Justice League of America #9
Justice League of America #9 holds a foundational place in DC history as the issue that retroactively explained how Earth's greatest heroes came together — a question left unanswered since the team's debut in The Brave and the Bold #28 nearly two years earlier. Using a clever anniversary framing device, writer Gardner Fox structured the story so each founding member narrates their own piece of the Appellaxian invasion, establishing an episodic, Rashomon-style origin that gave the JLA a coherent mythology for the first time. The Appellaxians themselves — alien warriors who arrived in meteorites and could transform Earth's inhabitants into creatures like themselves — became one of DC's most durable alien threat concepts, revisited in JLA #200, Secret Origins #32, JLA: Year One, and beyond. In narrative terms, the issue's core lesson — that the seven heroes could only prevail by working together — codified the team's reason for existence and has underpinned virtually every subsequent retelling of the League's founding.
In this classic 1962 tale from *Justice League of America* #9, the team celebrates its third anniversary by recounting how it all began—revealing the moment the world’s greatest heroes first joined forces. With Snapper Carr and Green Arrow as eager listeners, the story unfolds as the League shares the pivotal events that brought them together, setting the stage for their enduring legacy.
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The issue was written by Gardner Fox and pencilled by Mike Sekowsky, the same creative team responsible for the JLA's debut, with interior inks by Bernard Sachs and the cover inked by Murphy Anderson — all under the editorial direction of Julius Schwartz, whose records DC later provided to confirm credits. Because The Brave and the Bold #28 (1960) had launched the team in medias res — with no explanation of how the seven heroes first met — there was an implicit gap in the book's mythology that Fox and Schwartz eventually addressed once the series had established a readership through its own title (launched late 1960). The issue is dated February 1962 and framed as a third-anniversary celebration, a storytelling conceit that let Fox write the origin without disrupting the ongoing narrative continuity.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: February 1962 (on-sale February 10, 1962); published by DC Comics (National Periodical Publications); written by Gardner Fox, pencilled by Mike Sekowsky, interior inks by Bernard Sachs, cover inks by Murphy Anderson, edited by Julius Schwartz.
- Story title: 'The Origin of the Justice League!' — the first time the team's origin was ever told in full, structured as a flashback narrated during the JLA's in-story third anniversary.
- First appearance of the Appellaxians: alien warriors from the planet Appellax, each encased in a meteor, who used Earth as a battleground to determine the successor to their dead ruler — each had the power to transform nearby living creatures into beings resembling themselves.
- Founding members portrayed in the origin: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter — all seven heroes worked separately against the invaders before being forced to team up against the last surviving Appellaxian.
- The story is framed as a retelling to Snapper Carr and Green Arrow (Oliver Queen), both of whom are present at the anniversary gathering but were not part of the original Appellaxian battle.
- Reprinted multiple times: fully reprinted in 80-Page Giant #8, DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5, Justice League of America Archives Vol. 2, and Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 1; selected pages also reprinted (some redrawn) in Justice League of America #97 (March 1972).
- The Appellaxian origin was retconned post-Crisis in Secret Origins (Vol. 2) #32 (1988), which removed Batman and replaced Wonder Woman with Black Canary; it was expanded again in the 12-issue maxi-series JLA: Year One (1998) by Mark Waid, Brian Augustyn, and Barry Kitson.
- The Appellaxians returned as antagonists in Justice League of America #200 (1981), written by Gerry Conway — a post-hypnotic suggestion forces the seven original founders to reassemble the meteor fragments, setting up a conflict between the founding members and subsequent JLA recruits.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in 80 Page Giant Magazine #8 (1965), Justice League of America #97 (1972), DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (1980), DC Archiv Edition #4 (1993), Justice League of America Archives #2 (1993), More Secret Origins Replica Edition #1 (1999), Showcase Presents: Justice League of America #1 (2006), DC Comics Anthologie #[nn] (2012), DC Universe Secret Origins #[nn] (2012), DC Universe: Secret Origins #[nn] (2013), The Justice League of America Omnibus #1 (2014), DC Comics Graphic Novel Collection #10 (2015), Justice League of America: The Silver Age #2 (2017), Justice League of America: The Silver Age Omnibus #1 (2020)
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