JSA
See Justice Society of America.
JScript
Microsoft’s extended implementation of Netscape’s scripting language JavaScript was similar to the original, but had extensions specifically for the Windows environment. Internet Explorer supported JScript and VBScript, and each had their strengths and weaknesses for webpage programming. JScript could be used for both simple tasks (such as mouseovers on webpages) and for more complex tasks (such as updating a database with Active Server Pages (ASPs) or running logon scripts.
Judge Dredd
In the 22nd Century, Mega-City One is a vast urban nightmare situated along the east coast of post-apocalyptic North America. To the west, the irradiated wasteland known as The Cursed Earth covers most of America, and the polluted Black Atlantic lies to the east. Over 400 million citizens are crammed into gigantic city-blocks, overcrowding is rife, unemployment is endemic and boredom is universal. Tensions and crime run rampant. Only the armored Judges prevent total anarchy. Empowered to dispense instant justice, these lawmen act as combination judge, jury and, if need be, executioner. One of the clones of Chief Judge Fargo, Judge Joe Dredd is the toughest and most famous of the elite corps. In 2066, Dredd and his twin brother Rico emerged from the cloning facility, and as five year olds, they are enrolled into the Academy of Law, graduating 13 years later.
Judge Dredd travels on a Lawmaster motorbike, which features powerful side-mounted cannons, a center-mounted “Cyclops” laser, and full artificial intelligence. It is capable of responding to orders from the Judge, and is capable of driving itself. It is connected to the Justice Department, which can transmit information to and receive information from the bike. Dredd also has a handgun which is named the Lawgiver, complete with DNA coding so that no one else can use the weapon; it will explode if it reads an incorrect palm-print.
John Wagner came up with the concept behind Judge Dredd by request from Pat Mills of Rebellion comics, and Carlos Ezquerra created the character design. Writer Peter Harris, artist Michael “Mick” McMahon and Wagner developed the character further. He was the first of a line of tough-guy heroes to come from 2000 AD’s pages, along with the likes of Rogue Trooper, but he has always remained the most popular and influential mainstay of the publication. Dredd has been portrayed on the Hollywood screen by Sylvester Stallone in Judge Dredd (1995 film) and by Karl Urban in Judge Dredd (2012 film).
Judge Dredd (1995 film)
In the year 2139, Earth’s inhabitants have crowded into a few Mega-Cities, and the crimes have become so violent and rampant that the regular justice system cannot contain them. However, a new justice system emerges, where mobile Judges act as instant judge/jury/ executioner units at crime scenes. In Mega-City One (formerly New York City), Joseph Dredd aka Judge Dredd, the toughest and most stringent Judge in history, is convicted of murder. But there are evil forces at work in the Justice Department, and Dredd is convicted for a murder he did not commit. The legendary Judge must survive and discover the secrets of his own past in order to stop the evildoers. Sylvester Stallone portrayed Dredd in this big-screen adaptation, which was revamped as Judge Dredd (2012 film).
Judge Dredd (2012 film)
In the future, America has become an irradiated waste land. On its East Coast lies Mega City One, which runs from Boston to Washington DC – a violent metropolis of 800 million citizens, where criminals rule the chaotic streets. The only law and rests in the urban cops called “Judges,” who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Judge Dredd is the ultimate Judge. He is challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge: a dangerous drug epidemic the drug called “Slo-Mo,” the users of which experience reality at a fraction of its normal speed. During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate a rookie with genetically mutated psychic abilities. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture: a 200-storey vertical slum controlled by a drug lord and her ruthless clan. When the Judges capture one of the clan’s inner circle, the drug lord wages a vicious war against the Judges. Karl Urban starred in this re-imagined version of Judge Dredd (1995 film).
Jughead
See Jones, Jughead.
Jumanji
Based on the 1981 children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg, this popular 1995 film about a magical board game that affects the world around its players starred Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt and Kirsten Dunst. A reboot of the film, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was released in 2017.
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
This 2017 follow-up to the 1995 film Jumanji features an updated magical game, which pulls its players into the reality of the game itself and transforming them into human game avatars. Based on the 1981 children’s book Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg, the family adventure starred Dwayne (“The Rock”) Johnson, Kevin Hart and Jack Black.
Jump drive
See Flash drive.
Jumpman
In the classic video arcade game, a player must defuse all of the bombs on screen by running into them. The player can run, jump, climb ladders, and use ropes that will either move him up or down. The only enemy in most levels is a white dot (or “bullet”) that can fire at the player in a straight line from on- or off-screen. Jumpman’s difficulty level is centered largely on the fact that jumps cannot be controlled at all, and that there is little room for error. A fall of even a single block height will kill the player, and many jumps require getting to a very precise location; however, a player can alter the Run Speed of the level, which controls the speed at which the player and enemies move. The playing levels are arranged in three tiers: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert, and could be played in order by tier, in order beginning to end, or in random order. The game would end when the level playlist completed, or the player ran out of lives.
Junk sleep
Low-quality sleep caused by the use of and disruptions from electronic devices such as cellular telephones, computers and televisions. Proper REM (rapid eye movement) sleep – which occurs in 90- to 120-minute cycles during the course of the night, and is thought to be involved in storing memories, learning, mood balance, and dreaming – is not achieved because one has been using consumer electronics right up until the moment of falling asleep. In addition, many consumers leave these instruments on throughout the night, which continues to disrupt sleep.
The term “junk sleep” was popularized by a four undergraduate students at Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information in Singapore. Their study was based on the idea that using electronic devices right before bed would affect sleep in a negative way. They concluded that junk sleep is a result of both the devices that carry the content and the content on the devices. The brightness of the screen, portability of the device, nature of the content on the devices, how the content is displayed, and the type of content all play a role in connecting one’s mind to certain activity flows. In order to avoid junk sleep, the students suggested not touching cell phones or laptops a half-hour before bed.
Jurassic Park (film)
In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster based on Michaell Crichton’s Jurassic Park (novel), mathematician Ian Malcolm and paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are among a select group chosen to tour a new island theme park populated by living dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. After the park’s mastermind, billionaire John Hammond, assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt. The 1993 blockbuster starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel L. Jackson and Sir Richard Attenborough, and spawned several sequels, as well as the video game Jurassic Park: Trespasser.
Jurassic Park (novel)
The Michael Crichton novel that inspired a Hollywood series of films (beginning with 1993’s Jurassic Park) was originally published in 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, with the paperback being released in 1991 by Ballantine Books. At the beginning of the book, a previously unknown variety of three-toed lizard begins attacking children in Costa Rica. A carcass of one of the lizards is sent to a lab at Columbia University. Believing it to be a dinosaur, a technician calls the renowned paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant. Before he can investigate, Grant and his research partner, Dr. Ellie Sattler, are flown to Isla Nublar, an island off Costa Rica, as consultants for InGen, a bioengineering firm. There, John Hammond, the owner of InGen and an important financial supporter of Grant’s fossil digs, reveals that he has turned Isla Nublar into a zoo called Jurassic Park, which has been stocked with dinosaurs that have been cloned by means of a breakthrough genetic engineering technology.
Unbeknownst to Hammond and the others, the Biosyn Corporation, a rival bioengineering company, has enlisted Dennis Nedry, the designer of the island’s computer security network, to steal dinosaur embryos from the island for their own purposes. Jurassic Park has been designed to run with only a minimal number of staff, with most of its systems being automated. Therefore, when Nedry shuts down the park’s security system to steal the embryos, virtually all of the park’s other systems start to malfunction. Nedry gets lost while attempting to get off the island, and is killed by a venom-spitting dilophosaur.
Meanwhile, the power outage leaves most of the “guests” trapped in various areas on the island, and disables the electrified fences around the dinosaur areas. A Tyrannosaurus rex breaks through the fence, eating one man and severely injuring Malcolm. Grant and the children are forced to flee into the park on foot. Grant finds evidence proving that the dinosaurs have been breeding, even though the park scientists have claimed the dinosaurs were engineered to all be female. Tim manages to reactivate the electric fences just before the raptors are about to penetrate the electrified bars on the lodge skylight. He then calls the supply ship, which is about to dock in Costa Rica, and Gennaro commands the ship to turn around because of the velociraptors that have jumped aboard. While walking outside the lodge, Hammond trips and falls down a ravine, where he is attacked and eaten by a group of small dinosaurs. Malcolm also dies from complications from his earlier injury.
The Costa Rican National Guard show up, take everyone away, and blow up the island. Grant, while waiting for the Costa Rican officials to release him, is approached by a man who tells him about some suspicious and unidentified lizards that have recently been seen traveling in packs through the jungle on the mainland. The lizards have since fled deep into the jungle, and their whereabouts are unknown.
Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Inspired by Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (novel) and the subsequent blockbuster Jurassic Park (film) and its sequels, the video game Jurassic Park: Trespasser takes place on Jurassic Park’s Site B, Isla Sorna, where the movies The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III take place. Players control Anne, who crashed onto the island and is trying to find a way off. The game uses a first-person viewpoint, but is notably one of the first first-person shooter (FPS) games where the player sees more of their character on-screen than just the hand on the gun. While exploring the island, founder John Hammond’s voice narrates relevant passages from the book he wrote about his experience with creating Jurassic Park, and Anne herself also chimes in to comment on the situation from time to time.
Unique among FPS games, Trespasser simulates what true first-person view is like; as such, a player can see Anne’s arm and use it to manipulate items in the game. In addition, Anne can put her gun away and directly interact with the environment with her right arm, so a players must move the arm onto whatever they wanted to touch/interact with before hitting a button. As a result of the game’s one-arm system, Anne can only hold and use one item at a time. Aside from carnivorous dinosaurs, the main obstacles hindering Anne’s progress are box puzzles.
Justice League of America
After the successful revival of superheroes in the Silver Age of Comics, DC Comics tasked Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky with the job of reviving the Golden Age of Comics’ Justice Society of America. Fox was inspired by the word “League” in various sports franchises at the time, and decided to create a new name as well as a new team. Fox and Sekowsky created the Justice League of America in 1960, and crafted the story and pencils for the team’s first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #28. Murphy Anderson inked this issue.
As revealed in Justice League of America Vol 1 #9, the origin of the JLA occurred when seven heroes (the Martian Manhunter, The Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman and Batman) first came together to repel the Appelliax alien invasion. When the world’s greatest heroes were unable to defeat this alien threat individually, they came together as a team to defeat them. The heroes continued to work together as the Justice League of America, after realizing they worked well together and getting backing and support from the American government. After the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, via retroactive continuity (“retcon”), Black Canary was set as a founding member of the League in Wonder Woman’s place. The “New 52” version of the team has a new canonical origin, which is virtually the same, except that it was Darkseid that was invading the Earth and that Cyborg has replaced the Martian Manhunter as a founding member.
At the close of the Silver Age in the 1970s, DC established that the JLA came from Earth-1. The JLA maintained their first headquarters in a cave called the Secret Sanctuary in Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. The JLA had an annual tradition of team-ups with their Golden Age counterparts, the Justice Society of America from Earth-2, which started in Justice League of America Vol 1 #21. Over the decades, many superheroes joined and left the Justice League, and the League itself underwent some changes in name and location, but the team remained a constant force against supervillains, regardless of their membership.
Justice Society of America
In late 1940 during the Golden Age of Comics, All-American Comics (which would later merge with National Comics to become DC Comics) created a new comic book series called All-Star Comics. With its third issue, All-Star’s format changed. Writer Gardner Fox combined all of the comic line’s primary characters in a single story, but not to stop a crime spree or save the world. All-Star’s heroes got together … for dinner. This was the humble beginning of comics’ first super-hero team. The idea behind the gathering of heroes in one issue was to promote the company’s second-tier characters. Any character who starred in their own series was deemed ineligible for inclusion, to avoid overexposure. For this reason, Batman and Superman were considered only honorary members of the Society, appearing only in All-Star #7 and #24. Likewise, when The Flash and Green Lantern were given their own comic books, they “left” the JSA and became reserve members. The opposite was also true: if a character lost his feature in another series, he also lost his membership in the JSA. Those in attendance at the first meeting of the Justice Society included eight costumed heroes: The Flash, the Green Lantern, Hourman, The Atom, Sandman, Hawkman, Dr. Fate and The Spectre. Two others decided to crash this dinner party: Johnny Thunder and the original Red Tornado. Hourman’s “leave of absence” marked the end of his strip in Adventure Comics.
After the Justice Society’s members disappeared by the early 1950s (as most costumed heroes did), they languished in limbo until 1961. During The Silver Age of Comics, DC heroes such as Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the Atom were dramatically updated for modern readers. Instead of having both old and new heroes live on the same Earth, DC created the concept of “parallel Earths.” The Justice Society’s Earth was now called “Earth Two,” while DC’s modern-day heroes lived on Earth One. Earth Two was one of an infinite number of parallel universes, making up one multiverse. Since the introduction of parallel Earths, the DC Universe has gone through some dramatic changes. The Flash served as the JSA’s first chairperson, but resigned when his duties in Keystone City became too great (in other words, he’d been awarded his own solo comic book series). Johnny Thunder took his place as a full member, and Green Lantern became the second chairperson. Green Lantern served an even shorter term as chair and soon left, as well. He was replaced by Hawkman as chairperson, who retained the post for many decades. Green Lantern’s place in the JSA was filled by Dr. Mid-Nite. Hourman also took a leave of absence, and was replaced by the original Starman. The team’s first female member, Wonder Woman, made her first appearance in All-Star Comics#8 and officially joined the team four issues later. During World War II, only a handful of others joined the JSA. Among them were Mr. Terrific and Wildcat, who appeared in only that single issue of All-Star, but later stories established them as more active members. A much more regular cast member was Black Canary. Also, although she was never officially inducted as a member during the Golden Age, Hawkgirl assisted the Society on several missions.
In 1951, the Justice Society simply disappeared with no explanation. With issue #58, All-Star Comics was retitled All-Star Western, and DC shelved their former bread-and-butter heroes. In later decades, writers explained the disappearance (in terms of DC continuity) as the product of McCarthyism. During this paranoid time in American politics, the JSA refused to reveal their secret identities to the U.S. Government. Instead, they chose to disband. Many of the team members settled down and started families. Some of their children would also become superheroes and later form Infinity, Inc.
The Justice Society faced some of their most relentless enemies during this time, including: Brain Wave, the Psycho Pirate, Solomon Grundy, The Wizard, Per Degaton. Most were also a part of the Injustice Society, a super-villain team that would return in many forms over the years.
Over ten years later, in the pages of The Flash #123 (1961), DC’s new Flash, Barry Allen, met his Golden Age predecessor for the first time. DC then decided to revive the Justice Society. But during the Silver Age, which began with Allen’s introduction in 1956, DC’s revived characters had secret identities, origins, and in some cases, powers that were vastly different than their Golden Age counterparts. Eventually, DC Comics acquired characters from former rivals Quality Comics and Fawcett Comics (home of Captain Marvel). These heroes’ adventures were assigned to Earth-X and Earth-S, respectively.
In their second meeting (Flash #129, 1962), the entire Justice Society showed up and decided to come out of retirement. The membership was then comprised of the Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite, the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and Wonder Woman. The first meeting of the Justice Society and the Justice League of America took place just a few months later in Justice League of America #21-22 (1963). This event proved so popular that it sparked an annual tradition. The JSA guest-starred in Justice League of America crossovers every year for 23 years.
Several heroes joined the JSA for the first time during this period. The original Robin (Dick Grayson) joined during the crossover in Justice League of America#55. The android Red Tornado was also admitted, but soon moved to Earth One and joined the JLA (Justice League of America #65). After he was retrieved from being stranded in the prehistoric past, the still youthful Star-Spangled Kid joined along with Superman’s cousin, Power Girl (Kara Zor-El, the counterpart to Supergirl) (All-Star Comics #58), and after Batman’s death, his daughter Helena debuted as the Huntress (All-Star Comics #72). In addition to these, Flash and Green Lantern frequently guest-starred in their counterparts’ series. The Golden Age Wonder Woman returned as the main character in Wonder Woman for a brief time, supplanting her Silver Age duplicate. This coincided with the Wonder Woman TV series of the 1970s. The original Superman (joined on one occasion by Johnny Thunder) was a regular character in Superman Family.
Two company-wide events changed JSA continuity in extremely significant ways. First, 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths collapsed all parallel Earths into only one universe and continuity. As a result, the Justice Society became the preeminent wartime heroes in the DC Universe, but Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were entirely removed from that Golden Age. Over the next couple of decades, writers would struggle to retrofit Golden Age tales in a coherent way, without these iconic heroes. By the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, all of the Golden Age heroes who had “exact duplicates” on Earth One were removed from the board. The Earth Two Robin and Huntress died and were laid to rest in a private cemetery on the estate of Hawkman and Hawkgirl. The Golden Age Superman and his wife Lois Lane retreated to another dimension, and the Golden Age Wonder Woman and her husband Steve Trevor were invited to Olympus to live as gods. History soon forgot all about these great heroes as the universe settled into its new state of existence. Trapped in Limbo were Hawkman, Flash, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman, Starman, Wildcat, Johnny Thunder, Atom, Sandman, Hawkgirl and Sandy the Golden Boy. Only the Spectre, Dr. Fate, Power Girl, and the Star-Spangled Kid managed to avoid this fate; there were already plans to use these characters in expanded roles.
Then in 2011, the second big event occurred when DC again wiped the slate clean to create “The New 52.” This universe began fresh, with most characters reinvented from scratch. The New 52 (or DCnU) contained 52 parallel Earths (a concept introduced by the 2005 Infinite Crisis, which had semi-restored DC’s original multiverse). Earth 2 in the DCnU was also the home of the Justice Society. This time around, all of the characters were of a similar age to the mainstream DC Universe; they were not of World War II. Again, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were removed from the board—all killed in an epic battle with Darkseid’s forces. After their passing, familiar new heroes (or “wonders”) began to appear.
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