Did you like this era of the title?

Not really. At least, not as much as the one before it.

1) Adventure Comics featuring Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes
2) Adventure Comics featuring Supergirl
3) Adventure Comics featuring The Vigilante
4) Adventure Comics featuring The Spectre
5) Adventure Comics featuring The Justice Society of America
6) Adventure Comics featuring Black Orchid

...then the rest.

I remember being excited to see Joe Staton do Plastic Man, a series he seemed born to draw. And the art was great, but the scripts were nothing special. Meanwhile Starman was a bland pile of sci-fi cliches, with Tanghal's inks removing much of the appeal of Ditko's art. So I guess no, I wasn't a big fan of this era of Adventure.

That Spectre run was great. I liked the Aparo Aquaman run and the Aparo and Garcia-Lopez Deadman stories, too. I don't remember reading the Vigilante or Black Orchid stuff.

I forgot to put Aquaman between Spectre and JSA. Those were some of Aparo's best covers.

This fun series was the first hint that DC might recover from the DC Explosion. They were treading water until this book came along, and then the less-explosive DC Explosion (take 2) occurred in the summer of 1980. The addition of Aquaman made a great line-up even better.

Jim