Personal Collection // Dick  Dillin // Justice League of America #103 (Dillin/Giordano) (1972)

December 1972, Justice League of America #103, Page #8, Dick Dillin pencils/Dick Giordano inks, "A Stranger Walks Among Us!", (a big thank you to Ruben for letting me buy this page from him) I would like to give a little background of why this story and art is so historically important in Marvel and DC comic history: The Rutland Halloween Parade is an annual event held on Halloween in the city of Rutland, Vermont since 1960. The parade has a strong superhero theme and has been the setting for a number of comic book adventures. Local officials maintain that it is the largest and longest running Halloween parade in the United States. Tom Fagan, a local writer and comic book fan, is credited with having a hand in the parade's early development and superhero theme. Tom was friends with many comic book authors and artists, most of whom hailed from New York. Fagan persuaded some of them to take part in the Rutland Halloween Parade in comic book character costumes. In the 1970s, the Rutland Halloween Parade achieved a degree of fame when it was used as the setting of a number of superhero comic books, including Justice League of America #103. Tom Fagan was himself featured as a character in a number of these stories, usually depicted as an acquaintance of the title characters. Due to the nature of the masquerade parade, these issues often saw people dressed as Marvel Comics heroes appearing in DC Comics publications, and vice versa, marking some of the first (unofficial) intercompany crossovers in comics. Caution was exercised, however over widespread use of the competition's characters — Tom Fagan, (who hosted the parade dressed as Batman), was typically drawn as Nighthawk in Marvel-published Rutland Halloween stories. Over the Christmas-New Year period in 1972/73, writers Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, and Len Wein crafted a loose three-part story spanning titles from both companies. Each comic featured Englehart, Conway, and Wein (and Wein's first wife Glynis) interacting with Tom Fagan and Marvel or DC villains (and heroes). One of the three stories is Justice League of America #103. In this panel page, we see Tom Fagan (dressed as Batman) welcoming “Len, Glynis, Gerry, and Steve” to Rutland. These four people are Len Wein, Glynis Wein, his wife, Gerry Conway, and Steve Englehart. In the bottom panel, Len Wein says” Julie will never believe me when I tell him about this!” (referring to DC Editor Julius Schwartz)

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