One of the most creative minds in history passed away in 2018. Stan “The Man” Lee, who single-handedly saved a struggling Marvel Comics from extinction and propelled it to the forefront of the market with his brilliant talent for creating cool superheroes who were not as diametric as those found in the pages of DC Comics, will always be remembered as a titan of the comic book industry.
And why not? A series of heartbreaking “reality checks” helped Spider-Man grow into his proverbial boots after he began his superhuman career as a young adult. The Fantastic Four are the first family of Marvel and are also notoriously turbulent and prone to quarrel over issues that make more sense on a natural level than simply trying to make things “cerebral.”
Even when he officially stopped writing comic books in the 1990s, he remained the face of Marvel long into his later years, mainly thanks to his numerous cameos in live-action movies with a Marvel theme. Stan did, however, occasionally cross the line and criticise his “distinguished competition” at DC Comics.
The first time was in 1989, when he quietly contributed to Detective Comics #600 and wrote a poem as an ode to Batman’s heritage. The second, however, sent shockwaves through the industry because it was going to be a full-fledged run of stand-alone issues that would give DC & Marvel fans the ultimate Forbidden Fruit: a Justice League origin story illustrated by some of the greatest comic book artists in history and written by Stan Lee himself!
All of this happened in 2001, the year DC revealed that Lee would serve as the series’ primary creative force and that “Just Imagine…” will feature various iterations of the Justice League. You are not ready for what is about to happen, even though it looks and feels like a blatant imitation of Marvel’s “What if…” series. Here is Stan Lee’s “Just Imagine…” Universe – Explored without further ado.
Origins of Stan Lee’s “Just Imagine…” JLA Members
The Man himself provides a foreword to each issue of the Just Imagine series, setting the tone for what to expect from it. In that opening note, Stan stresses that the Just Imagine series is not intended to be a critique of the most famous superhero team in DC history; rather, it is just him coming up with alternate versions of these characters and adding his own distinctive style to the mix in what he called a “fun exercise” while collaborating with some of the greatest comic book artists in history.
And yes, before you ask, Lee’s JLA is also recognised as existing within the DC Multiverse, having appeared on Earth 901 during the Infinite Earths continuity prior to the Crisis, on Earth 27 during the Infinite Crises, and on Earth 6 following Flashpoint. But how precisely does this JLA differ from the several others that already exist in DC? That is what we are here to demonstrate, and we will start with the person Stan Lee wrote a poem about in 1989.
Batman
The first book in this ground-breaking miniseries, Just Imagine Stan Lee and John Kubert Creating Batman, had all the makings of a great Stan Lee narrative, as we must admit. The great illustrator John Kubert, who created Sgt. Rock and Hawkman during the Golden and Silver Ages of DC Comics, completes the recipe for a tale that is as colossal as its legendary authors.
The Hulk, not Bruce Banner, is the story’s main character in keeping with Stan’s penchant for alliteration in his character names. No, it is Wayne Williams, a young African-American man with a terrible and pessimistic attitude on life. Sam, Wayne’s father, is a police officer, or at least he was until he was shot and killed while attempting to apprehend some crooks.
Wayne expresses the aforementioned skepticism to his mother as they are returning from his funeral, believing that his father’s career was the cause of his death. When his mother informs Wayne that he served his community as a police officer, Wayne merely says, “Yeah… And that’s the thanks he got.” As the two make their way back home, they come across a group of thugs beating up on a guy; Wayne’s mother tells them they’re doing a wrong thing, but he quickly rushes her away by saying the guy probably deserved his fate.
Their leader, Handz Horgum, whose supervillain would have probably been Hammerhandz had Stan the time to explore him further, recognizes Wayne as the son of Sam Williams. Wanting to teach the boy a lesson, he stages a robbery at the departmental store Wayne works at and frames him as an accomplice. The store owner “testifies” to the same, and Wayne is sent to prison, where his entire life changes.
He stands up to the prison bully Korgo and meets a scientist called Frederick Grant who advises him to train both his body and mind. At night, with nothing better to do, Wayne looks outside of his cell and counts the bats in the sky, eventually befriending one and taking it on as a pet. He spends months training in the prison’s facilities, becoming stronger, sharper, and way too good at sewing for some reason.
But then he receives word that his mother had passed away before he could get out, and he decides to finally confront Handz for good. So when he gets out of prison, he shaves his head and changes his entire appearance. He figures that to stand up to a guy as influential as Handz, he needs a lot of money; and so, in a scene reminiscent of Spider-Man’s origin story, Wayne Williams decides to become a professional wrestler; and no prizes for guessing what his gimmick was.
The Batman became an international sensation; a masked luchador who became so wealthy that he bought a mansion in Los Angeles as his base of operations for his revenge! He hires Grant as his tech guy in sort of a mash-up of Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox and goes after Handz personally. After disposing of the criminal who shaped his life, The Batman vows that he will transcend his status as a wrestler and become a force of justice for the world, as newspapers spread the word of his deeds all across California.
Superman
Just Imagine Stan Lee with John Buscema is not a statement that sounds quite right, and Marvel fans will know why; Stan & John spent much of their time working together at Marvel Comics, especially on titles like The Silver Surfer, where Buscema’s artistic genius truly flourished. Stan praised Big John’s creativity by saying that he often worked off of story outlines that Lee himself narrated to him over the phone and managed to come up with the perfect artwork for his stories every time, with no script, nothing.
So it isn’t surprising to see, then, that the artwork for the Superman issue of Just Imagine the universe is absolutely immaculate and reminiscent of certain Golden Age titles as well. What is surprising is the path they set him on because in this universe, Superman isn’t an alien being known as Kal-El; instead, he’s called Salden, a member of the Kryptonian planetary police force.
Squadman Salden is a proper jock, too; when he isn’t out, putting criminals behind bars or pumping iron, he’s got eyes only for his hot, alien wife Lyella. But at his core, Salden is a good person: his love for Lyella extends beyond simple physicality, as he seems to genuinely love her to bits, and even his obsession with working out is reasonable considering the position he is in.
Salden is a member of the police squad of genetically-enhanced members of his species. He’s the smallest guy on the team and would end up being a liability to them if he didn’t stick to his rigorous training regime. Salden dreams of being the mightiest of Krypton’s heroes, but as his beloved wife brings to our attention, something is about to go horribly wrong. You see, many years ago, Squadman Salden had captured a sinister criminal by the name of Gundor Gorrok and gotten him locked up in Krypton’s maximum-security prison.
But in the present day, Gorrok orchestrates a prison break and escapes the facility using a shoulder harness, which is a device that allows one to fly. As Salden is busting up a terrorist attack, Gorrok goes after his wife and kills her to send him a message.
A rage-filled Salden tracks Gorrok to the newly-invented Space/Time Bender, which is powered by a “green energy source”; aka Stan Lee’s version of Kryptonite! Gorrok plans to use the invention to escape to another galaxy where he will be safe from the Kryptonian police, but Salden manages to board the Space/Time Bender with him. As both aliens fight on their spaceship, they crash-land on a blue-green planet called Earth, where they both take rather distinct paths. Gorrok, ever the devious criminal, decides to become the conqueror of this world.
Salden just wants to get back home to honour the death of his wife after killing the man who took her from him, but there are a couple of obstacles to that. 1) Earth’s space travel technology is primitive, and 2) his ship is drowning alarmingly fast. Salden braces himself for death as he tries to escape but miraculously, he realizes that his physiology basically makes him a superhero on this planet.
He earns a few quick bucks as a circus attraction and then gets to work on his revenge when he’s contacted by Talent Agent Lois Lane who wants to make him her star client. Salden accepts her branding and starts going by “Superman”- the unintentional hero of planet Earth who is really only helping them fight crime so their space program can be fast-tracked to completion and he can go home. Salden saves the Chinese President from a plot that somehow involves Gorrok as well, though that’s a story we’ll come to later, and the world starts accepting the S symbol of the Kryptonian Police Squads as a symbol of hope and inspiration.
Green Lantern
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Dave Gibbons creating Green Lantern brings together two masters of the absurd, in two very different senses of the term. Stan has always had a propensity for stretching the imagination to its breaking point as a baseline when writing his stories and Dave Gibbons’ stellar artwork for the Watchmen series is as absurdist as any mainstream comic can get.
So it’s only natural that their Green Lantern collaboration would turn out to be the most bizarre and by extension the most-interesting issue of Stan’s Just Imagine series. The story is focused on a day in the life of archaeology professor Len Lewis. Len is a teacher who truly loves his subject, and you can tell by the way he conducts his class.
His students often think that archaeology is just about collecting boring old artifacts and classifying their time periods, but Len is a dreamer if anything, and he opens their minds up to the possibility of more fantastical happenings having been the source of some of Earth’s biggest mysteries.
He bedazzles them with stories of an ancient race of aliens who might have inspired the Egyptians to create the pyramids, and how Aladdin’s lamp might have been an actual thing, while most of his students wonder what this middle-aged blonde man has been smoking before class. But one of his students, Cathy, sticks around afterward because she can sense that he knows more about the fantasies he has described in class; and she needs to know about it, too.
She approaches him after class and discovers that Len Lewis claims to have located the fabled Tree of Life, which appears in nearly every religious text, and is going to go to the cradle of mankind aka Africa to find it. She informs this to her superior, and it is revealed that she is some kind of spy, though we’re not going to talk about who she’s working for just yet.
Cathy books herself a ticket on the same flight as Len and charms her way into going to the location of the World Tree with him. When they get there, they see an area surrounded by a mysterious green mist that Len notes seems almost alive; but then they themselves are surrounded by a group of thugs, who try to take Cathy captive and force Len to unravel the secret of the bog.
Naturally, things go wrong, they shoot Len dead, and it’s revealed that Cathy is actually in on the whole thing with this group of thugs, but none of it matters because as Len Lewis’ body descends into that mystical bog, he hears it; the call of the Tree of Life. It tells him that long ago; Earth was populated by a different race of beings who faced a cosmic threat that annihilated most of them; It was the last of their race.
It has judged Len to be pure of both mind and soul and proposes to resurrect him as a server and protector of humanity who will yield the Life Force. Yggdrasil proceeds to resurrect Len Lewis and imbue him with Its powers, turning him into the superhero known to mankind as Green Lantern. He immediately “rescues” Cathy from the terrorists but is able to sense that she’s hiding something from him so he doesn’t tell her exactly what happened to him at the bog.
Back home, the Green Lantern becomes a major hero by saving his city from an animatronic monster who was being remotely controlled by the same group of thugs that he’d encountered before. The Green Lantern takes care of both problems, but in the process loses Cathy, who had by this point chosen to side with him; he vows to become a defender of mankind and flies off into the night sky striving to prove worthy of his powers.
Wonder Woman
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Jim Lee creating Wonder Woman completely flips the script on its head when it comes to how we even perceive Diana of Themyscira; or maybe not, since the titular character of the series- Maria Mendoza- is reminiscent of the early, early days of Wonder Woman’s DC existence. The switch here might seem like a simple one to some of our viewers: Stan Lee decided to change the pantheon Wonder Woman was affiliated with from the Greek Gods to the Incan Gods.
But that truth changes everything because the Greek and Incan pantheons are wildly different from one another; and so are the circumstances surrounding their descendants in the 21st century. Maria Mendoza is the daughter of the Juez aka Judge of the town of Santa Atalaya in Peru.
A very, very long time ago, her father used to be a farmer. One day, when he was returning to his home with his daughter and wife, a group of thugs set upon them, killing the latter. Padre Mendoza then encountered some members of the police force and was hopeful of getting justice from them; but in the end, even they turned out to be corrupt, and he had to watch them divide the profits they made off of the car they stole from him, helpless to do anything about it.
He made a vow then, that he would no longer be the victim, and allied himself with Armando Guitez, the local mob enforcer and the man who effectively ruled Santa Atalaya with an iron fist. Maria grew up as a vocal Incan activist, who was proud of her heritage and troubled by the exploitative excavations being carried out by Guitez’s men at the fabled site of Cuzco; the ancient city that was created by Manco Capac, the legendary son of the Incan Sun God.
She tried to stop the excavation from going beyond what it already had but was stopped by Steve Trevor, an archaeologist working for Guitez. Trevor told her that Guitez wasn’t looking for gold; he was looking for power in the form of ancient relics. To make matter worse, he also wanted Maria to become his bride.
The pair decides to confront the evil tyrant but is too late in their efforts: Guitez breaks open a relic containing evil spirits and transforms into a monstrous being. Desperate for a way out, Maria follows his example and smashes a relic of her own; only hers held in it the fabled Golden Staff of Manco Capac, which imbued her with the powers of the Sun God and transformed her into Wonder Woman. She chased down Guitez to Los Angeles and managed to purge him of his evil there, after which she assumed the identity of Diana Prince- museum curator extraordinaire- and continued to fight crime out of the West Coast.
The Flash
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Kevin Maguire creating The Flash is perhaps the most-flagrant re-imagination of an iconic DC superhero for 2 key reasons: 1) The Flash does not draw his powers from the Speed Force and 2) The Flash is a woman! This issue begins in the bowels of the facilities of a top-secret organization called STEALTH: which stands for Special Team of Espionage Agents Licensed to Target & Hit. Sounds like Stan couldn’t be bothered to come up with something elaborate, but given the fact that this is a one-shot, we actually appreciate him being upfront with us for once; given his history of coming up with way too convoluted code-names for his top-secret organizations.
A woman called Andrea Zakara is working on a time-travel device that would allow her to visit the past and return without a trace, altering the course of history in the process. But her experiments aren’t going all too well because all their test subjects end up coming back crispier than KFC chicken. It is for this exact reason that they’re looking for a person called “the seeker”, who can supposedly help them solve the problem. Somewhere over-ground, we come across a stunning blonde woman called Mary Maxwell.
Mary is a college student with a passion for adventure; she raves about comic books, wears a t-shirt that says, “I exude attitude”, and is utterly detached from her workaholic scientist father who is too fixated upon his own studies to even pay mind to what his daughter is saying to him. Mary tells her friends that she loves her father, but wished that he “lived on the same planet as her.” When she gets back home, she tells her dad that a literal UFO landed in the middle of their college football ground but he’s too absorbed in his work to pay her mind.
But things change rather dramatically when an alarm sounds off in his workstation and he frantically commands his daughter to pack up and get in the car. Earlier, Mary’s friends pointed out that a black car was following her around; turns out it came all the way to her doorstep and its occupants were now trying to attack them. Her dad legit Rick Sanchez’s the lawn and makes an escape in a station wagon fitted with rocket propulsion systems, so naturally, Mary has a tonne of questions for him.
Turns out, Mary’s father was the seeker that the STEALTH agents were looking for, and now that they were on their trail, it wouldn’t be long before something bad eventually happened. Something bad did happen, but not in quite the fashion either of them expected. As the Maxwells were making their escape through Australia’s coral reefs on a speedboat, they encountered a weird, green mist that seemed to infect Mary’s body and make it rather sluggish.
It was as if she’d aged 80 years in terms of her movement, and when they returned to America, a cab driver mockingly called her Flash. Dr. Maxwell deduces that if he injects Mary with just enough hummingbird DNA, her movements will return to normal; after all, hummingbirds have the fastest wings. But just as he was about to administer the dose, he’s found by the STEALTH agents who shoot him dead. He ends up administering the full dose to Mary, which gives her speed beyond comprehension.
She quickly deals with the STEALTH agents and takes up the moniker of The Flash; the costumed speedster with a rainbow plume and fighting attitude. Eventually, The Flash is able to avenge her father’s death by dealing with Ms. Zakara and her henchmen, but she realizes her work is not done by far and decides to become a superhero herself; just like the comic book characters that she so loves.
Shazam!
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Gary Frank creating Shazam! is something we personally have mixed feelings about, and it has nothing to do with the story. Gary Frank is regarded as one of the best artists to ever lend his creativity to a Superman title, and the fact that Stan Lee didn’t create his Just Imagine universe’s Superman with his artwork feels like a missed opportunity.
But on the plus side, it does give us a rather graphic and Arthurian take on the entire mythos surrounding the Wizard Shazam and his place in the DC Universe. Did we say Arthurian? That’s right, we did say that, because unlike Captain Marvel from the mainstream universe, this superhero wasn’t created by an “ancient wizard called Shazam”; he was created by King Arthur’s mythical wizard Merlin.
Why? Well, to deter the ancient threat of Morgaine Le Fey, should she rise again. You see, Merlin defeated Morgaine in a decisive battle after slaying her beast and confining her to a tree- kinda like Mimir from Norse Mythology. But he knew that the seal wouldn’t hold for all of eternity, so he prepared a means to tackle her should she ever rise again.
He put this creation of his in stasis till its services would be required, and retired to the frontier that used to be the Crown Jewel of the British Empire: India. There, he lived for thousands of years as a fakir who performed “magic tricks” that would wow the locals, who were unaware of the fact that what they were seeing was, in fact, not an illusion but real magic.
He’d go unnoticed by time until one day when 2 Interpol agents- Robert Rogers and Carla Noral- came to India in search of a terrorist threat that went by the name of Gunga Khan. They witnessed the fakir’s magical act and were on their way to figuring out Khan’s location when some thugs started beating him up and demanding to know the secret behind his tricks. Carla managed to chase them away while Robert defended the fakir, but apparently, it was too late.
In his last moments, the great wizard Merlin told Robert Rogers that the magic of Shazam must live on, passing on the power he had created ages ago to this unwitting intelligent agent. Carla and Robert leave the scene and prepare to infiltrate a meeting to gather more intel on Khan and his nefarious plans, but they’re ambushed by his men, who take Carla captive and push Robert into a nearby lake.
As he drowns to his death, Robert curses the fakir for putting them in this predicament and shouts out his dying word with what he thought would be his own last breath: Shazam. Instantly, he’s transformed into a demonic creature that can grow wings on command and manages to fly back to safety. With his newfound powers, Robert figures out the location of Carla and Gunga Khan and saves the former while ensuring the latter doesn’t succeed in essentially turning all of America into the Children from “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”.
After cleaning up their trail, both agree that Rob’s newfound powers could become the biggest asset for Interpol; an indestructible weapon of pure destruction. They conclude that they will keep the truth a secret so as to not let their own lives be dictated by the powers that be.
Unbeknownst to them, Morgaine Le Fey has sensed the passing of Merlin and the awakening of Shazam in a far-away land, where she plots her former rival’s downfall alongside a hooded figure that has been popping about in every issue so far. Don’t worry, you’ll see where we’re going with this soon enough.
Aquaman
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Scott McDaniel creating Aquaman sounds almost like a Marvel origin story out of all of the tales we’ve recounted so far; and yes, that includes Batman the Wrestler. The other thing that makes it quintessentially Marvelian is the fact that it was created by Stan Lee and a pre-DC Comics affiliate Scott McDaniel, who had worked on numerous Daredevil and Spider-Man titles during his time with Marvel.
Ramon Raymond is a marine biologist who is literally obsessed with water; to the point, that it bores his girlfriend Amelia out of her mind, but she loves him and stays loyal to him anyway because it is his passion for marine biology that makes him such a charmer. Ramon might not know much about what constitutes a “regular lifestyle”: his father was a cop, his brother Frank is a cop, and even though he is a marine biologist, he is fighting to preserve Earth’s water bodies in his own way because of a quality shared by all three of them; total dedication to their cause.
It’s why he doesn’t go out partying as often as Amelia would have liked, but it doesn’t change a lot, because the couple seems to share a genuine, opposite-attract kind of love. But just because he doesn’t know how to party doesn’t mean he can’t show off to his girlfriend; Ramon has been experimenting with Dolphin DNA recently, and he believed that he had come across a method to naturally expand a human being’s ability to stay underwater.
If you’ve been paying attention to this story, you know how this is going to go: he goes out with his girlfriend into the open seas, goes into the water in a diving suit, and comes across a “green mist” that, along with the dolphin DNA he had injected into his veins, turn him into a living aqueous entity. That is to say, he becomes a literal Aquaman.
He’s scrambling to explain this transformation to Carla but sees that she’s been surrounded by some pirates, and so he tests his powers out. And sure enough, they can’t land a punch on him and their bullets pass right through him while he can pretty much control the amount of pressure with which he feels like hitting them. He escapes back to his city with Carla and decides to tell his brother Frank about his transformation, but is attacked by a group of people who are seen to be working for that same hooded figure we mentioned earlier.
While Ramon is able to drive them away with his powers, Frank gets shot in the leg and is nearly-paralyzed and taken off-duty. Ramon visits his brother in his hospital room and decides that, after having shunned his family legacy for so long, he would now embrace it. Ramon Raymonds decides that he is going to fight for Justice, and becomes Aquaman; the lethal liquid protector of Los Angeles.
Catwoman
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Chris Bachalo creating Catwoman is a sentence that fans of idiosyncratic comic book art lovers are foaming at the mouth for right about now. The later is one of the most critically-acclaimed comic book artists to never win a major award for his contributions and we count us amongst the people pissed off about that.
Not only did his work give Sandman (not the Marvel one) a defining look, but he also created the seminal world of Steampunk, which is some of the most visually-appealing comic book work we’ve ever come across. But coming back to the story of Stan Lee’s Catwoman, it isn’t as devious as you might think it is, though it definitely contains tinges of vintage Selina Kyle.
Our protagonist is Joanie Jordan; the very, very attractive daughter of a police officer who is rather frustrated with his job lately, what with all these superheroes popping up out of nowhere and acting outside of the jurisdiction of law enforcement with no restraint. Basically, he’s the old-man-yells-at-sky meme incarnate. Joanie herself isn’t too far from getting there, it seems. Though she is a very successful model in her own right, she finds her work rather shallow. She thinks about how her career is dependent on her looks, and when they go away, it’ll be “Bye, bye Joanie.”
But she shrugs it off because she’s got a big gig tonight; she’ll be posing at the 5th Federal Bank, which is a very big deal in the media, and for a group of thugs on the other side of town who are planning to rob it. A man in a spacesuit called Furgo the Flesh Crawler commands 3 other men to steal every last penny from the bank and to do it by posing as a certain model’s designer. Any guesses as to who that might be?
Of course, it’s Joanie, who gets paid “a visit” by the same 3 men who were bargaining with Furgo. A scuffle ensues, but somehow, Joanie and her pet cat and constant companion Ebony, get struck by a bolt of green lightning which magically binds their spirits together, giving Joanie cat-like superpowers. She realizes that her senses have been heightened; she has retractable claws for days, and that she can survive a trust fall much like a cat can.
The next day, her heroic acts find their way onto TV, and her management agency sky-rockets her to the top of their company’s position. Joanie herself is proud for a very different reason; she knew her dad had always wanted her to become a cop deep in his heart, and now, with her powers, she could follow that same path of justice. She goes to his place, intent on telling him all about her secret, but doesn’t do it when she realizes her father hates superheroes.
After all, he’s a cop; and superheroes take away a lot of their work, leaving them behind to clean up the scene after them. So Joanie thinks better of it and decides to keep her powers a secret that only she and Ebony can share. She goes back home that night and fashions a suit for herself- all of Stan Lee’s Just Imagine universe characters are masters of sewing if you couldn’t tell already.
She takes on the moniker of Catwoman and saves a family from a burning building while she’s out testing her own limits. The next day, Furgo has Joanie kidnapped and intends on keeping her as his “personal treasure” being smitten by her beauty, but she just escapes his sewer palace and attributes it to the help of Catwoman.
So Furgo decides to go to the 5th Federal Bank himself to keep a close eye on the robbery his men are about to commit alongside one of Joanie’s peers; little do they know, Catwoman is on hand to spoil the party yet again. Joanie goes to town on Furgo and his men, defeating all of them and getting them thrown in jail. And thus begins the legend and dual life of Joanie Jordan; aka Catwoman!
Robin
Just Imagine Stan Lee with John Byrne gives us a completely different take on the Boy Wonder and the Dynamic Duo. Some core elements of his backstory are kept the same- for example, the fact that he’s an orphan- but much of it has been changed to adapt his character better for the overarching storyline; and trust us when we say, Robin is key to the storyline of Stan Lee’s Just Imagine universe because he was chosen by the big bad of the entire ordeal himself; Reverend Dominik Darrk. That’s Darrk with two R’s, by the way.
Every time we’ve spoken about a mysterious hooded figure meddling in affairs in this video so far has been a reference to this man. He seemingly has magical powers that go beyond human comprehension: he can open portals, warp reality, subdue Morgaine Le Fey to his will, bestow superpowers to his favored pupils, and commune with an other-worldly being that he claims will give him and all his disciples of the Church of Eternal Empowerment the strength needed to subjugate the world to their will.
Here’s how Robin figures into this evil preacher’s nefarious schemes. He was left at the doorsteps of an orphanage as an infant. Even the orphanage workers were confused as to why his parents would choose to leave such a healthy baby boy all alone in this world. They named him after the Robin that landed on his crib when they took him to it, and from then on, Robin lived an isolated life. He grew up a sullen, retracted mess; someone who wouldn’t even play with the other children, because he had more pressing things going on in his mind: such as why would his parent abandon him, and why would no one else take him in?
As a result, Robin grew up an outcast amongst outcasts; out of his entire batch, he was the only one to go un-adopted until he became a legal adult; and that only pushed him further into the clutches of isolation. Robin believed that he was destined to be alone in this world and that he didn’t need anyone else. That changed for a brief time when a girl called Beth showed up as a volunteer at his orphanage.
The two of them were attracted to each other but did nothing about it, and then Robin threw himself into training his mind and body to their peak conditioning as a means of coping with his fresh loss. All the while, he’d encounter robins whose tone of singing would typically herald the coming of an event in Robin’s life. When he met Beth, they were singing. When he met Reverend Darrk’s representatives, their cries sounded almost ominous.
Robin brushed Darrk’s men off and went on to find a job as a martial arts teacher, but Darrk was able to lure him into his service by promising him that he will find his parents for him. He brainwashed Robin into becoming his primary tool of destruction and sent him after Batman. The pair fought on a rooftop and Robin wasn’t able to finish the fight properly because Batman took off to take care of a “real threat”.
A failed bank robbery, an awkward reunion with Beth, and a small dose of truth serum later, Robin realized what Darrk was doing to him, and agreed to team up with Batman to take down the Reverend. The Dynamic Duo turned up at the Church of Eternal Empowerment and started mowing through Darrk’s men when someone called the cops on them and they escaped through a magical portal their dark priest had summoned.
Afterward, Batman tried to get Robin to team up with him, but the vigorous youth rejected his offer, choosing to blaze through his own path. The issue ends with Batman saying, “Do what you must, Robin. Our paths will cross again.”
Justice League of America
Just Imagine Stan Lee with Jerry Ordway creating the Justice League of America is just…yeah, man. This is why the Just Imagine universe feels so mythic. The creator of countless Marvel superheroes collaborating with the man whose artistry brought DC’s very first Crisis event to life is the reason this entire series is just a celebration of comic book history, its contributors, and their legacy itself.
But getting back to the origins of the story, it all begins, and we can’t believe we’re saying this, with Green Lantern! All across national media, there is a broadcast going on; three heinous criminals are about to receive three different forms of the death penalty in three different locations. But thanks to the machinations of the evil Reverend Darrk, all three of them disappear from their containment facilities before anyone can do anything about it.
They resurface as a team rather appropriately- or inappropriately, based on your familiarity with them- called the Doom Patrol. We’re gonna take a moment for you guys to lose your minds, and then have a meltdown, because this isn’t the Doom Patrol you’re thinking about. Nope, it takes “doom” more seriously than the anti-hero superteam we’ve come to know and love; this iteration of the Doom Patrol has a version of Parasite, Blockbuster, and Deathstroke who are all color-coordinated and powered by magic. Go figure!
They turn up at the university where Len Lewis teaches chasing after a young boy called Adam Strange; again, not the defender of the planet Rann, though that name will figure into this story soon enough. Adam has an amulet that the Reverend Darrk is seeking to bring forth his eternal master into the realm of man, so naturally, he is running from the Doom Patrol. Len Lewis senses the danger thanks to his connection with the Life Force and transforms into the Green Lantern, saving Strange from his pursuers.
The pair manages to shake them off for long enough, and end up at a pier, where Green Lantern takes up Adam Strange’s suggestion and contacts the 4 superheroes he knows of so far. Using his Life Force, he contacts Wayne Williams, Maria Mendoza, Mary Maxwell, and the alien known as Salden on his home planet, calling them to action with a plea; he tells them that this is the greatest menace any of them have ever faced in their lives and that it is their duty to step up and fight it. He says, “I beg you to be true to the powers you possess.
Don’t ignore this call.” And after a little bit of personal persuasion, he manages to get them to rendezvous with him at his location. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman arrive at the scene and start questioning the Green Lantern immediately, but there isn’t enough time.
The Doom Patrol attacks them, and Parasite manages to take control of Superman’s body. They take Adam Strange and make off in the dead of night, leaving the remaining heroes in shambles. Ironically enough, The Flash is too late to arrive on the scene, but her powers help them get away from the cops at least.
Inside Wayne Williams’ Bat-copter, the rag-tag band of superheroes decides to put down their last defeat to a lack of coordination, and decide to operate as a group from there on out. And so, the Justice League attacks Reverend Darrk’s Church of Eternal Empowerment, where they find out a shocking truth; Adam Strange is, in fact, the son of Darrk, and has manipulated them all into coming here thanks to Parasite’s possession of Superman. Now, he wants to take his father’s place as the herald of doom.
Stuck between these dueling sorcerers and their super-powered henchmen, the League almost loses the fight when Parasite infects Green Lantern. But Batman is able to bring him back, and the League rallies to defeat Strange and the Doom Patrol in a decisive battle. Darrk manages to escape yet again and promises the coming of a great Crisis, but the Justice League lives to fight another day.
As they get swarmed by paparazzi, the 5 superheroes wonder where and how they will assemble for team meetings and such, when Green Lantern asks them to place their hands gently on the symbol on his chest. All 5 of them are transported to the World Tree dimension that exists within him, making it Stan Lee’s equivalent of the Watchtower/Hall of Justice. They pledge to put their differences aside and come together to aid humanity in their greatest hour of need, and Green Lantern christens them to the Justice League of America.
When Batman asks why only America, and not all of Earth, we get perhaps the most Stan Lee line in all of the issues of the Just Imagine mini-series from The Flash: “There are certain tax advantages.” To which the Man of Green can only reply, “Can’t argue with that”, as the issue comes to a close.
Marvelous Verdict
The Just Imagine Universe is, admittedly, more Marvelous (see what we did there) than DC-esque, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What made Stan Lee’s work tick is the fact that it could, at times, tread the highly unlikely territory of having a professional wrestler become a legitimate superhero and it wouldn’t seem weird because of how naturally he handles the story.
Now, admittedly, a big criticism levied against the entire series was that it tried to make classic DC characters “look like clowns”, particularly Batman, whose entire thing was being a dark, grim, and brooding character. And Stan The Man’s use of outdated lingo certainly didn’t help matters. But at the beginning of this video, we told you about the foreword Stan wrote for the readers of these comics and expressly focused on the phrase “fun exercise” for a reason; because that is exactly what it was.
The whole point of the Just Imagine series was to do just that; to just imagine what Stan Lee’s vision of a Batman or a Green Lantern would look like, and to then see it brought to life on paper by some of the greatest artists to bless the comic book industry. In that respect, the series manages to accomplish its goal and then some. Stan Lee’s Justice League of America is a colorful tapestry of mismatched heroes based out of Los Angeles, California; and we think that that is simply brilliant. Our verdict is you should go read all of these issues yourself because they’re just that entertaining.