Review: All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever by Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Joe Staton, et al.

Comic hardcover, 446 pages
Published 2019 (contents: 1976-79)
Acquired January 2020
Read February 2020

All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever

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Writers: Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz

Pencillers: Ric Estrada, Keith Giffen, Joe Staton & Wally Wood
Inkers: Joe Giella, Dick Giordano, Dave Hunt, Bob Layton, Joe Staton, Wally Wood
Colorists: Liz Berube, Carl Gafford, Adrienne Roy, Jerry Serpe, Anthony Tollin
Letterers: Todd Klein, Bill Morse, Ben Oda, Milt Snapinn

I've decided to read my way through most of DC's Earth-Two/Justice Society work. Specifically, I'm interested in what they did with the concept from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. The Justice Society qua the Justice Society doesn't particularly interest me: I have no need to read a bunch of 1940s team-up comics. Rather, one of the thing I like most about DC is the sense of legacy and development, and I think you could argue that really starts with the Justice Society of America: because those characters didn't need need to stay eternally youthful like the Earth-One/Justice League ones, they could age, have children, change identities, and such, and when Earths-One and -Two were merged during the Crisis, this aspect of the premise got incorporate into the wider DC universe. So I'm not reading (much of) the old stuff, and I'm not going into the Geoff Johns era because, really, a little bit of Geoff Johns goes much too far in my experience. (And then in the "New 52" era, DC abandoned what made the concept work entirely.)

Helena, you're the best.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #465 (script by Paul Levitz, art by Joe Staton & Dave Hunt)

Anyway, I think that whole approach to the JSA really begins here, with its first ongoing revival in the 1970s. At this point the JSA had guested in a number of Crisis on Multiple Earths stories, but this was the first time they appeared as the stars of their own series since they were shunted out of All Star Comics back in 1951.

Go Justice Society!
from All-Star Comics #74 (script by Paul Levitz, art by Joe Staton & Joe Giella)

That said, this isn't that great. I mean, it's totally serviceable superhero action... but that's about it, with a couple exceptions. Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz have the sort of storytelling where the JSA is plunged from adventure into adventure: usually each storyline ends with a hook for the next already underway. But this actually makes the adventures seem small-- the pacing is never able to emphasize anything. It also makes it feel like these characters don't really have any lives outside of this title, since there's no gaps where they can live their own lives and have solo adventues. I mean, they literally don't, since none of them have ongoing series... but I would argue that they ought to feel like they do. Where do Sylvester Pemberton or Power Girl even live? What do they do when not superheroing? They feel more like, I dunno, the Teen Titans or the X-Men, than they do the multiversal equivalents of the Justice League.

Bruce Wayne: in any reality, still a jerk.
from All-Star Comics #69 (script by Paul Levitz, art by Joe Staton & Bob Layton)

Most of the original threats here aren't very interesting, either. Vulcan, the astronaut who's always on fire? Some underground people? (Why is it always with the underground people in comics?) The writing is a little inconsistent, too. No one seems to know if Power Girl can fly or just jump really far. (In the earliest Golden Age comics, Superman could just jump really far, but by this point, he was long able to fly, and Power Girl ought to have the same power set.) Sometimes the book seems to be about a subset of the JSA called the "All Star Super Squad" but this is pretty inconsistently indicated, and eventually fades away.

And to think, Roy Thomas brought this guy back. Roy Thomas gonna Roy Thomas, I guess.
from All-Star Comics #60 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Keith Giffen & Wally Wood)

I did think it was interesting that the "parallel Earth" angle was occasionally pushed: this Earth has no apartheid in South Africa, for example. Not much was done with that, however.

If I was decades out of time, surely the thing I'd be reading about was earthquake science, too. (In later issues of All Star Comics, as well as Infinity, Inc., it becomes clear he didn't even look up his own family!)
from All Star Comics #59 (script by Gerry Conway with Paul Levitz, art by Ric Estrada & Wally Wood)

That said, this comic has some interesting seeds and nuggets. I liked the development of Dick Grayson, now American ambassador to South Africa. I liked the introduction of Power Girl, even if she was sometimes written too broadly. (I think you can write a confident feminist, and not have her come off like this.) I liked the secret origin of the Justice Society. I liked the Wildcat focus issue. I liked the idea of the Star-Spangled Kid being out of time. (In execution, I didn't always understand it. Why was he so lonely? Weren't all of the Seven Soldiers of Victory out of time? Go hang out with them!) I liked the introduction of the Huntress. I liked the death of the Earth-Two Batman. I liked the explanation for why the JSA was inactive from 1951 to the mid-1960s.

Oh, poor Helena.
from All-Star Comics #71 (script by Paul Levitz, art by Joe Staton & Bob Layton)

You can see how later writers, especially Roy Thomas in the 1980s, would pick up and develop what was done here. There's the kernel of a good premise here, but (as it often is in mass-produced superhero comics) it will take a while for it to develop.

I haven't got to it yet, but I'm pretty sure Roy Thomas turned this one-issue story about the end of the original JSA into a whole epic.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #466 (script by Paul Levitz, art by Joe Staton)

(A couple quibbles about this collected edition. It's clearly from the same "masters" as the Justice Society, Volume 1 and Volume 2 collections of 2006. Those collections replaced references to issue numbers from the original comics with ones to collections of that era. Now, those make no sense: they should have been updated again or (my preference) changed back to the originals. Also, it would have been nice if Justice League of America #171-72 had been included here, between Adventure Comics #465 and 466, since those issues of Adventure lead into the JSA's appearance in JLA and follow up on it. Also, I remember it as being rather good! Also also, I think choosing "All Star Comics" as the series imprint is weird; I feel like people are far more likely to find what they want and know what they're looking at with "Justice Society" branding. Collections of issues of Action Comics are never called "Action Comics" on the cover, and if they are, it's "Superman: Action Comics.")

This post is the first in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers The Huntress: Origins.