Greetings! Welcome to Earth 2

Justice League America 195-197

“Crisis with the Secret Society of Super-Villains”

I lied, we're not looking at Post-Crisis right now; these comics came out in 1980 and are distinctly Pre-Crisis. In fact, I have a lot of Pre-Crisis stories to get through before Post-Crisis either because they have strong continuity ties to several Post-Crisis stories or because it's just something I really want to read. The first issues I read, Justice League of America 195-197, are unique because the story provides a good introduction to the 'Multiple-Earth' concept that is such a major focus of the shift from Pre- to Post-Crisis.

Pre-Crisis loved multiple versions of existing characters. The JLA protected Earth 1 and the JSA called Earth 2 home.

In addition to the concepts of Earth-1 and Earth-2, this story is jam-packed with characters: introducing several members of both the Justice League and the Justice Society while also providing some background on the two teams. The ten villains consisting of the Secret Society of Super-Villains are also featured. All-in-all we have a story with 35+ characters, many of whom are major players in the DC Universe on both sides of the Crisis.

So smart, his skull can't contain his brain.

 The Ultra-Humanite (Super-smart criminal gorilla, a DC Universe (DCU) classic, we'll meet plenty of these) gathers several villains both from Earth-1 and Earth-2, including, among others: The Mist, Brainwave, Cheetah, Killer Frost, and uh...Signal Man. Signal Man is supposed to represent Batman's arch-foe so it's clear The Giant Scientist Gorilla is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

In a plot derived purely from comic book logic, The Ultra-Humanite has discovered that if five heroes each from Earth-1 and Earth-2 are kidnapped and banished, while still alive, to the realm of Limbo, which exists between the gulfs of the multiverse, the sudden vacuum of heroism would force the multiverse into an act of balance and banish all heroes from one of the two Earths. I don't know how this makes sense, but I'm not a malicious gorilla, so let's just go with it. Because going with it leads to two issues of villains kicking the crap out of our heroes and banishing them to Limbo. Bad guys win! Game over.

Actually, it would've been game over if the Ultra-Humanite wasn't such a dick: as his comic-book-logic surmised, all of the heroes disappear from Earth-2 upon the consignment of the ten captured heroes to Limbo, but instead of acting surprised about this, he brags to the Earth-1 villains that he duped them and knew the heroes would only disappear from Earth-2. Post-revelation, the evil albino ape sends them packing back to Earth-1. The last issue consists of the Earth-1 villains freeing the heroes from Limbo, re-establishing any balance the multiverse had before and leading to the Secret Society banished to Limbo. Crisis averted and good triumphs once again.

Just from this simple plot synopsis, it's evident that the constant switching from Earth-1 to Earth-2 can get confusing and downright tedious. The multiverse was often a crutch for writers to come up with all kinds of crazy shit. In what universe is balance maintained by erasing heroes from one Earth and not the other? Isn't that taking a situation of balance and causing an imbalance? Comics can get pretty crazy and jettison all normal logic just to make stuff up on the fly; that's fine, part of the beauty of comics. This situation, fun as it is, doesn't follow any kind of internal logic I can decipher and loses any kind of story tension when the end of the story is dictated by whatever the writer feels like and nothing anything the characters do.

Batman looks so happy at the prospect of punching the mentally ill.

Although, there is a gleeful abandon to this story which has a certain charm. Arch-enemies teaming up to take down together who they cannot defeat on their own. Cosmic adventures, heroes in peril, and the world at stake. These issues provide an excellent primer of what many DC stories were like from the 60s through early 80s as well as an interesting juxtaposition to what's to come.