Super-Team Scorecard

The Brave and the Bold #28 February 1960 In a Nutshell Starro the Conqueror has come to Earth with a plan to detonate all of Earth’s nuclear weapons. The League splits up to thwart mutated duplicates Starro has created, then reassembles to battle the giant alien starfish together. With the help of a teenager named Snapper Carr, the League manage to deduce the conqueror’s weakness, and end his threat with a simple household chemical. From the outset, we should note that Justice League creator Gardner Fox is relying on formulas previously established for the Justice Society, a book he worked on nearly twenty years earlier. One of those formulas is the framing narrative. Many of the League’s missions follow the pattern of a menace being established, the team splitting up into smaller groups to confront specific threats around the globe, then coming back together again for a final confrontation.  Roll Call I am reluctantly giving Aquaman participation credit for this issue, though his...

I've been reading comics for over half a century at this point, and my favorite books have always been the Super-Teams. The Justice League, the Avengers, the Legion, the FF; I loved them all. Admittedly, many of the solo books had better developed characters and more interesting stories, but there's a strong appeal in getting a dozen costumed crime-busters for the price of one.  But even as a kid these team books often left me with a nagging, unanswered question. Do you really need all these heroes? When you've got Superman on your team, what are Green Arrow, Hawkman or the Elongated Man bringing to the table? Is everyone who shows up for a mission really making a contribution? This blog is my attempt to quantify this question. I'm going to be taking a look at classic super-team titles one issue and a time, and seeing which heroes are really pulling their weight. The questions I'm asking are simple: who is showing up when called, and who is actually making a differe...