All-Star Comics #40 “The Plight of a Nation!” - April 1948
Writer – John Broome
Artists – Arthur Peddy & Bernard Sachs, Carmine Infantino, Alex Toth
The cover blurb of this particular issue sums up the story as follows: “The Justice Society of America tackles the problem of Juvenile Delinquency!” As you might imagine, it’s not an entirely realistic take on the problem or the solution, but you have to give Broome credit for the attempt. The Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams series of the 70s is often held up as an example of the first really socially conscious DC series, but there are earlier examples of dealing with social issues, and this is one of them.
In an ironic bit of timing, this issue deals with youth gangs and the gang culture, and as I type this review I’m listening to the local news discuss a white teenager who was out in one of the local parks when a gang of 13 black young men attacked him, beat him and would have killed him if the gun one of them was carrying hadn’t misfired. A comic book from 1948 explores how “juvenile delinquents” in gangs rob, steal and fight other gangs, and here we are in 2013 with this genuine problem still in existence.
So the comic itself is split up into three 12-page chapters, each handled by a different artist. Carmine Infantino is well known for drawing the Silver Age Flash comics, but here he is in 1948 drawing the JSA. I’ve seen examples of his work on the Flash comic in this same time period as well, so he was already a veteran DC penciller by the time he started drawing Barry Allen. Alex Toth is another name I’ve heard before, though I can’t think of artwork examples off the top of my head. The end result is pretty good art, if not up to modern standards. The membership of the JSA is pretty much who you’d expect, consisting of the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and Dr. Mid-Nite, but also Wonder Woman and Black Canary.
The plot is two-fold. There is the usual criminal organization, the Crimson Claw, who is carrying out daring robberies. And there is the local youth gang who look up to these crooks and wear their colors, who will grow up to be criminals themselves if they aren’t set straight now. Black Canary and Green Lantern visit the local police to discuss the problem, and we get the usual litany of reasons that gangs exist: poverty, peer pressure, lack of parental involvement, lack of religious beliefs, poor work in school and lenient judges. And then they fight other gangs “for thrills, or because of racial or religious hatred or frustration”. Broome seems to have genuinely done some research and tried to put some serious thought into the issue, even if the setting of a super-hero comic doesn’t really lend itself to an issue this weighty.
And this being a super-hero comic from the 40s, it’s a given that the team manage to catch the criminals and show the boys the error of their ways. Wonder Woman has some device which shows several of them their future in prison as they’re heading to the electric chair, which scares them straight. They’re just good kids who don’t understand the dire path in life that they’re on, don’t you know! If only it was that easy.
On a lighter note, it’s amusing that there is a Junior Justice Society, who keeps in touch with the genuine article through the editor of All-Star Comics. Hawkman says this almost word for word, and I guess the idea is that in the world these characters exist in, they’re meant to be real, while comics based on their exploits are published with the full awareness and approval of the JSA membership. The comics are the dime novels or “penny dreadfuls” of the day, perhaps, if that much thought was even put into the implications of these characters being aware of their own comic book exploits.
Broome juggles the large cast of characters by splitting them up into groups of two, and letting GL and Black Canary investigate the youth gang, while the Flash and Hawkman go after the Crimson Claw. The other characters don’t have much to do until the end of the story, when they all join in the big fight to capture the Claw. The criminals are rounded up, the boys learn their lesson, and the case is closed. I wonder if characters in Golden Age comics were allowed to fail, and what the readers’ reaction would have been if the ending had consisted of the heroes failing to make a dent in the youth gang culture, as a more modern take on this issue would surely have ended. Maybe they’d have been allowed to rescue one boy but not the rest.
It’s an interesting historical look at a comic attempting to tackle real-world social issues.
I’m guessing that Dr. Mid-Nite was a low-tier character, since he only got 6 or 7-page stories in All-American comics. At least the few I’ve read are that short. Dr. Mid-Nite is Charles McNider, an actual medical doctor, though you wouldn’t know that from this story, where he’s known for writing and publishing the adventures of Dr. Mid-Nite. Seriously. He either makes a living or suppliments his income by publicizing his own exploits, and thus associating his civilian identity with his super-hero identity, and it gets him into trouble. Grant Morrison had Bruce Wayne do much the same thing by publically stating that he financed Batman, and I thought that was a stupid move for exactly the same reason.
The more interesting thing about McNider is that he’s blind, and as such predates Daredevil as a sightless superhero by over 20 years. Like Daredevil he has compensations. In Mid-Nite’s case, he is normally blind in daylight, but can see in absolute darkness. Oddly enough, has special lenses that he constructed which allow him to see in the daytime via infrared. So his lack of vision is a handicap and an alibi that protects his secret identity when the writer needs it to be, but is otherwise moot as long as it’s dark or he has his lenses. He has no superpowers other than his night vision, and uses his smoke filled “blackout bombs” to render the bad guys blind thanks to darkness where he can see and they can't.
So while Daredevil has enhanced senses and a sonar-like ability which he uses to navigate in the world, Dr. Mid-Nite can see unaided in total darkness, has no enhanced senses, and can see via infrared glasses in normal light. Both men are in the mold of Batman, simply men using their athletic and fighting prowess to do what they do. For my money, Daredevil is the more creative of the two, and is obviously far more commercially successful than Mid-Nite ever was, but credit where credit is due: DC had the first blind superhero.
The story: during a chance encounter, a thug named Logger suspects that McNider and Dr. Mid-Nite are one and the same, and he goes to the Tarantula in an attempt to prove it. He brings the kidnapped McNider with him. Tarantula isn’t buying it since everyone knows McNider is blind. Tarantula decides that the best way to prove things one way or the other is to pull a crime and see if Dr. Mid-Nite shows up to stop him or not. If he doesn’t, he’ll believe McNider is Mid-Nite.
Tarantula announces his plan to the police station. He’s going to steal the money from a safe and free some crooks from jail. He knocks them out with gas, and then proceeds, only to be intercepted by Dr. Mid-Nite. The usual wisecracking fight occurs, and all of Tarantula’s goons are captured, with only Tarantula himself getting away. He heads back to his hideout to find McNider seemingly still tied up, guarded by Logger. Of course, being the clever guy that he is, McNider had hypnotized Logger, raced to the police station, fought the bad guys and raced back, thus preserving his secret identity. So the whole story boils down to secret identity hijinks rather than taking the idea of a blind man playing superhero and really using that angle to tell a different kind of story. But at only six pages long, the thin plot doesn’t outstay its welcome.
McNider himself was in the 10 issue Justice Society series DC published in the early 90s, before dying in Zero Hour as Extant aged him and several other JSA members to death. With only 10 issues, it’s a given that he didn’t get a lot of page time, but like the other original JSA characters, it’s interesting to read a little of his actual history.
Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1 – Summer 1992
“And I Shall Shed my Light…” by Roger Stern, Dusty Abell and Steve Mitchell
There’s no doubt that Geoff Johns has managed to turn Green Lantern into a huge success. DC is currently publishing five titles featuring Lanterns, with a sixth on the way. But back in the early 90s, DC was attempting to do the same thing, with more limited success. In addition to the main Green Lantern book, there was also Green Lantern Mosaic, and then the Green Lantern Corps Quarterly, an anthology series featuring a rotating cast of different alien GLs. But my favorite part of each issue was the Alan Scott story.
Issue 1’s story is essentially a re-introduction story for Alan, both for the characters in-story and for the readers. At the time this was published, Alan and the other JSA members had been written out after the Crisis, and had only recently been returned by Waverider in the Armageddon Inferno crossover, if I’m remembering right. Alan rescues a couple of soldiers from a collapsed bridge, and while they recognize that he’s a Green Lantern, one of them remarks that he doesn’t look like any Green Lantern he’s ever seen, causing Alan to reflect that he should have expected that since he’s been out of action for a while. The sabotaged bridge causes him to remember his own similar troubles. We get a couple of pages recapping Alan’s origin story from the 40s with the train crash, the lantern speaking to him and the defeat of Dekker, the man from the rival engineering firm who had blown up the train bridge.
Alan’s daydreaming as a means of recapping his past is worked into the story as he nearly misses his target. The culprits who blew up the bridge that the rescued soldiers were traveling over are Neo-Nazis. They’re just a bunch of punks with guns, and Alan takes them out pretty easily. He learns the location of their headquarters and leader, and drops their own truck on the roof as he makes an entrance. There’s a nice tie-in to the deliberately garish theatricality of his costume as he drops the truck on the house for much the same reason that he created the costume: to make a big impression on the bad guys and let them know that Green Lantern is gunning for them.
The coda sees him back home as his wife Molly finds him charging up his ring and reciting his oath. It turns out that Alan was only out and about in the first place because he couldn’t sleep, and she saw the report about his adventure on the news. In a day when few of these characters are allowed to age or have a happy domestic life, this is a nice way to wind down the story.
Between the short 12-page length, and the panel which tells readers to “follow the adventures of the Green Lantern in every issue”, this feels like a modern version of Alan’s original Golden Age series. As far as I know, Alan Scott was the only Golden Age character to get his own solo feature in the post-Crisis era. The potential of these older characters in the modern world interacting with their younger counterparts was barely realized before DC wrote them out during Zero Hour. And even here, someone at DC was having qualms about publishing the adventures of an old man, because Alan’s new costume and restored youth turn up not too many issues down the line.
The Flash – Flash #123, September 1961
“Flash of Two Worlds!”
You’d think as often as this somewhat famous story has surely been reprinted that I’d have read it before, but no, I never had. The cover blurb reads “destined to become a classic” and for once the ever-present hype of Silver Age comics is correct. DC’s multiverse has its roots in this story, and what strikes me about it, having finally read it, is how low-key and understated it is. It’s not treated as a grand epic; it’s just another adventure for Barry Allen. It’s only fundamentally important in retrospect since it completely changed the fictional world that DC’s characters lived in.
Barry’s girlfriend Iris is holding a charity event for kids, but the magician she hired hasn’t shown up, so naturally Barry suggests that the Flash fill in. He shows up, plays tennis against himself on stage and runs other speed tricks, before ending his act by vibrating into invisibility. But he inadvertently vibrates “across the dimensional barrier” between universes and ends up in Keystone City. Finding himself there, he looks up Jay Garrick and goes to pay him a call. How does he know about Garrick, if they’re from two different universes? He read about Garrick in comic books, written by Gardner Fox. Seriously. And the best thing about the meeting? The two Flashes don’t fight. There’s no clash of egos, no misunderstanding, it’s just two men meeting for the first time and getting to know each other. And when Jay talks about the fact that he had retired and gotten married, but was thinking of coming out of retirement due to a recent crime wave, Flash fan boy Barry offers to go along with him and help, and Jay agrees.
It’s so refreshing to read about two heroes and generally nice guys acting like decent people and cooperating with each other. Seriously, it’s a breath of fresh air. How many times have we read team-up stories where the first thing the heroes do is fight each other, for whatever reason? Too many.
The rest of the story is a pretty standard storyline. Three of Jay’s old enemies have teamed up: the Thinker, the Fiddler and the Shade (the same Shade that turned up in James Robinson’s Starman series). Jay and Barry split up at first, and when they fail to capture the villains they’re after, decide that teaming up works better. It’s during this team up that the scene from the cover occurs, and yes the cover is accurate in this instance. Jay is a little older, a little slower, and has been the Flash for 20 years at this point, so already he’s being allowed to age in real time, back in 1961. Barry is the younger, faster Flash who is just enjoying the whole experience. In the end, Jay comes out of retirement, Barry returns to his Earth, and the promise of future interactions is established.
This is good stuff. The story deserves its reputation, more for how it affected DC than for the story itself, but the actual meeting between the two Flashes is pleasant and amicable, and elevates the story into something a little more than a run of the mill adventure. I’m glad I finally took the time to read it.
You never know what you'll learn about characters by reading early appearances. My local libraries have about 10 volumes each of the Superman and Batman chronicles, the series that purports to have every appearance of the character from the beginning in chronological order. Two interesting things emege about the characters:
Batman - when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams took Batman back to his roots, that means back to the way he was in about the first five appearances. I had no idea how quickly Batman went from this dark figure in black and grey to this fun-living, wisecracking guy in bright blue and grey who looks like he's having a great time fighting the crooks. And his puns are just as bad as Robin's. "Quiet, or poppa spank!" Goofy Batman didn't begin in the 60s, it started in 1940. Who knew?
Superman - the best way to describe him early on is as a "socially conscious thug". Here's a sample of how he operates:
- in one story, he plans to help a wimpy college football player for some reason. So what does he do? He disguises himself to look like the guy, then he kidnaps the man, drugs him so he stays asleep for days, and locks him in his apartment!
- In another, a friend of Clark's is killed by a hit and run driver. So Superman gets all ticked off, breaks into a radio station, manhandles the announcer out of the way, and declares to the town (not yet Metropolis) that they'd better solve the driving problems or they'll answer to him. He then goes to visit a car dealership, declares that he's selling junk cars, and proceeds to demolish them all, and then goes on to commit more vandalism.
- When taking on a crooked coal mine owner who refuses to take proper safety precautions, he sees to it that the mine caves in and traps the owner and his friends underground with the oxygen running out until he agrees to improve conditions.
And so on. Superman may have turned into a "boy scout" later on, but he didn't start out that way.
The Batman Chronicles vol. 1 – Every Batman story in exact chronological order.
I’ve read some of these stories before, but as far as I know this is the first time they’ve all been reprinted in the order of publication and without leaving anything out. The hardback archives run by series, so one set of archives will contain only Batman issues, while the other will contain Detective Comics, etc. The Chronicles, in addition to being in paperback and much cheaper, also goes back and forth between both series. Not that this is terribly important in terms of story continuity, since with a few exceptions there is generally very little from issue to issue, but it does provide an opportunity to see the character of Batman develop over time. Volume 1 contains Batman stories from Detective Comics #27-37 as well as Batman #1, which was quarterly at the time.
I haven’t read the whole book yet, but for those who are interested, here are a few thoughts on the stories so far:
May 1939 – Detective Comics #27 – The Case of the Chemical Syndicate - The very first story, clocking in at about 6 pages. The Bat-Man (not Batman) investigates the murder of a chemical tycoon, discovering that one of his partners murdered him to steal the secret contracts that would leave him as the sole owner of the Apex Chemical Corporation. All the basics are established here: bored rich playboy Bruce Wayne who is secretly the Bat-Man, his friend Commissioner Gordon, and Batman’s predilection for daring physical action and acrobatics. You’ve probably read this story even if you’ve never seen any of Batman’s other early appearances.
DC #28 - Frenchy Blake's Jewel Gang - Using information obtained from a Police stool pigeon, the Bat-Man sets aim on one Frenchy Blake, leader of a notorious jewel theft ring. Batman versus gangsters, pretty standard stuff.
DC #29 - The Batman Meets Doctor Death - Dr. Death plans to use his new invention of a poisonous pollen extract on any wealthy person who refuses to pay him tribute. Mad scientists turn up early in Batman’s series, unlike Superman or the Flash, who spend a long time fighting standard, garden-variety criminals. Notable for the fact that Batman watches Dr. Death apparently burn alive at the end of the story and does nothing to save him, proclaiming “death… to Dr. Death!” Batman doesn’t have nearly as much of an issue with criminals dying in these early stories, even threatening to kill a few himself.
DC #30 - The Return of Doctor Death – That didn’t take long. Thought dead in a fire in his home, Dr. Death has survived, but is in need of funds to re-establish himself, so he sets his sights on diamonds owned by a Mrs. Jones.
DC #31 - Batman vs. the Vampire, Part 1 – Bruce Wayne has a fiancé! Her name is Julie Madison. When Batman discovers Julie in a trance, he is advised by an apparently hypnotized doctor to take her to Hungary. Bruce is naturally suspicious, so he tags along as the Bat-Man, following Julie’s boat in his new autogyro (with bat wings!), carrying his new invention, the batarang. The story is never quite clear on whether the villains are vampires or werewolves. They seem to be a mix of both. This is the story with the “Mad Monk”, and the cover with a giant Batman towering over the castle with the red-robed monk.
DC #32 - Batman vs. the Vampire, Part 2 – The Batman and Julie make it to Hungary, tangle with another vampire/werewolf person, and Batman is hypnotized by the monk who taunts him with the threat of turning Julie into a werewolf. Batman frees himself, makes some silver bullets, and shoots both vampires dead.
DC #33 - The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom – First origin story for Batman. It’s only two pages, and has nothing to do with the rest of the plot. First appearance of Bruce’s philosopy: “Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot.” The rest of the story involves a fat little man named Kruger who has decided that he’s the second coming of Napoleon, and that he’s going to take over the world with the help of his “death ray” when he fires from a dirigible. Batman barely breaks a sweat defeating this guy.
DC #34 – Peril in Paris – Is this where the idea for the Question came from? A friend of Bruce Wayne’s turns up, and he has no face. Don’t ask me how he breathes or eats or anything. Bruce’s response? “This is a queer happening. I wonder if I should look into it?” Yeah, turns out it’s all a plot to force the faceless guy and his sister to turn all of their money over to a crazy duke.
DC #35 - The Case of the Ruby Idol – Ah, time to head back to the “orientals are mysterious” type of plot as a ruby Hindu idol is the motive for several murders.
DC #36 - Professor Hugo Strange – Another mad scientist. I remember seeing this guy turn up on Batman, the Animated Series, reading Bruce Wayne’s mind or something. In his first appearance here, Strange is using a fog to hide his henchmen as they commit crimes. The idiot Gotham police are unable to catch Strange’s gang because they keep hiding in the fog. Batman has to figure out how he created the fog and put an end to it.
DC #37 - The Screaming House – Double-crossing crooks and jewel heists. It’s back to standard criminals in this story.
DC #38 - Robin the Boy Wonder – The Sensational character find of 1940! Dick Grayson watches his parents die and overhears the killers threatening the owner of Haly’s circus, and he decides to tip off the Police. However, the Batman intervenes to save the boy's life, and trains him to become his partner in fighting crime. The two of them capture Boss Zucco and see that he’s sent to prison. Despite having avenged his parents, Robin decides to stick around since he loves adventure. "I bet our next case will be a real corker!"
So, some thoughts on the Batman so far:
- In contrast to Superman and the Flash, who spend most of their early stories fighting standard criminals, Batman is fighting supernatural menaces and mad scientsts from his earliest days. He’s also not averse to occasionally using guns, and he doesn’t seem to have any remorse if the criminals die, even if he’s the cause of their death. Apart from these oddities, the character is very familiar and could often pass for the modern day version. Keep in mind these comics are over 70 years old, and yet Batman hasn’t really changed all that much. Or rather, he’s been taken back to this early concept since he’s about to lighten up with the appearance of Robin on the scene.
- It works to tell the story, but the art is fairly crude and amateurish. Bob Kane is putting some thought into it and trying to add details, such as the tweed pattern on Gordon’s jacket or a detailed brick wall, or other things that jumped out at me while reading.
- According to later retcons, Dick Grayson didn’t become Robin until the third year of Bruce’s career as Batman. In fact, I still remember the “Year Three” storyline with Nightwing, drawn by Pat Broderick as I recall, where Boss Zucco gets out of prison and is gunned down. That certainly leaves plenty of room to insert new stories in years 1 and 2.
- Batman’s suit starts out black and gray, with blue highlights. By the time Robin turns up, the blue is starting to dominate. It doesn’t take long for dark, creepy Batman to turn into “Brave and the Bold” Batman. It happens while Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson are still writing!
- There is a lot of exposition in text boxes, but when you’ve only got six to eight pages to tell the story, I guess it’s better to make things clear than to leave the reader guessing. There’s no narrative decompression here, and no long, movie-inspired visual storytelling.
Green Lantern Corps Quarterly issues 2-8, Alan Scott adventures
GLC Quarterly ran for 8 issues before ending due to Emerald Twilight. Each issue had, among the random Green Lantern stories, a series featuring Alan Scott. The first four were written by Roger Stern, and explored Alan’s life as he adjusted to the modern world after being out of action for awhile immediately after the Crisis. The three that followed that were written by Ron Marz, and take an entirely different direction, which I’ll get to shortly. The final story in issue 8 is a flashback to the 40s that features Abin Sur of all people.
I pulled all the back issues out last night and read through them, and rather than the full review I gave the first story, I”ll just summarize and comment.
GLC#2 – Hector Hammond draws Alan into a trap by faking the death of Doiby Dickles. He attempts to take Alan’s ring for himself, mocking him for being old and well past his prime, but Alan has greater willpower in the end and wins the fight, which was all mental imagery anyway. Notable due to the fact that while Hammond has an enlarged cranium, it’s only about double the size of the normal human head, not this gigantic monstrosity of a head that we’ve seen in recent years. It’s also interesting that Obsidian and Jade are visiting Alan and Molly, and there’s no sign that Obsidian is mentally deranged or hates Alan in any way. Obsidian’s evil tendencies drove several JSA storylines later on, but here he seems perfectly fine.
GLC #3 – Alan and Molly place a call to Doiby, who is alive and well on the planet Myrg, having become king of that planet way back in the Silver Age in Green Lantern #45 (which, oddly enough, is the only Silver Age comic I own, other than reprints). Jay Garrick arrives and lets them know that Dinah Lance, the original Black Canary, passed away while the JSA were missing. After the funeral, Alan and Molly decide that they need to go visit Doiby and his wife after all. It’s Molly’s first trip into space, and they enjoy catching up with Doiby, and encounter Prince Peril, the villain of GL #45. This is a pleasant, low-key story that covers a lot of ground, and it’s enjoyable just watching Alan and his wife enjoy each other’s company.
GLC #4 – Alan fights a rampaging Solomon Grundy, who either genuinely kills him, or injures him badly enough that Grundy believes he’s dead. Alan’s ring intervenes and won’t allow him to succumb to death, arguing that he still has a duty to all the innocents in the area. This fits in with the original stories where the lantern (and by extension the ring made from the lantern) had a mysterious intelligence that would occasionally intervene in Alan’s adventures. In the end it’s a question of willpower and determination to put others ahead of himself that revives Alan, and he and his daughter Jade determine that Grundy is little more than a mad dog that has to be put down at this point, and they make the decision to destroy him.
GLC #5 – Someone at DC had an issue with old superheroes, and it shows up in this storyline. Alan Scott wakes up and finds that he’s young again. His costume has changed as well, into the one he would wear as “Sentinel” not too long after this, though he’s still Green Lantern here. He heads out into Gotham to look for answers, fights illusory versions of the Icicle and Grundy, and then encounters a new Harlequin, who is behind the illusions. The art and story just scream “the grim 90s”. Jim Balent draws the book, so there are plenty of snarling faces, grim poses, and women with huge boobs. The story ends on a cliffhanger with Alan’s newfound youth and change in attitude unexplained.
GLC #6 – Alan fights the Harlequin again, and is as ruthless as he’s ever been in fighting off her temptations after she attacks Molly. He drives her off, but not before learning that she has nothing to do with him being physically young again. Her identity and why she’s interested in Alan are never explained, and neither is how she has similar illusory powers as Molly Mayne, the original Harlequin. Maybe if the series had continued, it would have all been explained.
GLC #7 – The youth and attitude change are explained as Alan and Green Lantern Torquemada (introduced a few issues earlier in his own story) go to investigate the Starheart and find that it is about to escape the prison where it’s been held. The portion of it that powers Alan has affected him, and his angry attitude reflect the Starheart’s own anger and hostility, while his youth is a result of his subconscious desire to be young and in his prime again. He unknowingly did it to himself. Alan and Torquemada fight the Starheart, but are outclassed badly and lose the fight, and all the magic that the Guardians had imprisoned escapes back into the universe.
GLC #8 – A flashback storyline, set in the 1940s. Abin Sur is pursuing an alien criminal, who ends up on Earth. Jay Garrick and Alan Scott encounter the alien and are rendered unconscious during the ensuing fight. Abin catches up with him, loses his ring to the criminal, and is shocked to see Alan’s ring. Despite the fact that it has different properties, he is able to use it and the fact that it has no yellow weakness to capture the criminal. Yep, it’s the old “power ring with different properties switch”, which is always fun. Kyle Rayner and Hal Jordan did much the same thing in Green Lantern #100 when fighting Sinestro. Abin recovers his ring and returns Alan’s. When Alan and Jay wake up, they have no clue that any of this happened, with Alan wondering why his ring is on the wrong hand. He’s left-handed you see, and Abin put the ring back on his right hand.
And that’s it. GLC Quarterly was cancelled thanks to DC’s change of character from Hal Jordan to Kyle Rayner, despite the fact that it was apparently selling well. There are plenty of other stories contained in the series of course. Laira originates from this series in a story drawn by Travis Charest, I believe. G’Nort had a regular feature for a few issues. Jack T. Chance shows up in the first issue and has a fight with Lobo in the last one. And so on. But the Alan Scott feature was always my favorite.
I've only read a little of this book, but here are my thoughts so far…
Leading Comics #1-4 have been reprinted in this volume. I’d never really heard of this group until the last few years, even though it was the second super hero team ever created, following the success of the JSA. I guess no one remembers second place finishers! Most of the characters are familiar in one form or another. Green Arrow and Speedy are present, even if they’re nothing like the bearded, liberal Green Arrow and angry, resentful Speedy of modern times (or pre-New 52 modern times anyway). They are, as has been noted in many places, largely clones of Batman and Robin, down to the vehicles, jocular comments, and puns when they’re fighting. That’s very apparent here.
The Shining Knight and Vigilante got a lot of background appearances on Justice League Unlimited, and a larger role in a few episodes. A cowboy on a motorcycle with unlimited ammo and a knight with a Pegasus and magic armor aren’t standard superheroes, so they stood out even if I didn’t know much about them. That was one of the best things about JLU, how it allowed some pretty obscure characters to have some screen time.
I’m more familiar with Stripesy/Pat Dugan than I am the Star-Spangled Kid, thanks to Dugan appearing in JSA because he’s Courtney Whitemore/Stargirl’s stepfather. He’s the team’s mechanic in the early issues, which fits how he’s written in the 40s as a mechanical genius. Stargirl herself is a legacy character for the Kid, as well as for Starman. I know next to nothing about the Kid himself, but it’s kind of weird that he’s the main character and Stripesy is the sidekick. A kid hero and an adult sidekick is a strange combination.
Crimson Avenger and his sidekick Wing are almost complete unknowns, so I’m forming first impressions as I read them. Wing is Chinese, and fairly stereotypical, speaking broken English and talking about his ancestors. He’s a product of the times, what can you do? If nothing else, at least he’s a heroic character, not a villain.
None of these guys really have any super powers, unless you count Shining Knight’s magic armor. They’re all street level guys in costumes, with a gimmick or two to carry them along. That along with the fact that they generally seem to adventure separately means that it’s not necessary to come up with cosmic level threats to challenge them.
The art is surprisingly fairly good, if certainly not up to modern standards. My prior impression of Golden Age comics consisting largely of bad art and bad writing has not been borne out as I read more of the books from that time period. Martin Nodell is the worst of the lot so far, though Bob Kane isn’t all that impressive either. Lettering can be an issue in the early Batman and Superman stories, and that certainly detracts from the story. The writing is obviously aimed at children and has plenty of purple prose, melodrama and contrivances, but it remains entertaining more often than not. And as always the chance to read the early versions of characters I first read about years later is always worthwhile.
Despite being billed as a team book, Leading Comics is still largely an anthology series, like so many other series from the 1940s. The opening and closing segments feature the entire team, but the five chapters in the middle are solo stories with the characters. From what I’ve read, this is the standard formula for most of the team’s existence, so it seems like it could get repetitive. On the other hand, this is a chance to read about some fairly obscure DC characters, so I think I can live with a little formula storytelling.
