Following up on a comment, considering how iconic and oft-replicated the cover to 1987's Justice League #1 was, how transitory it all was. For instance, the mini-series that preceded it, Legends, clearly set up Changeling being on the team. Considering how I was never wild for Gar Logan as a Teen Titan, he would have maybe been my least favorite press gang into even the JLI. Could you imagine how insufferable the Blue and the Green would have been? I could always half-ignore Booster Gold as a marginally powered also-ran, but ol' Beast Boy would have been prioritized to capitalize on the (already waning) New Teen Titans heat. Plus, I figure he'd have been a bizarro Year One Black Canary, constantly comparing the JLI disparagingly to the Junior JLA. I'm not sure the creative team were in a position to refuse him, either, so I bet Marv clawed him back. Near miss.
Dr. Light is a big "ew," because you figure that was an editorial mandate to take advantage of Kimiyo Hoshi's visibility from Crisis on Infinite Earths. Her whole point was to take a hero's journey from ill-tempered narcissist to noble self-sacrifice, as exemplified for her by Supergirl. It would have been an interesting reset to have her reject that template-- to decide "I didn't spend my entire life earning a doctorate to become a world-class scientist so that I could die on a mudball in the Anti-Matter Universe, just because I stumbled into metahumanity. That's a role for one of these other super-goofs that punch first and think never." Given the intention for Crisis to erase itself, there was never a Kara Zor-El to offer that lesson. Dr. Light could have been a magnificent foil for Guy Gardner, whose self-importance and insubordinance could have also rankled Batman and J'Onn J'Onzz. Plus, the JLI desperately needed women, as evidenced by the later inclusion of Green Flame and Ice Maiden from the Global Guardians. But Fire and Ice were "hey-- sexxxy laaaadies" who could play traditional female types and a typical extrovert/introvert dynamic. Dr. Light demanded more nuance, but Giffen couldn't be bothered, and she was totally reject-able even by a book as desperate for leads as JLI. Her later, limp rotation through a problematic weak sister spin-off book in it's lesser days was no great victory for either female or Asian representation. Nobody has ever seen enough value in Dr. Light to do anything worthwhile with her.
Given that there was no longer an Earth-2, the Justice Society was in (literal) limbo, and that we had moved on to a new incarnation (if not outward presentation) of Dr. Fate for the eighties, it's a shame he was a one-arc chump. I guess Nabu and Linda Strauss dipped in a few times, but they moved Dr. Fate into a solo role at a time when team association could have given the concept a firmer standing. That said, Fate was never really a draw, and you've got a Spectre situation of constantly having to explain why he even needs a team to back such a powerful figure. This was an exit that I agreed with, because Dr. Fate had too much going on in their lives, and I don't think the humor that works for that property is the same flavor the JLI traded in.
Given the five minutes Captain Marvel was in the group, it's disheartening how much damage that small exposure did to the character. As a Wonder Woman fan, I've long decried the tendency for characters with a smaller but devoted fandom to be defined by their usage in higher visibility team over their solo vehicle. It's a form of Flanderization, where a character is warped by the needs and biases of the creative force behind an ensemble into a caricature that sticks for those with no broader awareness of the hero. And boy, did Captain Marvel get walloped with the goober stick. Roy Thomas was wise to pull the Big Red Cheese out as quickly as he did, and a fool for not immediately placing him elsewhere to manifest a counter-narrative. Legends had traded heavily on the boyish innocence of Billy Batson, but when DC's surprise hit of the year turned him into a simpleton, that stuck with him in perpetuity. That's the buffoon a loathsome Zachary Levi played in those wretched feature films, so now that's what Shazam is to a modern global audience. Given that the JSA had been 86'd, I always felt like Roy blew it with Infinity Incorporated, which had already dismally failed to ride the coattails of X-Men and New Teen Titans to such a degree that I think even the Detroit League bettered them. If only Roy had the vision to rework the property more fully into a contemporary Justice Society, he could have brought Captain Marvel and Dr. Fate into that team, preempting that approach on the more successful 2000s JSA revival. And it would have spared us all that Silver Scarab melodrama.
I still have affection for the Justice League that we got, but it's interesting to consider how we didn't really get the one that we were promised.
