counterparts that would happily be superseded by other, stronger, and far more threatening variants on the concept.
My Rating:
Could Be Better
Were you also disappointed by the first appearance of the Injustice Gang? Do you that the group was severely under-powered and outclassed? Were also unimpressed by Libra? Which incarnation of the JLA or the Injustice Gang is your favourite? How are you celebrating Justice League Day this year? Whatever your thoughts on the Injustice Gang, feel free to share them below, check out my other Justice League reviews, and go donate to my Ko-Fi to suggest other JLA stories for me to cover.
