60 WEEKS WITH THE JUSTICE LEAGUE: Week 29

Justice League America #29
Aug. '89
"Nabu on in my Mind"
Together again, for the last time: that lovable gang of freelance fools--
Keith Giffen (plot & layouts)
J.M. DeMatteis (script)
Ty Templeton (penciller)
Joe Rubinstein (inker)
Albert De Guzman (letterer)
Gene D'Angelo (colorist)
Kevin Dooley, our hero
Andy Helfer, our flounder

Justice League Europe #5
Aug. '89
"Stagg Party!"
Another relatively witty, fairly exciting international romp, courtesy of:
Keith Giffen, plot
J.M. DeMatteis, script
Bart Sears, pencils
Joe Rubinstein, inks
Bob Lappan, letters
Gene D'Angelo, colors
Kevin Dooley, asst. edits
and Andy Helfer as the Beaver...


Dear readers, August 1989 was a very good month for the JLI. Firstly, there was Kevin Maguire's phenomenal cover to JLA #29, which takes the cake as my favorite cover yet from this whole "60 Weeks" experiment. And then, the story--in which Templeton's pencils truly shone--had the great sense to take Kent Nelson, formerly Dr. Fate, inside Blue Beetle's mind to clean house after the Queen Bee's tampering.

Meanwhile, in JLE, Sears' pencils were getting better by the month, hitting straight-up radtastic proportions in issue #5. As if to prove how awesome his skills were, the penciller finally cut Captain Atom's mullet.

Inside the book, the creators offered up a good, fun romp focused on Metamorpho, with appearances from his pre-amnesia supporting cast: Simon Stagg, Java, and Metamorpho's wife (or former wife, apparently, since she thought her hubby was dead and so remarried to Java), Sapphire. The whole thing makes Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred's Metamorpho story in Wednesday Comics make a helluva lot more sense.

Also worthy of note, the letterers apparently swapped books that month, and according to the in-book credits (not the cover credits), Rubinstein handled inking duties on both titles. (Maybe that's why I liked Sears' pencils so much.) Oh, and JLA's letters page offers this insight regarding art credits for the past handful of issues:

COVER CREDITS: We're getting queries about who did the cover to issue #27, and hence here we'll give cover credits. Issue #25, 26, and 28 were done by Kevin Maguire and Josef Rubinstein; #27 was painstakingly done by Kevin using pointillism: doing every one of those little dots by hand, hour-after-hour, day-in, day-out. Kevin also pencilled and inked this issue's cover, putting in all those women by hand, hour-after-hour, day-in ... (ahem). Which was more fun, Kev?

The complete 60 Weeks with the Justice League on The Danger Digest:
#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #21, #22, #23, #24, #25/1, #26/2, #27/3, #28/4, #30/6, #31/7, #32/8, #33/9, #34/10, #35/11, #36/12, #37/13, #38/14, #39/15, #40/16, #41/17, #42/18, #43/19, #44/20, #45/21, #46/22, #47/23, #48/24, #49/25, #50/26, #51/27, #52/28, #53/29, #54/30, #55/31, #56/32, #57/33, #58/34, #59/35, #60/36


All images this post copyright DC Comics. Original text copyright Jon D. Witmer/The Danger Digest.