To Infinity and Beyond

From March 1984 comes today's selection, Infinity, Inc. #1, brought to you by the creative team of writer Roy Thomas and arts/co-designers Jerry Ordway and Mike Machlan.

It's Christmas Eve 1983 (I guess Ma Hunkle was still MIA back then, but couldn't someone have slapped a wreath up on the building?), on Earth 2 and Hawkman has called an emergency meeting of the Justice Society of America. Everyone's there except Superman and Sandman (Wesley Dodd's had recently suffered a stroke), but before Hawkman can explain why they are gathered they are interrupted by four upstart new heroes who burst in, clamouring for membership.

Holy bad parenting, Batman...all four of these "new" heroes have ties to family ties to members of the League. For college kids, I thought they were sort of unreasonable to their parents (sure, in high school, kids can be a little mean to their moms and dads, but by college, you hope this will be settled down...it was for me, anyway...), but I suppose that was largely colored by the bad attitude of the Silver Scarab, aka, Hector Hall, child of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. Between super-heroing and archaeology, the Hawks were apparently absent parents...and Hec pretty seriously resents his latchkey childhood.

Anyway, the Society ask the kids to wait in an adjacent room, while they have some discussion about whether or not to admit the younger generation. While they wait, the kids reflect on their origins.

The blonde with the the wierd red and gold costume and head-piece (is it a hat, a crown...some sort of modern tiara?!) is Lyta Trevor, daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, who's dating Hector and has chosen the name Fury for her superhero identity. She mentions her meeting with the Earth One Wonder Woman as one of the things that encouraged her to finally step up to the hero business (remember when they met in WW #300? No? You should read yesterday's review for the through-line).

One of the other two heroes is Nuklon, who's the godchild of golden age Atom, Al Pratt, who is over seven feet tall and endowed with great strength, as a result of his one-time villain grandfather's experiments against the All-Star Squadron back in World War II.

The fourth member is Norda, using the codename Northwing, who hails from Feithera, a mystical city which the Hawks discovered during their early hero careers, populated by a human-like race of bird people(I really can't explain it any better than that!). His father was an anthropologist whom Hawkman brought to Feithera to study the culture. Hector really has some attitude about Norda, since he resents the attention of the Hawks.

Anyway...the JSA open the doors and announce their decision in the negative (never mentioning that the vote was nearly a tie), which is when two more young heroes show up, showing off new abilities.

Despite their claim that Green Lantern is their dad, neither Jade nor Obsidian are welcomed into the Society...and the kids go off to sulk and scheme. The JSA's younger and most-recently-added members, Power Girl and Huntress go after the kids to talk to them...and to think some about the old-ster attitudes of their fellow JSAers.

Of course, the Brainwave bursts into JSA headquarters on the last page for a cliff-hanger.

This was an interesting first issue, although the kids have not yet come up with the idea for their own team here, nor even the name in the title. It's also strange that Brainwave Junior (the guy in red with the blue goggles) is featured on the cover while Fury and Northwing are not, since he doesn't appear in the series until the second issue, at least. By the time of their debut, we had also already seen this team, when they traveled into the past to meet the All-Stars of WW II.

On another note, this was one of like four experimental books at the time, featuring a new reproduction method which I believe was called The Baxter Process, or perhaps that was the kind of paper they were using. I know I shied away from these titles for a little while due to the higher cover price (can you imagine, that there was a time when we thought $1.25 was too much to pay for a comic book?)...but eventually, the new art reproduction won me over...