This week's mythcomic, "A Dream of Monsters," follows the latter pattern. Four of the six heroes-- Quantum Queen, Elvar, Dartalon, and Aviax-- have no mythic identities individually, but only collectively, insofar as they are part of Clonus's brood of mutated "children." Re-Animage has a little more individual mythicity, simply because his creators had to devote some cosmological thought to the process by which his body regenerates. The mental mistress Psyche, however, plays a more central role in the tale insofar as she is "the good mother" against Velissa's "bad mother," though even so, "Monsters" seems to be much more about the Frankensteinian story of Clonus-Prime, his wife Velissa, and the Hatchlings. Later stories in the short-lived WANDERERS series made some attempts to give the heroes some myth-status, as when Aviax, a fellow who can turn into various types of birds, fights an evil scheme that involves the extermination of birds, but all of these stories failed to imbue the sketchy characters with any symbolic stature.
In THE INJUSTICE SOCIETY OF THE WORLD, the starring heroes of the Justice Society don't have much mythicity compared to the villain-group. In the earlier tale A CURE FOR THE WORLD, the Society-members have more mythicity, but only in the collective sense. None of the heroes' particular skills or potentialities are emphasized, bur rather, all of them are made into vessels for the story's message regarding the liberating effects of democracy. If the same story had been told with six different DC heroes, it probably would have read about the same.
It is, however, not impossible for a narrative to sustain both individual and collective myth-amplitude, at least better than "Dream of Monsters" does. In THE JUSTICE LEAGUE'S IMPOSSIBLE ADVENTURE, five League-members are transported to an alien world by a group of judgmental beings named "the Impossibles." The Impossibles remove the powers of Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and J'onn J'onzz simply because all five received their abilities without working to earn them. The powerless heroes are then obligated to defend the cosmic judges against a group of predacious aliens. During the battle, most of the heroes find that the removal of their powers turns out to be a Good Thing, because it either removes their weaknesses or prevents them from having their former powers turned against them. (For instance, Aquaman is attacked by mental waves from a brain-creature, but he realizes, somehow, that the waves could've slain him had he still had his telepathic powers.) So collectively, all the members share the amplitude of "earning what was not earned," but since the script exploits each of their individual myth-identities, each hero also has an individual myth-amplitude.
ADDENDA: Since, going by Google, I seem to be alone in appreciating JLA #59, I'll add that although Gardner Fox works into the story the weaknesses of Superman and J'onn J'onzz readily enough, he couldn't really do this with the other three. The Flash has no specific vulnerabilities, Aquaman's weakness of needing immersion in water only takes place after a full hour, and Fox probably didn't even know that the Amazon, as written by her creator, lost her strength (sometimes) if a man chained her-- or welded her bracelets together-- or whatever Marston wanted to write at the time. That's probably just as well, as we spared a scene in which Wonder Woman had to say, "The Crystal Man welded my bracelets together, but since I don't have my Amazon strength, I-- uh-- well, I'm still chained up!" (Oddly, the story does give Wonder Woman a psychological block, which is slightly appropriate, just because her creator was of the psychological profession.)
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