Beyond the whole "secret identity" thing which some members shared while others didn't, what did the Silver Age JLA heroes keep to themselves?
Superman: besides Batman who knew all this stuff, the Man of Steel didn't tell the team about his cousin and secret weapon Supergirl. Another Kryptonian on Earth would have been of great interest I would think. For that matter, what about the Superman Emergancy Squad of Kandor? Wouldn't Green Arrow or Aquaman love to have a tiny Super-guy to help them out of a jam? Was the existence of Kandor general knowledge?
What about the Phantom Zone? Why wouldn't Superman figure out some way to put the Joker, Grodd, Sinestro, Black Manta, etc, y'know the dangerous guys who keep escaping into the Zone legally?
Batman: Believe it or not, the SA Caped Crusader had little to hide for someone who guarded his secrets closely. I'll go with time travel via Professor Nichol's time hypnosis/ray and Brane Taylor--the Batman of the Future.
Wonder Woman: Obviously the location of Paradise Island. Would you tell Hal Jordan and Ollie Queen where to find a land of nubile, forever young women? Also there's that little thing about the existence of the Greek Gods!!
Aquaman: You think that it would be Atlantis but Superman and Wonder Woman already know about that! However there were Atlantean state secrets that he never revealed, perhaps some he even implemented.
The Flash: Gorilla City was a secret that only he knew about for a long time. I wonder if he told the JLA about Earth-Two right away? "I had this weird experience and GL, Hawkman, Atom and WW, you were all there but it wasn't really you!"
More to follow!
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Continued:
Green Lantern: Did he ever mention that he was an agent of the Guardians? That there were 3,599 other Green Lanterns out there? BTW, shouldn't Superman already know about the GLC with all his deep space missions? Surprised that they never did a "Superboy Meets Abin Sur" story!
Martian Manhunter: One wonders if J'onn mentioned his telepathy that often. If you acknowledge Denny O'Neil's contribution to his backstory, then there's the "political exile" thing! ;-)
Green Arrow: Really can't think of any unless it's the Bat-envy!
The Atom: Beyond the Time Pool ("Hey guys! Guess who just saved Edgar Allen Poe's life? C'mon, guess!"), probably the fact that he became a super-hero so his girlfriend would be successful and marry him!
Hawkman: I'm sure that Katar kept the full range and power of the Absorbascan a closely guarded secret.
Snapper was shown as knowing about the Absorbascan in Justice League of America #43, the first Royal Flush Gang story. Given how Fox JLA issues are written there might be an expository line in an early one where GL talks about the Guardians. Be that as it may, Flash knew about them by "One of Our Green Lanterns is Missing!" in The Flash #168. In the 70s JLA knowledge of the Guardians and the GL Corps was taken for granted.
Some of the things you mentioned can be addressed, Philip. And I'll get to those in a minute. The rest is conjecture, of course. For my money, there was no reason for any member of the Justice League to spill any of his secrets to the rest of the group. But, in at least some instances, during the Silver Age, they did.
■ The rest of the Justice Leaguers were aware of the existence of the Phantom Zone. In JLA # 14 (Sep., 1962), Superman told the group that he missed out on that month's meeting because he was tied up on a mission in the Phantom Zone.
■ The entire JLA visited Atlantis in Aquaman # 18 (Nov.-Dec., 1964) to attend the wedding of the Sea King to Mera. The group made a return visit to the undersea city in Aquaman # 30 (Nov.-Dec., 1966) to attend Aquaman's funeral. (He got better.)
■ The Flash did not tell his JLA buddies about Earth-Two before they learnt about it on their own in JLA # 21-2 (Aug. and Sep., 1963). As you might recall, the Crime Champions abducted the Flashes of both worlds and held them captive in their hide-out in the misty borderland between worlds. The villains did this to prevent the Scarlet Speedsters from telling their respective teams about the parallel Earths, which would have fouled their evil scheme.
■ By the early '60's, J'onn J'onzz's mental powers had disappeared from his own series. There was no accounting for that within the fictional conceit of the series; he simply did not have them, anymore. Curiously, Gardner Fox, who tended to treat the Manhunter like a green-skinned Superman, showed J.J. using mental abilities twice: he mentally transformed an element to lodestone in JLA # 4 (Feb.-Mar., 1961), and he read a shopkeeper's mind in JLA # 54 (Jun., 1967).
Still, it wasn't a major issue.
■ The Justice Leaguers knew about the Time Pool. The basis for the story in JLA # 52 (Jul., 1967) was to show the cases that kept certain JLA members from participating in the fight against the Lord of Time two issues previous. As depicted, the Leaguers who missed that case---per the requirements of the group's by-laws---audio-recorded the events that kept them from responding to the emergency signal. The Atom reported that he missed out on the Lord of Time mission because he was on a Time Pool visit to the past, preventing the assassination of Benjamin Franklin. (Which was a tale actually told in The Atom # 27 [Oct.-Nov., 1966]).
■ The Justice Leaguers also knew about Hawkman's absorbascon and what it could do. Luke Blanchard provided one JLA reference for that. Another, more telling one, appeared a couple of issues before that first case against the Royal Flush Gang. In JLA # 41 (Dec., 1965), due to circumstances forced by the villain's master scheme, the Winged Wonder used the absorbascon to learn the secret identities of his fellow JLAers. Hawkman's thoughts clearly stated that he had promised his fellow members that he would not use the absorbascon to pry into their personal secrets.
Needless to say, the other Justice Leaguers were highly pissed that Hawkman broke his word---until they learnt the reason why.
In some cases, like that Earth-2 thing, it would probably be good to let others know of its existence, just to avoid the problems that ultimately arose. OTOH, spreading things around too much, or having audio/written accounts, make it too easy for secrets to be less so, especially with so many evil mind-readers, rays, etc.
Letting the League know I'm an Amazon from Paradise Island seems reasonable. Giving them a map doesn't seem necessary; if a crisis arises, they can probably find it fast enough (not that I want the guys landing there even then). Same with Gorilla City. I'll bet they all knew there was a Fortress of Solitude and a Batcave, but I doubt they all knew the addresses.
Superman would be the most problematic because all of his secrets seemed to involve other supremely powerful people running around (or at least possibly so). He could mention there were Kandorians, but there were so many Kryptonians showing up one way or the other, including via the Phantom Zone and that Krypton-Earth highway, that knowing of its existence didn't change much for them.
The thing I always liked about the JLA (besides Sekowsky drawing them like they were guys dressed in costumes instead of hugely muscled guys painted different colors) was that they seemed to spend a lot of time in the HQ, sitting around the table talking with each other. I'd guess all kinds of war stories got told then, if only in general outline.
If nothing else, they could share info on the most recent aliens that had tried to invade Earth.
-- MSA
Has anyone ever made a list of all the alien races in the silver age?
Also I wonder if Superman ever had a conversation with Aquaman about why he has legs and no tail like his friend Lori?
I don't have the specifics handy, Dandy but Aquaman made several appearances, cameos and mentions throughout the Silver Age in the various Super-titles as Mort Weisinger co-created him.
With Lois writing so much about Superman and Krypton, did he have any secrets?
I know the JLA knew about the Phantom Zone but why didn't they use it?
It's telling that when the team formed and needed a HQ, neither Superman nor Batman offered their place, even temporary!
Oh yeah, I certainly remember this comic book. This too.
Philip Portelli said:
I liked that cover for LL #29, as Mort just happened to create the two characters he included. Coincidence or...something else. Either way, it's one of my favorite DC covers just for its goofiness. I used it to illustrate my Trivia Quiz this year just because I could.
Brent Clark Rogers has done a Guide to the DCU that he's updated a number of times (six or seven that I know of). He gave me a copy of #6, and it was several inches thick. It included every alien race from DC at the time, as I remember, but I don't remember if it indicated when they first appeared, and my copy is not readily available.
http://www.amazon.com/Brent-Clark-Rogers-Guide-Universe/dp/B00189JF...
-- MSA
At that point the Atom and Hawkman had only just been introduced, so the alternatives were Flash, Green Lantern and J'onn J'onzz. This was before Aquaman got his own title (just), but he and Green Arrow were both long-running characters. (At this point Aquaman was appearing in Detective, GA in World's Finest.) Perhaps more to the point, they also didn't have regular girlfriends, unlike the Flash and Green Lantern. In J'onn's feature in Detective Diane Meade had been introduced four years earlier, but she was not yet a constant presence in the stories, although she soon would be. She had been shown dating John Jones the month before in Justice League of America #7.
I always had the impression that though the Phantom Zone was used on Krypton, it was thereafter considered cruel and unusual punishment. Or at least, that's the idea I got when it came up in Action Comics or Superman in the 60s.
Philip Portelli said:
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