Who's This? Comics' first super-team.
The facts: The JSA is the first ever super-team in comics, debuting as a group in All-Star Comics #3 (December 1940). With no example to go by, those early stories had the members meet, then split up into solos and sometimes duos, each doing their part in a chapter written and drawn by their usual creative teams, before meeting up again at the end. It's a formula that was picked up by the 7 Soldiers of Victory later, and even many Justice League of America stories in the Silver Age, or as a tribute later. As page counts dropped, the team got to work together more as years went on, the JSA helming All-Star until issue 57 (March 1951). Once Earth-2 was established, the team paired up with the JLA in what became an annual event, leading to a revived All-Star Comics in 1976, running from #58 to #74. They obviously appeared in All-Star Squadron in the early 80s. The post-Crisis era pushed the characters into a pocket dimension where they had to live through Ragnarok on a loop, though the collapse of the Multiverse meant they were now the historical precursors of the JLA. They scored a period mini-series in 1991, and having returned from their never-ending battle, starred in a new Justice Society series as of the next year. Unfortunately, they had editorial enemies at DC, losing the series after 10 issues, and getting either killed, lost or aged beyond superheroics in 1994's Zero Hour event. Many returned in the Armageddon: Inferno mini-series and went on to star in modern versions of the JSA, as a mix of Golden Age veterans and younger legacy heroes (many of them introduced as the members' kids in Infinity Inc.). The early 2000s produced well-received Society comics including JSA (1999-2006), JSA Classified (2005-2008), Justice Society of America (2006-2011), and JSA All-Stars (2009-2011). The New52 relegated the characters to Earth 2 series, but with Rebirth, several writers have brought the JSA back to life, including an abbreviated fourth volume of Justice Society of America (2023-2024) and the current JSA series.
How you could have heard of it: There's still a JSA series on the stands, written by Jeff Lemire, and a version of the team appeared in the Black Adam movie. They had also appeared in Smallville, Legends of Tomorrow and, of course, Stargirl. The new Superman movie showed them on a mural in the Hall of Justice. The team appears all over the place these days, with prominent members even getting their own mini-series from time to time.
Example story: All-Star Comics #74 (October 1978) "World on the Edge of Ending" by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Joe Giella
So why an issue of the All-Star Comics revival (indeed, its last issue before the DC Implosion, so despite its next issue notice)? Well, I often go with Golden Age stories for the individual members and their villains, sometimes even using JSA stories from All-Star, so that's ground well-covered. The Who's Who image shows the team as it was in this later era, with the young "Super-Squad" members and the obviously older originals, so I decided to go there (despite having just dropped "of America" from their name). Especially since it's not an era I know well at all. Let's dig into it.
What I DID know about this era of All-Star is that Huntress and Power Girl, the two main young’uns, have a friendship a lot of post-Crisis grieved for, a mirror of the World's Finest relationship from Earth-1. PG has only been "Karen Starr" for a month (in-universe), but her pal is going to help her with her secret identity issues. Just like my friends do with me.
They have time to finish their lunch before their JSA beepers start going off and they head to JSA HQ (more on this next week) for a briefing by Dr. Fate and Hawkman, the two Egyptologists who have just been warned of world-ending shenanigans by the "Master Summoner". And whatever threat this is, the JSA has to split up to deal with it. CLASSIC! Of course, there are only two possible groups with THIS FEW members showing up. Is it Armageddon, or isn't it?
The first group head out to stop a military conflict brewing between China and the USSR, at least Green Lantern thinks that's the mission. Power Girl takes a shell for GL, who seems more concerned for a prone soldier, and we get a bit of back and forth between him and Hawkman about the JSA's values. Hawkman, PG in his arms, says that when HE was permanent chairman (doesn't sound permanent when you say it like that, buddy), they looked after their own first, but I think Alan Scott is right to say their priority should be innocents. Is this supposed to be an echo of the Hawkman/Green Arrow conflicts in the JLA, or has Hawkman been possessed or something? Tell me, friends. Do YOU trust that face?
As it turns out, the soldier GL was ministering to has absorbed some emerald energy and is now dangerous... Meanwhile, Dr. Fate, Huntress and Flash are in Montreal, which writer Paul Levitz believes is the largest city in Canada (it was, but Toronto overtook it before this issue came out) and "torn apart by two cultures" (okay, let's calm down). That's the Earth-1 Montreal. On Earth-2, however, it's also the capital of Quebec, which is an independent country. History went differently very early, too, if the Chateau Frontenac is in Montreal rather than Quebec City. (It also looks nothing like ours.)
An international women's conference is under threat? Hooded terrorists of the Manosphere are holding the event hostage. Huntress goes in swinging while Jay Garrick catches bullets left and right, but he's not as young as he used to be (a common JSA problem). Thankfully, Dr. Fate comes in with the spells. For some insane comic book reason, this "apolitical" conference is also testing a universal translation field, which malfunctions and becomes a literal Babel incident. A sign of the end times? The heroes take off before this happens, but how in the heck does Joe Staton envision travel by Fate?
Now, unless this is your first superhero comic, you've probably figured out that the Master Summoner is a bad guy and likely manipulating the JSA into CAUSING the Apocalypse. He attacks them claiming their deaths is where it all begins. With all the Egyptian trappings, Hawkman thinks maybe it's related to something he did as Prince Khafu (sic), which prompts Dr. Fate to do some cool-looking things with Carter's ancestral knowledge of something or other.
Whatever he did there breaks the Summoner's chains and they escape. Chapter 5: FINALLY we see what the rest of the Society is doing - basically dealing with Earth-2 falling apart.
Personally? I want to see the story where Dr. Mid-Nite fights a bunch of rats, although Wonder Woman in "Bees & Bracelets" also interests me. The subgroup we're following splits up to fight other magical threats - fire falling from the sky, gravity going mad, troglodytes rising from the sewers, etc. - but everything they do seems to fuel the crisis, not stymie it. Fate figures it out. And though I will say I think his ability to know everything and do anything is a bit of a drain on the story (like, I don't know what's happening half the time), it's useful to have a guy who can do a telepathic/mystical all-points bulletin.
Not everyone can show up, of course.
Doc, come on, it would have taken you the exact same time to praise their promptness. Anyway, if everything they do, every life they save, every disaster they avert brings the world closer to destruction, the only thing TO do is nothing. So they just sit there until the stars misalign and the Master Summoner shows up to tell them they've won. (None of this had anything to do with Hawkman's past lives, so I don't know why that had to be mentioned at all.)
Next issue: One of the JSAers dies! Except there was no next issue. SOMEbody dodged a bullet! Oh wait! Oh no! The imploded story was printed in Adventure Comics #461 and #462! Oh, it was Batman. From that empty chair shot, I thought he was already dead. DC Implosion or not, it seems ridiculous one wouldn't give All-Star one more issue (#75 no less) so it could tell this shocking potential bestseller.
Who's Next? An old brownstone.
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