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  • The team's debut in The Brave and the Bold #28, where all seven classic members, plus Snapper, teamed up to battle Starro the Conqueror. Every team member gets time to shine against Starro's starfish thralls, and to defeat him for good they use barrels of lime thanks to a clue unknowingly provided by Snapper, who had been using lime while mowing the lawn that day.
  • Snapper Carr gets one in the very first issue, when he stowed away on Despero's ship and captured him while the other members were busy escaping the perilous worlds they'd been sent to.
  • Justice League of America #8 had a continuous awesome moment for Snapper Carr, who, when he discovered the JLA were brainwashed to commit crimes, used Doctor Destiny's anti-gravity disc to trail the heroes and "steal" the loot before they could. When the angry gangsters tried to kill the helpless League, Snapper then stole the machine they used and broke the hypnosis, saving the day by himself.
  • Justice League of America #10 is about to end with the heroes helpless against the sorcerer Felix Faust, only for Aquaman to telepathically command whales to catapult flying fish into the tower window and hit Felix, distracting him from his spell and allowing the League to save the day.
    • The follow-up issue has a Darkest Hour moment when the Demons Three have turned the entire League into mist and encased them in glass jars. Green Lantern is able to use his positioning before he's transformed to free Wonder Woman using his Power Ring, and the League turns the tables on the demons by disguising themselves as one another and mimicking each other's powers.
  • Justice League of America #13 has the League confronted with robot doubles of themselves who seem stronger than they are, but with encouragement from Aquaman, they're able to figure out their weaknesses, outlast them, or trick them to win—and then Aquaman gets another awesome moment when he's the only one to figure out that the machine they have to destroy is in the arena itself.
  • Justice League of America #14 has a villainous awesome moment for Amos Fortune, who captured Batman to act as a proxy named Mr. Memory, who went around erasing the heroes' memories and nearly blowing them up with atomic bowling balls. This plan was only stopped with the intervention of the newest League member, the Atom, who was able to escape and use Green Lantern's Power Ring to help the other heroes.
  • Justice League of America #16 is an unusual story where a fan wrote in to the JLA about a fictional villain he created, the Maestro, who purposely misled the League about his power and trapped them inescapably (he was worried a villain might actually use said plan). After thinking over the scenario, the League realized the Atom was the key to recognizing his actual power—being so tiny, he couldn't hear the music that supposedly made everyone dance, but was affected by the high-frequency signal that was really causing it—and used the knowledge to prepare accordingly and defeat him. The entire team gets in on the action as they imagine themselves crushing the Maestro's plan and informing him just how it was foiled.
  • A villainous one for Queen Zazzala's debut in Justice League of America #23 occurs when she realizes the JLA have bested her bee-men and decides to use them as her new drones to obtain an immortality elixir. Using radiation to control their bodies, she threatens to destroy Earth if they don't do as she commands, and they have no choice but to obey since she can detonate the device mentally and kill them with the radiation if they refuse. When the ingredients for the immortality elixir are gathered, she has the foresight to not remove the radiation until they're safely away from her, giving her time to become immortal and create weapons to destroy them...only for the League to pull off a last-second victory over her by making it so the ingredients can't be opened, and Green Lantern ensures her device can't be used again.
  • In the first Crime Syndicate story from Justice League of America #29-30, Black Canary, who has no superpowers, takes down Superwoman by using her own strength against her with judo, pressure points, and jiu-jitsu holds, then binds her with the Lasso of Submission.
  • The JLA Classified miniseries New Maps of Hell has the Martian Manhunter put some fairly arrogant and powerful entities in their place;
    (to POTUS Luthor) "Well, Lex, my colleagues tend to treat you with some care, and even deference. As if you weren't an ordinary criminal. So I feel it's my place to remind you: I am from the fourth planet in this solar system. You are not my President. And you are utterly without any intrinsic importance to me."
    (to Eldritch Abomination) "We're the Justice League. We've beaten up real gods and made them cry. You are nothing to us."
    • In the same storyline, we get to see what the Speed Force and a Green Lantern ring can do together. That's why we have the Justice League.
  • Martian Manhunter has another great line during Morrison's run, when the heavenly host invades. The guy can talk down to freaking angels:
    "You people. How many times must we face your kind? Would-be conquerors and master races, so full of your own superiority, you will not see reason or hear the voice of sanity. But see this, hear this....We will not do as we are instructed."
  • In Justice League Of America #134, Supergirl joins the League to help find a missing Superman. They find Despero, one of the worst and oldest enemies of the League... and she trounces him. First she grabs him and throws him hard enough to put him into orbit, and then she flies out of the planet, meets Despero in space and knocks him out with one punch.
  • In one Justice League comic (Justice League of America, vol. 2 #14 or thereabouts), the entire JL is captured by Luthor and his Legion of Doom, and he's about to execute Supes, when Firestorm transmutes the Kryptonite knife into a butter knife. The entire Legion turns on him, until he reveals his "Trump Card": He slipped Batman a ball-point pen. By the time the Legion turns around, Bats has freed the entire rest of the League.
    Batman: With a ball-point pen, I can pick the locks at Fort Knox.
  • In the Justice League limited series DC: The New Frontier, John Henry's entire presence in the story is not only gut-wrenchingly tragic, but badass as all hell...until the point where it turns gut-wrenchingly tragic. Steel was never the most fascinating character, but knowing what really inspired him (let's just say it wasn't Superman) almost makes this the Moment of Awesome for both characters.
    • Seriously, how was there not a John Henry mini-series after New Frontier came out?
  • Wonder Woman in New Frontier Classified. After a man douses her with alcohol and sets her on fire, Wondy responds by ripping off her flaming breastplate and smacking him with it. The only sufficient response to this is probably "Holy shit!"
    • ...and the story even had a great historical sting by virtue of Diana doing that stunt at the very Playboy Club that had the famous reporter/feminist activist Gloria Steinem, undercover as a Bunny, there to record it all.
  • The Squire basically forcing Batman to work for her in JLA Classified.
  • When the entire Justice League was killed on a time-travel mission, a prerecorded video from Batman assembled a new team. During the speech he recorded some unknown time ago, Green Arrow starts complaining to the Atom - and the video tells him to shut up. That's how Crazy-Prepared Batman is.
    • Leading this team is Nightwing, who manages to save Tokyo and lead the group while suffering from the crippling fear that he can't measure up to Batman. Despite this, he faces down the giant-sized Big Bad with no trouble. And when she tries to kill him, the replacement League shows her... Nightwing was using himself as the bait.
      • Nightwing's speech when he takes his (surrogate / adoptive) father's place in the JLA would also certainly count.
        Nightwing: Not Here. Never here. You got a grudge? The guy across from you stole your wife? Just having a bad day and want to take it out on someone? There's fifty levels of self repairing Watchtower you can trash to your heart's content. But you leave it outside this room. This is where the Justice League sits down to work. The. Justice. League.
      • Which prompts the following line from Green Arrow(to himself):
        Green Arrow: When did he get "channeling the dead" vision? He's got the Bat's voice and everything.
  • In the Trial By Fire story by Joe Kelly, the JLA is battling an enemy who has telepathically manipulated the nations of the world into all-out war. After taking down a number of nuclear missiles, the JLA return to confront the villain, when he tells them that there's one more missile. The second-last issue ends with Superman racing after the missile (which was aimed for a Korean city) desperately straining to catch it... only to fail, and the entire city goes up in a nuclear fireball. The death-toll would be in the millions. We begin the final issue with, "At 13.57 local time, the town of Chongjin, North Korea, was destroyed by a nuclear warhead. The city has survived many wars, but it will not survive this. But... at 13.57 and 0.00001 microseconds, the entire population of the city found themselves standing on a hill 30 miles away. They were carried there, one at a time, by one man. The Flash. The fastest man alive." There are no words for that much awesome, there just aren't.
  • The time that Batman laid out Guy Gardner with a single punch.
    • Blue Beetle: (laughing) "One punch!"
  • It comes at the very start of Final Crisis, but this line tells you everything you need to know about the League:
    Superman: "These are celestials capable of cracking the planet in half and enslaving billions. Justice League condition amber."
  • New 52 JLA #1 - Green Arrow spending almost an entire week surviving in the woods, being hunted down by evil robotic versions of the Justice League, all with a serious wound to the side.
  • New 52 JLA #7 - Superman is captured by Rao, in a device designed to keep Kryptonians restrained on Rao's ship. Superman, after giving a The Reason You Suck speech to him, promptly starts exerting his strength. Rao tells him he can't escape. Supes replies? "I'm not trying to. I'm flying." Using his incredible strength and simple use of his ability to fly, he crashes the whole ship into the moon. As seen here.
  • The climax of "Justice League Rebirth #1" with Superman pulling a Big Damn Heroes by locating the weakness of The Reaper, an Eldritch Abomination preparing Earth for his race, and allowing the whole League to defeat it together, followed by the League giving it one hell of a Badass Boast that causes the creature to flee.
    Batman: This is mercy. *Leave*. Tell all the other reapers, tell everyone and everything like you that this world is protected.
    Superman: Whatever comes, we will face it.
    The Flash: Consider yourself warned.
    Aquaman: We stand guard here.
    Wonder Woman: We are the Justice League. Run.
  • New 52 JLA #10 - Rao has been depowered by a red sun as he is with Superman and his younger self. When he starts ranting and raving to Superman, said younger self calmly picks up a nearby polearm, and decapitates his older self. Younger Rao acknowledges the murder, but he also notes that becoming the older Rao would've been a far, far worse crime, and that he plans to not only take Krypton back to his time and teach its people how to live, but when his work is done, intentionally end his own life, "as I should have, long ago." He is serious about his redemption.
  • ''Justice League (2018)" #13. It is a full-on and awesome battle of wits and wills between The Joker and Lex Luthor, and shows both of them at their fullest potential. In the end, the Joker wins, and he is terrifyingly efficient in how he dismantles Lex.

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