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Unlock more secrets of the JUSTICE SOCIETY of AMERICA (& friends) !

VOLUME THREE

26 95

In The US

52695

ISBN 978-1-893905-80-1

9 781893 905801

VOLUM E THREE

Companion

Edited by

ROY THOMAS

★ Edited by Roy Thomas

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

ISBN-10: 1893905802 ISBN-13: 978-1893905801

The ALL★STAR Companion

In this third volume, comics legend ROY THOMAS presents still more amazing secrets behind the 1940-51 ALL-STAR COMICS and the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! Also, there’s an issue-byissue survey of the JLA-JSA team-ups of 1963-85, the 1970s JSA revival, and the 1980s series THE YOUNG ALL-STARS with commentary by the artists and writers! Plus rare, often unseen art by NEAL ADAMS, DICK AYERS, MICHAEL BAIR, JOHN BUSCEMA, SEAN CHEN, DICK DILLIN, RIC ESTRADA, CREIG FLESSEL, KEITH GIFFEN, DICK GIORDANO, MIKE GRELL, TOM GRINDBERG, TOM GRUMMETT, RON HARRIS, IRWIN HASEN, DON HECK, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JACK KIRBY, JOE KUBERT, BOB LAYTON, SHELDON MAYER, BOB MCLEOD, SHELDON MOLDOFF, BRIAN MURRAY, JERRY ORDWAY, ARTHUR PEDDY, GEORGE PÉREZ, H.G. PETER, HOWARD PURCELL, PAUL REINMAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, HOWARD SIMPSON, JOE SINNOTT, JIM STARLIN, JOE STATON, RONN SUTTON, ALEX TOTH, JIM VALENTINO and many others! Featuring a new JLA/JSA cover by GEORGE PÉREZ!

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All-Star Comics, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, All-Star Western, and Young All-Stars are trademarks of DC Comics. All characters shown are TM & © DC Comics.

All-Star Comics & the Justice Society of America are trademarks of DC Comics. All characters shown are TM & © DC Comics.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: EARTH CALLING EARTH-TWO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Part One: ALL-STAR COMICS IN THE GOLDEN AGE (1940-1951) I. THE SEVEN SOLDIERS OF CHRISTIAN VICTORY by Mike W. Barr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Was a 16th-century adventure novel the ultimate predecessor of the Justice Society?

II. THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY by Jim Beard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Shelly Mayer’s Red Tomato… oops, pardon me, I mean Red Tornado!

III. STARS IN THE NITE by Robert Klein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 The unsolved—indeed, previously unnoticed—puzzle of All-Star Comics #8

IV. THE BEST “WILL” IN THE WORLD by Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Found! One more page from that long-lost 1940s JSA story

V. ALL SCHWARTZ COMICS (Interview conducted by Roy Thomas) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Julius Schwartz on his days editing All-Star Comics

VI. THE MANY PERILS OF JOHNNY PERIL by Will Murray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 The Weird Worlds of All-Star’s Back-Up Adventurer

VII. ALL-STAR COMICS #58—FOURTH TIME’S THE CHARM! by Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 A look at three pre-1976 attempts to “continue” the JSA’s vintage title

Part Two: ALL-STAR WESTERN (1951-1961) VIII. THE SUNRISE AND SUNSET OF ALL-STAR WESTERN by Michael Uslan & Robert Klein . . . . . . .67 Would all those cowboys and Indians continue the legacy—or destroy it?

Part Three: THE JLA-JSA TEAM-UPS (1963-1985) IX. A CAPSULE HISTORY OF EARTH-TWO by Kurt Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 An all-encompassing overview of DC’s parallel worlds (1961-1986)

X. CRISIS ON FINITE EARTHS by Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99 The Justice League-Justice Society team-ups (1963-1985)

Part Four: THE 1970s JUSTICE SOCIETY REVIVAL (1976-1979) XI. ALL THE STARS THERE ARE IN (SUPER-HERO) HEAVEN by Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158 The 1970s Justice Society revival—“All-Starring” the original cast

Part Five: THE YOUNG ALL-STARS (1987-1989) XII. WHO WAS WHO IN THE ALL-STAR SQUADRON (1941-1945) by Pedro Angosto . . . . . . . . . . .190 Addendum to The All-Star Companion, Vol. 2

XIII. YOUTH MUST BE SERVED by Roy Thomas & Kurt Mitchell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191 An overview and illustrated index of The Young-All Stars

FOREWORD by Roy Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238

Covers culled from house ads, 1940s. [© DC Comics.]

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PART ONE

ALL-STAR COMICS In The Golden Age (1940-1951)

2005 “re-creation” by Irwin Hasen. With thanks to Dan Makara. [JSA TM & © DC Comics.]

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Chapter I

The Seven Soldiers Of Christian Victory Was A 16th-Century Adventure Novel The Ultimate Predecessor Of The Justice Society of America? by Mike W. Barr

he literary forebears and influences upon the 1940 creation, by writer Gardner F. Fox and editor/co-creator Shelly Mayer, of the Justice Society of America are many and varied. And, though none can be singled out as the sole definitive influence upon the creation of that legendary concept, numerous sources can be suggested that may well have supplied at least a patch for the quilt.

Such a work may well be The Seven Champions of Christendom.

Breakfast Club of Champions Septets of champions (clockwise from top left): The cover of the 1913 American edition of The Seven Champions of Christendom, probably by interior artist Norman Ault. [© the respective copyright holders.] So why an image of DC’s original Seven Soldiers of Victory? As noted in ASCV2, it was a letter from Jeff Fruen of St. Paul, Minnesota, printed in a 1985 issue of The Comics Buyer’s Guide, that first brought Johnson’s tome to the attention of comics readers. Fruen ended his missive: “It might have been read in childhood by the creators of the Justice Society, and possibly suggested the name of the Seven Soldiers of Victory.” Given the unusual structure of the name of the combo from Leading Comics #1-14, the latter seems especially likely to Ye Editor! Since the Seven Soldiers will be covered in the fourth volume of this series, above are two panels of Jerry Ordway’s pencils done for All-Star Squadron #29 (Jan. 1984), revisiting a sequence from Leading #3 (Aug. 1942). Here the assembled heroes take dibs on which of various villains summoned out of time by Dr. Doome each of them will battle. Courtesy of Jerry O. [© DC Comics.] The Justice Society of America—admittedly a few more than seven of them— in a recent depiction by veteran artist Bob Layton, partly adapting vintage images. Was Richard Johnson’s book, printed at the turn of the 17th century, a source of inspiration for the first and greatest comic book super-hero group? Thanks to Bob and to Michael Dunne. [© DC Comics.]

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Chapter II

The One That Got Away Shelly Mayer’s RED TOMATO... Oops, Pardon Me, I Mean RED TORNADO by Jim Beard

n the past 67 years, the Justice Society of America has spawned more than its fair share of oddities and enigmas. But one of the oddest and perhaps most enjoyable of these quirks is that JSAer-who-never-was, Ma Hunkel, the Golden Age Red Tornado.

Created by All-American Publications editor Sheldon “Shelly” Mayer, hefty housewife and grocery store owner Ma Hunkel initially became the longjohns-wearing Red Tornado to protect her family, and later to defend her neighborhood. The Red Tornado, thought by her fictional public to be a man, is considered to be one of the very first parodies of the then-burgeoning field of superheroes, and arguably the first costumed female heroine. And she also almost joined the Justice Society. Nearly lost amid all the rest of the history-making contents of 1940’s All-Star Comics #3 lies the strange and mysterious cameo by Mayer’s Red Tornado. Inserting herself into the proceedings for only a single page (drawn, and probably written, by Mayer), Ma Hunkel made an impact on JSA fans that lasts to

The Editor Pulls Some Funny Stuff All-American (and later DC) editor Sheldon Mayer in a 1945 photo, flanked by his art for the two super-heroes he drew in actual stories. (Left:) The Red Tornado, natch—from the Scribbly story in All-American Comics #23 (Feb. 1941). (Oh, and the subtitle of this chapter is mostly a quote from All-Star Comics #3.) (Below:) The Terrific Whatzit, from Funny Stuff #5 (Summer 1945). On the inside front cover beneath the above pic, Mayer announced that he had drawn the entire contents of that issue of DC/AA’s first funny-animal comic, so he could “get it out of my system!” McSnurtle the Turtle, who wore a costume identical to that of The Flash except for the chest symbol “TW” instead of a lightning bolt, was ordinarily drawn by Martin Nadle/Naydel. [© DC Comics.]

this day. Speculation as to whether she was an actual member, or if she was ever even considered as a potential member by either the characters or the creators of the JSA, has become a subgenre of discussion in comic book circles. A simple perusal of the facts should illuminate the truth. As editor-in-chief of AllAmerican, Shelly Mayer was heavily involved in of all aspects of the comics, from plot to art to production. Overseeing and mentoring many creators of the time, he was also something of a frustrated writer and artist himself. Having brought his semi-autobiographical comic strip “Scribbly” over from his previous employment at Dell Comics, Mayer set up shop for the “boy cartoonist” in AA’s flagship title All-American Comics #1 in 1939. There, Scribbly’s humorous cast grew to include the oddball Hunkel Family (introduced in All-American #3), led by the overbear-

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Chapter III

Stars In The Nite The Unsolved—Indeed, Previously Unnoticed— Mystery of All-Star Comics #8 by Robert Klein

[Edited from an e-mail sent by the author to Roy Thomas]

’ve taken to reading All-Star Comics sequentially, and just last night I made it through “Two New Members Win Their Spurs” in issue #8. A few things struck me as being out of place, enough so that I’m wondering if that story originally had a somewhat different form that the one in which it was published.

Could this story have originally been intended to introduce Dr. Mid-Nite as Green Lantern’s replacement, with Starman added only as an afterthought? Although the evidence is ambiguous, there are enough indications to be consistent with that notion. Here are my observations: On the first page, the Starman figure does not seem to be inked (or perhaps even penciled) by the artist who did the rest of the page (E.E. Hibbard). Starman appears to be a Jack Burnley drawing—but it’s a small sample, so I could be wrong. But let’s take a look at the copy on that same intro page. There are a few sentences about the gravity of the case and about how Dr. Mid-Nite saved the day—and then a short comment that the JSA will induct Dr. Mid-Nite, and Starman, too. Starman clearly gets short shrift compared to Dr. Mid-Nite. Starman being lost in the background is a theme which will be repeated throughout the issue. Dr. Mid-Nite was a character seen as having much less star power than Starman (couldn’t resist), who’d been introduced recently in Adventure Comics as its cover feature—and that’s the basis for my suspicions. The most telling clues are in the first and last chapters, the ones featuring all the JSA members together. The intro starts with the JSA puzzled by a recent series of crimes. Dr. Mid-Nite rushes in to describe his own experience with such a crime, to talk about the culprits, and to reveal the antidote to the poison. Clearly, the featured character here is Mid-Nite. He’s front-and-center. And Starman? He’s pictured in the background in three panels, drawn from his mid-chest upwards, with no dialogue and certainly no action role. Again, these Starman drawings look to me as if they

“Two New Members Win Their Spurs!” Since Dr. Mid-Nite made his solo-feature debut at least two months before Starman, could it be that, although All-Star Comics #8 was written with an eye toward inducting Doc into the JSA with a flourish, later-arrival Starman was merely shoehorned in at the last moment—perhaps to avoid having yet another new member “win his spurs” in the very next bimonthly issue? Could be! (Left:) Though Doc never appeared on any Golden Age covers except those of All-Star, he was considered by publisher M.C. Gaines and editor Sheldon Mayer to be worthy of an AA house ad, which pushed him and Sargon the Sorcerer. This scan is from All-American Comics #24 (March 1941), the month before Mid-Nite’s coming-out party… and two months before Sargon’s. With thanks to Bob Bailey. [© DC Comics.] (Center:) Parent company DC had far higher hopes for its new cover feature Starman. This 1/6-page house ad from Superman #10 (May-June 1941) even trumpets the name of its artist/co-creator… something rarely seen in Golden Age comics. The ID of the writer of the first Starman story is still in dispute. Thanks to Bob Hughes for this scan and the previous one. [© DC Comics.] (Right:) The late Jack Burnley a few years ago, holding a copy of the 1940 edition of New York’s World’s Fair Comics, forerunner of World’s Finest Comics— and, as outlined in ASCV1, probably of All-Star Comics, as well.

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Chapter V

JULIUS SCHWARTZ’ “Definitive” Interview About His Days Editing All-Star Comics Conducted by Roy Thomas Julie, Julie, Julie (Left:) A 1941 photo of Julius Schwartz, from the JS collection, courtesy of Heritage Comics and Michael Eury. (For a photo of Julie taken Aug. 10, 1945, and thus even closer to when he came to work as an editor for All-American Comics, see ASCV1. Thanks to Al Dellinges for adapting the above logo.) (Right:) The cover of Julie’s 2000 memoir Man of Two Worlds, written with Brian M. Thomas—a 200-page treasure trove for fans of the Golden and Silver Age, though it barely scratched the surface of the man’s life and career. [Photos © Estate of Julius Schwartz; Superman TM & © DC Comics.]

[NOTE: This interview was first printed, with almost totally different art and photos, in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #7 (Winter 2001). Few of the comic book images from the earlier version have been retained, since so many of them are currently available in books in print from DC Comics.] INTRODUCTION: Julius Schwartz needs no introduction at all to anyone who knows anything at all about the Silver Age of Comics, since as the original editor of The Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Hawkman, The Atom, The Spectre, et al., from 1956 through the 1970s, he practically invented the damn thing. Earlier, he was a science-fiction fan, then authors’ agent, in the 1930s and early ’40s; and from 1944 he was an editor at AllAmerican Comics and later for DC Comics proper. (All-American, a company which included all comics featuring Wonder Woman, Flash, and/or Green Lantern, among others, lasted from 1939 to 1945, when it was wholly absorbed by National/DC; however, DC’s symbol had graced all AA covers during those years except for a brief time in 1945.)

2001

Julie, who is one of the people most responsible for (or guilty of, take your pick) helping Ye Writer/Editor break into the comic book field in 1965, graciously agreed to be interviewed this past August in

conjunction with The All-Star Companion, and for Alter Ego. The limited purpose of the conversation—his first since publication of his memoirs—was to be the JSA in the 1940s, and to some extent the influential JLA-JSA team-ups he initiated with writer Gardner F. Fox in 1963. My intention in what follows was simply to ask Julie all the questions I could think of about All-Star and the Golden Age JSA, which he edited from 1944-50. Julie has been swearing for decades that he remembers few details about individual stories or even the original series; but I felt I had nothing to lose by asking. Until I did, none of us could ever be certain he might not, under gentle prodding, recall some detail that had just never occurred to him before. And, indeed, while Julie is understandably uncertain about many events now more than half a century in the past, the reader is still likely to find a few surprises in what follows. I know I did .... [2007 NOTE: This interview was originally transcribed by Jon B. Knutson, and was retyped for this edition by Brian K. Morris—and thanks to Al Dellinges for adapting the All-Star Comics logo as per my request. Julie, alas, passed away in 2004. —Roy.] ROY THOMAS: Basically, Julie, what I’d like us to talk about is the Justice Society, which means mostly All-Star Comics in the 1940s, but to some extent the JLA-JSA team-ups, as well. We’ll send you a free copy of The All-Star Companion.

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All-Star Comics’ Two Golden Age Editors (Left:) A vintage photo of All-American’s editor, Sheldon Mayer, can be found on p. 7. Here we have the pic of him at 68 (complete with caricatures) that appeared in the quirky 1985 one-shot magazine Fifty Who Made DC Great. The cartoons by Steve Petruccio accurately show a young (but unauthentically bearded) Shelly pushing Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s “Superman” on M.C. Gaines, et al., in 1938. Not only that, but six years later he hired Julie Schwartz! [Art © DC Comics; photo © the respective copyright holders.] (Below:) Mayer titled this sketch: “Julie Schwartz as I remember him.” [© Estate of Sheldon Mayer.]

check the early All-American Comics, there were several text stories written by “Ted Yigdal.” I believe that’s how you spell his real name. He was an editor for Shelly prior to World War II, and he wrote stories. [NOTE: See ASCV1 for photos of Dorothy Roubicek and Ted Udall.] Before Ted Udall came along [in 1940], I believe Shelly Mayer may have gotten some editorial help from—what was the name of that artist who did “Hop Harrigan”? JULIUS SCHWARTZ: [laughs] I’d expect that “irregardless”! All right, go ahead. RT: You’ve often told the story of how you bought three comics on the way to be interviewed at All-American in 1944, and how that’s the only thirty cents you ever spent on comics in your life. Do you know what kind of comics those three were? SCHWARTZ: What titles and issues? Only my memory bank knows. I don’t. RT: Well… did they help? With the interview, I mean. SCHWARTZ: I guess I’d have to answer positively, because when Shelly Mayer interviewed me, my answers must’ve been good enough for him to hire me on the spot! [laughs] RT: So he did the actual hiring? You didn’t meet with [publisher] M.C. Gaines? SCHWARTZ: No, no, no. Just Shelly. In fact, he offered me $60 a week. I never thought of mentioning that before. $60 a week was pretty good back in those days. RT: ’Twasn’t bad. I started out at DC in ’65 for only $100 a week— $110 at Marvel—and that was twenty years of inflation later! SCHWARTZ: I must have been doing well enough, because once he’d offered me $60 a week—it was during the war years—he could not raise me in salary [due to a Wartime wage freeze], so what he did was give me a $100 a month bonus after a couple of months. RT: That was really good! SCHWARTZ: Yeah, that was much more than I was making as a literary agent. RT: Did the fact that you were a science-fiction fan and reader and agent probably help you get the job? SCHWARTZ: It wasn’t the fact that I was a fan; it was that I was a literary agent. Writers would submit scripts to me, and if I liked one well enough to submit to magazine editors, I had the know-how as to whether the story was good or bad. Shelly knew I was well-versed in pulp magazines, with their strong plots, and that’s the type of stories All-American was doing. RT: Did you know Dorothy Roubicek, whom you replaced as script editor under Shelly Mayer in 1944? SCHWARTZ: Very well. She had replaced Ted Udall a couple of years earlier. You know who Ted Udall is? His real name? If you

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RT: Jon Blummer. He both wrote and drew it, I think. SCHWARTZ: Well, I think he may have helped Shelly with the editing for a while, too, earlier. Now, when Ted Udall got drafted [in 1942 — RT], that presumably is when Shelly hired Dorothy Roubicek. What Dorothy had done before, I have no idea. The reason Dorothy was leaving in ’44 is, she was getting married to a comic book artist named Walter Galli, and she gave notice; she was just going to stay another week. As a matter of fact, I think it was a short week. [laughs] I was hired February 21, 1944, and began working on February 23. February 22 was Washington’s Birthday, which in those days was a legal holiday. It wasn’t until years later that we instituted Presidents’ Day. For three days, as I roughly remember, Dorothy briefed me. She advised me that my main job would be plotting stories and editing them. I would not have to bother with the artwork, which was a relief. I knew nothing about art. She left behind a series of index cards containing plot ideas. Hey! Now that I think of it, I haven’t thought about this in years. You’re pretty good, Roy! RT: [laughs] It’s a gift, Julie. SCHWARTZ: She left a series of index cards. If she had to plot an Atom story, she’d go to that index card and come up with a plot she’d already prepared. I don’t think I ever mentioned that to anybody before. RT: You mean she just thought of ideas for The Atom, for this character or that character, in spare moments, and wrote them on index cards? SCHWARTZ: Right! Let me tell you something about Dorothy. She married Walter Galli and later divorced him, her second husband, to marry Bill Woolfolk [prominent comic book writer and later a bestselling novelist]. Let me tell you an anecdote I probably should’ve put in my book …. RT: Well, you can put it in the second edition. SCHWARTZ: This is roughly in the early ’90s. After the San Diego conventions, I used to go up to Los Angeles and spend three or four days with Harlan Ellison, Gil Kane, and Forrest Ackerman. I’d go to the Golden Apple comic book shop, and just hang out. I’d stay at the Holiday Inn in Westwood. One day, exiting the Holiday Inn, to my

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John Broome Sweeps Clean John Broome (on right, above), probably trying to answer some obscure Golden or Silver Age question posed by Roy Thomas (at left) at a dinner hosted by the Comic Collectors Association of America at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con, the only convention John ever attended. Alas, he passed away less than a year later. Photo courtesy of Jon Berk. It’s not possible to be 100% certain which stories featuring JSAers—besides All-Star #35 & #39-57—were scripted by Broome. But researchers who analyze script styles feel he wrote the Green Lantern story in Comic Cavalcade #27 (June-July 1948), in which the Emerald Gladiator tackles The Fool. Art by Alex Toth. [© DC Comics.]

RT: All-Star #36 is the one about whose writer we’re not certain. This was the one where suddenly Superman and Batman guest-star. Do you have any idea as to why they might have been shoehorned into the JSA, especially just for one issue? SCHWARTZ: I don’t know. RT: Issue #37 has an idea you’d have thought would have happened a long time before, an Injustice Society. Of course, you used that idea later in Justice League. Do you know how that happened? That was a Kanigher story. SCHWARTZ: It just came about. RT: It must’ve worked, because there was another one only four issues later. Then there was the issue [#38] where almost all the JSAers died, or seemed to. It’s never been reprinted .... SCHWARTZ: Let me tell you something about the JSA stories that were never reprinted. There’s a possibility—when I was hired by Shelly, he said, “You really have no deadline worries, because we’re three issues ahead on everything.” So eventually, when All-Star was cancelled, there were three issues still hanging around! RT: But he’d been gone for two or three years by the time All-Star died. SCHWARTZ: What I can’t remember at all is whether any of the material that was hanging around was done even before I was hired. Some of the stories you mentioned, I have no recollection of. Some

Black Canary Sings For Her Supper For obvious reasons, the late-1940s heroine has been a favorite subject of art commissions for years. This piece by Canadian artist Ronn Sutton is yet another “Exhibit A”! [Black Canary TM & © DC Comics.]

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Anyway, about all those science-fiction issues of AllStar: I noticed that one of them, “Invasion of the Fire People,” owes a lot to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Did you hear that back in 1938? SCHWARTZ: Oh, I heard the original, yeah. RT: Of course, All-Star #49 came ten years later, but a lot of things in it came straight out of that broadcast. About this time, too, you started printing “JSA Laboratory” pages, where some member of the Justice Society would tell how to do some simple science experiment. Do you know how these came about?

Fingering The Co-Creator Bill Finger, co-creator of Batman, Green Lantern, and Wildcat, was one of the premier early comics writers. His name should really have been up there on the masthead of the very first Batman story in 1939’s Detective Comics #27… as it was on the initial tales of GL and Wildcat. [Batman art © DC Comics; fuzzy photo of Bill Finger printed by Jerry Bails in his 1960 pamphlet The Green Lantern Golden Age Index.]

SCHWARTZ: I don’t recall if I wrote them or not. RT: One story, “The Gun That Dropped through Time” [#53], in 1950—that was Broome, too, of course, and it had this wonderful theory of “time ledges”—that time was like a mountain, and if something fell through time, it would stop for a little while on each of several ledges, each a different era. I’ve been trying for years to learn if that theory came from any particular science-fiction story. SCHWARTZ: All I know is, it’s all Broome.

RT: Just three issues before the end [#55], in “The Man Who Conquered the Solar System,” you had a Professor Napier—I guess that name came from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Carson Napier [Carson of Venus]. There were elements in that issue, too, from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Whisperer in Darkness.” Did you read Lovecraft, besides acting as his literary agent back in the ’30s? SCHWARTZ: Oh, sure! I never could read his long stories. I would only read the short stories. RT: But hey, it was his longest story that you sold, Julie—his short novel At the Mountains of Madness! And the other HPL story you sold, “The Shadow Out of Time,” was one of his longer short stories, too! SCHWARTZ: Prior to that, he’d been writing since 1923, so—all I can say is, I liked things like “The Rats in the Walls” and “Pickman’s Model.” I was not a devout Lovecraft fan. I couldn’t read them fast enough. I was a fast reader, and you couldn’t read Lovecraft fast! RT: It is sometimes a little like wading through molasses. SCHWARTZ: Exactly. RT: The last issue of All-Star [#57] was called “The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives.” People have wondered for years, did any of you know this was going to be the last issue and thus give it that title? SCHWARTZ: My guess is, we did not know. RT: At this point you and the writers and artists made up various features for All-Star Western, like “The Trigger Twins” and “Strong Bow” and “Don Caballero”....

The Astounding Howard Phillips Lovecraft Fantasy master H.P. Lovecraft and the cover of Astounding Stories (Feb. 1936) which spotlighted HPL’s classic short novel At the Mountains of Madness. Julie says he could only read the writer’s short stories! [Astounding art © the respective copyright holders.]

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RT: Yeah, but that’s okay. Nobody cared. The main thing is, it was a great idea. SCHWARTZ: Well, I care! Of course, I had to go to Earth-Three, and eventually to Earth-Prime. But Earth-Two should’ve been EarthOne, let’s get that straight. RT: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for years: Except for a few very early stories by Kanigher, including the origin, John Broome had written all the Flash stories. Yet, suddenly, when you decided to revive the original Flash—which both Broome and Kanigher had also written at times in the ’40s— do you know why Gardner Fox wound up writing “Flash of Two Worlds” instead of Broome? #123 was only the second new Flash story that Gardner wrote. SCHWARTZ: Let me ask you: Was John Broome on a limited schedule then ? Was he still around? RT: Yes, because he came back and wrote most of the Flash issues for some time after that Fox story. He was just off the book for an issue now and then. SCHWARTZ: Sorry, I can’t recall. RT: Originally, did you have any thought that the Earth-Two stories might become a regular thing, as they did especially in Justice League after the initial “Crisis” story? SCHWARTZ: Correct me if I’m wrong—when I did the “Crisis on Earth-One”/“Crisis on Earth-Two” story, which is a two-parter, I believe that was the first time a Justice League story hadn’t been completed in one issue. RT: Except for the Felix Faust story. SCHWARTZ: When the second “Crisis” issue appeared, I took up the whole front [splash] page with a summary of what happened before.

Earth-Two Julie, Earth-Two Julie Here's Joe Kubert's awesome (and oft-reproduced) caricature of Julie Schwartz, done originally as the cover of Amazing World of DC Comics #3 back in the 1970s... but with a slight difference. In tribute to one of Julie's greatest achievements, and courtesy of Shane Foley, Julie is flanked by the Earth-Two versions of the quartet of heroes depicted on the original. The playing cards at bottom symbolize Contract Bridge, a game Julie loved and played in many a tournament. [© DC Comics.]

RT: With all those heads! SCHWARTZ: When I see a Batman or any other comic nowadays, and it says, “Part 4 of a 6-part Story,” you’ve got to brief the reader. You’ve got to put somewhere at the beginning about what went on before, and who the characters are. In the old days the pulp magazines like Argosy would run two or three serials in the same issue, and they’d always lead off with a page or more of what happened before! I was brought up on pulp magazines, and that’s where I got it from.

RT: It was a good idea, because it allowed people to get into the story. Two-parters were pretty rare in those days. Was there any resistance from the higher-ups to the idea of a twoissue story? SCHWARTZ: No! No one raised any objection. I was allowed to do what I wanted to do. RT: And what you wanted to do made for some very good comics. Thank you very much, Julie. SCHWARTZ: Thanks. Say hello to Dann for me.

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Chapter VII

ALL-STAR COMICS #58— Fourth Time’s The Charm! A Look At Three Pre-1976 Attempts To “Continue” The JSA’s Vintage Mag by Roy Thomas hen All-Star Western #58 hit the newsstands (and my own solar plexus) in early 1951, it seemed to make it highly unlikely that there would ever be an All-Star Comics #58 starring the Justice Society of America. Small wonder I shed a few tears at age ten when I received my subscription copy in the mail, a week or two before it went on sale nationwide.

And so he was—at least as regards a comic book that got published.

And when, a quarter of a century later, Gerry Conway, at my suggestion, persuaded DC to let him launch a revival of All-Star Comics, beginning with an issue numbered “58” (see Chapter XI), he doubtless assumed he was the first person ever to script such a comic.

These magazines were conceived and (in a manner of speaking) produced by a trio of fans named Larry Ivie, Roy Thomas, and Craig Delich.

However, even on what was then known to DC readers as EarthPrime, enthusiastic comics readers had produced no less than three amateur magazines labeled “All-Star Comics #58.” That we know about.

Here, in chronological order, are the stories of those abortive incarnations of the 58th issue of the title starring the first super-hero group ever.

Bunker-Busters! Joe Staton (pencils) and Bob Layton (inks) drew this centerspread of the World War II JSA closing in on Hitler especially for The Amazing World of DC Comics #16 (Dec. 1977). Before this article is over, you’ll see all these characters again, in one or another version of All-Star Comics #58—and we do mean all! [© DC Comics.]

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Larry Ivie As Bill Schelly wrote in his monumental 1995 study The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, Larry was “a key comic fan in the late 1960s.” Born in 1936, he had started reading comic books during the World War II years—but unlike the vast majority of readers, he retained and later added to a great store of memories about them, both about the magazines themselves and about those who had written, drawn, and edited them. And he was quite possibly the first person ever to put together an “All-Star Comics #58.” As he wrote in a letter reprinted in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #4 (Summer 2000): “After DC ended the series with All-Star #57, we [he and other fans?] tried to continue it with binders containing old stories [clipped] from other titles. The binders contained full-sized prints cut from two extra copies [of each comic]— 5¢ each from back-issue shops—pasted onto sheets of binder paper (on the front side only).”

Keep Hope Alive! (Left:) Larry Ivie’s covers for his 1950s edition of All-Star Comics #58—and his All-Star cover for the story “The Justice Society’s Arabian Nights Adventure.” Despite the small size of the image, we can pick out Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Atom, Green Lantern, and The Flash. Anybody else in there? Starman, maybe? [Heroes & logo TM & © DC Comics.] (Above:) “Making costumes to play the best versions of the JSA characters,” Larry says, “was our second childhood attempt to save them from unpopular changes.” Here, young L.I. examines an authentic model he made of Hawkman’s helmet, from the classic Shelly Moldoff period of 194044. Photo courtesy of Larry. For more such models, and even more details concerning some of the events covered in this chapter, pick up a copy of Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #4.

sheets of typing paper folded in half, making four pages per sheet.” As it happened, however, in the latter half of the 1950s, Larry would make a real stab at drawing part of what could have been the first published edition of All-Star #58.

All that remains of these efforts, apparently, are smallish reproductions of the cover of Larry’s “All-Star Comics #58,” which utilized the splash art of the final Green Lantern/Solomon Grundy encounter, from Comic Cavalcade #24 (Dec. 1947-Jan. 1948), beneath the earliest All-Star Comics logo and a big “No. 58.” The issue also contained published tales of Hop Harrigan, Johnny Peril, Aquaman, and perhaps others; images of the last-named trio were added to the bottom of his cover. Larry also prepared, around that same time, a second All-Star cover, numbered “L.I. #8,” which was done in light-colored pencil and never intended for reproduction. It depicted what appears to be 7 or 8 JSAers on a flying carpet, soaring above a minaret. The issue evidently included (or was intended to include) a new, Ivie-drawn story which he cover-titled “The Justice Society’s Arabian Adventure.” “Our single-copy issues,” Larry writes, “were drawn on

54 ALL-STAR COMICS #58

Larry has written (in A/E V3#4) that he phoned editor Julius Schwartz “[a]s soon as the first issue reviving The Flash appeared… to see if he’d be interested in a revival of the Justice Society… with chapters for each character.” If that dating is accurate, that would make it mid-summer of 1956, when Showcase #4 went on sale. According to Larry, Schwartz “didn’t agree with my prediction that… the new Flash was going to take off, and a JSA revival could do even better. He said he wasn’t interested in another revival until they saw how well the first one did.” A bit later, Larry drew up sample pages of Superman and Batman… but Superman editor Mort Weisinger, who met with him in his DC office, dismissed them by pointing to a sign that read: “Remember, we are writing for 8-yearolds!” In early 1959, Larry was a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City when Sheldon Mayer lectured one day as a “guest professional.” Mayer, of course, had been the original editor (from 1939-48) of the All-American Comics line, retaining that position after M.C. Gaines’ company was totally purchased by National/DC. As such, he had been the original editor of All-American Comics,

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“Draw Comics… At Home!!” This page from the 1954 Joe Kubert & Norman Maurer’s Comic Book Illustrators Instruction Course, Lesson One sported the sample panel descriptions and dialogue Roy used as the basis of his first tries at writing a comics script. Only when he was given professional scripts by Gardner Fox in the early 1960s, courtesy of editor Julie Schwartz, did Roy see anything more. [© Joe Kubert & Estate of Norman Maurer; Tor TM & © Joe Kubert.]

Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer. Kubert had been my favorite artist since his Hawkman of the mid-1940s, and I’d admired Maurer’s work in Lev Gleason’s Boy Comics and Daredevil. From comics-style editorial pages they produced for their St. John mags, which depicted them together in their mammoth studio, surrounded by gorgeous artwork, it was clear these two were friends and well as partners. And now these two talents were going to teach all us aspiring comic book artists to draw! Somehow I quickly acquired a spare dollar bill and sent off for the first (and sadly, as it would happen, the only) volume of their Comic Book Illustrators Instruction Course, which arrived not too many weeks later. Its 16 pages dealt primarily with drawing the human head—but, most importantly for this article, it also contained a few tossed-off tidbits of information about writing comics. As shown at left, one page

Adapt Or Die! One acerbic writer/artist once referred disparagingly to Roy T. as “the Super-Adaptoid”—the name of a Lee & Kirby android villain—but the Rascally One has never felt any need to apologize for doing adaptations, since he’s also written hundreds of original scripts in his 42 years in the field. Back in the day, Roy was lauded for his work with the stories of Robert E. Howard, as in the splash at left from The Savage Sword of Conan #4 (Feb. 1975), drawn by John Buscema & Alfredo Alcala—while above are Steve Kurth’s pencils for Marvel Illustrated: Last of the Mohicans #1 (July 2007). Thanks to Ralph Macchio & Nicole Boose for the scans from Roy & Steve’s adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s classic tale. [SSOC art © Paradox Entertainment; Mohicans art © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Chapter VIII

The Sunrise And Sunset Of ALL-STAR WESTERN Would All Those Cowboys And Indians Carry On The Legacy—Or Destroy It? by Michael Uslan and Robert Klein

Saddle Up! y 1950, the super-hero flood was over. At DC, Flash Comics and All-Flash had been canceled outright. Green Lantern had lost his own title and had given up his All-American Comics cover spot to cowboy Johnny Thunder and his horse Black Lightnin’, only to see the entire magazine converted three months later into AllAmerican Western. Robin’s feature had lost its cover status at Star Spangled Comics, first to headliner Tomahawk and then to Dr. 13, the Ghost-Breaker. Comic Cavalcade had been turned over to the Fox and the Crow and their funny-animal friends. Even the mighty Wonder Woman was about to be booted out of Sensation Comics, which would shortly be converted into Sensation Mystery.

And, with issue #57, All-Star Comics’ number was up. DC had turned to a variety of genres to fill the newsstands where the super-heroes had once reigned. So when it was finally time to fill All-Star’s publication slot, what were the possibilities considered? Perhaps All-Stars in Space? All-Star Men at War?? AllStar House of Western Teen-Age Romantic Hollywood Funny Animals??? There were lots of categories to choose from, probably more than any time before or since. Two months after the final issue of All-Star Comics went on sale with a Feb.-March 1951 cover date, All-Star Western debuted without missing a beat. Along its ten-year run—roughly the same length as the reign of the original super-hero magazine—it would be a showcase for the evolution from the DC Golden Age to the Silver Age. If you want to follow the Julius Schwartz/DC style as it develops throughout the

From Out Of The West… (Above:) Stick on an All-Star logo, and this would’ve made the perfect cover for the 57th and final Golden Age issue of All-Star Comics, with all seven JSAers tied to a stagecoach that’s going over a cliff, while a symbolically giant cowboy grins! So why has the Strange Adventures logo been added to the art from the Hasen/Oksner cover of All-Star #47 (July-July 1949)? It’s because this is actually the cover of the “ashcan edition” of SA, probably printed in early 1950 to secure trademark for the name of DC’s first science-fiction title, which was then in the stages of preparation. Strange Adventures #1 came out with an Aug.-Sept. 1950 cover date. [© DC Comics.] (Left:) The cover of All-Star Western #58 (April-May 1951), spotlighting The Trigger Twins, is credited to Gil Kane (pencils) & Frank Giacoia (inks). Thanks to Frank Motler & Bob Cherry for scans. This cover also appeared in house ads, such as the one on the previous page from Tomahawk #5 (May-June 1951), sent by Robert Klein. [© DC Comics.]

1950s, there are two places to look: the Schwartz science-fiction titles are the first, of course, but the Westerns show it just as well, perhaps better in some ways. By the time it wound up in Boot Hill in 1961, ASW would be a full-fledged Silver Age book with the same sophisticated level of art and script that you’d see in The Flash, Green Lantern, or any title within editor Schwartz’s stable. All-Star Western #58 was launched with a full line-up of characters, an anthology book of totally new features. Headlined by The

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Not Quite Ten Little Indians, But… (Clockwise from top left:) Gil Kane & Frank Giacoia contributed this Strong Bow “bullseye” cover for ASW #61 (Dec. 1952-Jan. 1953). Thanks to Bob Klein. [© DC Comics.] Fred Meagher’s cover for Straight Arrow #52 (Dec. 1955), repro’d from a photocopy of the original art sent by Ethan Roberts. In real life, Straight Arrow was a Cherokee who’d been raised as a white rancher—which must’ve caused him all kinds of personal identity problems. [© National Biscuit Co. or its successors in interest.] Timely’s Apache Kid #18 (Feb. 1956) was a real Straight Arrow copy—a Caucasian who disguised himself as an Indian. Shades of the Boston Tea Party! Cover art credited to Sol Brodsky. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] Arrowhead, in Black Rider #24, was a young Pawnee warrior who went into action as—a young Pawnee warrior. What a concept! Art by Joe Sinnott. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] Perhaps the best-drawn series starring a Native American was Prize Comics Western’s American Eagle, drawn by near-future EC artists John Severin & Bill Elder. Issue #86 was cover-dated March-April 1951, and was published by Feature Publications, Inc. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Back In A Flash! The dynamics Infantino developed drawing “The Trigger Twins” served him in good stead when a certain Silver Age speedster became his main assignment! Compare Carmine’s splash from All-Star Western #101 (JuneJuly 1958) with his cover for The Flash #114 (Aug. 1960). Joe Giella inked both pages; the Western yarn was scripted by Robert Kanigher, Flash by John Broome. [© DC Comics.]

“The All-Stars At Night Are Big And Bright…”

Twins” stand out. Meanwhile, Gil Kane’s artwork on “Johnny Thunder” had become even more sophisticated. His work was more detailed, the action sequences more dynamic and powerful, his layouts more ambitious. Some stories featured his own inks. Something had spurred Kane on to new heights.

Adding a few members to his supporting cast, Johnny Thunder became a more fully-developed character. In issue #73, Swift Deer, an Indian boy, was introduced and became his occasional junior sidekick. Not much later, a Lauren Bacall look-alike and “refined lady from the East,” Miss Rhodes, arrived via stagecoach and quickly caught John Tane’s eye. More and more, both Johnny and The Trigger Twins got into situations that played off their secret identities. Often the stories became clever puzzle or detective stories. At the same time, human interest angles were developed more fully. Like Johnny Thunder, the Twins developed a supporting cast which played larger roles as time went on. The lead characters in both strips showed more complexity. If this sounds like the same set-up as for the early Schwartz Silver Age super-heroes, it’s because AllStar Western was the place where all these ideas were introduced and developed. In 1957 Carmine Infantino returned to “The Trigger Twins” after Ross Andru had handled the pencils for ten issues or so. Infantino’s art had moved far beyond his work of even a year or two earlier. His layouts had a strong sense of design and balance; his figures boasted a new realism. The combination really made “The Trigger

Gil Kane

(Trigger) Twins Separated At Birth? Wayne Trigger from ASW #72 (Aug.-Sept. 1953), and a certain Emerald Gladiator from Green Lantern #3 (Sept.-Oct. 1960). If you knew Gil Kane from his GL penciling, you’d recognize even his early ASW work. Scripts by William Woolfolk & John Broome, and inks by Bernard Sachs & Joe Giella, respectively. Thanks to Bob Klein. [© DC Comics.]

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PART THREE

The JLA-JSA Team-Ups (1963-1985)

Illustration by Jim Valentino—an homage to Gil Kane & Dave Cockrum’s cover for Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975). [Justice Society of America & Justice League of America TM & © DC Comics.]

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Chapter IX

A Capsule History Of Earth-Two An All-Encompassing Overview Of DC’s Parallel Worlds (1961-1986)—With Footnotes, Yet! by Kurt Mitchell

I. Introduction If [physicist Hugh Wheeler III’s ‘many worlds’ theory of wave function decoherence] is correct, then at this very instant your body coexists with the wave functions of dinosaurs engaged in mortal combat. Coexisting in the room you are in is the wave function of a world where the Germans won World War II, where aliens from outer space roam, where you were never born. —Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions and the Future of the Cosmos (2005), p. 169 Two objects can occupy the same space and time—if they vibrate at different speeds! My theory is, both Earths were created at the same time in two quite similar universes! They vibrate differently—which keeps them apart! Life, customs— even languages—evolved on your Earth almost exactly as they did on my Earth! —Barry Allen, The Flash #123 (1961), p. 4 hen DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner F. Fox introduced the parallel universe later named Earth-Two, their chief goal was to tell an entertaining story (and sell a few hundred thousand copies of The Flash). If they were aware of Wheeler’s radical theory of quantum mechanics—and, given the erudition of both men, one cannot rule out the possibility—they may well have wondered what all the fuss was about: parallel Earths and alternate realities had long been a staple of science-fiction, including sf comic strips and books, by the time the then-obscure Ph.D. candidate submitted his thesis in 1957. Schwartz and Fox had built earlier stories around the concept (as had others, at DC and elsewhere), but “Flash of Two Worlds” was something else, something special, so special that we are still talking about Earth-Two more than 45 years after the publication of that seminal issue.

Odds are that if you’re reading this book you already know the premise. If not, here are the basics. The stars of the Silver Age superhero revival of the late 1950s/early ’60s, a new generation of costumed champions led by the Justice League of America, live on “Earth-One.” Their Golden Age predecessors, the World War II generation of mystery men led by the Justice Society of America, dwell on “Earth-Two.” Some Earth-One characters—Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman and others—have older twins or “doppelgängers” on Earth-Two. Each world occupies the same space as the other but vibrates at a different frequency on the molecular level. There are an infinite number of such realities existing side by

88 A CAPSULE HISTORY OF EARTH-TWO

A Strange Adventure That Really Happened, Maybe—On Some Parallel Earth DC editor Julius Schwartz (left) and writer Gardner Fox (right) were characters in their own offbeat tale “The Strange Adventure That Really Happened!” in the science-fiction comic Strange Adventures #140 (May 1962)—some months after they introduced their Earth-Two concept into the DC Universe. Art by Sid Greene. Thanks to Mike W. Barr & Bill Schelly. [© DC Comics.]

side, including our own. By altering their own vibratory rate, people can cross from one world to the other. If you understand these ground rules, you have just passed Multiple Earths 101. The story of Earth-Two is the collective creative effort of some 180 different writers, artists, and editors, encompassing over 400 individual comic books published between 1961 and 1986.1 That’s a lot of history to take in. I propose therefore to divide it into three overlapping periods we shall imaginatively label Early, Middle and Late. The Early Period (1961-75) is dominated by the editorial personality of Julius Schwartz. Reintroducing the Justice Society and its

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When Whirls Collide The classic Carmine Infantino/Murphy Anderson cover of The Flash #123 (Sept. 1961), seen at left, has often been homaged, imitated, or even parodied. Into which of those three categories do these other three drawings in this montage fall? You decide! (Below:) The atoms of the Zoo Crew and Just’a Lotta Animals are about to smash bigtime in this Scott Shaw! pin-up (inked by Carol Lay) from Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! #15 (May 1983). It worked out perfectly that the Gardner F. Fox of Earth-C would be—a fox! Script by Roy Thomas. [© DC Comics.] (Bottom left:) The 2004 cover of Shanda Fantasy Arts’ Atomic Mouse #3. “Atomic Mouse of Two Worlds” guest-starred a wonderfully-named alternate-Earth hero called Jackal Lantern—but the main event was the meeting of the 1950s Charlton Comics Atomic Mouse and the new SFA version developed by writers/publishers Mike & Carole Curtis and artist Louis Frank. [© Shanda Fantasy Arts.] (Bottom center:) And, just to bring things full circle, here’s veteran DC artist Joe Giella’s take on what that cover might’ve looked like if the title had been “Green Lantern of Two Worlds!” With thanks to Joe and collector Arnie Grieves. [Green Lanterns TM & © DC Comics.]

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Crisis On Even More Earths Crisis on Infinite Earths is in print in a deluxe edition, so we don’t need to visually remind you of that controversial epic. Already by the late 1960s, there’d been enough super-heroes streaking around at various comics companies to have populated several more alternate Earths—as witness the cover of the fan-published newszine The Comic Reader #200 (April 1982), where artist Paul Abrams drew a retrospective of specimens from Archie, Charlton, ACG, Dell, Gold Key, Tower, Milson, Harvey, and maybe somewhere else. Can you name them all—or maybe even diagram the preceding sentence? TCR was then published by Jerome Sinkovec and edited by Mike Tiefenbacher, who reports that he added several of the figures around the logo. Donor’s name lost, alas. [Characters TM & © the respective TM & © holders.]

Giordano toward the end of that title’s run, overseeing stories featuring the Golden Age Batman in #197, a moving story by Alan Brennert and Joe Staton that detailed the dawn of his romantic relationship with Catwoman, and #200, the final issue, which featured the Earth-One and -Two Batmen tackling the same villain three decades apart. Wein, as editor of The Flash, pitted its Earth-One hero against The Shade in #298-99. His successor, Mike W. Barr, teamed the two Flashes with Dr. Fate in #305 as a prelude to the debut of Fate’s new back-up series in the Feb. 1982 issue (#306). Writer Martin Pasko and penciler Keith Giffen took Fate and his troubled wife Inza through a surreal series of apocalyptic encounters with the Lords of Chaos and other dark forces. The series ran through #313, with Steve Gerber coming aboard as co-writer with #310. The 1984 JLA-JSA crossover in Justice League of America #23132, a Kurt Busiek/Alan Kupperberg co-production for editor Alan Gold, gave no indication that the tradition was on borrowed time.

VII. The Crisis and Its Aftermath The release of Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 on January 3, 1985, would change the face of the DC comics line forever. In the course of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s epic crossover, Earth-Three and Earth-Prime (among others) were destroyed and the Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-4 (the world of the Charlton Comics super-heroes,

a new DC acquisition), Earth-S and Earth-X universes merged into a single reality. To say that the Crisis had a devastating effect on the Earth-Two characters is to veer dangerously toward understatement. In the new DC Universe, the Earth-Two Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Speedy, Aquaman, and The Huntress never existed.14 History, particularly JSA history, had to be rewritten. Power Girl and Fury, among others, needed new or at least revised origins. Those challenges would be met in the postCrisis issues of Infinity, Inc., in the Young All-Stars series that replaced All-Star Squadron, and in Thomas’ new Secret Origins title. But first, there were goodbyes to be said. The Thomases and artist David Ross brought the story of the JSA to a close with the 64-page one-shot Last Days of the Justice Society Special in which ten JSAers, plus non-members Hawkgirl and Sandy, were exiled to Asgard where, to prevent Götterdämmerung, the Twilight of the Gods, they must fight, die, and rise to fight anew forever. But it’s hard to keep a good super-team down. The JSA would be brought back in the 1992 mini-series Armageddon Inferno. In the more than two decades that have passed since Crisis on Infinite Earths, they and other formerly Earth-Two characters have appeared in hundreds of comic books and graphic novels. Simply to list them all would double the length of this article, which deals with continuity only through 1989.

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Chapter X

ON FINITE EARTHS The Justice League-Justice Society Team-Ups (1963-1985) by Roy Thomas The following piece appeared in slightly different form in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #7 (Winter 2001). As stated at that time, it features short sidebar interviews with every living writer of a 1963-85 JLA-JSA team-up except Martin Pasko and Cary Bates, who did not respond to our inquiries. Of scripters of that monumental series, only Gardner Fox and E. Nelson Bridwell have passed on, within a few months of each each in the mid-1980s. Many of those 23 JLA-JSA team-ups have been reprinted in recent years and are currently available: those from 1963-69 in hardcover volumes of Justice League of America Archives, those of 1963-1977 in the four volumes published to date (with more to come,

we hope) of the full-color trade paperback series Crisis on Multiple Earths, and those of 1963-64 in the first two black-&-white volumes of Showcase Presents: Justice League of America. Therefore, unlike in A/E V3#7, we have here reprinted relatively little art from the first 14 team-ups, preferring to concentrate upon rare and unseen art instead. Oh, and incidentally—all italicized references to “JLA” below denote, of course, the 1960-87 series Justice League of America, not the JLA series begun in the 21st century. “JLA” was the accepted short-form version of the name of the mag for many years, and we see no reason to alter that now. Thanks to Kurt Mitchell for adding several corrections and bits of information to this section. [Adapted logo above TM & © DC Comics.]

A Cast That Deserves A Hand—On Any Earth This unpublished pencil illustration of the JLA and JSA by Carmine Infantino was retrieved from the Heritage Comics Archives by Dominic Bongo. [© DC Comics.]

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Abbreviations: AQ = Aquaman AT = Atom BC = Black Canary BH = Blackhawk BL = Black Condor BM = Batman BW = Brainwave Jr. CA = Crimson Avenger CS = Commander Steel DF = Dr. Fate DG = Doll Girl DL = Doll Man

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DM = Dr. Mid-Nite EM = Elongated Man FB = Firebrand (Danette Reilly) FL = Flash FS = Firestorm FY = Fury GA = Green Arrow GL = Green Lantern GY = Gypsy HB = Human Bomb HG = Hawkgirl HM = Hawkman HO = Hourman HU = Huntress

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JA = Jade JE = Jester JT = Johnny Thunder LB = Liberty Belle ME = Metamorpho MM = J’Onn J’Onzz, Manhunter from Mars MT = Mr. Terrific NU = Nuklon NW = Northwind OB = Obsidian PG = Power Girl PL = Phantom Lady PM = Plastic Man

etween 1956 and 1961, editor Julius Schwartz of DC Comics (then officially known as National Periodical Publications) launched new, updated incarnations of The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom, and the Justice Society of America (now the Justice League of America). Even so, a number of readers still clamored for the return of the original 1940s heroes of All-Star Comics.

Alter Ego founder Jerry G. Bails and I were among the most vocal and persistent of these, but ours were hardly lone voices calling out in the four-color wilderness. A number of other, mostly adult readers carried the bring-back-the-JSA banner both in the pages of the burgeoning new wave of comics fanzines and in letters to editors, particularly to Julie, godfather of the Silver Age of Comics. Accordingly, in The Flash #123 (Sept. 1961), editor Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox startled comics readers by revealing that Jay (“Flash”) Garrick and Barry (“Flash”) Allen both existed in the DC Universe; they merely dwelt on two parallel Earths. These worlds vibrated at different speeds, and their inhabitants were thus totally unaware of each other—until Allen crossed over to Garrick’s Earth to help battle the elder Flash’s foes Fiddler, Shade, and Thinker. Thus was born the concept of “Earth-Two,” a world on which the heroes of the Golden Age JSA had been real, living beings, not mere figments of someone’s imagination in a comic book. (But surely that wonderful scene in Robert Kanigher’s script and Carmine Infantino’s art for the very first neo-Flash story, in 1956’s Showcase #4, wherein Barry reads an old issue of Flash Comics just before he is struck by

THE

RA = The Ray RM = Robotman RO = Robin RT = Red Tornado (android) SA = Sandman SC = Silver Scarab SG = Sargon the Sorcerer SK = Shining Knight SL = Steel (grandson of Commander Steel) SM = Starman

SN = Sandy the Golden Boy SP = Spectre SS = Star-Spangled Kid ST = Stripesy SU = Superman SY = Speedy TA = Tarantula US = Uncle Sam VB – Vibe VG = Vigilante VX = Vixen WC = Wildcat WI = Wing

WW = Wonder Woman ZA = Zatara ZN = Zatanna (w) = writer (pl) = plot (d) = script (dialogue & captions) (a) = art (fa) = finished art (p) = penciler (i) = inker

a mixture of lightning and chemicals, had an influence on The Flash #123 five years later. Of course, Schwartz had been editor of that book, and at this late date it is impossible to say whether that scene was RK’s idea or Julie’s.) It seems likely that Fox was brought in to script the Silver Age Flash comic for only the second time with issue #123 because, in 1940, he had co-created the original speedster (with editor Sheldon Mayer and artist Harry Lampert). However, regular 1960s Flash writer John Broome had also written the human comet’s exploits in the late ’40s, as had origin-writer Kanigher. “Flash of Two Worlds” was a sensation to new and longtime fans alike. Its cover became one of the most famous and most imitated of the decade. The world in which the older, original Flash lived was given the illogical name Earth-Two, and the younger Flash’s EarthOne; but that was merely an acknowledgment that Barry Allen was the main event, and Jay Garrick a pleasant sideshow. In the second two-Flashes encounter (The Flash #129, June 1962), Schwartz, Fox, and penciler Infantino teased the readers with a flashback sequence from All-Star #57’s “Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives,” the JSA’s last recorded case. Predictably, readers clamored for more. Finally, with the third two-Flashes story, came the full-fledged return of the Justice Society of America. There follows an issue-by-issue recounting of…

Silver/Bronze Age Justice Society Stories The Beginning

THE FLASH #137 (June 1963) COVER: Carmine Infantino (p) & Murphy Anderson (i) STORY: “Vengeance of the Immortal Villain!” - 25 pp., 3 chapters WRITER: Gardner Fox ARTISTS: Carmine Infantino (p) & Joe Giella (i) JSA ROLL CALL: FL, GL, WW, AT, HM, DM, JT SYNOPSIS: The Flashes of two Earths team up to fight the Earth-Two Green Lantern’s

Back on p. 91, we printed the page in The Flash #137 on which the JSA returned to action in the 1964 Mexican edition of the 1963 DC comic—which appeared in the 241st issue of the rotating title Batman. Pencils by Carmine Infantino; inks by Murphy Anderson. Villain Vandal Savage was originally a foe of the Golden Age Green Lantern, but had encountered the Jay Garrick Flash as a charter member of the Injustice Society in All-Star #37. [© DC Comics.]

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And May The Best Earth Win!

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JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #147 (Oct. 1977) COVER: Dick Dillin (p) & Frank McLaughlin (i) STORY: “Crisis in the 30th Century!” - 32 pp. (4 chapters) WRITERS: Paul Levitz & Martin Pasko ARTISTS: Dick Dillin (p) & Frank McLaughlin (i) JLA ROLL CALL: SU, GL, GA, BC, BM JSA ROLL CALL: PG, HM, FL, GL, DF (plus cameos by WC & SS)

SYNOPSIS: Mordru, a super-sorcerer out to conquer an entire galaxy, uses the three demons of Felix Faust to capture four of the Legion of Super-Heroes (Sun Boy, Brainiac 5, Wildfire, and Princess Projectra) in the 30th century. However, the demonic trio turn on him and set out to rule the world on their own. NOTE: • Star-Spangled Kid and Wildcat are crossing over from a case in the revived 1970s All-Star Comics; this story takes place between ASC #68-69.

Paul Levitz [Paul Levitz began as one of the fabled “Junior Woodchucks,” a sort of intern position at DC in the early 1970s. He was soon writing comics as well, including a memorable stint on The Legion of SuperHeroes. And in 1976 he inherited the revival of All-Star Comics when Gerry Conway left DC, co-creating The Huntress as the daughter of the Earth-Two Batman. He also wrote the first-ever origin of the Justice Society for DC Special #29 (Sept. 1977). By the 1980s he was DC’s coordinating editor, and today he is the company’s president and publisher. He took time from his busy schedule to respond to my e-mail questions thusly about his part in one JLA-JSA team-up:] At the time of JLA #147-148, I was writing both All-Star Comics with the JSA and The Legion of Super-Heroes, so I suppose I was a logical candidate to work on the crossover. I wasn’t one of Julie’s regular writers, though. At the time I hadn’t sold him any scripts (or probably even tried, since I was having a tough enough time keeping up with all the deadlines I had overcommitted myself to with other editors). Marty Pasko was one of Julie’s regulars, though, and Marty and I were splitting an apartment in the Village at the time, so somewhere along the way we must have [Paul Levitz continued on next page]

Mean And Green One of the JLA stalwarts during this period was the Earth-One Green Arrow, as visually revamped in the late 1960s by Neal Adams—and here drawn superbly by Mike Grell. The inked version of this commission piece, done for Michael Dunne, saw print in Justice League Companion (Vol. 1), but we figured you wouldn’t mind feasting your eyes on the pencils, as well! [Green Arrow TM & © DC Comics.]

You’ll Love It At Levitz Paul Levitz, long before he became president and publisher of DC comics, again by Dave Manak from AWDC #14. [© DC Comics.]

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Chapter XI

There Are In (Super-Hero) The Heaven! The 1970s Justice Society Revival— “All-Starring” The Original Cast! by Roy Thomas Special thanks to Michelle Nolan, Eric Nolen-Weathington, and Ray Bottorff Jr. for providing the All-Star and Adventure covers.

was there for the conception—but that’s just about it.

In 1975 Gerry Conway, scripter of several of Marvel Comics’ major titles, left that company and became a writer/editor for DC. Gerry and I had already been friends for over half a decade, so it was only natural that, one evening early that year, at his apartment on Manhattan’s West Side, we started kicking around some ideas for new projects he could initiate at DC. Gerry had plenty of his own concepts, of course—but, on a whim, I suggested a revival of All-Star Comics, name and all. In those days, the fabled Justice Society appeared only in annual guest-shots in Justice League of America, and were assumed to dwell on “Earth-Two,” an other-dimensional world that existed parallel to that of the JLA. I reasoned, why not give the JSA their own title again, tapping into that exposure? (Of course, what I really wanted, as a fan of All-Star Comics from 1945 through the end in 1950, was just to see the guys return in their own mag instead of in one story a year.) Gerry sparked to the idea and, for good or ill, from that point on I had no more to do with it. (How could I? I was under exclusive contract to Marvel, and probably shouldn’t even have suggested the idea in the first place!) Well, actually, I did send, at Gerry’s request, comments to be printed on the revived AllStar’s first letters page; I figured that wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers back at Marvel. All-Star Comics #58 hit the newsstands in autumn of 1975, and became a reasonably popular if not bestselling title. In February 1976 Stan Lee asked me to become Marvel’s editor-in-chief again—the post I’d held from 1972-74. I agreed, but (after a week’s vacation in sunny L.A. convinced me I’d rather move to southern California instead) I soon reneged, and suggested to Stan that he offer Gerry the job. He did, and Gerry very briefly became Marvel’s editor-in-chief in between Marv Wolfman and Archie Goodwin… and, even when he decided the job was not to his liking after all, he continued to write exclusively for Marvel for some months. With Gerry’s departure from DC in early ’76, Paul Levitz, his assistant editor who had already dialogued a bit of JSA material, became All-Star’s new writer. He continued as scripter for the remainder of All-Star’s ’70s run, which culminated with #74 (Sept.-Oct. 1978)—and included the Justice Society’s never-before-told origin, unveiled in DC Special #29 in 1977—and which then continued in Adventure Comics #461-466 in 1979, at which point the JSA “died” with the decade that had seen All-Star’s revival. The following is a brief overview of the JSA’s career during the Gerry

158 ALL THE STARS THERE ARE IN (SUPER-HERO) HEAVEN!

All-Star Is Dead! Long Live The Justice Society! Because all the stories of the 1970s JSA revival that appeared in All-Star Comics #58-74 and Adventure Comics #461-466, plus the group’s first-ever origin from DC Special #29, are currently in print (in color, yet) in a pair of 2006-2007 trade paperback volumes under the title Justice Society, this book need print far fewer images from the original comics than would otherwise be the case. Still, we did want to start out with a ’70s JSA image—so we chose Joe Staton & Dick Giordano’s powerful cover for All-Star #74, the final issue of the JSA’s own title in that series. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Jonathan Mankuta. [© DC Comics.]

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Ford and Jimmy Carter years, punctuated by short interviews given by both of the series’ writers and by all three of its surviving pencilers. (The great Wally Wood, alas, died in 1981.) We greatly appreciate the time these five gents spent with us via e-mail and telephone; and while their comments have been edited slightly for space, we’ve made every effort not to put words into their mouths—or to take too

many out. What we have, I believe, is both a bird’s-eye and microscopic viewpoint of two dozen 1970s comics which are more fondly remembered, and which have left a more lasting legacy, than 90% of what was published during that era and since...

The ALL-STAR Issues (and an Awesome SECRET ORIGIN) Robin, Star-Spangled Kid, and newcomer Power Girl (Superman’s cousin) as a younger “Super-Squad.”

NOTE: The key to character names in the listings can be found on p. 100.

ALL-STAR COMICS #58

NOTES: • Brainwave (spelled “Brain Wave” in 1940s All-Star Comics) has a new body and look.

(Jan.-Feb. 1976) COVER: Mike Grell

• Though Star-Spangled Kid says he “belong[s] in the 1950s,” his original stories actually ran from 1941-48; he’d returned in 1972, with the rest of The Seven Soldiers of Victory, in Justice League of America #100-102.

STORY: “All Star Super Squad” – 18 pp. WRITER: Gerry Conway ARTISTS: Ric Estrada & Wally Wood [see Estrada interview] JSAers PARTICIPATING: FL, HM, DM, WC, DF, GL, RN (plus SS & PG)

SYNOPSIS: Brainwave tries to destroy Seattle, Capetown, and Peking (Beijing) to gain revenge on the JSA, who are joined by

• Although listed in the roll call, SSK and Power Girl are not JSAers in this issue; indeed, this is Power Girl’s first appearance anywhere. • Star-Spangled Kid henceforth uses Starman’s Cosmic Rod, borrowed from Ted Knight. • From #58-65, All-Star covers feature a smallish “Justice Society” logo plus a larger “Super Squad” one, plus the main All-Star Comics logo; “Super-Squad” was usually hyphenated in the stories. • The splash-page logo from #58-65 will read “The All Star Super Squad,” with no interior JSA logo. • This is the first All-Star cover ever to feature a Justice Society logo of any kind. • All-Star #58-59 were reprinted in the DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest, Vol. 1, #3 (July-Aug. 1980).

“Here We Come, Old-Timers!” Ye Editor must confess that he winced when he saw that the cover of All-Star #58, the very first revival issue, showed four JSAers sprawling, defeated, with three upstart youngsters rushing to save them—but it was lovely Mike Grell art! Fellow writer Alan Brennert reminded Roy in Alter Ego #19 (2002) that, when the issue first came out, RT said it should’ve been cover-blurbed “Now Dying in Their Own Magazine!” But Roy still basically liked the comic. Original art repro’d from a black-&-white copy in Amazing World of DC Comics #6 (May 1975). [© DC Comics.]

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Maybe You Can Go Home Again

Look familiar? In 2006 Ernie Chan drew this quasi-re-creation of the cover of All-Star Comics #59 (see p. 160) for collector Arnie Grieves. [Characters TM & © DC Comics.]

ALL-STAR COMICS #60 (May-June 1976)

Ric Estrada RT: Ric, you’re noted for your war comics work alongside Kanigher, Kubert, Andru, Heath, et al., on DC’s “Big Five” war comics, as Chris Pedrin called them in his book a few years back. You haven’t drawn many superheroes, so why do you think writer/editor Gerry Conway asked you to pencil the revival of All-Star Comics in 1975? RIC ESTRADA: I think it may have been because my style was very direct and very simple—plus I happened to be available at the time. I did a lot of romance stories, war stories, mystery stories... but no, I didn’t do many super-heroes, though I did do Legion of Super-heroes and Super Friends and one issue of Batman. RT: I know Gerry was very happy with the work, because I saw a lot of him at that time in New York. How did you feel about the idea that Wally Wood was going to ink the book? ESTRADA: Very happy, because Wally Wood is one of the big names in the industry. I think everybody admires him and loves his work. I felt that would enhance the value of my work, and it did. Years later, when I did Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, and I sold the original art, the ones I inked would sell for something like fifty bucks, and the only one he inked sold for like a hundred and fifty. [laughs] RT: It was a happy combination. Did you ever

meet Wally personally in connection with this book or at any other time? ESTRADA: You know how it was: you freelanced in those days, and you came to the editorial office and you met people for half an hour, you chatted for a while, and then you didn’t see them for another three years. I kept meeting people over the years. I remember meeting Neal Adams almost every week; he worked at DC and had this little office there. And I met people like Joe Orlando and Carmine Infantino; they were always there.

But Wally Wood—I would run into him and say hello and say good words and that was it. I also knew Wally from the EC days, way back in 1950, ’51. RT: Joe Orlando is often credited with designing Power Girl, maybe from Gerry Conway’s suggestion. But the only design sketch I’ve ever seen was one you did that DC ran in its fan-magazine Amazing World of DC Comics. Do you remember how that character was designed?

COVER: Ernie Chan (as “Ernie Chua”) STORY: “Vulcan: Son of Fire!” – 17 pp. WRITER: Gerry Conway ARTISTS: Keith Giffen & Wally Wood [see Giffen interview] JSAers PARTICIPATING: PG, FL, WC, SS, GL, DF SYNOPSIS: The destruction of Vulcan Probe One, a 200-day mission to orbit the sun, turns astronaut Christopher Pike into a cosmic-axe-wielding super-villain who menaces the Earth. NOTES: • Alan (GL) Scott is revealed to be having economic problems as head of Gotham Broadcasting. • Layout penciler Ric Estrada, replaced by newcomer Keith Giffen, is announced as having moved on “to new heights in Blackhawk.”

ESTRADA: Not the exact details, but I do know they liked the way I drew women, because I had done a lot of romance stories. In fact, the first year I worked for DC, I did mostly the romance line. I drew girls sexy, but not too muscular like they became later. RT: Of course, Wally was noted for his females, too, so the inking worked out between the two of you. She had a very sexy outfit. ESTRADA: And she was kind of a hefty girl.

[Ric Estrada continued on next page]

A recent photo of Ric Estrada, courtesy of the artist.

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Everybody Take A Bow! Frankly, we had no idea why these 15 great late-1970s drawings by Joe Staton were prepared, but fans Michael R. Graboid and James Doty (in an Internet exchange forwarded to us by Grand Comic-Book Database overseer Ray Bottorff, Jr.) felt they were quite possibly done for the DC Super-Stars Society, a DC fan club “that was to have begun right around the time of the ‘DC Explosion’ in Summer 1978, which [soon] became the ‘DC Implosion.’ Staton did a number of promo things for that.” A few of Joe’s ink lines had dropped out, alas, on the copies we have, on The Atom, Starman’s face, etc.—but we still think they deserve to be printed bigger than we could do back in Alter Ego #14! [© DC Comics.]

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Chapter XIII

Youth Must Be Served The Short But Legend-Laden Life Of The Young All-Stars Introductory Perspective by Roy Thomas Listings by Kurt Mitchell & Roy Thomas n the letters section of the final issue of All-Star Squadron (#67, March 1987), I—that’s Roy, who else?—addressed the readers in my triple capacity as “writer/creative editor/co-creator.” In response to rampant rumors concerning a “second series” of Squadron, I said that March, which was three months away when #67 went on sale, would see the debut of a new comic titled The Young All-Stars. It would have a slightly different cast, yet would be in every way a successor to the one being discontinued.

“As everybody knows,” I wrote, in a post-Crisis on Infinite Earths World War II-era comic, “there’ll be no Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, or Aquaman—or any memory of same. (And to the above list has now been belatedly added the illustrious names of Green Arrow and Speedy.)” Those seven would be replaced on the One Big Earth by “a smattering of new All-Stars—younger ones”—and those six heroes were depicted at the bottom of that page. Alert readers immediately recognized Neptune Perkins, Tsunami [Miya Shimada], and Dan [Dunbar] the Dyna-Mite, all of whom had appeared in Squadron—and I revealed that the lady in the golden armor was the Golden Age Fury, “who seems to be the mother of Lyta Trevor of Infinity, Inc.” I had impishly decided to have a 1940s as well as a 1980s heroine named Fury, and indeed the new one’s backstory had gone on sale three months earlier, in Secret Origins #12. As for the other two figures, I coyly opined as how we needed to hold a few surprises back for The Young All-Stars #1. But I reminded readers of certain hints I’d laid out in previous letters sections about how the energy represented by the likes of the Earth-Two Superman, et al., displaced when they were rendered retroactively non-existent by the Crisis, had to go somewhere. (My theory, as would be revealed in YAS #3, was that it went into the likes of “Iron” Munro and Flying Fox, while Wonder Woman’s energy was reimbodied in the new Fury. Of course, that hypothesis was stretched a bit by the fact that Neptune and Tsunami existed before Aquaman did not—and where did that leave GA and Speedy? Clearly, I had just used that theory as a starting point.) I did assure readers that the likes of Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Green Lantern, Hawkman, et al., would appear in the new series. (I pointedly didn’t tell them that the powers-that-be had decreed that I should use the “adult” All-Stars sparingly.)

While We’re Young… The first illustration ever published of the six initial Young All-Stars, which appeared in the letters section of All-Star Squadron #67, was seen in our previous volume. So we’re launching this chapter with the powerful drawing of that sensational sextet done by longtime series artists Howard Simpson (p) & Malcolm Jones III (i) for Who’s Who Update ’87 #1 (Aug. 1987). [© DC Comics.]

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What had happened was that, in November of ’85, DC’s managing editor Dick Giordano and I had talked over the situation post-Crisis, and had agreed that All-Star Squadron had been fatally wounded by the companywide maxi-series. I would have preferred to continue with the original comic featuring the heroes I had left—still dozens strong, after all—but I could read the handwriting on the wall, so I acquiesced in replacing Squadron with a new comic. For a time, the new series was to be called simply The New All-Star Squadron, but that title lacked pizzazz. I certainly felt strongly that the word “All-Star” should be a part of its name. It was apparently on an Amtrak train headed south from New York to central South Carolina, where my wife Dann’s father had moved from Long Beach, California, to launch a new branch of Hughes Aircraft, that the name The Young All-Stars was born. The exact wording was her suggestion, and it was the perfect phrase. Dann and I, as I reported in YAS #1 (I finally had a title I could abbreviate without awkwardness), “had a ball coming up with new heroes, whose history and futures are largely unknown—a few blank slates to write upon.” I would explain some of our reasoning in issue #3.

Dracula Perseveres! Dick Giordano (photo) and Roy Thomas collaborated most notably on a 180-page Marvel adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel Dracula, as per this panel from Dracula Lives! Vol. 2, #1 (real #5) (March 1974). The black-&-white project was finally completed in 2004 under editor Mark Beazley and was published as Stoker’s Dracula, the graphic novel it was always designed to be. The hardcover was nominated for a Harvey Award in 2006. Thanks to Pat Bastienne for the photo. [Dracula art © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Wonder Woman had needed replacing, along with the “displaced energy” thing, because somebody had to be in line to become the future mother of Lyta (Fury) Trevor of Infinity, Inc. George Pérez was then making considerable use of Graeco-Roman myth in his new Wonder Woman series; so, after talking with Dick and George, Dann and I decided, with mutual consent, that “we’d just carve off one little corner for our new heroine—the three Furies of Greek legend.” And so Helena Kosmatos became the “original” super-heroine called Fury. (See ASCV2 for a rare ancient Greek depiction of the Furies on an amphora.) I had considered not bothering to do stand-ins for Batman and Robin, who had no super-powers—till I remembered that Jerry Bails’ 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books had reprinted a panel of an early DC aviator hero known as The Flying Fox. That’s also the name of a species of bat—or at least, so it had been considered until recent years, when scientists had decided it was actually not a bat but a primate. Still, the teenaged Bruce Wayne of Earth-One had once used “Flying Fox” as a secret identity in a retroactive tale. Dann suggested making our character a Native American—a Quontauka descendant of our earlier sword-and-sorcery hero Arak, Son of Thunder. The name Flying Fox fit that concept nicely—so Batman’s energy-heir was born. There was no replacement for Robin.

192 YOUTH MUST BE SERVED

We didn’t bother to ring in doubles for the vanished Green Arrow and Speedy, either—though the notion for the joining of the bowwielding Tigress in issue #9 was already in the back of my mind. But we had not one but two hero-subs for Aquaman! As I commented: “Hmmm... most groups have trouble finding enough for one water-powered hero [to do], and we have two. Guess we’re just gluttons for punishment.” Then there was Arn “Iron” Munro, the obvious Superman substitute. I preferred to be mysterious about his origins for a few issues, but he was actually perhaps the first Young All-Star conceived. He owed much to Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, published in 1930 and somehow fallen into the public domain (as I’d learned when arranging to adapt the book for Marvel, a few years earlier). Arn would be the son of the novel’s superhuman protagonist Hugo Danner, who was so close in abilities and other ways to the 1938 Man of Tomorrow that it’s almost inconceivable to me that avid science-fiction fan Jerry Siegel didn’t read that book and utilize much of it, consciously or un-, in the newspaper comic strip samples that became Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1. The only clue I gave in YAS #3, though: “The fact that he’s from Colorado is indeed significant, as are his precise early-Superman powers (leaping 1/8 of a mile instead of flying, etc.)... and that the source is even older than the Man of Steel.”

Dann Thomas in a late-1970s photo. Pic by Nick Arroyo.

I put the character’s nickname “Iron” between quotation marks to stress that it was a

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The Young Art-Stars The six then-fledgling talents who worked on (or, in two cases, nearly worked on) the first issue of The Young All-Stars deserve a double-page spread all their own for their heroic efforts! Pics courtesy of the artists. [Secret Origins, Young All-Stars, Arak, Son of Thunder, & Sandman art in this spread © DC Comics.] Tom Grindberg (right), originally tapped as penciler of the series, never actually drew any of it, but did complete its prelude: the debut of the new Fury (left) in Secret Origins #12 (March 1987), which came out, by design, three months before YAS #1. The editors had inker Tony DeZuniga graft armor designed by Michael Bair onto Fury, so we’re not sure of her original outfit in Tom’s pencils. At far right is a recent science-fictional drawing by Mr. G.; he’s done a ton of art these past twenty years in many fields. [Sea creature art © 2007 Tom Grindberg.]

Michael Bair (photo bottom right) penciled several pages and parts of pages of YAS #1. At left center is an early drawing he did of Fury as “Mike Hernandez.” With thanks to George Hagenauer. At right: Roy T. fondly recalls the single issue of Marvel’s New Universe title Nightmask (#7, May 1987) that he and Michael did together, evidenced by Michael’s breathtaking cover. In recent years, he has both penciled and inked for Marvel and other companies, including on JSA. [Nightmask art © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Vince Argondezzi (photo at right) penciled Helena Kosmatos’ nightmare on pp. 1-5 of YAS #1, as per splash above. These days, he divides his time between commercial art and comics such as Lord of Blood (right) with Tokyopop scripter R.A. Jones, and has won awards for his work. [Lord of Blood art © Vince Argondezzi & R.A. Jones.]

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Issue By Issue [CREDITS NOTE: Roy & Dann Thomas are listed as co-writers on all issues of The Young All-Stars, so there’s no need to name them 32 times. In point of fact, the pair usually collaborated on the plotting, but the dialogue and captions were generally the work of Roy alone. Each issue’s splash sported a quotation related to the story.]

The Gathering Storm (Left:) In Young All-Stars #1, Helena’s “uncle” Johnny Quick flies her and Liberty Belle to an emergency confab of the All-Star Squadron; pencils by Michael Bair. (Below:) Flying Fox startles several RCAF Spitfires in the skies above Canada; pencils by Brian Murray. Inks for both panels by Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas—and, to save space, since the Thomases wrote every issue of YAS, we won’t repeat their credit each time. [© DC Comics; Young All-Stars logo TM DC Comics.]

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ALL-STAR COMPANION VOL. 3 THE YOUNG ALL-STARS #1

Still more amazing secrets behind the 1940-51 ALLSTAR COMICS and the JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! issue-by-issue survey of JLA/JSA (JuneAn 1987) TEAM-UPS of 1963-85, the 1970s JSA REVIVAL, SYNOPSIS: Helena Kosmatos has a nightand theCOVER: 1980s series THEMurray YOUNG ALL-STARS with Brian mare in which Mekanique, the living robot commentary by the artists and writers! Plus rare art STORY: of TheBUSCEMA, Young Allfrom late issues of All-Star Squadron, kills by NEAL ADAMS,“The DICKComing AYERS, JOHN Stars” DICK – 26 DILLIN, pp. SEAN CHEN, RIC ESTRADA, CREIG many of the heroes of the Squadron. Neptune FLESSEL, KEITH GIFFEN, GIORDANO, MIKE Perkins talks Tsunami out of suicide. An air ARTISTS: VinceDICK Argondezzi (p, pp. 1-5), GRELL,Michael TOM GRINDBERG, TOM GRUMMETT, patrol encounters Flying Fox over Canada. Bair & Brian Murray (p, pp. 6-26). RON HARRIS, IRWINJones HASEN, DON HECK, TNT is killed and Dyna-Mite injured in a & Malcolm III (i) CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JACK KIRBY, battle with saboteurs. Arn “Iron” Munro STARRING: FY, JQ,SHELDON LB, NP, TS, FF (intro), JOE KUBERT, BOB LAYTON, MAYER, BOB McLEOD, SHELDON MOLDOFF, stops the Valkyrie Gudra from claiming (dies), DD, IMPEDDY, (intro)GEORGE (Cameos: GL, H.G. PETER, JERRY TNT ORDWAY, ARTHUR PÉREZ, HOWARD PURCELL, Dyna-Mite’s soul.STARLIN, Gudra checks in with her HM, FB, AM, GU, TA, WH, SG, WC, PAUL REINMAN, MIKESP, SEKOWSKY, HOWARD SIMPSON, JOE SINNOTT, JIM teammates Axis Featuring Amerika: Der JOE STATON, SUTTON, ALEXMA, TOTH, JIMSA, VALENTINO and manyof others! SS, FL,RONN MH, CA, AW, VG, RM, Übermensch, Die See Wolf, Usil the Suna new JLA/JSA GEORGE PÉREZ! ST, SK, cover DM, by WI, MT, AT) (240-page trade paperback) $26.95

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Archer, Die Grosshorn Eule, and Die Fledermaus. NOTES: • In the introduction, Amazing-Man suddenly displays unexplained magnetic powers; previously, he had had the ability to “become” any substance he touched. • The members of Axis Amerika are Nazi and Fascist versions of those Earth-Two heroes (Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Green