From: tyg@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Tom Galloway)
Subject: Re: McReviews: JLA #72
Organization: Interleaf
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 04:17:22 GMT

In article <1993Jan23.164600.1@fnalo.fnal.gov> morrow@fnalo.fnal.gov (Elmo the Stunt Elk) writes:
>	Squadron Supreme first appeared in Avengers 89, in the *late 60s*,
>and was deliberately the first JLA/Avengers crossover.  JLA 89 featured a
>thinly disguised version of the Avengers, who also made recent reappearances 
>in JLE. 

Well, not quite, or rather it's a bit incomplete.

While the Squadron Supreme first appeared in Avengers 85 (not 89; that one was
a set up for the Kree-Skrull War), the Squadron Sinister first appeared in
Avengers 70. The Sinister were based on Earth-Avengers and were bad guys
created by the Grandmaster to fight the Avengers during a game with Kang. This
was later retconned to the GM modelling the Sinisters after the Supremes (OK,
if I can resist a Diana Ross comment here, so can the rest of you). The
Sinister consisted of Hyperion, Nighthawk, Whizzer, and Dr. Spectrum.

In Avengers 85, several Avengers get tossed into the parallel world of the
Supremes and meet up with Lady Lark, Hawkeye (later Golden Arrow after an
alias Hawkeye took to convince Steve Rogers to go back into the hero biz as
Nomad after he quit being Captain America due to what was intended but not
stated to be Richard Nixon's suicide after Cap discovered a plot to take over
the country illegally, later Black Arrow), Tom Thumb, and Cap'n Hawk (later
Blue Eagle). In 86, they met the Supreme version of the Sinisters and made it
back to their own Earth.

Meanwhile, Nighthawk of the Sinisters appeared in an issue of Daredevil. He
later reformed and joined the Defenders, after another appearance of the
Sinisters. 

The Supremes next appeared in a multi-parter around Avengers #140-146 as pawns
of a cross-dimensional Serpent Crown plot, as the Crown in their dimension had
taken over President Nelson Rockefeller. At this point Amphibian was introed.

At some point, both the Sinister Hyperion and the Supreme Hyperion turned up
in an issue of Thor which revealed a lot about the Supreme Hyperion's secret
ID and life. This was because the issue was drawn by long time Superman artist
Wayne Boring.

The Supremes next appeared in a Defenders storyline in the early 100s as the
Overmind of their dimension had taken them over. I believe it was here that
Nuke and Arcanna were introed. This led into the Squadron Supreme mini-series.

The Sinisters were also used fairly often as villains.

Meanwhile, until an early issue of JLI, DC didn't use the Assemblers again.

>	I'm convinced, though I don't have hard proof, that the
>JLA/Avengers semi-xover was a result of a deal between then-team writers
>Roy Thomas and Mike Friedrich (? on that last name, also the issue numbers
>may be off a notch or two).  A similar event occured in the early 80s when
>Marv Wolfman and Mark Evanier semi-xovered the Titans and the DNAgents 
>in their respective books.

There was also a semi-xover between the Roy Thomas written Invaders and the
Gerry Conway written Freedom Fighters. This had the added twist of all but one
of the Invaders dopplegangers being in real life a comics fan modelled after
Thomas, Conway, or their friends. Once again, DC didn't reuse the Marvel
dopplegangers, while Marvel made extensive use of two of the DC dopplegangers.
One was retconned into being the Mighty Destroyer from 40s Timely comics,
while the Spirit of '76 was the first replacement Captain America when Steve
Rogers was missing and presumed dead.

"This had better be important! I'm smack in the middle of an especially
meldramatic monologue!"  --Magna Khan
tyg   tyg@hq.ileaf.com
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc