The Brave and the Bold #28

A Justice Society for a new decade

In the 1940s, DC's Justice Society of America had gathered the company's heroes in All-Star Comics. After World War II superheroes lost their audience, and the Justice Society made its last appearance in All-Star Comics #57 in 1951. By the end of the 1950s, editor Julius Schwartz had already reinvented the Flash (1956) and Green Lantern (1959), and both were selling. He asked writer Gardner Fox to bring back the team idea.

Schwartz changed one word. He felt 'League' would appeal more to young readers than 'Society,' because it called to mind sports organizations such as baseball's National League. The Justice League of America debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28, which went on sale December 29, 1959, with a cover date of February-March 1960.

The Brave and the Bold had begun in 1955 as an adventure anthology starring the Viking Prince, the Silent Knight, the Golden Gladiator and Robin Hood. With issue #25 it became a tryout title like Showcase, and issues #28 to #30 tested the new team. After those three issues, the Justice League received its own series in October 1960.

The lawyer, the speed artist and the editor

Gardner Fox was the natural writer: he had written the original Justice Society in the 1940s. Born in New York City in 1911, he earned a law degree and was admitted to the New York bar in 1935, but practiced only about two years before the Depression pushed him into comics. He is estimated to have written more than 4,000 comic stories, 1,500 of them for DC, and he also wrote science fiction and sword-and-sorcery novels.

Penciler Mike Sekowsky, born in Lansford, Pennsylvania, in 1923, had started at Timely, the forerunner of Marvel, in 1941 and earned a reputation as one of the fastest artists in comics. He came to DC in 1952 and drew the first Adam Strange story in Showcase #17. He and Fox co-created the Justice League, and Sekowsky drew the team's own series for 63 issues. Murphy Anderson inked his cover for issue #28; Bernard Sachs and Joe Giella inked the interior chapters, and Ira Schnapp designed the JLA logo.

Fox kept the team practical. Superman and Batman were members, but in the first story they are 'too busy' to answer the call, and in early issues they played small roles. Fox worried that the two biggest stars, who already shared World's Finest Comics, would overshadow the others. Readers soon demanded more of them.

Starro the Conqueror

The story opens at sea. Peter the Puffer Fish warns Aquaman that an alien starfish, Starro the Conqueror, is attacking Earth. Starro has turned three ordinary starfish into lieutenants. Aquaman alerts Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, the Flash and J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter; with Superman and Batman unavailable, the rest split into teams.

Green Lantern stops a lieutenant that has exploded an atomic bomb to absorb its power. Wonder Woman and the Martian Manhunter free a laboratory full of kidnapped scientists. The Flash finds the town of Happy Harbor under Starro's control except for one teenager, Snapper Carr, who joins the final battle. The heroes discover that lime on Snapper protects him from Starro's influence, and a few barrels of lime turn the conqueror into a trophy.

Fox, a lifelong reader of the pulps, drew on them. Starro is widely said to have been inspired by Ray Cummings's story 'Tarrano the Conqueror' and by H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic horrors. Schwartz, in his earlier career as a literary agent, had represented Lovecraft. One writer has argued that Happy Harbor, a Rhode Island harbor town that became the League's first home, is a nod to Lovecraft's Providence. The team's headquarters, described here as a cavern, was later placed in a hollowed-out mountain outside Happy Harbor.

The team that inspired its rivals

Justice League of America became one of the most successful series of the Silver Age. It won Alley Awards for best comic book and best adventure-hero group for 1961, and the team grew to include Green Arrow, the Atom and others. In Justice League of America #21 (August 1963) the League first met the Justice Society, and those crossovers became a tradition.

The team's success is also tied to one of comics' most retold stories. According to an account repeated in Sean Howe's history of Marvel, Marvel founder Martin Goodman was playing golf in 1961 with DC's Jack Liebowitz, who bragged about the sales of his new superhero team. Goodman then asked for a team book of his own, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby produced the Fantastic Four. Even its tellers hedge it with 'allegedly,' so it is best read as legend, but it is a fixture of comics history.

Starro later made his big-screen debut in the film The Suicide Squad. The issue is also the first comic book cover appearance of Aquaman, who had been appearing in stories for some 20 years, and of the Martian Manhunter.

The 9.6 and the record

Silver Age DC keys are far tougher in high grade than their Marvel counterparts. In November 2013, when a CGC 9.2 copy sold through a dealer for $120,000, a record for the issue in any grade, only four copies were graded 9.2 or better. By comparison, 23 copies of Avengers #1 were then certified in that range. A census-topping 9.4 had sold for $60,375 about a decade earlier.

In January 2024 the finest known copy, graded CGC 9.6 with off-white to white pages, came to auction. The census then showed it as the only 9.6 with none higher, one 9.4 and three 9.2s, and no copy graded above 9.4 had ever sold at public auction in the grading era. The auction's description said the last 9.2 it had offered, 15 years earlier, drew bidders who flew in from around the country. Its grader's notes record only very light spine stress lines that break the color.

On January 11, 2024, the 9.6 sold for $810,000, including the buyer's premium, nearly seven times the previous record. Later in the same session, Showcase #4 sold for $900,000 and narrowly passed it as the most expensive Silver Age DC comic.

Mid-grade copies are far more common. By August 2026 the census showed 64 universal-grade copies at 6.0 and 179 graded higher.

The numbers

Print run

Not documented in the sources reviewed

CGC census, November 2013

2 at 9.2, 2 at 9.4, none higher

CGC census, January 2024

1 at 9.6, none higher; 1 at 9.4; 3 at 9.2

CGC census, August 2026

64 universal-grade copies at 6.0, 179 higher

Justice League tryouts

The Brave and the Bold #28, #29 and #30

Pages and price

36 pages, 10 cents

Timeline

1. Mar 1951

   The Justice Society makes its last Golden Age appearance in All-Star Comics #57.

2. Aug 1955

   The Brave and the Bold begins as an adventure anthology (August-September 1955).

3. Oct 1956

   The Silver Age Flash debuts in Showcase #4.

4. Oct 1959

   The Silver Age Green Lantern debuts in Showcase #22.

5. Dec 29, 1959

   The Brave and the Bold #28 goes on sale, introducing the Justice League of America.

6. Oct 1960

   Justice League of America gets its own series.

7. Sep 1961

   Gardner Fox's 'Flash of Two Worlds!' introduces DC's multiverse.

8. Aug 1963

   The Justice League meets the Justice Society in Justice League of America #21.

9. Nov 2013

   A CGC 9.2 copy sells through a dealer for $120,000, then the issue record.

10. Jan 11, 2024

    The finest known copy, CGC 9.6, sells at auction for $810,000.

The world in 1960

• Jan 2, 1960

  Senator John F. Kennedy announces his run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

• Feb 1, 1960

  Four Black college students begin the Greensboro sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter.

• Mar 22, 1960

  Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes receive the first patent for a laser.

• May 1, 1960

  A Soviet missile shoots down an American U-2 spy plane, and pilot Gary Powers is captured.

• May 6, 1960

  President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

• May 9, 1960

  The FDA announces it will approve Enovid as the first oral contraceptive pill.

• Jun 16, 1960

  Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is released.

• Jul 13, 1960

  Kennedy is nominated for president at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, The Brave and the Bold #28 is number 13 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (27 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Julius Schwartz chose 'League' over 'Society' because it sounded like baseball's National League.
• Superman and Batman are founding members but sit out the first adventure because they are too busy.
• Snapper Carr, the League's teenage mascot, turns out to be immune to Starro because he is covered in lime.
• The issue is the first comic book cover appearance of Aquaman, who had been in comics for some 20 years.
• In 2013, only four copies of The Brave and the Bold #28 were graded 9.2 or better, against 23 copies of Avengers #1.
• The 9.6's $810,000 price was nearly seven times the previous record for the issue.