Blog
The Mandela Effect
03/12/2026
Does everyone remember this image?
The big promotional image by Ed Benes from 2006, to promote the newly rebooted Justice League of America series by Brad Meltzer following Infinite Crisis? This books was a really big deal. The prior series, JLA, had sort of petered out in its long run after several seminal runs by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid and Joe Kelly, so this new book had really big shoes to fill.
Looking back, I think this series unfortunately really suffered from the era it was published in. This is where Dwayne McDuffie was thoroughly bullied out of telling the stories he wanted to tell by editorial. The events of James Robinson's Cry For Justice basically roughed up this book and took it's lunch money. Even the introductory arc by Brad Meltzer seemed a little too excited to explore the history of DC that Meltzer loved rather than push for new stories we could all enjoy.
The book does have some really great stuff in it too, though. The initial team was wildly innovative, deliberately built to honor the whole history of the League, and it looked fantastic thanks to some of the most restrained work of Ed Benes's career. (way less butts!) Mcduffie was clearly pushing to bring his vision of the League from the animated series to life in the comic, which I think everyone can agree would have been incredible. It eventually gave us a next generation Justice League led by Dick Grayson's Batman that felt like it was finally moving the League into the future before they rebooted the entire continuity.
But that's not why we're here. We're here specifically to admire this initial promotional image, showing all the heroes lined up to receive their possible invitations to the League. We've all seeing is so many times, this is a really seminal piece of DC artwork. Of course, the image was eventually split and used as the cover for issue #1...
Looking back, I think this series unfortunately really suffered from the era it was published in. This is where Dwayne McDuffie was thoroughly bullied out of telling the stories he wanted to tell by editorial. The events of James Robinson's Cry For Justice basically roughed up this book and took it's lunch money. Even the introductory arc by Brad Meltzer seemed a little too excited to explore the history of DC that Meltzer loved rather than push for new stories we could all enjoy.
The book does have some really great stuff in it too, though. The initial team was wildly innovative, deliberately built to honor the whole history of the League, and it looked fantastic thanks to some of the most restrained work of Ed Benes's career. (way less butts!) Mcduffie was clearly pushing to bring his vision of the League from the animated series to life in the comic, which I think everyone can agree would have been incredible. It eventually gave us a next generation Justice League led by Dick Grayson's Batman that felt like it was finally moving the League into the future before they rebooted the entire continuity.
But that's not why we're here. We're here specifically to admire this initial promotional image, showing all the heroes lined up to receive their possible invitations to the League. We've all seeing is so many times, this is a really seminal piece of DC artwork. Of course, the image was eventually split and used as the cover for issue #1...
I have been looking at this art for twenty years. I think I might have noticed SOME of these changes... but as we all dug into this last night the sheer number of alterations from the original promotional image to the cover one absolutely blew us away.
The front row has been swapped out so it features most of the characters that will be featured on the actual team, so Arsenal takes Green Arrow's place, Red Tornado swaps with the Flash, and Black Lightning swaps with John Stewart, who is now in Lightning's former spot WAY in the back. Wally & Ollie are now in the second row, replacing Red Tornado and Elongated Man (who is dead now). in Arsenal's previous slot, we have Nightwing (who is surprisingly NOT dead despite Dan Didio's best efforts).
In the second row, Aquaman is now in his weird Sword of Atlantis series, so he's unavailable, and is replaced with Guy Gardner, whose spot in the back is now completely empty. Booster is off traveling through time in his new series, so he's replaced with Big Barda.
In to the upper back row; the Question is dead, so he's replaced by J'onn in his more-alien post-Infinite Crisis look that he only had for a little while. Animal Man and Adam Strange would still be in space with Starfire, so they're replaced with new character Batwoman... and Hourman? Fire is now depicted with her powers active. Kyle Rayner is now in his much worse Ion costume. Tempest has been replaced with Mr. Terrific.
The Karate Kid was in the original image (Meltzer was planning to bring the Legion back), but now his spot is empty.
You'd think that's it, but there's a TON more. Power Girl's belt is different. The number of spikes on Batman's gloves. Captain Marvel doesn't look THAT different, but this would be Freddy instead of Billy because of the Trials of Shazam, so his logo is a little different. Vixen's HAIR changed. They put a jacket on Black Canary. The colors of Huntress's costume. The color of the flag Hawkman is holding. The invitations themselves. The shading on Superman's 'S'.
The front row has been swapped out so it features most of the characters that will be featured on the actual team, so Arsenal takes Green Arrow's place, Red Tornado swaps with the Flash, and Black Lightning swaps with John Stewart, who is now in Lightning's former spot WAY in the back. Wally & Ollie are now in the second row, replacing Red Tornado and Elongated Man (who is dead now). in Arsenal's previous slot, we have Nightwing (who is surprisingly NOT dead despite Dan Didio's best efforts).
In the second row, Aquaman is now in his weird Sword of Atlantis series, so he's unavailable, and is replaced with Guy Gardner, whose spot in the back is now completely empty. Booster is off traveling through time in his new series, so he's replaced with Big Barda.
In to the upper back row; the Question is dead, so he's replaced by J'onn in his more-alien post-Infinite Crisis look that he only had for a little while. Animal Man and Adam Strange would still be in space with Starfire, so they're replaced with new character Batwoman... and Hourman? Fire is now depicted with her powers active. Kyle Rayner is now in his much worse Ion costume. Tempest has been replaced with Mr. Terrific.
The Karate Kid was in the original image (Meltzer was planning to bring the Legion back), but now his spot is empty.
You'd think that's it, but there's a TON more. Power Girl's belt is different. The number of spikes on Batman's gloves. Captain Marvel doesn't look THAT different, but this would be Freddy instead of Billy because of the Trials of Shazam, so his logo is a little different. Vixen's HAIR changed. They put a jacket on Black Canary. The colors of Huntress's costume. The color of the flag Hawkman is holding. The invitations themselves. The shading on Superman's 'S'.
|
They legitimately just completely redrew this image, and I never noticed. I might be severely overthinking this, but I swear I could stare at this for hours.
I kept finding the second image saved as some variation of "Turner Variant", which gave me some pause. Apparently Michael Turner did a variant cover of this issue, so clearly people thought this was it... but of course that doesn't really track, does it? If you're paying Michael Turner for a variant cover, would he really just draw over the original Ed Benes art like this? It turns out, no, the actual Turner Variant looks like this: Which means that not only is this NOT a variant cover, but it's regularly mislabeled! Various wikis all seem to use the two images interchangeably. Maybe there's more to this than I'm aware of, but it really does look like the two images have actually managed to slip past a lot of notice and are treated like the same image, even though one is CLEARLY the Ed Benes original, done much earlier before they were buried in editorial notes, and the other is clearly redrawn, losing a lot of details. We know art assets are often redrawn before publication, but for such a huge well-known image to undergo so much redesign is bananas. |
|
Please, somebody weigh in here. No one I've talked to about this knew about this before we pointed it out. Did anyone see it?