Justice League of America #106
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeJustice League of America #106 is the pivotal issue in which Red Tornado — an android who had spent years oscillating between the Justice Society's Earth-Two and the larger DC multiverse — is formally voted into full JLA membership, cementing his status as the team's first android member and opening one of Bronze Age DC's most emotionally resonant ongoing subplots. The issue simultaneously introduces Kathy Sutton, who would go on to become Red Tornado's long-term romantic partner and eventual wife, anchoring the character's decades-long exploration of what it means for a synthetic being to pursue love, identity, and family. Writer Len Wein uses the 'Wolf in the Fold!' storyline to pivot the android away from pure action-hero mechanics and toward genuine interior life — taking a secret human identity as 'John Smith,' looking for a job, and grappling with whether his teammates truly trust him — a character framework that persisted for the next decade of JLA storytelling. As the pivotal link between Red Tornado's Earth-Two origins and his long tenure on Earth-One, this issue also clarifies one of DC's most pressing continuity questions of 1973: how the android survived his apparent death in issue #102 and crossed dimensional barriers to join a new team on a parallel world.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 16 grades ▾
This exact issue on ebay
Raw / ungraded ▾ $3.48–$37.99 7 listings
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Issue #106 falls squarely in the middle of Len Wein's celebrated run on Justice League of America (#100–114), a stretch the writer handled alongside penciler Dick Dillin, who provided the series with a remarkably consistent visual identity across 115 issues from 1968 until his death in 1980. The book was edited by Julius Schwartz, whose editorial records were later used to confirm the precise creative credits — script by Wein, pencils by Dick Dillin, inks by Dick Giordano, letters by Ben Oda, and a cover painted by Nick Cardy. The issue resolves a narrative thread Wein had deliberately set in motion at the climax of the landmark JLA #100–102 anniversary arc, in which Red Tornado seemingly died saving Earth-Two, and then reappeared mysteriously at the end of #105; issue #106 delivers the payoff, establishing both the android's new Earth-One status quo and the civilian life that would define him going forward.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: August 1973 (on-sale July 10, 1973); part of DC's Volume 1 Justice League of America series, issue #106.
- Story title: 'Wolf in the Fold!' — Red Tornado is formally voted into JLA membership after revealing that the explosion in JLA #102 did not destroy him but instead hurled him from Earth-Two to Earth-One, where he is now stranded.
- First appearance of Kathy Sutton, the employment counselor who befriends Red Tornado/John Smith and begins a romantic relationship with him — a supporting character who remained central to his story across multiple decades and titles.
- Red Tornado adopts the civilian secret identity 'John Smith' in this issue, a defining element of the character's ongoing status quo through the late Bronze Age and beyond.
- Creative team: script by Len Wein; pencils by Dick Dillin; inks by Dick Giordano; letters by Ben Oda; cover pencils and inks by Nick Cardy; edited by Julius Schwartz. Credits confirmed from Schwartz's editorial records.
- Villain of the issue is T.O. Morrow, Red Tornado's android creator, who had secretly posed as the blind hermit sculptor who gave the android a human face — and who has planted a kill-switch in Tornado's body tied to his JLA signal device.
- The story was reprinted in The Best of DC (DC digest series, 1979–), issue #31 (December 1982), indicating it was regarded as representative of the era within a few years of publication.
- Issue #106 is included in the DC Bronze Age Omnibus Vol. 1 (collecting JLA #77–113), as well as the later DC Finest: Justice League of America: Crisis on Earth-X collection (collecting #103–132), placing it within DC's own curatorial view of Wein and Dillin's run as a definitive Bronze Age era.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Batman #717 (1974), The Best of DC #31 (1982), Batman #6 (1984), Justice League of America Hereby Elects... #[nn] (2007), Showcase Presents: Justice League of America #5 (2011), Justice League of America: The Bronze Age Omnibus #1 (2017), Super Adventure Comic #67
Key issues in Justice League of America
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.