The Brave and the Bold #28

History

Editor Julius Schwartz, who had shepherded the Silver Age revival of the Flash and Green Lantern, commissioned writer Gardner Fox — the original architect of the Justice Society of America in the 1940s — and penciller Mike Sekowsky to create a modern successor team. Schwartz deliberately rechristened the group the 'Justice League of America' rather than reviving the 'Justice Society' name, reasoning that 'League' would resonate better with young readers who associated the word with sports organizations. DC, still cautious about launching new titles, road-tested the concept in The Brave and the Bold, which had been repurposed as a try-out anthology starting with issue #25; the JLA's debut in issue #28, published on December 29, 1959 with a cover date of February–March 1960, proved so successful that the team earned its own ongoing title within eight months. Fox and Sekowsky went on to collaborate on the first 65 Justice League adventures together.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of the Justice League of America, comprising Aquaman, Wonder Woman, The Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), and Martian Manhunter (J'Onn J'Onzz) as the active combatants, with Superman and Batman appearing only in cameo due to prior commitments within the story.
• First appearance of Starro the Conqueror, an alien telepathic starfish who transforms three ordinary Earth starfish into giant deputies and attempts to use nuclear energy and mass mind-control to subjugate humanity — DC's first Silver Age alien-kaiju-scale villain.
• First appearance of Lucas 'Snapper' Carr (full name later established as Lucas Carr), a teenage civilian from Happy Harbor, Rhode Island, who is inadvertently immune to Starro's mental control because of lime (calcium oxide) on his lawn-work clothes; the JLA reward him with honorary membership and a signal device, making him the team's mascot for the next nine years.
• First cover appearances of Aquaman and Martian Manhunter anywhere in DC Comics, despite both characters having ongoing backup features in other titles at the time.
• Written by Gardner Fox and pencilled by Mike Sekowsky, with inking split across multiple hands — Bernard Sachs and Joe Giella on interior chapters, Murphy Anderson on key segments — and a cover by Sekowsky and Anderson; letters by Gaspar Saladino.
• The issue was physically published on December 29, 1959, carrying a cover date of February–March 1960; the story is titled 'Justice League of America: Starro the Conqueror!' and is structured in five chapters, with each chapter following a different hero or sub-group facing one of Starro's deputies before the full-team finale.
• The story notably presents the JLA as already fully formed — with established headquarters, signal devices, and mutual familiarity — rather than depicting any origin or formation, a deliberate narrative choice that generated decades of continuity work retconning the team's founding (most notably in the 1998 maxi-series JLA: Year One).
• The issue has been reprinted extensively, including in Justice League of America #39 (1965), DC Silver Age Classics: The Brave and the Bold #28 (1992), Millennium Edition: The Brave and the Bold #28 (2000), Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 1 (2005), and Justice League of America: A Celebration of 60 Years (2020), among many other collected editions.

Cast · 23 characters

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