Who are the Justice League
The Justice League is DC’s flagship team: the company’s biggest names in one book. It debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28, cover-dated March 1960, by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky.
It was a deliberate redo. Twenty years earlier Fox had written the Justice Society, DC’s first team; the League was his Silver Age relaunch of the same idea, now starring the rebooted Flash and Green Lantern alongside Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Like most flagship teams, its lineup has not held still, so the eras below track the roster.
The founders (1960)
Roster: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter.
The “Big Seven” launched in a try-out issue and graduated to their own title, Justice League of America #1, seven months later. DC kept Superman and Batman in the background early on, both because their own editors guarded them and because Fox wanted the newer Silver Age heroes to carry the book.
The satellite era (1970s)
Roster: the core plus a wide bench, including Green Arrow, the Atom, Hawkman, Black Canary, and Elongated Man.
Through the 1970s the League ran from an orbiting satellite and expanded into a large rotating membership. This is the era that fixed its image as DC’s whole roster on call.
Justice League International (1987)
Roster: a smaller reformed team, with Batman, the Martian Manhunter, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, and Fire and Ice.
Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire relaunched the book as a comedy: a UN-chartered team of second-stringers who bickered as much as they fought. It is the most distinctive run in the League’s history, and the reason a chunk of readers think of Booster Gold and Blue Beetle as core Leaguers.
The Morrison relaunch (1997)
Roster: the Big Seven, restored.
Grant Morrison’s JLA put the founders back together and wrote them as modern myth, near-gods on a moon base facing threats at their own scale. It reset the League to its iconic lineup and ran as DC’s top team book into the 2000s, the version the 2011 New 52 relaunch and later screen adaptations drew from.
Notable issues
- The Brave and the Bold #28 (1960): first appearance of the Justice League.
- Justice League of America #1 (1960): the team’s first ongoing title.
- Justice League #1 (1987): the Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire relaunch, Justice League International.
- JLA #1 (1997): Grant Morrison’s Big Seven relaunch.
For collectors
The League’s key is The Brave and the Bold #28 (1960), the first appearance and one of the more valuable Silver Age DC books. Justice League of America #1 (1960) is the secondary key as the first ongoing issue. The 1987 Justice League #1 is an accessible modern key tied to the fan-favorite International run.
