With #86, Mike Friedrich signed on as writer. Friedrich got his start, as so many in the 1970s did, as a fanboy who wrote letters to DC Comics and struck up a pen-pal relationship with DC editor Julius “Julie” Schwarz. He was responsible for the silver age reintroduction of Phantom Stranger, and from there he went on to his first regular gig, here on JLA. Much later in life, he would become one of the first independent comics creators on his Sci Fi/Underground anthology Star*Reach, and you can see his indie sensibilities in this early work. His first issue of JLA was an environmentalist story about the corruption of the word’s plankton, and the implications to the entire ecosystem. His scripts weren’t always great on this title, but they were always extremely ideological.