my mistake typing error
November 22 1940
Corrected it
Thanks
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DC History Club: Roy Thomas at DC August 2020 Stargirl Series
Stargirl had its final.episode for season 1 today.
Roy Thomas
Created the other three members of the JSA with his wife Dann who the second Firebrand was named after.
Dr Mid-Nite
Hourman
Wildcat
In the DC Tittle Infinity Inc
Though as young adults
See
For further infornstion
Especially
Which describes
The history of Stargirl
Including her ties
To the
Star spangled Kid
Starman
JSA
Shazam
Justice League Unlimited
Batman Brave and the Bold
Justice League Action
Young Justice
Smallville
Legends of Tomorrow
The Spear of Destiny
And Camelot
Funny how a lot of Stargirl
Ties in with
This Topic
The final episode ended with
a dedication
Honoring
Courtney Elizabeth Johns
Thr.sister of
Geoff johns
Show Runner and Producer
Of the series
As well as DC
comic book writer
She died in a airplane accident.
With a destination of Paris
Which inspired him
To write Stargirl
His last image of her
Was doing a ballet pirouette
For him
In the plane boarding area
As she embarbed
On her journey
To Eternity
It was initially thought
To be a terrorist attack
But it was a malfunction
Of the plane
I think.that
Is easier
For a relstive or loved one
To live with
Also we saw
Shining Knight
In issues 1 4
Of All Star Squadron
Last wee
SPOILER
All I ever wanted
The beginning of the final arc in Hawkman 24 out on Tuesday
Reincarnaton is OVER
No more timr and space
The Hawks start here
This is their last run
BUT ‘The years eill be like days to you both’
DC History Club: Roy Thomas.at DC -August 2020 The Start of Comic Book Fandom
Roy Fact Comic Book.Fandom
Roy Thomas was born November 22 1940.
At four and a half he saw his first rack of comic books and wanted some because of their colorful covers
At first, his mothet read to him Superman and Batman comics
He learned to read from All-Star Comics, staring the JSA. His favorite character was Hawkman
His life goal became
to get a complete collrction of All Star Comics
And thus, Comics Fandom came inro being, as he helped Dr Jerry Bails in his mission
From
http://www.comicconmemories.com/2010/09/05/the-50th-anniversary-of-comic-fandom/
"
Dr. Jerry Bails, Assistant Professor of Natural Science at Wayne State University, had loved superhero comics since he was seven years old. That’s when the first Justice Society of America story had appeared in All Star Comics #3 in the winter of 1940/41. Unlike most comic readers of the day, he had held fast to that love into adulthood. In 1953 he began a correspondence with former Justice Society writer Gardner Fox. Working to complete his collection of All Star lComics, Jerry was thrilled in 1959 to be able to purchase Fox’s personal bound run of All Star Comics #1-24.
When the Flash was reborn in Showcase #4 in 1956, Jerry was pretty excited. His excitement grew as another Golden Age character, the Green Lantern, was revived and revamped in 1959, also in the pages of Showcase. Then when his precious Justice Society was reborn as the Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28 in early 1960, he really began to feel the urge to do something to encourage this superhero revival, to keep it going strong.
But what to do and why so lonely? In the post-Wertham period of the late fifties, comics were looked upon, at best, as trashy kids’ stuff of no lasting value. For an adult college professor – with a Ph. D. in Natural Science, no less – to read and collect comics, well, it’s difficult for a fan of today to imagine how isolated he must have felt. In those days it would have been highly embarrassing for an adult to be seen reading a comic. He would have been laughed at, his emotional health questioned. And he had no fellow societal outcasts to commiserate with, to share his illicit love. As far as Jerry knew, no other comic fans existed. That changed for him in 1960.
In November 1960, Jerry received a letter from Roy Thomas. Roy had written to DC editor Julius “Julie” Schwartz looking for All Star Comics back issues. Julie forwarded the letter to Gardner Fox who in turn referred Roy to Jerry. Each thrilled to find a fellow fan, they exchanged a hundred pages worth of letters within five months.
Jerry and Roy began to kick around ideas for other superhero revivals and began writing letters to DC with their suggestions. In January 1961, Jerry wrote to Roy that he was thinking of publishing a Justice League newsletter that he would send to anyone having a letter published in DC Comics. (Around that time, Julie Schwartz had decided to start printing the full addresses of the writers of letters to the editor appearing in the comics he edited. Julie knew that when the science-fiction pulps had done this back in the 1920’s and 1930’s, it had allowed isolated fans to contact one another and create organized fandom.)
Jerry took advantage of an invitation to lecture at Adelphi College on Long Island to visit Julie Schwartz at the DC offices in February of 1961. He learned from Julie that his proposed JLA newsletter was something that science-fiction fans called a “fanzine.” (In 1932, Julie had co-published one of the most important early fanzines, The Time Traveller, along with Mort Weisinger – also a DC editor in 1961 – and number-one fan Forry Ackerman, who later became Guest of Honor at the March 1970 San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Minicon.) Julie told Jerry about science-fiction fandom and gave him copies of Xero #1-3.
Encouraged by his meeting with Julie Schwartz and reading Xero and with science-fiction fandom as a model, Jerry decided to set his sights higher. Instead of a JLA newsletter, he decided to publish a fanzine dedicated to superhero comics and their revival. Named Alter-Ego, the first issue appeared in March 1961 with Roy Thomas listed as co-editor. Bill Schelly writes in Founders of Comic Fandom that the “response to Alter-Ego was immediate and explosive. Bails had clearly tapped into an un-met need of comic book fans and collectors, a magazine such enthusiasts could call their own.” In part using the addresses in the DC letter pages, Jerry worked hard at building a list of fans and potential fans he could send a free copy to and managed to distribute his entire first print run of around 200 copies.
Comic Book that first had full addresses in the letter colums allowing fans to contact each other…
Remember comic books are dated in months of advance
The cover of Alter-Ego 1
DC History Club: Roy Thomas.at DC' -August 2020 Justice League of America 16
Roy Fact Two JLA 16
In 1962, Justice Leagie of America 16 was published with rhe title Cavern of Deadly Speres
In.part, the story was a tribute to rwo comic book fans, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas
The JLA has nine members at the time. The original seven, Grern Arrow and thr size shrinking Atom
They break into threr person teams who enckunter criminal. Soon each starts to dance in an individual way.
Despite this obstacle, they capture the bad guys
All nine find the main Bad Guy in a large cave and are trapped in individual spherrs. Trapped, the villian blows up the entrance. The JLA were doomef
Next we see all nine are studying some storyboards in their headquarters. What is going on?
JLA fan ‘Jerry Thomas’ had devised a scenario wherein the JLA were utterly defeated. He sent the story boards
to the JLA for safekeeping
The rest of the issue is the JLA trying to find a weak point ib the scenario
.Read the entire story at
https://www.dcuniverse.com/comics/book/-/1c6ef25e-3a85-417a-b3a7-c99bc4c79934
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DC History Club: Roy Thomas:at DC' -August 2020 Two Weeks at DC with Mort Weisinger
Roy Fact Two Weeks at DC Mort Weisinger
From Wikipedia
In 1965, Thomas, former teacher of high school history and English moved to New York City to take a job at DC Comics as assistant to Mort Weisinger, then the editor of the Superman titles. Thomas said he had just accepted a fellowship to study foreign relations at George Washington University when he received a letter from Weisinger, “with whom I had exchanged one or two letters, tops”, asking Thomas to become “his assistant editor on a several-week trial basis.”
"I worked at DC for eight days in late June and very early July of 1965 before accepting a job at Marvel Comics.
This came after his chafing under the notoriously difficult Weisinger, to a point, Thomas said in 1981, that he would go “home to my dingy little room at, coincidentally, the George Washington Hotel in Manhattan, during that second week, and actually feeling tears well into my eyes, at the ripe old age of 24.”
How mean was Weisinger?
Neal Adams once asked him that.
See
Secret Origins The Story of DC Comics
At 44 minutesv15 seconds in
https://www.dcuniverse.com/videos/secret-origin-the-story-of-dc-comics/37
Familiar with editor and chief writer Stan Lee’s Marvel work, and feeling them “the most vital comics around” Thomas “just sat down one night at the hotel and – I wrote him a letter! Not applying for a job or anything so mundane as that – I just said that I admired his work, and would like to buy him a drink some time. I figured he just might remember me from Alter Ego.” Lee did, and phoned Thomas to offer him a Marvel writing test.
After passing the test Stan offered Roy a job.
See the next post for Roy’s sareer at Marvel
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DC History Club: Roy Thomas.at DC' -August 2020 Roy at Marvel
Roy Facts Roy at Marvel
Stan Lee Interviews Roy Thomas
Back to Roy’s story
By Wikipedia
The writer’s test, Thomas took.in 1965, "was four Jack Kirby pages from Fantastic Four Annual #2
He was hired. His first work was Millie the Model followed later by Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos.
Stan made less and less rewrites of Roy’s work and Roy took over Xmen and then Avengers.
n 1972, he succeeded Stan Lee as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, a position that he would hold for two years while continuing to write a variety of titles.
He created many charactes including Red Sonja for Conan the Barbarian, the Vision and Ultrom from Avengerd.
See link for his claim on Wolvwrine
Roy loved the Golden Age
And used them in Invaders
As well as the climax to the Kree Skull in.Avengers.
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Thanks to the History Club for introducing me to Jonni Thunder by Roy and Dann Thomas! Just finished reading it this morning here in the archives. I loved the 4 part story especially its homage to the old detective pulps/movies! Great Stuff! You can tell they had a lot of fun creating it!
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DC History Club: Roy Thomas.at DC' -August 2020 Roy 2nd Time at DC
Roy Facts At DC Again
In 1981, after several years of freelancing for Marvel and a dispute with then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Thomas signed a three-year exclusive writing/editing contract with DC.
He was to write 100 pages a month
DC wanted a sword and sorcery title like Conan the Barbarian and Roy provided them with Arak, Son of Thunder, an American Indian in the Court of Charlemagne in theb8th century when magic and dragons were still a possibility. The series lasted 50 issues but is not in our library.
Roy made sure that he would write a JSA title, which he set in World War II, called the All Star Squadron
On Wonder Woman
You took over Wonder Woman. Because you’re a guy, what was it like to come up with good stories for her?
No problem. I’d been reading WONDER WOMAN since I was at least five or six. But I talked things over, and to some extent co-plotted with, my girlfriend and soon wife Dann to get more of a female perspective. I’m happy with the short-run Gene Colan and I had on the magazine, but DC (without deliberately trying to) kind of double-crossed me in various ways and reduced my enthusiasm for doing the heroine, so I left.
Roy Thomas on All Star Squadron
https://twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/06allstar.html
https://twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/12a-ss.html
Roy Thomas on Justice Society
Infiniry Inc
Crisis
Shazam
https://www.dcuniverse.com/news/roy-thomas-crafting-justice-society-creating-infinity-inc-and-re/
Jerry Thomas appeared on panel in Crisis On Infinite Earths #8 . He was a police officer just outside the Warp Zone
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What happened to
All Star Squadron
After Crisis on Infinite Earth
After that
Roy wrote Young All Stars
Mainly devoted to the
replacemrnt charscters
Created by Roy
To replacethe
Earth 2 versions of
Superman
Batman
Womder Woman
Aquamsn
This series was not as good
As All Star Squadron
In any way
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I didn’t like that he went all Wold-Newton on us in the Young all-Stars.
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Polls
Can be found
At
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Quiz
Can be found
At
5 out of 6 for the Quiz, not bad. I had the right answer for 6 then thought that was too easy so changed my mind.
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Shazam working with the Marvel family or alone is tough for me. I enjoy the family dynamic of the kids working together but it does take away from Shazam being special. I also miss the days of Mary Marvel being out in the DC universe and being so much nicer than everyone she worked with.
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