September, 1971: Justice League of America #94

JLA #94 must have arrived in early September, because I remember reading it on a very sunny summer day. I read it out loud to my friend Kevin Quinn who lived down the street, while we played in a large cardboard box in his back yard. I remember being a bit scared and a bit emboldened to have the excuse to read the word "hell" out loud, because it was in the script to this issue.
This comic book confused the heck out of me. It was my first DC comic that wasn't self-contained, as this issue, as I was later to learn, was wrapping up loose ends from the Deadman backup in the cancelled Aquaman comic. This "Deadman" character impressed me a lot, probably in part because all of his appearances in this issue were drawn by Neal Adams, who was obviously a step above the less dazzling Dick Dillin, who drew all of the non-Deadman pages in the comic. But besides the art, the idea behind Deadman (a ghost who could possess living humans) and the audacity of his name (seriously, "Deadman"?! That's a real superhero?!) struck my fancy.
I was less impressed with Merlyn, an archer villain who debuted in this issue (although I remember assuming he had been around already; I wasn't accustomed to the idea that actual new characters could even be introduced to the comic books!).
In the back of this 48-pager were reprints of the first appearances of Starman and the Sandman, both from the 1940's. I know that I wasn't the only young reader who absolutely loved the Sandman's unconventional "costume", which consisted of a mismatched double-breasted business suit and hat with a gas mask. Later, I could never figure out why they would have ever put him in a boring yellow and purple union suit. While I loved the Sandman's look and gimmick (he put his enemies to sleep with a gas gun), the story wasn't impressive enough to stick with me, and this first appearance, contrary to the cover, wasn't really an "origin" story. The Starman story, though, was a geniune origin, the first one I got to read! "Origin" stories, which tell who the hero is and how he came to be, have always been important ones to comic book fans, maybe the most important, when routine adventures fail to live up to the initial promise of an exciting concept. Anyway, the Starman tale told me how Ted Knight invented his incredible "gravity rod".  Well, I guess the tale just told me that he invented the gravity rod, but that was good enough for me, that and seeing a hero debut in a newly-designed costume (although the maskless red-and-green outfit with the boring star as a chest emblem didn't exactly thrill me).