A JLA question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Who was the first black member of the Justice League and in which year was the issue when they joined the JLA published?

Bloodwynd was '92 but also JLI and also not Bloodwynd to start with so I don't know if he counts. If not him, Steel, maybe? Mid-to-late 1990s?

Comments

[bcholmes]

Vixen, in Justice League Detroit would be my guess. October '84, according to the Intertubes.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Yeah, I totally forgot the Detroit League even existed.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

They tried to get Black Lightning back in the late 1970's or early 1980's, but he refused the invite. Took him a couple of decades to change his mind.

Vixen, I suspect?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Right, Vixen! I knew I was forgetting someone. Detroit JLA not my forte. So, mid-1980s?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

1984, so yeah.

[brett-dunbar.livejournal.com]

Vixen was in the Detroit era JLA from Justice League of America Annual 2 in 1984. She seems to have been the first.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

There was a story in 1974 in which John Stewart fills in for a temporarily-incapacitated Hal Jordan, although that was just a one-off and he wasn't a regular member.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

It counts.

You's good. The earliest I recalled was from the 80s, where Amazing Man stepped in as an auxiliary.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Well, I happened to read that story when I was a kid.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Still counts.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Can't be; Amazing Man is Earth-2, so is JSA, not JLA.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

It was on Earth-1; I have no explanation.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

ComicBookDB.com (not definitive, but usually has a commendably low error rate) shows Amazing Man first appearing in All-Star Squadron in 1983, and appearing only in that book and its successor Young All-Stars until 1989. [There might have been a JLA crossover during that time, of course. Probably on the early end, as Crisis on Infinite Earths put the kibosh on those for a while in 1984.]

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Bit of a tangent:

There are levels of comics expertise.

Anyone fannish qualifies as a comics geek, who can point out that the original Golden Age Superman started with abilities identical to those of Philip Wylie's Gladiator.

A manga geek, however, can tell you that Jerry Siegel's origin for the character is much closer to the original version in Hokusai's Sky Orphan Samurai Bastard.

(I told this to my partner Valerie, who goggled at me and said "Hokusai?" Her degree is in Art. You have to pick the right audience for some jokes. :D )

All that being said, it occurs to me I may have been spinning my wheels here; the Amazing Man story could have been JLI, so it don't count. Anyway John Stewart predates that by at least a decade, which in comics is like dog years.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Then, John would be the first reservist. Vixen the first full-timer.

[chuk-g.livejournal.com]

Was that the Christmas story, with the Key? I liked that one.

[davidgoldfarb.livejournal.com]

Yep.