In 1940, the Justice Society of America was the number one superhero team in a field of … one. How does the new JSA monthly stack up in the much more crowded world of 1999?

Pretty well, if you ask me. The JSA doesn't quite have the manic inventiveness of JLA, or the take-no-prisoners attitude of The Authority, or the sheer density of Top Ten, but it's a good, solid, intelligible read with comfortable characters and attractive art, and in the present state of the comics world, that's plenty.

Not that I didn't hope for more; James Robinson's name on the cover virtually guarantees wild optimism. He wrote the original Green Lantern better than anyone ever has in The Golden Age, and Jack Knight is the best Starman ever; now here he was with the whole JSA cast to work with! Woo-hoo!

As it turned out, Robinson wasn't going to kill some heroes, cripple others and turn three of them into out-and-out villains, as he did in Golden Age. Much as I love stories like Babylon 5, in which major plot developments cause major, permanent changes to the cast or premise of the series, that's not how they do ongoing series here at the cusp of the 21st century. Change is okay, but radical change which leads to a dramatic and final conclusion, no. Otherwise, it wouldn't be an ongoing series, would it?

Within that format, though, the first five issues of JSA have seen several new characters (Hawkgirl, Sand, Stars), a new Dr. Fate, new powers for Sand, a new name for Nuklon, now known as Atom Smasher, and a mystery villain who turned out to be Mordru, the Legion of Super-Heroes' number one villain, as a young man! That's easily as good as the first five issues of Kurt Busiek's Avengers, and what more can a guy ask?

Now Robinson is leaving for a while, along with Jack Knight, but co-writers David Goyer and Geoff Johns have really been writing most of this title anyway, or so it seems to me. I haven't much cared for Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., (Courtney's a bit too bratty for this old grump, though I like Stripsey), but the Kid's been all right in JSA; nosy without being stupid, daring in the way teenagers are, but able to get the hint at the end of the Mordru storyline and free Dr. Fate. She's more the Buffy she's clearly intended to resemble and less the, well, selfish, shallow, stuck-up punk. Perhaps the version of Stars in JSA will leak over into Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., but I doubt it; Kyle Rayner is a neat character in JLA, but in his own book, he's a dork. On the other hand, JLA writer Grant Morrison doesn't co-write Green Lantern, so maybe there's hope.

With a large cast (most of whose members have ties to other Golden Age or modern heroes, so a potentially huge supporting cast) and a stable of JSA and Infinity Inc. villains to draw upon, JSA won't lack for plots. The real test will be characterization, which is always difficult for a team this size. Robinson excels at quiet moments unrelated to the plot; for example, Jack Knight's fondness for collecting is hardly ever relevant to How We Beat The Villain Of The Month, but he talks about it all the time anyway, because there's more to Jack Knight than a collection of villain-beating powers. Atom Smasher, Hawkgirl and Sand are all filling the shoes of their elders, just as Jack is, but what ELSE do they like to do? Let's see them doing it.

One of our readers called for more "baseball" issues, in which the team plays softball or goes to a concert or helps one another move, or just hangs out, without a villain showing up to turn things back into Combat Mode. He was talking about another team, but a baseball issue would be perfect for a team with as much history as this JSA, but who are at the same time getting to know each other. Although each of them has fifty years of comics history behind him or her (either in person or family history) they haven't worked with each other for a long time, or in some cases ever. They're discovering who their new teammates are, and since there's all that history to draw on, there's more than enough to discover.

Unlike JLA or Avengers, most of the JSAers don't have their own monthly books, so the writers can take them in any direction without contradicting their "regular" writer. It's too bad that's even an issue; would it be so hard to have Tom Peyer (Hourman) and Chuck Dixon (Birds of Prey) co-write JSA with Robinson, Johns and Goyer? Yeah, it probably would - too many cooks and all that - but it's a neat idea.

Geoff Johns can do character bits, as in Judgment Day, where a huge cast is deftly characterized with a couple of choice lines each. David Goyer has been co-writing Starman for years now.And because this title is a JLA spinoff, the thrones and dominions at DC will probably let the writers run with the title a little, reserving their micromanagement for the Superman and Batman titles.

Thus, we may confidently expect JSA to settle into a comfortable groove, like Roger Stern's Avengers or the Levitz years of the Legion: every character a little different from the rest, with one or two quirks that sometimes get a page or two, sometimes just a line of dialogue, but always there, so that when the Big Bad Menace shows up, he's threatening people we've come to regard as friends.

That has not yet happened. I like Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Black Canary and Jack Knight from their appearances elsewhere; Hourman's new monthly has made me really like him, too; and the fact that Stars is so much better here than in her own book is a big plus in her column. Issue #5, of which I've seen a preview copy, gives us a good look at Sandy Hawkins, about whom few of us know much at all. Now that we've opened the series with a bang, let's get an idea who Atom Smasher, Wildcat, and Hawkgirl are, so the next time Mordru comes back, he's breaking into a life already in progress.

It's off to a good start, but the best is yet to come.