The 1960s witnessed dramatic changes in American popular culture. The worried, conservative patterns of the 1950s had failed to feed the imagination of the American public, who demanded new ideas about politics, about themselves, and about the world in which they lived. Television, once considered a "low-brow" medium, began to offer "high-concept" programs—science fiction and horror series whose popularity in syndication continues to this day. Similarly, the comic books of the 1960s found new ways to excite the imagination, using superheroes for more than action and adventure. The colorful costumed characters soon found themselves in the wild world of "speculative fiction." A former literary agent in the field of science fiction, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz knew that good fiction raised good questions - and the best questions are ones that persist after the story is over. The fantastic world of the Justice League of America allowed writer Gardner Fox, with artist Mike Sekowsky, to challenge the heroes with wild adventures—against star-spawned villains, against each other, against themselves, against anything—in the meantime provoking the imagination of the reader with science-fiction ideas about parallel dimensions, time travel, dream machines, ESP and duplicate selves. The playful and exciting stories in this handsome Archive Edition capture the imagination as forcefully now as the did in the 1960s.
