Justice League of America #87

Feb 1971 · DC · 0.15 USD

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“Batman -- King of the World”

★ 1st appearance — Blue Jay

About this Issue

Justice League of America #87 marks the first appearance of the Champions of Angor — Wandjina, Blue Jay, Silver Sorceress, and Jack B. Quick — four DC heroes explicitly designed as analogues of Marvel's Avengers (Thor, Yellowjacket/Ant-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver, respectively), making it one of comics' earliest and most deliberate inter-company winks. The issue is the DC half of a covert, unsanctioned 'stealth crossover' engineered simultaneously with Avengers #85–86, where Marvel's Roy Thomas introduced the heroic Squadron Supreme at precisely the same cover date — a behind-the-scenes stunt pulled off without either editorial team's blessing. The Champions proved durable enough to be revived in Keith Giffen's late-1980s Justice League International era, where their nuclear-apocalypse backstory gave those stories genuine moral weight, and the Angor concept has continued to evolve through DC's multiverse restructurings into the 21st century.

In "Batman — King of the World," the Justice League investigates a mysterious robot that hijacks Batman and Hawkman’s minds, leading to a chaotic clash with an unknown team of heroes on a distant world. Written by Mike Friedrich and brought to life with dynamic art by Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, this 1971 classic features a striking cover by Neal Adams, capturing the surreal scale of the alien conflict.

writer Mike Friedrich · artist Dick Dillin · inker Joe Giella · letterer Ray Holloway · cover Neal Adams

ComicBooks.com Value

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Raw (Fine) $17

CGC 9.8 · 8 in census $677

CGC 9.6 · 15 in census $223*

CGC 9.4 · 20 in census $148

CGC 9.2 · 12 in census $118

CGC 9.0 · 6 in census $74

CGC 8.5 · 4 in census $61*

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CGC 8.0 · 6 in census $52

CGC 7.5 · 5 in census $52

CGC 7.0 · 2 in census $41*

CGC 6.5 · 2 in census $38*

CGC 6.0 · 4 in census $36*

CGC 5.5 · 2 in census $28*

CGC 5.0 · 3 in census $27*

CGC 4.5 · 3 in census $24*

CGC 4.0 · 1 in census $23*

CGC 3.5 none in existence

CGC 3.0 none in existence

CGC 2.5 none in existence

CGC 2.0 none in existence

CGC 1.5 none in existence

CGC 1.0 none in existence

CGC 0.5 · 1 in census $20*

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History

Mike Friedrich, who had taken over as JLA writer with issue #86, orchestrated this issue as DC's reciprocal contribution to a scheme he had himself proposed at a fan gathering — convincing both Roy Thomas at Marvel and Denny O'Neil at DC to swap inter-company in-jokes in concurrent issues. By the time #87 arrived, O'Neil had left the book, leaving Friedrich to execute the DC side of the deal himself, uncredited at the interior opening pages in a break from the Julius Schwartz editorial house style. The interior art was handled by the title's established penciller-inker team of Dick Dillin and Joe Giella, while Neal Adams provided the cover — a tableau that dramatically depicted a deluded, power-mad Batman enthroned as 'King of the World.' Notably, neither Thomas nor Friedrich is said to have cleared the crossover stunt with their respective publishers before going to press.

Trivia · 8 facts

First appearance of the Champions of Angor (later called the Justifiers/Assemblers): Wandjina, Blue Jay (Jay Abrams), Silver Sorceress (Laura Neilsen), and Jack B. Quick (Harry Christos) — all debuting in this single issue.
The four Champions are deliberate analogues of Marvel Avengers: Wandjina mirrors Thor, Blue Jay mirrors Yellowjacket/Ant-Man, Silver Sorceress mirrors Scarlet Witch, and Jack B. Quick mirrors Quicksilver.
The issue forms the DC half of an unofficial, unsanctioned inter-company 'stealth crossover' with Marvel's Avengers #85–86 (both on newsstands simultaneously, cover date February 1971), with both creative teams aware of and coordinating the parallel debuts.
Written by Mike Friedrich (his second issue as regular JLA writer) with interior art by penciller Dick Dillin and inker Joe Giella; cover art by Neal Adams.
The story's title is 'Batman — King of the World'; the robot antagonist manipulates Batman into a state of power-mad paranoia and Hawkman into paralytic fear, while the JLA fakes its own defeat to neutralize the threat.
In the original 1971 story the Champions have no team name; they were retroactively labeled 'Assemblers' in Justice League Europe #19 (1990) and 'Justifiers' in Justice League Quarterly #3, with 'Justifiers' canonized in Who's Who #12 (September 1991).
The issue was reprinted/collected in Justice League of America: The Last Survivors of Earth!, a trade paperback spanning early Bronze Age JLA issues from 1969–1971.
Edited by Julius Schwartz, the longtime JLA editor who oversaw the series from its inception through the mid-1980s.