[JSA Book Club] Week 1: Origins [2/17-3/1]

After running something like this for about a year, my running theory is: figure you have about 30 to 45 minutes a week of the reader’s time, including what they respond here later. So for your every two week club, however many pages folks on average can read in a little less than two hours. Most comics these days take maybe 10 minutes or less to read (which again is why I go 99.99% digital unlimited services).

The Golden Age stuff takes me probably double that time for the same number of pages. There seems to be more dialogue, and a different concept of how to use time flow per panel etc.

Frankly I have 6 or hardcover DC Archives of the golden age stuff (Superman Golden Age V1 and V6, Seven Soldiers of Victory v3, Blackhawk V1 and All Star V4). and I’ve probably only read a story or so from each, it’s just super hard for me to read page by page, even though it is fascinating historically.

Footnote on this two week assignment: Volume one Hardcover DC Archives All-Stars has: issues #3–6.

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Just read the Spectre story in that first issue number 3. typical wild Fantastical romp including traveling impossible distances and seconds and standing on top of planets and all that fun stuff. Then this panel ends it and here’s what I say

" say that was an exciting story Spectre" - Johnny Thunder… or more likely "are you kidding??? if even a quarter of that story is true, we’re all going to lose our minds and go insane!!! and what’s going to happen if the Spectre wakes up on the wrong side of the bed with that kind of power??? YIIIIKES!!!

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If ignorance is bliss, Johnny Thunder is the happiest man in…Squaresville or wherever this story takes place.

Continuing issue 3…the Hourman story. In the 70s and 80s and on, Hourman becomes a pretty compelling character (along with the android Hourman in the 90s). Here, it is a fun concept (instead of 60 seconds like Negative Man, this guy gets a full hour of strength!).

I was a tad shocked to see two cops murdered at the diamond display, that was tough. It was a bit unbelievable to me that these same killers would keep sparing Hourman (twice), especially since they obviously knew all about him for this heist.

It was around 26 years or so later that wierdly two TV shows appeared the same season on different networks where both series featured an Hourman ripoff. The one I saw as a kid was “Mr. Terrific” ( JSA was already appearing in the yearly Justice League Crises) but there was also “Captain Nice.” Both used drugs…

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I have to be honest, I only really went through All-Star #3. I mean, I can do Golden Age era stories, but I guess only in small doses. I did recently read through #8, Sensation Comics #1 and Wonder Woman #1 for the World of Wonder Book Club last month. If any of y’all read those and want to talk about it there or check out our thoughts on them, check it out:

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Yeah, Hourman becomes 1000% more interesting when they finally admit that he’s a drug addict.

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Yeah, I’m a bit ashamed that I spent all that money on Golden Age Archives and have barely actually read them. Fun to page through, really hard to read.

Wait, comics are written for kids, am I losing my brain cells already? I thought that didn’t start for me until next year…

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I love reading Golden Age comics, but they are kinda like a really rich dessert. I try to avoid reading more than one issue at a time to make sure that they don’t overwhelm my palate. I find them easier to read than many Silver Age comics, though.

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I find I need to be of a particular bent of mind to read Golden Age stuff. Having said that though I do enjoy the occasional dip into them. As @AlexanderKnox has said they are like a very rich dessert that I find my mind craves on occasion.

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Yeah, I can only read a few pages at a time in the ol’ time stuff. I like them, but the flow is a lot different than I’m used to.

I have to admit that I’ve owned some Superman Archives for years that I still haven’t read all of.

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Well, as I enjoy a quiet day by myself (you don’t count as a person, Chester the Ancient Cat), I’m taking a peek at some more of the anthology stories in All Star #3 , all written apparently by Gardner Fox who 20 years later was still delivering the comic book excellence goods!

The Red Tornado one pager was a great interlude, and I really hope the current Justice League as well as hopefully an upcoming iteration of the Justice Society will be sure to mix in the “don’t take everything so seriously” comedic relief of this kind of character. I enjoyed the appearances of Red Tornado’s kids and grandkid later on (Cyclone etc).

Next up: Sandman, who makes sure we are aware he is just a man. First, as a fan of the 90’s Sandman Mystery Theater, let me say this story very much looks and feels like the 90s version: gross horrible unthinkable crimes being solved with a wiff of knockout gas by “just a man” Wesley Dodds. The art here is not top notch, it’s downright primitive at times, although settings look fine- it’s the people that aren’t quite done right. But the story works, and the motivations of the guilty party actually make sense . This story of hideously inflated animals and people reminds me very much of the late '50s monster flicks shown on Saturday afternoons on local channels in the late 60’s when I was growing up.

This scene with Johnny Thunder saying the story would give him nightmares and Wesley Dodds / Sandman stating he was getting them too from that adventure again is echoed in the 90s series- let me check if the 90s series is here…

It’s not here, as it was a Vertigo title, but if you have Comixology Unlimited (at $5.99 a month why wouldn’t you?), it is there waiting for you in the shadows…

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I thought the Red Tornado page was really weird, like were her stories back then comedies mostly aimed at her expense? It was so odd that to highlight her in this book they chose to make fun of her for blowing a seam in her pants.

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It was meant to make fun of the superhero genre even back then. Later in the comic series “Not Brand Echh” by Marvel, you had Forbush Man, Irving Forbush, the janitor for Marvel supposedly and he dressed remarkably like the Red Tornado, but 25 years later.

That 1 page interlude from All Star #3 actually wasn’t too bad of a joke, because you have Red Tornado posing with the cape mysteriously all around her and all those other panels then you find out the gag later is because she had lost her pants trying to crawl up the ladder of the fire escape… as an old guy that constantly has to keep pulling his pants up I kind of thought that was funny…

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I read it as being a slap stick gag along the lines of something that might be seen in a Three Stooges episode.

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When I was a kid and heard about the All Star Comics i wanted to read them all.

Years ago. I bought a digital copy of the last JSA All Star Comics and it was fine but nothing memorable.

These early All Star Comics are very hard to read. The eight stories in an issue I dont remember what happened an hour later.

I will be back with this club onve the comics get to be readable.

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@TurokSonOfStone1950: You’re in luck then because in March we will be moving forward in time to start on Infinity, Inc and also covering the first Silver Age appearances of Jay Garrick in The Flash as well as the first few JSA/JLA crossover stories. We decided to throw out the first year’s reading list completely as well as the idea of reading in chronological order. Instead we are going move between eras since this time around didn’t really go off so well. (and if there are some Golden Age stories thrown in it will be only one issue rather than so many at once.)

This week was, not to put to fine a point on it, a total bust and I apologize to everyone for that. :sweat:

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Heyyy…not a total bust. The colors were pretty!

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Thanks.

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I find these issue historically interesting more than anything else. However, they do have their moments.

COMMENTS ON ISSUE #3

The date of this first meeting is retroactively set to November 22, 1940 in All-Star Squadron #1 in 1981. This just happens to by Roy Thomas’ birthday.

Roy surmises that All-Star Comics was created due to the success of the World’s Fair anthology earlier in 1940.

In a 1977 interview Gardner Fox claims that each of these stories were written as separate stories like #1 and #2. At some point, someone came up with the JSA idea and Gardner tied them together.

info to this point from All-Star Companion Volume 1 from 2004

I don’t recall when I first read these stories. It would have been when I bought Volume 1 of the All-Star Archives somewhere between 1993-1995.

Loved the Roll Call in JLA, no different here.

Yet the guy not in the Roll Call, Johnny Thunder, uses his genie to get everyone there quicker. I like Johnny Thunder on the team. A little humor and occasionally he’ll save the day. Then again, I like Snapper Carr and Jimmy Olsen too.

Atom wonders where Superman, Batman and Robin are. Too busy earning the big checks Al. I know why they aren’t there, but I would have preferred they showed up a few more times in the Golden Age than they did. Thankfully, the JLA dispensed with the “too popular” route after ten issues or so.

Who needs house ads? Just put “Read The Flash Every Month in FLASH COMICS!” at the end of his chapter.

I find it interesting that’s it’s not just the art that changes from chapter to chapter, it is the lettering as well.

The entire DCU in just 9 comics and costs just 90 cents.

My pick of the stories is Dr. Fate. Although those Witches of Endor don’t look like Ewoks. It also has an odd finish where he tosses the dark wizard into a wall and breaks his neck. No magic solution, just fisticuffs.

The Flash gets the team’s marching orders from the FBI in Washington and now the team has got something to tie these stories together. Next time it will be a much better book.

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COMMENTS ON ISSUE #4

This story would be reworked into All-Star Squadron #67 and was the last issue of that series.

Boy does this issue read a little different in this day and age! And by different I mean from the first time I read it in the 1990s.

The FBI Chief (not named until later as J Edgar Hoover) gathers the team together and tells them the nation’s multiple problems. Undercover agents of foreign powers are in the USA to undermine us. Newspapers are threatened with bombings if they tell the truth about totalitarian nations. Munition plants are wrecked. Colleges are overrun with “alien teachers” preaching democracy is outdated. Orators stirring up class and race hatreds. The JSA needs to stop these minions of dictator nations for AMERICA and DEMOCRACY!

This issue was written about the time of the holiday season of 1940. There really were a lot of people in the US and other parts of the West that looked around and wondered if democracy was still the way to go. Nearly all the time in this issue they are mentioned as dictator nations, but they do mention the Bund once on page “c.” If you looked around the world, Germany had conquered France and other nations. Britain was just hanging on. Japan had been beating the Chinese for years. The USSR had even gone over to the Nazi side and started gobbling up Baltic states. Their economies seemed better as we were still in a depression. People really could be talked into thinking you needed a “strongman” to lead in the dog eat dog world of international affairs.

I really like the Flash story that starts things off. There is a certain power fantasy here of not having to obey rules and laws, but just fighting for the right thing. Flash invades a greyshirt’s home. When he complains, Flash says “That’s just like you rats! Yelling about your “rights” under a constitution you are trying to overthrow!” He shows the workers that all the pamphlets are made overseas by foreign powers and checks “from a foreign dictator.” Any of this sound familiar? In the end Flash sets the mob on the hapless greyshirts. No police, no jury, no newspaper articles, just we’re going to beat you up. No wonder kids ate it up and some adults even might think, “if only.” The Flash gets wind of a ship targeted for sabotage and he spends a second straight issue at sea because Aquaman hasn’t been invented yet. He finds out about their leader (who controls 30,000 spies!) and he’s off to Toledo.

I want to mention a few things about the Green Lantern story. I love the panel where he recites his oath while holding his cape like a certain other mystery man from Gotham City. His rings weakness is to non metals, not just wood. So he’s taken out by a bottle to the head. The villains HQ is a dirigible that billows out smoke to disguise it as a cloud. That is very cool. In the end, an ordinary man who was threatened by the greyshirts gives his life to save Green Lantern. These first two stories have ordinary people inspired by the JSA save the day.

The Sandman story was the other one I thought was well done. The locals duped into joining the greyshirts make amends by joining the army. Maybe they should start with the CCC and work their way up? How he drove from El Paso to Toledo in a few hours is a mystery for another day.

I think #4 is well worth reading, especially the Flash and Green Lantern stories.

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