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All-Star Squadron
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The All-Star Squadron is a DC Comics fictional superhero team that debuted in Justice League of America #193 (August 1981). Created by Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway.
ll-Star Squadron #1 contains "An Open Letter to the Readers" written by Roy Thomas. In it he describes the impetus for the series, namely, DC wanted a comic book telling tales of the Justice Society of America. The last series to do so was All Star Comics, which lasted only seventeen issues, ending in 1979.
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The All-Star Squadron is a DC Comics fictional superhero team that debuted in Justice League of America #193 (August 1981). Created by Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler and Jerry Ordway.
The concept
All-Star Squadron #1 contains "An Open Letter to the Readers" written by Roy Thomas. In it he describes the impetus for the series, namely, DC wanted a comic book telling tales of the Justice Society of America. The last series to do so was All Star Comics, which lasted only seventeen issues, ending in 1979. As Roy Thomas put it, DC management gave him "a chance to write a return of the JSA." Instead of writing stories in the modern era, however, Roy Thomas decided to place the tales during World War Two. The setting would be DC's fictional world of Earth-Two, established during the 1960s. The cast of characters, however, would include a large ensemble of heroes from both the DC stable and the Quality Comics Group (which had been purchased by DC). With so many characters to choose from, the creative team decided to concentrate on "quite promising characters who have been ignored or underplayed for years," instead of those Earth-Two characters who had counterparts on Earth-One. Roy Thomas writes, "If we lost the original GL, we gained the Earth-Two Robotman; if we dropped Jay (Flash) Garrick, we picked up on Johnny Quick; Liberty Belle could stand in for Wonder Woman till more super-powered ladies came along. We even tossed in an Earth-Two version of the venerable Plastic Man, whose series in ADVENTURE was just folding..."
The All-Star Squadron was an example of "retroactive continuity" or "retcon", as it rewrote the already-established history of DC superheroes that had been published during the 1940s. The first known use of the term "retcon" was by Roy Thomas in the letter column of All-Star Squadron #20 (April, 1983). Several story lines ironed out continuity errors (and quite a few were created), fleshed out characters' origins and rewrote earlier stories to
The Trylon and Perisphere, actual structures constructed in New York City for the 1939 New York World's Fair, housed the Squadron's headquarters. The All-Star Squadron had a robotic butler named Gernsback, who was based on the Elektro robots from the fair and was named after science fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback.
Originally, the All-Star Squadron was supposed to exist on "Earth-Two", a parallel world used by DC as the venue for stories occurring during the 1940s, and including heroes only published during that era as well as the early versions of characters still published up to the present day such as Batman and Superman (the contemporary versions of those characters existed on "Earth-One"). After the 1985 DC Comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths merged the parallel worlds into one continuity, the duplicate superhero versions were eliminated. The All-Star Squadron was then itself retconned and left only with the characters unique to that time period, so that Superman, Batman & Robin, Wonder Woman and Aquaman were not alive at that point in history, and were thus never Squadron members. This was accomplished by cancelling it after #67 and replacing it with a successor series, Young All-Stars.
In a nod to the original JSA adventures in All Star Comics, writer Roy Thomas tried to include at least a cameo appearance by the golden-age Hawkman in every issue, since Hawkman was the one hero to appear in every golden-age issue of All Star, including the two pre-JSA issues. Unfortunately, the artwork for issue #49 was printed without Hawkman's cameo included, so it became the only issue to break the streak. The string of appearances, however, had already been broken several issues into a mid-70s revival of All Star Comics, numbering and all.
When writer Gerry Conway revived the Justice Society in their own regular series in 1976, he initially intended to have the younger members of the group, including Power Girl and the Star-Spangled Kid, spun off into their own team (and potential series of their own), to be called the All-Star Squadron. The group's named was subsequently changed to the Super Squad, after management at DC worried that the team's original name would be abbreviated as A.S.S.
Fictional history
The book chronicled the adventures of a large team of superheroes, including members of the Justice Society of America, Freedom Fighters, and Seven Soldiers of Victory, as well as a small number of solo heroes. The premise was that, on the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt gathered available superheroes at the White House and asked them to work together to battle sabotage and keep the peace on the home front during World War II. At the time, many of the Justice Society members had been captured by the villain Per Degaton, but the available heroes were asked to first guard against a potential attack on the American West Coast. Degaton himself used some stolen Japanese planes to launch such an attack, so the new Squadron's first major mission was to stop the attack and rescue the captured heroes, who also became part of the new group. The rationale for not using the Squadron in combat situations in the European or Pacific Theaters of War was that Adolf Hitler had possession of the Spear of Destiny, a mystical object that gave him control of any superheroes with magic-based powers or a vulnerability to magic (including Superman, Green Lantern, Doctor Fate, and others) who crossed into territory held by the Axis Powers. America's entry into World War II caused several of the members of the JSA to enlist, or be drafted in their civilian identities. These included Starman, Hawkman, The Atom, and Johnny Thunder.
Creators
Writers
Artists
- Rich Buckler - # 1-5, 36 (Sep 1981-Jan 1982, Aug 1984)
- Adrian Gonzalez - # 6-18 (Feb 1982-Feb 1983); Annual #1 (1982)
- Jerry Ordway - # 19-26, 29 (Mar 1983-Oct 1983, Jan 1984); Annual #2 (1983)
- Richard Howell - # 27-28, 30, 40 (Nov 1983-Dec 1983, Feb 1984, Dec 1984)
- Rick Hoberg - # 31-35, 38-39 (Mar 1984-Jul 1984, Oct 1984-Nov 1984)
- Arvell Jones - # 37, 41-46, 50-55, 58-60, 67 (Sep 1984, Jan 1985-Jun 1985, Oct 1985-Mar 1986, Jun 1986-Aug 1986, Mar 1987)
- Todd McFarlane - # 47 (Jul 1985)
- Mike Harris - # 48-49, 61 (Aug 1985-Sep 1985, Sep 1986)
- Mike Clark - # 51, 56-57, 60 (Nov 1985, Apr 1986-May 1986, Aug 1986)
- Tony DeZuniga - # 62 (Oct 1986)
- Michael Bair - # 63 (Nov 1986)
- Wayne Boring - # 64 (Dec 1986)
- Don Heck - # 65 (Jan 1987)
- Paul Kupperberg - # 66 (Feb 1987)
Cover artists
- Rich Buckler - # 1, 3-6, 36 (Sep 1981, Nov 1981-Feb 1982, Aug 1984)
- Joe Kubert - # 2, 7-18 (Oct 1981, Mar 1982-Feb 1983)
- Jerry Ordway - # 19-33, 50, 60 (Mar 1983-May 1984, Oct 1985, Aug 1986); Annual #1-2 (1982-83)
- Rick Hoberg - # 34-35, 37-39 (Jun 1984-Jul 1984, Sep 1984-Nov 1984); Annual #3 (1984)
- Arvell Jones - # 40-44, 46, 52, 55, 58-59, 64-66 (Dec 1984-Apr 1985, Jun 1985, Dec 1985, Mar 1986, Jun 1986-Jul 1986, Dec 1986-Feb 1987)
- Tim Burgard - # 45 (May 1985)
- Todd McFarlane - # 47 (Jul 1985)
- Mike Harris - # 48-49, 61-62 (Aug 1985-Sep 1985, Sep 1986-Oct 1986)
- Mike Clark - # 51, 53-54, 56-57 (Nov 1985, Jan 1986-Feb 1986, Apr 1986-May 1986)
- Michael Bair - # 63 (Nov 1986)
- Tom Grindberg - # 67 (Mar 1987)
See also
External links
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