All-Star Squadron is an important moment in the history of superhero comic books. In the letter column of issue #10 (Feb. 1983) is the first recorded occurrence of "retroactive continuity," the word later shortened to "retcon." Writer Roy Thomas uses it in response to a letter from Lee Allred (who would himself become a comic book writer of, among other things,
Fantastic Four and
Batman '66 Meets the Legion of Super-Heroes). Allred praises Thomas for his "matching of Golden-Age comics history with new plotlines." Thomas's reply makes it clear the word is not his coinage: "
As for what Roy himself (myself) is trying to do, we like to think an enthusiastic ALL-STAR booster at one of Adam Malin's Creation Conventions in San Diego came up with the best name for it, a few months back: 'Retroactive Continuity.' Has kind of ring, don't you think?"
Retcons would go on to be one of the major creative forces of the superhero comics industry, and it all begins here! Well, kind of. That statement's untrue in two ways. One is that comics writers had long been willing to "retcon" things when needed. The other is that this actually isn't how we now think about retcons. Often these days, "retcon" is used to mean an idea that retroactively
wipes out old continuity: think of all the different origins of Green Arrow. Sometimes the new origin is justified in-story (e.g., a timeline change), but sometimes a new writer just tells an old story a new way. But Roy Thomas means the opposite. This isn't new continuity that retroactively disregards old, but new new continuity that retroactively
slots in.
All-Star Squadron takes as its premise that all the Golden Age comics adventures happened as written. (Basically, anyway.) But in between those adventures,
these ones happened. The series begins on the eve of Pearl Harbor; after the Japanese attack, President Roosevelt organizes every American superhero into the All-Star Squadron, who will fight the Axis on the home front. This gives Thomas access to every character published by DC in the 1940s, plus those published by Quality Comics (whose characters were published by DC after the company ceased operations in 1956). The resulting organization has an extraordinary amount of members (over fifty), though in practice the comic tended to focus on a smaller set of the larger membership. Thomas weaves the adventures of the A-SS (um...) in and out of real Golden Age stories, as well as real World War II history.
It's pretty enjoyable stuff. There are two sets of characters Thomas tends to prioritize: the core Justice Society members (e.g., the Atom, Doctor Fate, the Spectre, and so on) and a set of characters whose adventures are much less chronicled (usually Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, Robotman, Commander Steel, Firebrand, the Shining Knight, Amazing-Man, Tarantula). I tended to enjoy the book more when it focused on this latter set. I don't think the JSA
qua the JSA is notably interesting: too many of them are square-jawed heroes who come from money, and of course their storylines are fairly set in stone.
But the other characters-- whose own series were short-lived, and whose futures were wide open-- give Thomas a canvas to do more. I really liked both female leads. Liberty Belle is the leader of the All-Stars, a real Golden Age character given new life here. I liked her a lot: a fierce, opinionated woman who swam the English Channel to escape the Nazis and who now argues in favor of American military intervention in the war through her radio show, she's a strong leader character in the Saturn girl mode. Plus she has a cool costume, complete with jodhpurs. (It took me some research to figure out why her pants had this weird thing on them.) Firebrand is a Roy Thomas creation, a distaff version of an existing Quality Comics character. Wealthy society girl Dannette Reilly replaces her brother when he's incapacitated during Pearl Harbor and she spontaneously gains fire powers. Again, a fun character. Many of the others are good, too: Robotman is a tragic character with a perpetual smile, Commander Steel too has a tragic background. (Steel was a retcon character from a brief 1970s WWII-set ongoing. More on him when I eventually jump back to his series.) I liked Amazing-Man, a black Olympic medalist spurned by his own country. These characters could change, go places, enter relationships, and so on.
This is the kind of comics I like. A team made of diverse personalities, working together. I did feel sometimes as though I liked the
idea of the characters more than the actualities, as Thomas will never be praised for amazing dialogue or character-focused plots. But it's the kind of comic series that's greater than the sum of its parts: I have fond memories of its sprawling cast, even if I couldn't point at a specific story and say, "That one made good use of them."
The stories weave in and out of existing Golden Age stories, as I said. Thomas usually fills you in or recaps, which is fine. He was at times more interested in the retroactive continuity than the other elements of storytelling. In Annual #3 (1984), for example, we learn that Green Lantern stepped down as chairman of the JSA because he accidentally killed someone. This isn't a character point-- it's never mentioned before or since, it never affects any decision he makes-- it's just there to explain why he was abruptly replaced as chair between issues in the original
All Star Comics run of the JSA. Or Hourman struggles with an addiction, but Thomas doesn't get any character mileage out of it; it just explains why he switched from using a pill for his powers to a ray. There's also a lot of time spent explaining how some characters are on Earth-Two in these stories even though they were on Earth-X in
a JLA/JSA crossover from the 1970s. At first it's interesting, but it goes on and on and it's honestly contrived even for this medium.
What was more interesting was the way Thomas grounded the series in the war. I know the comics actually do a lot with the war, but in my experience, it's in a pretty jingoistic, simplistic way. Thomas weaves
All-Star Squadron in and out of the actual events of World War II. The All-Stars deal with the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, attack Japan (unsuccessfully) in revenge, save Churchill from assassination during a real America visit, discover the Ultra-Humanite was responsible for a real act of sabotage, fight in the real Battle of Santa Barbara, and so on. The Justice Society members enlist as ordinary soldiers and officers, but soon end up activated as the Justice Battalion under the command of the War Department, Roy Thomas expanding a real Golden-Age story into a multi-issue saga.
Probably my favorite of all of these was when Thomas had the All-Stars involved in a real 1942 Detroit race riot in issues #38-40 (Oct.-Dec. 1984). (Black defense workers brought in to increase production were met with hostility by white residents.) He's not afraid to criticize his own leads; at first, many of the All-Stars (who are all white except for Amazing-Man) are all, "Well, really, both sides are violent and thus should be criticized" before finally realizing that maybe it's worse to be a violent racist than someone using violence to defend themselves from violent racists.
One aspect of the series is somewhat ridiculous: it ran sixty-seven regular issues; the first sixty make it from December 1941 (Pearl Harbor) to April 1942. That's twelve issues per month of story time on average, though February disproportionately has twenty-three issues (plus two annuals) devoted to it. It took two years of actual release time to get through February, almost an issue for each day of the month! To make it to V-J Day,
All-Star Squadron would have needed to run about 528 issues. To be able to do that,
it would still need to be running now, as with issue #1 debuting Sept. 1981, #528 wouldn't be reached until Oct. 2024 if I've done my sums right.
I feel like this was somewhat optimistic.
I would really like to know why Roy Thomas took this approach. Why stretch it out so much? He did go on to cover May and June 1942 in the sequel series
The Young All-Stars (which I haven't yet read), but that still leaves over three years of wartime uncovered! So we have seven months packed with superhero incident, and many more comparatively empty. He had to know even at best,
All-Star Squadron would make it to 100 issues tops. It sometimes feels contrived within the story, even; there's a story set in 1942 that explains a powers and costume change the Atom underwent in 1948. Why are we explaining this now and not in 1948? Or, there's a bit where we're told Robotman built a special aircraft to transport the All-Stars in his spare time. What spare time!?
The art is always solid; Thomas was assigned and/or picked good collaborators, the best of which was Jerry Ordway. Ordway's done great stuff since as both writer and artist, but this was his first ongoing comics assignment; he inked most of issues #1-20, and pencilled most of #19-29 (before departing to co-create
Infinity, Inc., again with Thomas).
There are some specific stories worth commenting on in brief:
- #9-10: "Afternoon of the Assassins!" / "Should Old Acquaintance Be Destroyed…" (May-June 1982) wraps a frame story around an unpublished issue of Gerry Conway's Steel, the Indestructible Man series from the 1970s. Conway's dialogue is left mostly intact; Jerry Ordway inks over Don Heck's 1970s pencils. It's a clever idea, though in practice, I found the Steel flashbacks kind of dull. I wonder if I will enjoy them more when I read the preceding issues.
- #13: "One Day during the War…" (Sept. 1982) is a slice-of-life story following a number of All-Stars on a single day. It's neat, and quiet, and the kind of thing I wish Thomas had done more often. (Though Dannette gets over her anti-Japanese racism improbably easily.)
- #18-26 and Annual #1 (Feb.-Oct. 1983) form a gigantic epic about the All-Stars battling the Ultra-Humanite and his/her minions, as well as another version of the Ultra-Humanite from 1984, and their own descendants in Infinity, Inc.! A big cast, a big story, it slowly build from a single confrontation with Thor(!) to a massive showdown. Great stuff, superhero comics at its best.
- #36-37: "Thunder over London!" / "Lightning in Berlin!" (Aug.-Sept. 1984) bring in Captain Marvel from Earth-S, temporarily under Nazi mind-control. It has its high points (I liked how Superman was mad because he thought Marvel was a knock-off), but it's way too easy for the All-Stars to sneak into Hitler's HQ and back out again. That should have been much more tense!
- #50-56: Special Crisis Cross-overs (Oct. 1985–Apr. 1986) cover how the Crisis affected 1943. This was neat, because I had a little frisson when I realized that #50 was leading into a scene I remembered from reading Crisis on Infinite Earths for the first time... all the way back in 2008! But this time I had a context for who Dannette Reilly was! And the sub-plot about Mr. Mind popping over from Earth-S to do a really bad job of running a supervillain team was some inspired comedy. Some of it was tough reading, though; the issue about defending Cape Canaveral against time-lost Indians seemed to have nothing to do with anything. But there was some fun stuff... even though the Crisis sounded a death-knell for All-Star Squadron, as several All-Stars could not have existed in this new context, and several others would have to be substantively changed. Roy Thomas grumbled in a letter column that at first he was told he could have an exemption for his series: Earth-Two could exist in the past, even if in the present it had been merged with Earths-One, -Four, -S, and -X. But I can see why this wasn't allowed to happen: if the goal of Crisis was to reduce confusion, saying there was an alternate Earth in the 1940s whose history had been erased doesn't seem like it would do it.
- #52, 55-59: Shanghaied into Hyperspace! (Dec. 1985, Mar.-July 1986) is a series of back-up stories showing what the Justice Society was up to during the Crisis. A Nazi plot (supplied by the Monitor) launched them into space, each to a different planet in the solar system; a passage by Harbinger knocked each rocket into a different timeline. This is apparently an expansion of an actual JSA story, the parallel timelines conceit being used to explain why the eight planets are nothing like they are in reality or even other DC stories. An okay idea, but Thomas is (as he often is) too faithful to the terrible stories, and they are deathly dull to read.
- #57-60: "Kaleidoscope" / "I Sing the Body Robotic!" / "Out of the Ashes… Mekanique!" / "The End of the Beginning!" (May-Aug. 1986) are technically post-Crisis, but the crimson skies remain as Roy Thomas ties up loose continuity ends before the series completes. He explains this as a the timeline changes being delayed by Mekanique, a robot villainess from the future. There's a neat bit where at the beginning of #60, a photo is taken of the All-Stars, then Mekanique lets history change, then the photo is developed, and you can compare the "original" to the photo and see which characters have been replaced (e.g., the Golden Age Superman no longer exists, but now Uncle Sam is there, as Earth-X's history has been folded in).
Issues #61-67 are an extended epilogue, no longer advancing the story of
All-Star Squadron as
The Young All-Stars was prepared. There are origin stories for Liberty Belle, the Shining Knight, Robotman, Johnny Quick, and Tarantula in #61-63, 65-66 (Sept. 1986–Feb. 1987), some of which are interesting, some not. Liberty Belle, the Shining Knight, and Johnny Quick didn't get very developed origins during
All-Star Squadron's main run, so that was nice, but on the other hand, the stories of Robotman and Tarantula were hashed out in detail already. Plus we get a fun missing adventure in #64 (Dec. 1986), slotting in between issues #46 and 47 (June-July 1985). The last issue, #67 (Mar. 1987), rounds things out with a retelling of
All Star Comics #4, the first real JSA adventure. As always, Roy Thomas is so faithful to the original as to make you wonder why he bothered! It's a fizzle of a last year for a comic that had been moving from success to success prior to
Crisis.
On the whole,
All-Star Squadron is the exact kind of superhero comic I enjoy. I like comics for the way they span large chunks of time, take in multiple issues and ideas, and build a tapestry. The joy of them for me is in the almost accidental way they do so: I love Green Arrow, for example, for his
lack of constancy. If the character had been the same all along, I don't think I'd like him so much.
All-Star Squadron is fun because it takes that accidental continuity and brings some coherence to it. But at the same time, it's just another installment in the accidental picture of Earth-Two, drawing on what Gerry Conway and Paul Levitz did in the 1970s, and providing a foundation for what other writers like James Robinson would do in the 1990s and beyond.
Oh, and having their base in the Trylon and Perisphere from the 1939 World's Fair was super-cool.
This post is the third in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One. Previous installments are listed below:
- All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
- The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
