October has become a month of social media challenges and marathons in recent years. In my circles, the most popular would be challenges to watch 31 Horror movies in October (which I did last year) and the #inktober challenge (31 ink drawings inspired by daily prompts). I’ve done the #inktober challenge before and I’ve done one of the many spin-offs inspired by #inktober, #Jacktober, which is 31 drawings of comic artist Jack Kirby characters based off a daily prompt. This year, I had a #JSATOBER daily prompt that got my attention. JSA stands for the Justice Society of America, which is the original team of super-heroes published by DC Comics. The first team-up of its kind, the JSA first appeared in ALL STAR COMICS #3 which hit the newsstands around November of 1940. This is the line-up of heroes in that issue: THE FLASH, THE GREEN LANTERN, THE SPECTRE, THE HAWKMAN, DR. FATE, THE HOUR-MAN, THE SANDMAN, THE ATOM, and JOHNNY THUNDER. The publisher was All American Comics and National Periodical Publications (these two publishers would soon merge into one—the future DC Comics) loaned SUPERMAN and BATMAN to the team as “honorary members.” WONDER WOMAN would later make her very first appearance in comics as the “secretary” for the JSA in ALL STAR COMICS #8. The JSA disappeared from comics when DC cancelled ALL STAR COMICS in 1951. They would not reappear in comics until 1963’s JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21 where they established the conceit that the JSA existed on a parallel world designated “Earth 2” and the Justice League (and associated characters) was on “Earth 1.”
The #JSATOBER challenge for 2024 was a series of 31 prompts based on the JUSTICE SOCIETY and associated characters.
Days 1-14 are classic members of the JSA from the 1940s. Number 15 is POWER GIRL. The Earth 2 analog for Superman’s cousin SUPERGIRL, PG was the first new member of the group introduced in the early 1970s when DC revived the ALL STAR COMICS title.
Days 16-18 are characters who were never members of the JSA but were established in the 1980s as having been members of the ALL-STAR SQUADRON, a World War II era super-hero “super group” where the JSA members worked together with all the other DC characters of that time period battling domestic threats to the USA.
Days 19-21 are INFINITY INC. characters. INFINITY INC. was a team introduced in the 1980s made up of younger heroes who were related in some way to the older JSA members. They were basically the Earth 2 version of the TEEN TITANS.
Days 22-24 are characters who were originally published in the 1940s by Quality Comics but were later acquired by DC Comics and added into continuity as the heroes of Earth X, where the Quality characters existed as the FREEDOM FIGHTERS fighting against Nazis in a world where the Axis powers defeated the Allied forces. Within the ALL STAR SQUADRON continuity, those Quality characters were originally from Earth 2 and chose to migrate to Earth X to take down Nazis.
Days 25-27 are characters from Earth S (or rather, Earth Shazam). These are characters who were originally owned and published by Fawcett Publications but were later acquired by DC Comics and established, like the Quality characters, as having originated on Earth 2 back in the 1940s.
Days 28-31 are characters from the YOUNG ALL-STARS. The YOUNG ALL-STARS are a collection of characters who are analogs of certain important characters from the 1940s who had been removed from that point in the timeline following the events of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The conceit being that the energy of beings like SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, AQUAMAN, etc., who now only ever existed in the modern day, would need to be incarnated into new characters. And these new characters became known as the YOUNG ALL-STARS. For example, “Iron” Munro/Superman, Flying Fox/Batman, Fury/Wonder Woman, etc. Whoever chose the prompts, got pretty deep with their choices. NEPTUNE PERKINS as the AQUAMAN analog. Neptune was a character that preexisted in comics but was never popular and largely forgotten. With YA-S he got a costume upgrade and a personality. “IRON” MUNRO has essentially the same powers that the original SUPERMAN had in his first appearance in ACTION COMICS #1. That is, he was strong but not THAT strong. He couldn’t fly but he could leap 1/8 of a mile, his skin was strong enough to handle bullets (but an exploding mortar shell would probably pierce his skin) and he could run faster than a speeding train. Within this new continuity, “IRON” MUNRO is established as the son of HUGO DANNER, a character from Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel, “GLADIATOR,” which was one of the inspirations for the character of SUPERMAN. They also chose DAN THE DYNA-MITE or DYNAMITE. DAN had originally been the teen sidekick to a character named TNT. Post-CRISIS, the TNT character gets killed and DYNAMITE joins up with the YOUNG ALL-STARS. TNT and DAN THE DYNA-MITE are obscure characters like NEPTUNE PERKINS who gained new life with YA-S. And finally, we have TIGRESS, who is the energy analog for CATWOMAN, who in the original Earth 2 continuity had reformed from her villainous ways to marry BATMAN and the two of them had a daughter who became the heroine known as HUNTRESS in the 1970s. TIGRESS is based on another 1940s era villain who was originally called HUNTRESS.
For the #JSATOBER drawing/inking challenge, I decided to make them quick sketches (about 5-15 minutes) and inks (about 30-60 minutes) so that I wouldn’t have my ADHD overwhelmed and not complete the project. To do so, I decided to basically just do headshots of the characters. I did not have a plan to use actor references at first. Like, my HAWKMAN and SANDMAN drawings are without a specific reference. When I got to STARMAN, I remembered that I had always felt like Gary Cooper would’ve been an actor that could have played him back in the day. So I found a pic of Cooper and used it as a profile reference. Then I went and drew HOURMAN without a reference and that’s when I realized that what I wanted to do was find a visual reference for all of them. Now, this is not to do an identical portrait of a famous actor but a basic facial reference that I would then tweak and adjust to fit my vision for the character similar to how I might use a body/pose reference. For the most part, I think it makes most of these successful as characters who seem familiar yet also uniquely themselves. I think I failed on POWER GIRL, however, because I couldn’t seem to avoid just making her look exactly like my Angie Dickinson reference!
So, allow me to do a rundown on the daily prompts and my references and any other info I think might be interesting.
HAWKMAN
SANDMAN
STARMAN—Gary Cooper
HOURMAN
WONDER WOMAN—Lana Turner
GREEN LANTERN—Burt Lancaster
THE FLASH—Unnamed doughboy solder reference I found online.
THE ATOM—Some Luchadore I found online but I don’t remember which one.
BLACK CANARY—Veronica Lake
DOCTOR FATE
THE SPECTRE—Peter Cushing
DOCTOR MID-NITE—Steve McQueen
WILDCAT—Rocky Marciano
JOHNNY THUNDER & THUNDERBOLT—Dwayne Hickman (TV’s Dobie Gillis) as Johnny and Bob Hope as the face of the T-bolt.
POWER GIRL—Angie Dickinson (1970s star on the TV series POLICE WOMAN)
LIBERTY BELLE—Veronica Lake (AGAIN!)
FIREBRAND—Adele Astaire was chosen for this character so that I could use her brother Fred Astaire for the ghostly image of the character’s brother the first Firebrand)
ROBOT MAN
NORTHWIND—Clarence Williams III (Link from 1968-1973 TV’s THE MOD SQUAD)
JADE—Suzanna Hoffs (singer/musician from the 1980s, the same era as INFINITY INC. which Jade was a member)
FURY II—Nancy Sinatra (singer/performer mostly from the 1960s/70s)
UNCLE SAM—Jimmy Stewart (a little younger than Uncle Sam is usually portrayed but he had an all-American look that I thought served the character)
PHANTOM LADY—Lee Meriwether (I just happened to come across a modeling shot of Lee Meriwether from the early 1960s that I thought fit the proper look for the character)
THE RAY—Tab Hunter
IBIS THE INVINCIBLE—Omar Sharif (sans mustache)
BULLETMAN—Gene Kelly (in mid-leap dancing)
CAPTAIN MARVEL—Fred MacMurray (he was the original reference for the actual WHIZ COMICS #1 so I thought it was a nice trick to use him now)
“IRON” MUNRO—Gordon Scott (one of the many TARZAN actors)
NEPTUNE PERKINS—Charles Bronson
DYNAMITE—Some random vintage photo of a kid boxer
TIGRESS—Rita Hayworth
