According to Mike Evanier over at his wonderful POV blog, the great Mike Friedrich is being recognized this summer at ComicCon with a Bill Finger Award. These are given to writers of comics of distinction and for this fanboy it's a pleasure to see Friedrich get get his due. I was the perfect age when I tumbled to his wacky spin on the Justice League of America, taking the helm of the book from Denny O'Neil who had done so after Gardner Fox. So as only the third regular writer of such a high-profile book it was incumbent on Friedrich not to shake the Earth too much, but he did anyway. The stories always drawn capably by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella (a team I underrated at the time) and often graced with dynamic covers by Neal Adams or Murphy Anderson, are peculiar and personal not one expects in a high-octane team book. The book touched on the issues of the time such as world hunger, pollution, and more. When it came time for the JLA and the JSA to team up they did so to help an alien boy and his dog, and there was Solomon Grundy as well. The book under Friedrich was not predictable and reading it still all these years later still feels personal, whimsical, and idealistic.
Here are the covers from Friedirich's run.
Looking at those covers again, I'm struck at how on almost all of them the League is downtrodden and shown in a moment of defeat. They recover of course, but it's an interesting way to draw in readers.
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I agree, Rip, Mike's run was wacky and fun ( didn't he have a character in there by the suspicious name of Ellis Harlanson?), but then in my opinion he should get an award just for Star*Reach, a comic that was way ahead of its time in all sorts of ways.
ReplyDelete"Harlequin Ellis" was the name of the Harlan Ellison wannabe who sought to date the vivacious Black Canary. Star*Reach was one of the most important publications in the history of comics, a bridge between the underground and the mainstream and a precursor of the direct sales market. I wish I'd been smarter to get more issues at the time.
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I loved the JLA around this time and was for me a must buy comic. Issue 94 is one of my all time favourite comics with a classic Neal Adams splash page and his work on a few more pages as well, brilliant stuff.
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