Customer Reviews

All Star Comics Archives, Vol. 2 (DC Archive Editions)

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Admittedly, I was a tad disappointed in this collection - but I was probably still thinking a bit too modern. These tales are from the early 1940's (and I was envisioning something more like the reprints from the 1950's that I'd read as a kid). The artwork is a bit more crude, the dialog & stories are definitely vintage. I suppose my biggest disappointment was that its not really a "team" book - the characters only get together at the "board meeting" in the beginning of each tale and then again at the "return meeting" at the end of the tale. In the middle, its all separate little stories, each featuring one hero in their own little bit. Don't expect any big "team" battles with all the characters fighting together.

But all that said, if you're a comics fan, and especially if you're a collector, then all of these "Archive Editions" are a great deal! Much less expensive than buying the originals (and a darn sight sturdier than a 60-year old comic printed on cheap paper would be)! Yes, it was a different time back then, and these stories are as much a look back at those times in general as they are a look back at super heroes in the "golden Age" of comics.

By the way, I bought my copy through one of Amazon's used book sellers and thus got an even better deal on it.

DC's All Star Comics Archives Vol. 2 contains reprints of All Star Comics #7-10. For a team of superheroes so closely associated with World War II, these issues are particularly interesting because they were published in the months directly preceding and then following the events of Pearl Harbor. They deal with issues like raising money for war orphans, fifth columnists, futuristic bomb defense formulas, and eliminating Nazi spies in South America.

Each character's individual adventure is illustrated by his or her regular artist, so these issues are a good snapshot of the state of the comic book industry in 1941/42. The art is crude compared to what would come later, but for every ham-fisted Johnny Thunder, there is a beautifully-rendered Hawkman or Starman story by the talented Sheldon Moldoff and Jack Burnley, respectively.

Keep your eyes open for interesting signs of the times like All Star Comics #8 with the U.S. Army Air Corps logo on the front cover as well as having each member of the Justice Society integrate the war slogan "Keep 'em flying!" into their story dialogue. Issue #8 also features the first ever appearance of Wonder Woman. Also of note is issue #10 where the team travels 500 years into the future. Despite the totalitarian atmosphere and ever-present squads of flying "defenders" that arrest and imprison the JSA members, they all remark with wonder about how great the future is.

Pick it up if you're a fan of Golden Age comics.

All-Star Comics Archives Volume 2; written by Gardner F. Fox and Sheldon Mayer; illustrated by Jack Burnley, Bernard Baily, Sheldon Moldoff and others (1941-42; collected 1992): In the 1940's, the Justice Society of America (appearing in book-length adventures in All-Star Comics) was what would later be DC Comics's first group of superheroes, created in part to boost interest in the lesser-known characters of the infant DC superhero community (Superman and Batman were honourary members who didn't really participate in the adventures, while other characters that included the Flash and Green Lantern would also become honourary members once they became popular enough, though both those heroes would eventually return to active status as the superhero boom of the early 1940's started to bust at the end of World War Two).

The first few appearances of the JSA involved members meeting to tell stories about recent cases. Quickly, though, All-Star Comics would showcase the evolution of the superhero group, with members first doing solo duty in individual stories oriented around a common quest and then members actually fighting together against a common foe.

The main JSA members at work here include Johnny Thunder, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, the Atom, the Flash, the Spectre, and Green Lantern. We also get the first 'bonus' insert story in superhero history, as Wonder Woman gets introduced in a solo story in one issue. Eventually, the JSA would deign to make her their recording secretary, a skill I'm pretty sure life as an Amazon didn't prepare her for.

In this second archive edition, the stories are firmly in the second mode, with the heroes teaming up at the end for the sake of closure. Gardner Fox and editor Shelly Mayer were inventing a sub-generic form on the fly, with no real antecedents unless you want to get goofy and claim Jason and the Argonauts as the first superhero group. Wartime concerns form the motivation for the cases in this book, as the heroes seek to raise money for European war orphans, bust saboteur rings, and secure America from aerial attack with a super-secret 'bomb shield.'

This last quest -- and the last story in the book -- sees Fox finally start to write stories with a certain amount of fanciful 'oomph' to them. The JSA gets dispatched singly through a time-portal in order to retrieve plans for the bomb shield from several hundred years in the future. This allows Fox to finally play with exotic locales (cities in the sky and beneath the sea) and a certain amount of humble-pie for the JSA members, who discover that the average man of the future can mop up the floor with all but the most powerful of them.

Comic-book art in the 1940's could often be pretty awful (the page rates of the time didn't exactly make for a rewarding work situation), though the craftsmanship of the artists would increase as the months flew by. Jack Burnley, a longtime 'ghost' on the Superman comics, draws the Starman episodes here with skill and a certain degree of professional slickness, while Bernard Baily on the Spectre remains one of the more idiosyncratic artists of the early Golden Age. Recommended for superhero fans.

Quite simply the best way to live in the Golden Age of comics. These comics would cost you thousands to buy, but here you can read them for a fraction of that. The art, crude by todays standards. Storylines, simple, but you have to remember when and where the comics come from. If you are a comicbook lover like I am, these are a must have.