I had seen house ads touting the imminent return of ALL-STAR COMICS, featuring the Justice Society of America, and I was ready for its return. I was already a fan of the team from its appearances in JUSTICE LEAGUE over the years. So there was an air of disappointment when I happened across this issue at the 7-11, the second in the run–it meant that I had somehow missed the initial outing, a story I wouldn’t read until it was reprinted in a Digest years later.
It seems as though either new DC editor Gerry Conway or his bosses were a bit worried about featuring the JSA as the stars of the series–perhaps the concern was that these crime-busters were all old men and women. And so, there was a move in these earlier issues of the revival to recast the JSA as the “Super-Squad”, with the addition of three younger members whom the audience could presumably relate to more easily. Things never quite worked out that way, though, and the Super-Squad idea was abandoned about halfway through the run, and really only referred to occasionally before then.
I liked a number of the titles that Conway originated during his short tenure as a DC editor. They were simultaneously steeped in a certain degree of nostalgia while also tapping into the whole spectrum of the nascent DC Universe in the manner Conway learned over at Marvel. ALL-STAR also had the benefit of artist Wally Wood bringing his classic and precise sheen to these stories, even when he was mostly working as the inker over somebody else’s pencils; Wood made everything look like Wood regardless, even when he was working in a lower gear on material he was only doing for the cash, like this.
So, coming into the story in the middle, we open on a pointless moment designed to get us a cool splash page wherein Brainwave, now redesigned to look more like a modern marvel villain, blasts and destroys the Justice Society. But these are only images of the JSA that he’s created for his own amusement. His friend, a haggard bum, is not amused. Meanwhile, the newly-introduced Power Girl verbally spars in an ugly fashion with Wildcat as they and the Flash head for JSA Headquarters so that they can track down the cause of the team’s problems. Wildcat is cast as an almost Archie Bunker-like misogynist, and Power Girl comes across as a complete ball-buster, so neither of them comes across well.
In South Africa and Seattle, meanwhile, Robin, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, Hawkman and Doctor Mid-Nite are coping with a deadly gas leak, an earthquake, and attacks by mysterious soldier minions of Brainwave. Also on-site is the Star-Spangled Kid, who’s been gifted with Starman’s cosmic rod, which he uses to put an end to the earth tremors. The Kid has Captain America problems, having been thrust from the 1940s into the ‘70s and feeling like a Kid Out Of Time.
Doctor Mid-Nite is able to scare the name of the soldiers’ leader out of one of them, but the JSA doesn’t understand why Brainwave is doing what he’s doing. Turns out that what he’s doing is creating catastrophes for teh JSA to combat so that his machines can drain off their “will energy” and feed it into his friend the Bum–who is rejuvenated as Degaton (albeit a Degaton far different from any version previously seen in print.)
But the JSA bursts in, and the battle is joined. Despite having superior numbers, the team is being trounced by the pair of geriatric super-villains, and so Brainwave makes his next move–to begin to hurl the Earth out of its orbit for some reason. Now the pressure is really on for the JSA. So Green Lantern and Doctor Fate combine their powers to create a protective aura around Power Girl, who zips outside of Brainwave’s spaceship and pushes it towards the sun.
The sudden change of heat and gravity startles brainwave enough so that his concentration wavers and his new body is revealed to be another mental illusion. With the two villains now dispatched, Power Girl frees the damaged ship from the Sun’s gravity well, and he heroes return to Earth, where they enjoy a final laugh at Wildcat’s expense. All in all, it’s a fun adventure that owes much to the Marvel style of the time–a lot of fighting, some very arch characterization, and a villain plot that doesn’t hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 