Welcome to another post in a series entitled "Summer on Earth-Two". Tonight, we're looking at the Showcase collected edition of DC's early-80s Golden Age revival, All-Star Squadron.
Rascally Roy Thomas was only one of many Marvel mainstays who abandoned the House of Ideas during Jim Shooter's regime. I eagerly anticipated his début story on Legion of Super Heroes, where he would unveil the most enigmatic member of Shooter's 1967 foreshadowed Legionnaires: Reflecto!
Unfortunately, given this was the man who created the Vision; birthed the Living Monolith, Sauron, Havok; and helmed the Kree-Skrull War, the story turned out to be a pedestrian and ponderous saga centring on Superboy.
All-Star Squadron #1 contains "An Open Letter to the Readers" written by Roy. In it, he describes the genesis of the series: DC wanted a comic book telling tales of the Justice Society of America. As we've seen. the 70s revival of All-Star Comics only lasted until the DC Implosion. Golden Age fan Thomas got a chance to write the JSA. but, like his visceral Invaders series for Marvel, he decided to set the team's adventures during World War Two.
The series was also set on the parallel world of Earth-2 but the cast included a large ensemble of heroes from both the DC stable and the Quality heroes aka The Freedom Fighters. Frustratingly (for me at least) Thomas decided to concentrate on "quite promising characters who have been ignored or underplayed for years," instead of those Earth-Two characters who had counterparts on Earth-One. Therefore, the focus was on Liberty Belle ( a new character on me) , Johnny Quick, Shining Knight, the original Robotman and a gender-swapped Firebrand, inspired by Roy's second wife Danette.
This may be the point at which the cover date jumps three months ahead...
My abiding memories of ASS ( which had been a putative title for the All-Star Comics revival of 1976) constitute two images: the bus trips from Glasgow to Chapelton during my first winter at University...
...then, that following summer, my first coach trip to London; The Wrath of Khan; the Great Darkness Saga in LSH and this crossover Crisis with JLA:
A brief respite with the real JSA...
All-Star Squadron also represented the birth of "retroactive continuity" or "retcon" (many years later, an amnesia drug in Torchwood!) Several storylines repaired "continuity errors" fleshed out characters' origins and rewrote earlier stories to explain "inconsistencies" in character portrayals, or fill in "missing" details.
One example would be the first ASS annual, which connects the origins of Wildcat, the Atom and the Guardian with that big ol' gayer, The Green Lantern. This was no more necessary than connecting the atomic accidents that created Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron Man and Dr. Octopus- but it paved the way for those very linkages in the Nineties.
The series is inoffensive and assiduous in its scholarship, thick with the slang and pop culture of the Forties. It's also hugely verbose and quite dull, particularly when the focus shifts to aborted material from Steel, the short-lived WWII comic created by Thomas's writing partner, Gerry Conway. Without the presence of cult favourites of the early Bronze Age- Dr. Fate, Wildcat, the Golden Age Flash and Green Lantern- the book centres on a cast of C-listers who mimic the late -60s Avengers ( Shining Knight = Thor and the Black Knight; Steel = Cap and Iron Man; Robotman = The Vision, etc.) This is particularly galling as,over at Marvel, Shooter mapped out Hank Pym's shattering breakdown and turned Tigra into a shallow, acquisitive coward. Perhaps Thomas could have restored the assemblers to their former glory. Then again, recalling his West Coast Avengers work in the early 90s, perhaps not.
The vibrant Kubert covers crackle with life but until inker Jerry Ordway takes on pencilling chores, it's a moribund title, curating exhibits of perhaps deservedly-forgotten superheroes. Despite my negativity however, I would be interested in returning for future volumes, especially for the period immediately after Ordway's departure. That was the point at which I finally bailed on ASS in 1984.
Next: The 150th post on Place!
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