Satellite Era Spotlight: Justice League of America #163

Remember in last month's Black Canary Wedding Planner, when the betrothed superhero duo were chatting with one another, and the name Anton Allegro came up?

I imagine that line of dialogue was a bit of a question mark for everyone, because if you did know who Allegro was, then you knew that not only had he reformed, but that he had died. And if you didn't know who Allegro was, well, then you didn't know who they were talking about at all.

Well, this is who they were talking about—


(He's the one summoning demons of destruction to slay the superheroes as alliteratively as possible. He's not actually ten feet tall, the perspective on this cover is just kinda crazy. Note all the lines drawing the eye towards Hawkgirls breasts though. This one must have flown off newstands).

Yes, Anton Allegro was the heavy in the Satellite Era classic that we're spotlighting tonight, Justice League of America #163 (1979); "Concert of the Damned," by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin.

As villains go, he's kind of a lame one, but then, so are most League foes (Isn't it odd that, individually, the Justice Leaguers have tons of great villains, but when they band together, the only ones who step up to challenge them are goofballs like The Key, a space starfish and, well, Anton Allegro?).

Allegro has a shock of black mad scientist/mad composer hair, a diabolically pointed goatee and one of the worst costumes the human mind can conceive of. Its skin-tight black spadex, which he wears with a bowtie, mustard-colored pirate boots and gloves, and a huge purple cape which might have been kind of cool, if it weren't for the piano key fringe along the bottom.

His weapon of choice is a synthesizer, which is either so wicked awesome or which he plays so wicked awesome that its capable of, as he expalins on the cover, summoning demons of destruction capable of slaying superheroes. That's not quite as cool as a guitar that could do the same, but it is cooler than a fiddle, violin or a wind instrument, the sorts of weapons previous music-based supervillains used. It's kind of admirable that in '79 Conway was with it enough to give a music-based villain a synthesizer.

Less cool? His successor's 1985 application of the technology into a keytar:


(That guy actually took down Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash Barry Allen. The real Anton Allegro would give his life in a battle against the Soviets to save them.)

But who exactly is Anton Allegro and how did he come to be?

Why would he turn his crazy-powerful synthesizer on the Justice League in the first place?

This is all covered in "Concert of the Damned," which opens with a scene of Green Arrow walking into Oliver Queen's apartment through the front door:



GA is surprised to see someone lying in wait for him. Anton Allegro is apparently surprised to see Green Arrow at all, saying, "Frankly, I was expecting Oliver Queen-- But you, Green Arrow--you'll do quite nicely!!"

"Yes, I was expecting Oliver Queen. But you, Green Arrow, who look an awful lot like Oliver Queen, what with the blond handlebar moustache and weird pointy beard, and who seems to have a key to Oliver Queen's apartment for some reason--you'll do quite nicely!"

A.A. introduces himself, then his fingers, "darting with inuman speed" on the keyboard of "a bizarre electronic accordion," summon three primary colored monsters. The ghostly beasts shrug off GA's trick arrows, and lay him out with a "JAPOW" to the jaw.

Meanwhile, 22,300 miles above the Earth, the rest of the Justice League sit around a table, talking. They have a special guest with them, Zatanna's father Zatara, and the topic is a boring sub-plot from the issue in which the League battled The Shark and his dainty-handed monsters.

Zatanna summarizes:



"Spell of Amnesia," huh Z.? You might want to study that spell yourself. You never know when you might need to cast it upon a teammate who stumbled upon you and your co-conspirators in the act of magically lobotomizing a rapist.

Sudenly, a big red "BLEEEEEE" summons the team away from this Zatara family drama. It's the emergeny signal! On a monitor screen, the head of Black Canary informs the team that Ollie has been attacked. She's bandaged his whole head in gauze and laid him on the couch, and he seems stable, but someone has to go kick his attacker's ass. And that someone is the Justice League! They spring into action:



I love this panel. Not just because it looks like Superman has totally forgotten how to run (not as unlikely as you might think for guys who can fly) and is about to topple over, but because Batman's action pose is so dramatic. I can practically hear him shouting "Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Once the invincible champions of justice have gathered around the wounded Oliver Queen's couch, the bearded Leaguer recounts his first encounter with Anton Allegro.



After listening to him rant for five panels, Queen was beginning to suspect that A.A. was something of a nut, and was looking for a way to let him down easy, when he looked out the window and saw something that demanded his attention:



A group of men wearing strange uniforms were using a laser tank to rob a bank. These sorts of super-crimes always seem so weird to me. To rob a bank, you really only need a gun, or the threat of a gun. A tank seems a bit like overkill. And a laser tank? Where did they get it? Did they invent a laser gun and then mount it on to a customized tank? Did they build the tank themselves as well? It seems like if they had the skills necesarry to build something like that , there would be easier, more legal ways to make money than bank robbery. Hell, just sell the laser tank. I bet you could get a lot of money for one of those.

It's worth noting that by DCU standards, using a laser tank for a simple bank hold-up isn't really that big of a waste of fantastic technology. I mean, consider Flash's rogues gallery, with their freeze rays, weather controlling wands and Mirror Master's mastery of mirrors. Those guys could make millions working for the U.S. military. Mirror Master could completely revolutionize communication and travel. And yet they devote their genius and/or resources on pulling off the sorts of crimes that anyone with a blackjak and/or pistol could do just as easily.

So anyway, Ollie pushes Allegro out the door, promising him a check to tide him over, and, just before slamming the door on him, gives him some free advice: "Do yourself a favor--and get a job!"

Allegro curses him, but Ollie's mind is already elsewhere. That rampaging tank requires the attention of a man who can shoot arrows at it, so it's time for Green Arrow to appear on the scene:



Yes! I love Green Arrow costume changes! Look! He had his whole costume—boots, bow, quiver full of arrows and all—on underneath his business suit! And you couldn't even see a bulge or anything.

Also, look at what he's holding in his left hand, and what he's shrugging off his right shoulder. Apparently he was wearing two identitcal suit coats one on top of the other. I guess the offices in The Queen Building get pretty chilly.

And then, it happens.

Ollie fires a tuning-fork arrow he's been experimenting with to shake the tank to peices, and Allegro gets caught in the blast.



Now I know Ollie's the superhero here and Allegro's the supervillain of the piece, and that we're supposed to root for the former and hiss the latter, but, I've got to say, Allegro seems to have pretty good reason to hate Green Arrow, if not Oliver Queen.

I mean, he's walking out of a meeting, minding his own business, when a masked vigilante employs an experimental weapon against a tank in the middle of a crowded public street, a weapon that caused permanent, incurable deafness in Allegro, a musician, who's whole life is devoted to the production of beautiful sounds.

Naturally, Ollie felt bad about it, and paid Allegro's hospital bills and apparently kept sending him checks (until he lost his fortune), but Ollie insists that it was a "freak accident." An accident, sure, but c'mon Queen, no one put a gun to your head and made you shoot your experimental tuning-fork arrow at that laser tank.

So Superman picks the wounded Ollie up in his arms (revealing that Ollie is still wearing his quiver full of arrows on his back...which he'd been laying on. Man, Canary is the worst nurse!) and flies him up to the satellite to recvoer.

Green Lantern Hal Jordan power rings up a giant tuning fork , which is able to track the frequency of Allegro's music of madness. With his friends in a big green bubble, he swoops towards--



Wait, what? Massachusetts? Star City is in Massachusetts? Really? Really? I honestly had no idea. I always thought it was somewhere on the west coast, I think because I just assumed it must have been somwhere near Seattle, if that's where Ollie relocated to later. Massachusetts. Huh. Does that explain Ollie's liberalism then? Is he just your typical Massachusetts liberal? Or should I say Taxachusetts liberal? Eh? Eh? Hawkman knows what I'm talking about...

As for the last ten pages of the book, Allegro's music demons totally take out Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkgirl and Black Canary. Zatanna and Zatara have some boring conversations about why her costume keeps changing, and what's up with her mom. And Superman and Batman pull the old robot double trick on Allegro to save his hot ex-wife's life, which brings us to the blurb for the next issue, "Murder By Melody!"

I'm missing the next 19 issues of the series, so I have no idea what happens, but none of the Justice Leaguers seem to have been murdered, as they're all still around and available to have meetings in JLoA #183.