On 1992 miniseries Armageddon: Inferno

If you happened to find a copy of 1992's Armageddon: Inferno 2001 #1 in a back issue bin today, you would have no idea that the story it would begin, one that would span four monthly issues, was a fairly pivotal one in the history of the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America.

The logo and title link it to Armageddon 2001, DC's1991 crossover event storyline that spanned some dozen annuals and two bookend issues and centered on the new hero Waverider travelling back in time to try to determine which superhero would become a despotic masked villain in his future.

And, of course, the image on the cover of the first issue prominently features Waverider...as does the corner box, a sure indication of who a book's star is meant to be. The Justice Society, meanwhile, wouldn't make the cover until the fourth and final issue.

Even once one starts reading the series, it doesn't seem like it's meant to be any sort of Justice Society story.  They are briefly mentioned in the second issue, when Superman suggests to Waverider that their old headquarters is no longer in use, and thus could make for a good place to host a gathering of superheroes. Other than that, they don't appear until the third issue.

Rather, the focus of the book seems to be to gather a whole bunch of DC's most popular characters, as well as some fan-favorite ones who might have been out of the spotlight for quite some time, and a murderers' row of artists to draw them. 

In fact, that seems to be the major selling point of the book, and the JSoA's return from the limbo they had been stuck in for a half-dozen years or so is somewhat incidental.

Writer Jon Ostrander and primary pencil artist Luke McDonnell spend only nine pages setting the whole adventure up, moving quite fleetly to introduce the premise. 

Waverider follows a disturbance in the timestream to a strange ritual in a Wyoming desert, where a dozen diverse people summon an extra-dimensional entity they call Abraxis. A bolt of lightning seems to split the sky, but rather than fading, it remains, and the slit of energy opens into a titanic staring eye. This is, a voice in a red-rimmed, tail-less dialogue balloon declares, Abraxis.

Abraxis plans to conquer this dimension by transforming his twelve supplicants and empowering them as his "daemen" servants. He will then send them in groups of three to four different points in time, where they will build for him giant "simulacra" which he can then inhabit. To aid them in their work, he will give them armies of "husks", hordes of all-black figures that evoke the shadow demons of Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Realizing that his own time-travelling shenanigans—in either Armageddon 2001 or its sequel mini-series Armageddon: The Alien Agenda—seems to have allowed Abraxis to breach the wall between dimensions, Waverider realizes that means he can also stop him.

Using his time powers, he finds the locations in time and space the daemen have went to and then finds the precise heroes he will be able to send to these battlegrounds without causing irreparable harm to the time stream.

They turn out to be about whom you would expect, many of the primary heroes of the DC Universe circa 1992, including the most popular heroes, although Ostrander also includes various period heroes from the past, characters that don't turn up all that often in DC Comics, and a couple of oddball choices, current heroes from points in their own past or, in one case, the future.

The adventures of each of the four teams, which are essentially just fight scenes against the daemen and husks, are each drawn by a different artist, including some big names that one might think would have been featured a little more prominently on the cover, but then, maybe in 1992 comics were still more event-driven and character-driven than artist driven...? (Or DC thought so, at least...?)

Each team is announced on a full-page splash by the artist who will be drawing the sequences featuring them, which I'll scan and share here.

First, there's Arthur Adams drawing present-day heroes Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Flash (Wally West), Power Girl (here wearing her worst costume, the yellow and white one) and Donna Troy (Here going by "Troia", and rocking the shorthair and short skirt look). This team is being sent to a future that I think appeared in a Superman comic I never read. (You know, this line-up wouldn't make a half-bad Justice League if you gave them one more hero to hit the magic number seven...)

Second, Michael Netzer draws World War II-era heroes Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Johnny "The Navajo Ace" Cloud, the team of Gunner, Sarge and Pooch (although on first mention "Gunner" is spelled "Gunnar") and the modern day Thanagarian Hawkman and Hawkwoman (here outfitted in what I believe are their Hawkworld costumes). This team will fight their battle during World War II, so it's a short commute for most of them.

Third, Walt Simonson draws Orion, Lobo, Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Enemy Ace (!!!) and Starfire in dinosaur times (As you stare in appreciation of Simonson's take on these various characters, do note the zig-zag of reddish orange in the lower left corner; that too is part of Starfire's weird hair trail). 

And, finally, Tom Mandrake draws Batman, The Spectre, a plainclothes Jo Nah/Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, a Firestorm "from his earlier years" and The Creeper "from the recent past"; this team is sent to the recent past. 

The second half of this first issue features Mandrake's sequence, which lasts 11 pages. Its event will be repeated in each of the other three sequences not drawn by McDonnell.  

1.) The heroes will gather. 

2.) Ostrander will do a decent job of introducing most of them in a way that feels quite natural to them. (Case in point, Starfire is in the midst of using her energy bolts to keep Lobo and Guy Gardner from fighting one another when Orion boom tubes in with the line "I have the word--it is battle!" And then Hans Von Hammer appears, dueling with a huge pterosaur while brooding about "the killer skies"; Enemy Ace doesn't really interact with the superheroes at all and, interestingly, thinks they and the bad guys and the prehistoric reptiles are all part of a nightmare he's having).

3.) They will fight the daemen, each of which Ostrander seems to have done far more work on than was probably necessary, given that this series is the only place they will ever appear, as he gives them each a civilian name, backstory and motivation for selling their souls as well as a new, demonic name and a super-power of some sort that makes them a threat to the heroes they face. I suspect the designs for each of these villains was likely provided by the artists, given how much they seem to reflect the stylistic sensibilities of whoever is drawing them (My favorites are Mandrake's Zhazor, who looks vaguely  Nazgul-like and throws bolts of flame; Netzer's Feth Sudol, who can transform himself into groups of different scary black animals; and Adams' Arquol, who can transform into a variety of cool vehicles; Adams' Inztuk has a somewhat generic eye-beam power, but his design, featuring a Styracosaurus head atop a humanoid body, is pretty cool). 

4.) Abraxis will inhabit the simulacrum. (Abraxis is also a pretty great design, which every artist draws the hell out of; he's a black-colored giant with diabolical horns and fangs that looks a little like Chernabog from Fantastia's "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence blended with a Thanos-like supervillain). 

As you can probably imagine, each of these extended fight sequences are great, and it's hard to overstate how fun it is to see these particular artists drawing these weird groupings of characters, most of whom seem to have been chosen by asking the artists which characters they might most like to draw (In fact, I wonder if that's how Ostrander went about assembling the characters to be featured). 

By the third issue, The Spectre sends a duplicate of himself to confront Waverider in the timestream to tell him the plan doesn't seem to be working, and suggest that they throw another group of heroes at Abraxis in his home dimension, thus stretching the demon/supervillain's attention across five conflicts in two different dimensions to further weakine him.

When Waverider says that he has already recruited all of the heroes he can without endangering the timestream, The Spectre volunteers a group of superheroes who area already outside of time and space: The Justice Society of America, who are still in some limbo dimension fighting Ragnarok from the events of 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America. 

Ostrander also writes a sequence from the point-of-view of one of the natives on Abraxis' home world, a hairy hominid that looks like he could be an ancestor to modern homo sapiens. Because Abraxis feeds on souls, he basically treats the native population of his world as cattle, their reproduction providing him with new souls. They are ruled by their most base instincts, and have no real concept of things like bravery, selflessness or heroism...at least, not until the Justice Society appears and awakens a light within them.

Dick Giordano pencils the Justice Society sequences in the fourth issue, so there's one more name to add to the who's who of this particular art team. 

That final issue includes four more splashes from Adams, Mandrake, Netzer and Simonson, each showing their assigned team of heroes battling Abraxis and his minions. These echo the splashes from the first issue, but each is a little stronger, I think, as it shows the heroes in triumphant action, rather than simply posing for a group shot. 

They are all great, but this one's my favorite:

As I noted on Bluesky when I was rereading this, I love that image of Orion manhandling the poor daemon's face. And Abraxis' melodramatic, operatic posing. And, especially, Guy's boots. I don't think anyone has ever drawn Guy's old giant boots better than Simonson does here. 

Naturally, the good guys win, and Abraxis is defeated, never to threaten the DC Universe again (Which is maybe unfortunate, given what a cool design he has). The modern-day heroes are all debriefing in the JSoA's old HQ, where they had met prior to embarking on this mission, when Superman laments the fate of the Justice Society, and Flash says, "Jay--all of them--deserve better!"

"You're correct, Flash," a voice says from off-panel. It belongs to Waverider, who appears suddenly, and the Justice Society materializes right behind him.

"It would be small thanks to such heroes as they to consign the Justice Society back to limbo," Waverider says. "That is why the daemen now fight the eternal battle of Ragnarok and the Justice Society is here instead."

The last panel is a big one, filling most of the last page, and in it, McDonnell draws all the modern day heroes from the series chatting with the newly returned Justice Society. Ostrander pens four narration boxes, the last of which reads, "Every once in a while, the good guys actually win."

The very next month, DC would launch a new ongoing Justice Society of America series by writer Len Strazewski and pencil artist Mike Parobeck, though it would only last ten issues before being cancelled. That book has never been collected, and I've never been able to find it in back issue bins, so I've never actually read it (and I keep hoping DC will collect it at some point). 

As for Waverider and the Armageddon-branding, well, the character would remain a mainstay in the DC Universe, but never got his own series again, and was mostly employed when a narrative called for time-travel or a character to explain time travel. Following the previously mentioned Armageddon 2001 and Armageddon: Alien Agenda, this was the last time DC used that title and/or logo. Inferno has never been collected...and neither have those other Armageddon books.  I know I've said this repeatedly before, but I hope DC will eventually collect Armageddon 2001 into a couple of DC Finest collections...maybe they can throw the sequels into one of them. 

So, did the Justice Society travel back to 1945 and then stave off Ragnarok or nah...?

As we just saw the other day, 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society Special #1 temporarily wrote the Justice Society out of the DC Universe through a complicated chain of events stemming from Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the heroes travelling back in time to 1945 and then entering a rift in the sky to join an eternal battle to save the world. Adolf Hitler had used the Spear of Destiny to bring about Ragnarok, and the only way to keep the villains of Norse mythology from destroying the world was for the heroes to merge with the Asgardian gods and fight fire giant Surtur and company until the end of time. 

So that happened, right...?

Sure. At the time. But this being DC Comics, nothing is safe from a retcon.

In 1991's Sandman #26, the fifth chapter of the "Season of Mists" arc, writer Neil Gaiman* refers to the events of Last Days, shading them in such a way that honors that story but alters it in a way that freed up the Norse gods to appear in other stories, like his own.

The plot of "Season of Mists" is that Lucifer has decided to abandon Hell, and given dominion of it to Dream, the titular Sandman of this particular DC series of that name. As Dream tries to figure out what to do with it, various gods and other entities meet with him in his realm, each making their case for why they should get possession of Hell.

One such god is Odin. He tells Dream that the only thing that frightens him is Ragnarok, and that "These days, too much of my time is spent hatching schemes to circumvent the darkness of me and mine."

Here are the panels that refer to Last Days, although, with no asterisks or editorial boxes, a Sandman reader might not even know that that Gaiman and company's story was referring back to a then five-year old superhero comic: 

The art in those panels, by the way, is penciled by Kelley Jones and inked by George Pratt (And while I don't always mention the colorists or letterers, I will also note that here the art is colored by Daniel Vozzo and that Todd Klein is responsible for the letters, which play a bigger-than-usual part in the storytelling of Sandman).

If you don't want to squint to read Odin's words in those panels, I'll transcribe them here:

Some years ago, it occurred to me that it is easier to fight something one knows something about.

I created a world--a notional dimension--and in it, I fashioned a tiny Ragnarok.

In my world, the last battle is fought, day in, day out, forever. I have learned much from it.

One thing that surprised me, though, was when my little world gained further warriors--ones I had not created. 

I do not know how they got there, nor why they fight, these little mortal heroes.

Odin brings this up because one of those little mortal heroes is, of course, The Sandman Wesley Dodds, pictured along with a quite janky looking little Hawkman in the orb in Odin's hand. Odin says has that Dodds has some of Dream's essence, a fraction of his soul within him, and he will trade Dodds for Hell.

So, according to Sandman, the Ragnarok in which the Justice Society fights is not the true Ragnarok, but a little artificial version of it that Odin had created in an alternate dimension (or, perhaps, a pocket universe...?) in order to study the last battle. 

It is this version of Ragnarok that Hitler summoned, and the Justice Society entered, with neither the Fuhrer nor the heroes realizing the difference...and their actions were apparently beneath Odin's notice, at least until he checked in on his experiment. 

There are probably some theological issues raised here, given that the Justice Society took its actions in Last Days on the word of The Spectre, an aspect of God...the God with a capital "G", as opposed to a lower-case "g" god, like Odin. Wouldn't The Spectre know better than to be taken in by a pseudo-apocalypse generated by a lesser god...?

I don't know. I'm not sure if The Spectre was, in 1986 or 1991, yet thought to be an aspect of God, as opposed to simply being a powerful spirit working at the behest of God (or, in the parlance of earlier Spectre stories, The Voice).

The following year, 1992, DC published the four-issue miniseries Armageddon: Inferno, written by John Ostrander and drawn by a half-dozen different all-star artists. The plot involved an extradimensional entity trying to conquer the DC Universe by sending his servants to different time periods in order to build bodies for him to inhabit, and the then new character Waverider assembling teams of heroes from different time periods to stop them.

In the third issue, The Spectre tells Waverider he knows where they can get another batch of heroes, provided Waverider uses his powers over time to temporarily stop the Ragnarok cycle the Justice Society was then stuck in. 

During this issue, Ostrander has The Spectre retell the story of how the Justice Society ended up in Ragnarok (the page atop this post, pencilled by Luke McConnell is from that passage of the book), and this version differs quite sharply from what we read in Last Days. Here, Ostrander removes the time travel element and decouples the events of Last Days from Crisis on Infinite Earths entirely. 

In the Armageddon: Inferno version, during World War II Hitler had tried to use the spear "to link the fall of Germany with Ragnarok" but "he hadn't the sorcerous power or training to accomplish his intentions." Still, apparently after shooting himself, Hitler's blood flowed over the tip of the spear, and "his hate was great enough to imprint his desire on the spear, waiting for a sufficient influx of magic power to complete the spell."

That magic power wouldn't come until decades later, around the time of Last Days. Ostrander has a scene in which Kobra uses the spear to wound The Spectre, and then The Spectre stumbles into the cemetery where "The Justice Society had gathered to mourn some of its fallen comrades." (There's no mention of Earth-2's Robin or Huntress here.) 

And from there the Justice Society enters into Ragnarok to begin their never-ending battle; the confusing bits in the original story involving The Spectre's powers traveling through time and space to 1945 during the events of COIE and Doctor Fate taking the Justice Society back in time having been removed.

A few years later, Ostrander would also refer to the events of Last Days in 1994's The Spectre #20, the second chapter of the "Spear of Destiny" arc (While Tom Mandrake was the Spectre's regular artists, this particular issue was drawn by guest artist John Ridgway). In this chapter, entitled "Strange Friends", Professor Nicodemus Hazzard is interviewing the surviving members of the Justice Society, now all old men, about their history with the Spear of Destiny.

When he gets to Wesley Dodds, the former Sandman talks to him about his dreams. 

"I have...such strange dreams," Dodds says:

I dream of people...friends...who are no more...who never could have existed as I dream of them.

I dream of events, not as they occurred, but as they might have been. One dream occurs over and over again...

That dream involves what appears to be either the Justice Society and/or All-Star Squadron (Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick are pictured in one panel) rushing at Hitler, who holds the Spear of Destiny. One by one they are killed off, and The Spectre reaches towards Hitler, only to be felled by the spear, after which point "the sky cracks and fire rains down...it's the end of the world."

These events don't quite line up with those in Last Days, if that's what they are meant to be referring to (it's possible this scene is meant to reference something from All-Star Squadron though, given Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick's presence; also, The Sandman, Doctor Fate, The Atom and Hawkgirl are all wearing different costumes than what they wore in Last Days).

The point that Dodds seems to be making, however, is that his dreams allow him to see things that are no longer canonical/in continuity. 

A third page of his flashbacks definitely does refer to Last Days, though, and artist Ridgway even reproduces a panel from that comic (although his panel featuring Ragnarok is quite different in terms of designs). 

"We're now in a graveyard," Dodds says:

It's sometime after the war. Most of us are still alive. We gathered to honor those who had died.

Then The Spectre is there, stumbling towards us, and he's dying. 

And we wind up in some sort of limbo, fighting to stave off Ragnarok, fighting the same battle over and over again.

Except, of course, that last part really did happen. 

Of course, these stories referencing Last Days all date from the '90s. I would not be surprised to learn that stories later in that decade or the early 2000s, from the pages of JSA or Justice Society of America or any of their spin-offs, also referred back to Last Days of the Justice Society, but that's just too many comics for me to reread for so minor a matter. (If you remember any, though, do let me know). 

At any rate, it is now 2026, and we're on the other side of Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint, Convergence and some big events I didn't read, like Geoff Johns' dumb-looking Superman vs. Watchmen series and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Where does the Justice Society fighting in Ragnarok stand now...? Well, the history of the JSoA was something I was particularly interested to see in the pages of the 2025 Mark Waid-written New History of the DC Universe, the purpose of which was to delineate what is currently in continuity and, well, I was disappointed. 

The Justice Society isn't really mentioned at all between the page featuring Infinity, Inc. (which immediately precedes Crisis on Infinite Earths in Waid's narrative) and the team's reformation as the JSA in what would have been the late '90s, our time. 

Did Last Days still happen in any way, shape or form? Did the Justice Society fight in Ragnarok? It's unclear from New History. There's a cryptic mention of the original JSoA's members having "subsequently undertook missions in secret, culminating in an adventure in another realm that extended their lifespans greatly," but that comes in a paragraph about their "disbanding under government pressure" (That is, during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings). 

That scene is set in the 1950s, though, and where they were between then and first Flash Jay Garrick and then the others reemerging around the time of the early days of the Justice League for regular team-ups is never touched upon. At any rate, that would seem far too early for the events of Last Days to have occurred, wouldn't it?

The timeline that followed Waid's story in New History, written by Dave Wielgosz based on he and Waid's research, similarly doesn't address the issue. In that, the Justice Society isn't mentioned at all between the founding of Infinity, Inc. and the events of Zero Hour. 

So, did Last Days of the Justice Society still happen? Did the Justice Society spend time fighting in Ragnarok (or a Ragnarok)...? I don't know, and it doesn't seem as if DC has an answer at this particular point. 

*Whose name always needs an asterisk now, I guess, as it feels wrong to mention him without also mentioning the credible allegations of horrible sexual misconduct that multiple women have made against him. 

On the rather confusing (to me) Last Days of the Justice Society of America

My interest in the Spear of Destiny in the DC Universe recently brought me to 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America Special #1, a 64-page story by writer Roy Thomas, co-plotter Dann Thomas, pencil artist David Ross and inker Mike Gustovich. 

I think it's one of the more confusing DC comics I've ever read.

That's not because it's poorly written or poorly drawn...God knows I've read much worse comics from the publisher, comics that due either to the script, or the nature of the art, or some disconnect between the writing and the art were difficult or impossible to parse with any real confidence.

Rather, my confusion stems from the fact that Thomas' story contradicts what I thought I knew about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and how it affected the DC Universe shared setting. (Mostly; there's also a plot point that amounts to little more than "Because magic...!", but we'll get to that in a bit). 

Now, if Roy Thomas and I seem to have a difference of opinion on how COIE impacted the DC Universe/history/continuity, I have to assume that's a me problem, and not a Thomas one. 

I mean, he was the guy who was writing for DC Comics at the time, and this script he wrote for them presumably made it through a series of editors who knew what was what. 

Meanwhile, I read COIE once, over 25 years ago, from a trade I borrowed from the library, and never felt compelled to revisit it (Certainly DC has given me plenty of chances to do so, as they seem to be constantly reprinting it in various formats. Honestly, I found it a bit of a slog, and read it with the interest and enthusiasm of a student reading a homework assignment; I suppose I should reread it now, though, given that in the last quarter century, I've read so many more comics that I'll now know many of the players and elements far better, and recognize all the cameos).

Okay, so here's my understanding of the climax of COIE, in which multiple Earths are all collapsed into a new, single Earth. This combination essentially synthesized the various Earths, their populations (well, at least their superhero populations) and their histories into a new one, the specifics of which would be laid out in 1986's History of the DC Universe and DC books going forward (like John Byrne's Superman work, George Perez's Wonder Woman and so on). Only a handful of characters from alternate Earths who were spared (Earth-2 Superman, Superboy-Prime, etc) would remember the old Multiverse, along with Psycho-Pirate, who seems to have been driven mad in the process.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

That's...not what is reflected here. All of the characters featured in this comic seem to be aware of their time on Earth-2, that there are characters who existed on both Earth-2 and Earth-1 (like Superman and Robin, for example), and the specifics of the events of the crisis, which they refer to as the crisis throughout. At various points, Hawkman and Starman even refer to it as "The Crisis on Infinite Earths". (Also, post-Crisis, should Power Girl be in this story at all?)

So that caused some friction for my brain when I was reading, but so too did making sense of the time travel elements of the plot...although that too seems to stem from my not remembering the events of COIE very clearly. 

After a prologue featuring Albert Speer visiting Adolf Hitler in his bunker near the end of the war in 1945, and a very wordy page in which the panels read rather cinematically, the readers' point-of-view moving through a cemetery on the grounds of Hall manor as if a movie camera were doing so, we find the JSoA of the time standing before a large coffin.

The roll call: Hawkman, Starman, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Flash, Wildcat, Hourman, Doctor Fate, The Sandman, The Atom, Johnny Thunder, The Star-Spangled Kid and Power Girl, along with apparently unofficial members, Hawkgirl and Sandy the Golden boy. 

Chairman Hawkman is holding forth, talking about the "two fallen comrades" in the coffin before them. As he does so, he recounts other Society members who have previously died (Earth-Two Batman, Mister Terrific) or been lost in other ways (Earth-Two's Superman and Wonder Woman). Who's in the coffin? Earth-Two's Robin Dick Grayson and Huntress Helena Wayne, both of whom died during the events of the crisis. Hawkman says they will be burying them next to Helena's parents, Earth-Two's Batman and Catwoman.

So, you can see where I might be confused here, right? 

Not only was I surprised that the Justice Society all seemed to remember the events of Earth-Two (like Batman's death), but they also remembered characters plucked out of continuity when time and space were rewritten (like their Superman, Kal-L), but somehow Robin and Huntress still have bodies? And Batman and Catwoman's remains survive, still buried in their graves with their headstones, on the then-new, combined Earth? Didn't all of these characters—Earth-Two's Batman, Catwoman, Robin and Huntress—get erased from existence, so that they never were, except, perhaps, as memories held by a handful of characters...?

The team isn't just mourning the deaths of Robin and Huntress, though, but that of the Society as a whole. Hawkman says that they've decided to disband and go into retirement, as "when Earth-One, Earth-Two, and so many other Earths became one, we in turn became, in a very real sense...redundant."

In a splash page that depicts the heroes of the new DC Universe, he goes on to explain that there are other, younger heroes, "many of whom bear the same powers, even the same names we do."

I'm reading Last Days in the 2017 Last Days of The Justice Society of America trade collection, which collects it with a dozen stories that Thomas wrote for the pages of the 1986-1990 Secret Origins (one of which I've recently written about). It also includes a text piece of Thomas' from the back of the original Last Days special, headlined "An Epilegomena to 'The Last Days of the Justice Society'" (My spellcheck doesn't recognize that word, by the way). In this Thomas explains a bit why DC published the story, and it seems the publisher agreed with what Hawkman said about the redundancy of the JSoA at the time. 

It's weird to think that DC might have thought that, say, two Hawkman, Flash, Green Lanterns or Atoms would be just too many. I mean, today we have, what, three or more Flashes? Eight Earth-born Green Lanterns? Hell, just looking at the Batman franchise, don't we still have two Batmen, two Robins, three Batgirls and more sidekicks and Bat-lieutenants than I can keep track of...?

Anyway!

Hawkman, the Society's chairman, is just about to announce that the team is now officially disbanded when The Spectre arrives in a shredded cape and gloves and then collapses in their midst. 

The Spectre reaches up and touches Fate's mask, causing the mystic to reel back while screaming in pain, and then The Spectre seems to explode in a very cool image, Thomas' narration telling us that "the ectoplasmic shell men have called The Spectre can return to whence it came."

The next 15 pages or so will consist of Fate explaining to the others what The Spectre implanted in his mind, an alternate version of the events of April 1945 than those which any of them remember. 

They are attending President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral, when the Earth begins to shake and the sky itself rends open, Wildcat observing that "another world's tryin' to rush in!" New president Harry S. Truman arrives and tells them it's a world wide phenomenon, at which point The Spectre speaks up: The source is Berlin, and "the destiny of all the Earth hangs uneven in the balance-- --and the weight of so much as a feather may tip the scales toward survival-- or the end of all the universe!"

Hey, Hawkman has a feather! He's got a whole lot of feathers! Maybe he can help?

And so Hawkman, and the rest of the Society (here including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, which would seem to indicate that this is 1945 on Earth-Two, and not in the new timeline in which there is and was no Earth-Two) streak to Berlin, although the most powerful of them can only go so far. 

"If we go traipsing inside Nazi-held territory, we'll fall victim to the spell cast by Hitler's Spear of Destiny, won't we?" Johnny says, to which Green Lantern responds, "Just those of use who are especially susceptible to magic."

That's how the spear was working on the JSA circa 1986 then, at least according to Thomas: Any hero "especially susceptible to magic" who entered "Nazi-held territory" would fall under Hitler's spell and end up fighting for him. 

(Thomas' text piece at the back addresses this a bit, saying he came up with it as an explanation for why the superheroes didn't change the results of the war too much, a regular problem with superhero comics that was only magnified when it pertained to "stories set in the well-mapped past." He also says he was planning to work out an explanation for why the spear's magic only affected those most vulnerable to magic—that is, conveniently, the most powerful heroes—but didn't get around to it before Crisis made the point somewhat moot).

And so Superman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, The Spectre, Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder stay behind while the ten remaining heroes moved deeper into enemy territory, many of them dying as they fought their way to Hitler's bunker (Starman, The Flash, Mister Terrific, Hourman and Doctor Mid-Nite all catch bullets in this sequence; Sandman takes a shot to the head, and then stations himself at a machine gun to provide cover fire for his allies before he himself bleeds out.)

In the bunker, they find a cackling Hilter with the spear held aloft. Fireballs pour from the sky, and then a wave of destruction pours forth, enveloping the world in fire. Hitler managed to take the whole world down with him in 1945.

So, um, why didn't the JSoA remember it happening that way? How were they still standing around on a very much not destroyed world in the 1980s? Well, here's the part I didn't really get. Apparently, during the Crisis—Thomas' text point lays out exactly which point—The Spectre's energies were flung throughout all of time and space, and the spear "drank" them up, super-charging it, and allowing Hitler to summon Ragnarok, the apocalypse of Norse mythology, ending the world. 

Still, if Hitler destroys the world in 1945, why is it still around in 1986? Well, it seems that though The Spectre's energy traveled through time, which I guess is a circle and not a line, the rip in the sky through which Ragnarok pours through happens at all times simultaneously, as no sooner has Doctor Fate explained all of this then a rip opens in the sky above them.

Now, I assumed where Thomas was going with this is that the JSoA of 1986 would end up travelling back to 1945, just before the events we just witnessed in Doctor Fate's story, enter the rip in space time and enter the Ragnarok cycle, where they would engage in an eternal battle, forever staving off the end of the world. When I started reading comics in the '90s, that's what the JSoA's status quo was, after all, and I read 1992's John Ostrander-written Armageddon: Inferno, in which the Justice Society returned from Ragnarok to the present-day DCU. 

That would make some sense of the time paradox, right? The Justice Society wouldn't remember the alternate history that Fate told them because they had prevented it from happening, just as the Earth wouldn't have actually ended in 1945, as a result of the present heroes' actions in the past. 

Well, that's not what Thomas does.

Instead, I guess we just leave it at The Spectre's powers behave how Thomas wants them to in order to tell a "last" Justice Society story that involves them fighting Hitler and the power of the spear, one that has them all ascend bodily to a sort of warrior's heaven of eternal battle, which is really not a bad "ending" for a team of superheroes, right?

Anyway, Doctor Fate takes the Society back in time to 1945, although he says they can't aid their past selves physically there, as, "No one living can see us...and we, in turn, cannot truly touch anyone or anything in this era."

Rather, once Hitler opens the rift in the sky, Fate takes them all within it, where they see the various characters of Norse mythology assembling for a final battle, one destined to end the world. The Society members are all quite conversant in Norse mythology, it seems here, and Ross' designs all lean toward the realistic, most of the gods wearing period armor, or looking like characters from opera stages, rather than something more colorful, like Jack Kirby's version of Norse mythology from Marvel's comics, or the Valkyries that Joe Staton drew in 1977's DC Special #29. 

Fate combines his magic with Green Lantern's willpower, and has the various members of the Society merge with various Asgardian gods, empowering the heroes to interact with the bad guys like Loki, Fenrir, Surtur and so on.

Over the course of some 20 pages, the heroes fight the mythological forces, dying one-by-one throughout. (That's two action sequences in which the heroes get killed in one book; I can only imagine what Geoff Johns would have done if given the opportunity to write the death scenes of so many heroes!)

Before long, of course, the heroes who died in the battle are resurrected, as are the opponents they vanquished, and the battle starts over. It can't actually be decisively won but must be fought over and over for all eternity...or for about half-dozen years, I guess, before the Justice Society is spelled by the bad guys from Armageddon: Inferno and are able to join the post-Crisis DCU. 

Not all of the Society members get stuck fighting Ragnarok forever/six years, though. Doctor Fate returns Power Girl and the Star-Spangled Kid to the present, saying that they are still so young and have too much life to live. Or maybe it's because they don't have Earth-One doppelgangers in the way that most of the others do?  (Of course, Power Girl was kinda sorta Earth-Two's answer to Earth-One's Supergirl, right? And after this appearance she would begin a long, troubled cycle of new and contradictory origins, one that I'm not entirely sure has ever been resolved definitively, but then, I don't think I've read a Power Girl story since shortly after the New 52).

Then The Spectre shows up to throw Doctor Fate out of Ragnarok too, returning him to the Earth of 1986. Like Power Girl and the Kid, there's not Doctor Fate double, either. 

So, I guess that's what became of the Justice Society after Crisis, right? 

At least until the Justice Society in Ragnarok story gets retconned, but that's a subject for another post...

The Justice Society vs. Hitler and The Spear of Destiny, post-Crisis: On 1988's Secret Origins #31

In 1988's Secret Origins #32, the creative team retold a previous comic story, keeping the plot basically intact, the only changes being those made to realign it with then-current, post-Crisis continuity and to use more modern storytelling techniques. Well, that, and the changes that are natural when different writers and artists tackle the same story, as their various styles inevitably affect the result. 

In that particular case, it was Keith Giffen, Peter David and Eric Shanower retelling the Justice League's origin story from the pages of 1962's Justice League of America #9. (I wrote about that story in this recent post.)

The previous issue, Secret Origins #31, did the same, only for the Justice Society's origin story. In this case, the creative team consisted of Roy Thomas, Michael Bair and Bob Downs, and they were retelling a story of much more recent vintage: Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton's "Untold Origin of The Justice Society" from 1977's DC Special #29 (The subject of the previous post).

As with the Secret Origins retelling of the Silver Age JLoA story, it's interesting, even fascinating to read the comics back-to-back, as doing so accentuates the stylistic decisions the creators make, including how to present the events, how to stage them, how to design the characters and otherwise tweak them. I was able to do so because DC Special #29 was collected in 2006's Justice Society Vol. 1, while Thomas and company's Secret Origins #31 was collected in 2017's Last Days of the Justice Society of America, both of which my local library system still have on their shelves. 

Now, Levitz's "Untold Origin" was published pre-Crisis, and was thus set on Earth-2, and included the Golden Age Superman and Golden Age Batman in the adventure alongside the eight original members of the Justice Society. Thomas' was post-Crisis and thus set on the then still new-ish Earth with its new history. 

The most immediately apparent change then is that Superman and Batman have been eliminated from the proceedings. Batman doesn't do a whole hell of a lot in the original story, and so Thomas doesn't replace him with anyone else; instead, rather than having The Flash, Green Lantern and Batman embark on a mission to Scotland to take out the advance men for a Nazi invasion of England, Thomas simply has the first two go.

As for Superman, he has less panel-time than the Dark Knight in Levitz's story but plays a bigger role overall. He shows up at the climax to destroy a Nazi bomber before it can drop its payload on Washington, D.C. and he then grabs a Valkyrie who has targeted President Franklin Roosevelt, at which point she disappears. It is also Superman who rejects the idea of the heroes forming some kind of battalion within the U.S. armed forces and comes up with the name "Justice Society of America."

Here, Thomas has Green Lantern using his ring to destroy the bomber. The bit with the Valkyrie menacing Roosevelt goes quite differently without Superman there, which we will get to in a moment. And as for the decision to form the Justice Society, here it is The Spectre who rejects Hawkman's proposal of a "super-battalion" ("battalion" is here spelled correctly, in contrast to the same scene from DC Special #29) and then comes up with the team's name. 

Thomas also explains a few things that didn't really make sense in Levitz's story. He explains why Green Lantern and The Flash aren't able to use their powers to escape their bonds after being captured by the Nazis during their mission ("Still dizzy--from the drugs Streicher gave us--couldn't use my ring before!" Green lantern says as Doctor Fate and Hourman arrive to rescue them). He explains why Fate doesn't immediately take down Hitler upon his arrival ("For all my power, I cannot attack Hitler while he holds The Spear of Destiny--", Fate tells the others). And he explains how it is that the Nazi long-range bomber seems to get all the way across the Atlantic and over D.C. so quickly; in the original story, Levitz seemed to suggest that the superheroes battled the Valkyries the entirety of the trip, whereas here that trip is almost instantaneous, with Green Lantern remarking that the journey was made supernaturally shorter ("Hitler's spear did it!" he cries. "That's the only answer!)

The biggest change comes at the end, which the creators add several pages to. Without Superman there to stop the Valkyrie who had targeted Roosevelt—who Thomas gives a name to, Gudra—she is free to continue her attack after zapping The Atom. In fact, she succeeds in killing Roosevelt.

The heroes mourn for a panel or two, with Fate saying that even his great power has never been able "to bring a man back from the far side of death", but The Spectre says he's going to try anyway. He disappears from the White House and journeys like a humanoid comet through bizarre backgrounds, finally declaring "I have pierced the veil!"

And The Spectre finds Roosevelt in a line of humans wearing pink-ish purple robes, "wandering toward a vision of blinding light," and The Spectre then announces, "I must speak with the one who decreed that JIM CORRIGAN should walk the world, an undead SPECTRE!"

Who, exactly, was that...? Thomas was equivocal here, as was the case at that point in The Spectre's history. This is, presumably, the mysterious entity referred to as "The Voice." Indeed, The Spectre is answered by a voice, communicating with him in big, bold, red, disembodied letters that emanate red rings.

This is, presumably, God himself, although Thomas, like creators before him, doesn't come out and say this exactly, as heavily as it is implied.

The Spectre and Voice argue a bit, and when the latter refuses to allow Roosevelt to return to life, The Spectre raises his hands against The Voice. The Spectre is powerless against The Voice, of course, but, noting The Spectre's tears, The Voice proceeds to show The Spectre the future, in which Roosevelt is destined to die soon anyway, after a few years of the world at war. Giving The Spectre the choice of whether it is worth resurrecting the president or not knowing all of this, The Spectre says that is still his wish, and so Roosevelt is restored to life, everyone but The Spectre a little confused as to what just happened.

The other changes to the story are more-or-less matters of style. Thomas is, perhaps unsurprisingly, much more wordy here than Levitz was, and he fills his narration and dialogue with references to real-world history, more closely tying the events of this superhero adventure to those of 1940. He also offers quite a bit more characterization, allowing us to see more of the heroes' thoughts and to hear them engaged in more revealing dialogue, seemingly noting the momentous nature of this story, as it involves the first meetings of the various heroes who would go on to spend so much of their careers together. 

Bair and Downs' art is much more realistic than that of Staton and Layton. I'm not sure which approach I prefer, but, if pressed, I think I would choose the latter team's, as it looks so much more "comic book-y." Bair and Downs' work is much more appropriate for this version of the story, though; certainly their Roosevelt, for example, looks more like the guy I've seen picture of than Staton and Layton's more cartoony take. 

Interestingly, the artists hew quite closely to one of the previous art team's designs, like that of the big green robot in the Nazi castle that Flash and Green Lantern battle (Here Thomas gives it a German name, the "mordmaschine--or, as you Americans would say-- --THE MURDER MACHINE!"), while doing their own thing with other elements, like the Valkyries, which here wear armor and winged helmets, looking more opera than Staton's more superheroic looking versions.

Bair also draws a lot of cooler magical effects when it comes to The Spectre and Fate, and I prefer the energy orbs the latter sends to scoop up Hawkman, The Atom and The Sandman to the energy tendrils that Staton drew in the earlier story. 

Oh, and speaking of Hawkman, Bair gives him the appropriate helmet here, the one with the weird screaming bird face, with the open beak and tongue obscuring his human face.

As for the Spear of Destiny, the reason I got interested in these stories in the first place...? 

Well, as noted, Thomas has Fate explain that he can't attack Hitler while he holds the spear and, on the following page, after Hitler inadvertently summons the Valkyries, Green Lantern seems to make a move toward Hitler, but the Fuhrer shouts "Keep back, Amerikanen!", and the tip of the spear glows with pink energy and Kirby dots, a barrier of fire appearing between Hitler and the heroes.

The exact nature of its effect on the superheroes isn't delineated here then, but it is at least clear that it protects Hitler from them while he's holding it. I suppose future stories will further explain how it kept the Justice Society off the frontlines, even though here we see Doctor Fate, at least, able to enter Berlin itself, with Hourman in tow.

The particular trade I found this story in, the aforementioned Last Days of the Justice Society of America, is also filled with the title comic, and stories from the pages of Secret Origins devoted to new tellings of the origins of Golden Age heroes The Sandman, The Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, The Flash, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder, The Spectre, Hourman, Green Lantern, Doctor Mid-Nite, Doctor Fate and The Atom, all written by Thomas. We'll take a look at those stories in the near-ish future.

The Justice Society vs. Hitler and The Spear of Destiny, Round One: On 1977's DC Special #29

In discussing what seems to be the first appearance of the Spear of Destiny in the DC Universe in 1977's Weird War Tales #50, a couple of you pointed me towards that same year's DC Special #29 as the first time the spear played a part in the story of the Justice Society. Over the decades, the magical properties of the spear were used as a retroactive explanation—that is, a retcon—of why it was that America's many powerful superheroes didn't directly enter World War II, with nigh omnipotent characters like The Spectre or Doctor Fate subduing Germany and capturing Hitler over the course of a busy afternoon.

The special was much easier to find than I originally worried, as it was collected in the back of 2006's Justice Society Vol. 1, which contained the first half of the 1976-1978 All-Star Comics series (It looks like it was also collected in 2011's Showcase Presents: All-Star Comics, one of the too-many Showcase collection I unfortunately missed, and 2019's All-Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever).

Entitled "The Untold Origin of the Justice Society of America", the 34-page, oversized story was the work of writer Paul Levitz, pencil artist Joe Staton and inker Bob Layton, with Neal Adams providing the cover, in which the Justice Society battles Valkyries while the greatest comic book villain of the Golden Age rants and raves in the foreground.

While the Spear of Destiny does feature rather prominently in the proceedings, and while it does evince magical powers that give Hitler some military advantage over America's superheroes, Levitz does not use it as any sort of explanation for why the JSoA didn't serve on the frontlines of the war, so that aspect of the spear in DCU history must have been introduced sometime later. 

It's also worth noting that this "Untold" origin of the Justice Society seems to contradict their actual origins from 1940's All-Star Comics #3 and the earlier issues of the series in several ways...which I only know because DC recently collected those comics in a pair of DC Finest: Justice Society of America trades.

First, there's the line-up. The Golden Age Batman and Superman are here involved in this adventure, whereas they were honorary members in the original comics (In a fun peculiarity, whenever a JSoA member got their own title, they were essentially promoted to "honorary member," leaving behind the also-rans of the Society; Wonder Woman was an exception, but then, she served as the Society's secretary, and thus wasn't active in each of their adventures). Meanwhile, Johnny Thunder, who was present from the first, even if he had to wait a few issues before he could earn an official chair at the team's round table, is here MIA.

Second, here the team's origin is prompted by President Franklin Roosevelt, who sends a trio of heroes on a mission into wartime Europe, and others join in various ways as the adventure unfolds. In the last pages, Roosevelt suggests they stick together as a team. 

Of course, in the original comics, the team seems like more of a social club devoted to swapping stories, and the war had no influence over their first banding together. They would soon go on various missions at the behest of the government, though (as soon as All-Star Comics #4, in fact), and they did all temporarily resign to join various branches of the armed forces (in All-Star Comics #11), an army general asking them to stick together in their superhero identities and form "The Justice Battalion of America." (Here, Hawkman suggests they form "a special super-batallion," [sic] but Superman corrects him, saying "we're not part of any army" and that "we fight only in the cause of justice...and that'll give us our name...").

With that out of the way, let's see how Levitz had reimagined the formation of the Justice Society, over 35 years after Gardner Fox and company had originally assembled them, and, in particular, how he made use of the Spear of Destiny.

I suppose I should also not that, this being 1977, this entire story is set on DC's Earth-2, the alternate world where the publisher's Golden Age comics all really happened, and where the original, Golden Age versions of their heroes continued to adventure on into the present day (Crisis on Infinite Earths would later collapsed Earth-2 into a single DCU, where the Golden Age heroes passed the baton onto the Silver Age heroes, and the likes of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were all modern-day heroes, their Golden Age iterations erased from continuity). That said, this story—or at least a slightly altered version of it—still existed post-Crisis, as Roy Thomas, Michael Bair and Bob Downs would re-tell it in 1988's Secret Origins #31, stripping Batman and Superman out of the proceedings...along with a few other alterations. (We'll take a look at that story in a future post). 

The title page features a crowd of over 20 heroes, the entirety of the Earth-Two Justice Society, with Red Tornado Ma Hunkel and the other Red Tornado in the back, and the likes of Power Girl, Skyman and Robin-with-yellow-pants in the foreground. 

In the upper left corner, Levitz pens a green narration box setting the stage:

In the winter of 1940, Adolf Hitler abandoned plans to invade England! To this day, no one knows why--no one but the ten heroes who battled across two continents to ruin those plans--and give birth to a legend!

One stormy night in 1940, a British agent named Smythe meets with President Roosevelt (who Staton gives a huge, pumpkin of a head, its size seemingly magnified by the tininess of his little glasses), telling him that he has reliable information that Hitler plans to invade England, and that he's been sent to ask for America's help in repelling the Nazis.

Roosevelt responds:

As God is my witness, you know I want to help...but I am the president of this great nation--not the king.

And I have promised my friends, the American people, that I would not lead them into war--not unless we were attacked!

How quaint that all sounds today! An American president acknowledging the limits of his powers, specifically saying he's not a king. An American president who feels honor bound to keep his word regarding not entering a war to the people who elected him. An American president who realizes he can't just enter a war because he wants to. 

Roosevelt has something of a compromise, or a workaround, to suggest to Smythe instead, though: Sending some of the "costumed heroes" who have appeared all over America in the last few months, men who are "more powerful, more daring than ordinary mortals."

Across his desk he slides a half-dozen photos of some of these guys, including the likes of Green Lantern, The Flash, Doctor Fate and, um, Batman, who I guess is technically more daring than ordinary mortals but, well, he's not the secret weapon I'd send to stave off an enemy army if I had my pick of Golden Age superheroes...

But what do I know?

A week later, Batman answers the bat-signal to find Green Lantern, The Flash and Smythe waiting for him in Commissioner Gordon's office. Maybe Smythe decided to call on Batman because, though lacking in super-powers of any kind, he is the easiest superhero to get a hold of...?

The trio are sent to a castle in Scotland, where advance men for the Nazi invasion are based. The heroes bust them up, but the aren't counting on the presence of an "experimental...murder machine!", a big, green robot with a swastika on its chest that kerShlams Batman into unconsciousness. Then The Flash bounces off of the robot at super-speed and strikes Green Lantern, rendering them both unconscious as well. 

The first use of superheroes in World War II does not exactly get off to a great start, then.

We then find the heroes in Berlin, where they stand atop a high wall, bound at the wrists and ankles, while Adolf Hilter himself plans to unmask them and publicly execute them, using "the ancient Spear of Destiny that a Roman soldier used on Christ himself!"

 It's unclear why The Flash's speed powers are no use to him when it comes to escaping such bonds, nor why Green Lantern can't use his ring to break free (It's not like he's in a wooden stockade or anything). Levitz never explains this, either. 

Regardless, Doctor Fate and Hourman appear, the former having seen Batman and company's capture in a crystal ball, and then picked up the latter on his way to Berlin. "I have need of your power!" Fate said by explanation to the Man of the Hour; granted, Hourman has more power than Batman, but wouldn't The Spectre of Superman have been a better get...?

As the newcomers free their fellow mystery men, Hitler grips the now-glowing spear and shouts.

"Then you Amerikaners are doubly fools," he starts: 

For you shall now only pay with your lives--

--you shall not stop the blitzkrieg that strikes Britain!

This I swear by the mystic spear and by all that is holy to Germany!

There's a flash of lightning in the sky, and a loud "Kulthoom," apparently the sound of thunder. Doctor Fate yells a warning at Hitler: "Madman--put down that talisman! You are unleashing forces beyond your ken--or your control!"

But it's too late. Through the power of the spear, Hitler has inadvertently summoned the Valkyries, "the sword-maidens of the Germanic war god, Wotan." Staton's women warriors seem to hail from a Norse mythology more like the one Jack Kirby drew for Marvel than that of our world. The fierce-looking women, each astride a winged white horse, wear tight red and green uniforms that suggest superhero costumes, the necklines plunging to their waists, showing off lots of cleavage. 

Fate leads the heroes into battle against the women, a battle that "rages overhead like a tempest", despite the fact that most of the heroes can't fly like Fate and Green Lantern can. Maybe Fate's magic is keeping the others airborne...? (In one panel, Staton does draw a tornado beneath The Flash's feet, though, so maybe his speed was able to generate a swirl of sufficiently powerful wind to keep him aloft...)

Meanwhile, Germany's invasion fleet closes in on England, and so Fate unleashes four magical tendrils that stretch across the Atlantic to pluck defenders from America. These turn out to be The Sandman, The Atom and Hawkman (Hawkman's helmet looks off to me; it's not the weird, screeching bird face mask he wore in the Golden Age All-Star Comics, but looks more like that of the Silver Age, Thanagarian Hawkman; did the Golden Age Hawkman ever wear such a mask? Like all things Hawkman, I have no idea). 

Somehow, this trio seems to help turn the tide on the beaches, despite the fact that all three are basically just above average regular guys, likely in better shape and more experienced at punching people out than the average G.I. would be, but otherwise not bringing all that much to the battle.

I mean, Hawkman's power is that he flies (He doesn't even bring a mace to this fight). The Atom's is that...he works out a lot...? And The Sandman? Well, his gimmick is that he puts gangsters to sleep and leaves them poetry...at this point, he's still in his suit, hat and cape instead of the purple and yellow tights he would later change into, but rather than a gas gun, here he throws sand at his foes, sand that seems to have a soporific effect.

At any rate, together with British military (and I have to assume the British military did most of the work), the three American heroes are able to repel the invasion...at least for a panel. With dismay, they realize that they had only turned back the very first wave, and that a whole fleet is on its way. 

But then the fourth hero Doctor Fate had summoned across the sea makes his appearance, first as "a sinister shadow against the moon," and then taking his more familiar form, that of "The astral avenger known only as...THE SPECTRE!"

The Spectre descends from the sky as a giant, wades through the English Channel, which reaches only to his waist, and sinks the fleet singlehandedly. 

At one point, he scoops a defiant Nazi officer up in his giant hand and looks directly at him, seemingly breaking the man as he does so: "Admiral Wilheim von Krupp looked into the eye of The Spectre this night... And all he saw was death!"

The Spectre's brief battle against the German fleet takes up only two pages, but there's one panel that is of particular interest. Levitz's narration reads, "Like the Angel of Death among the Egyptians, he visits each and every ship..."

That's an evocative image, of course, and a pretty intriguing metaphor. I can't help but wonder if John Ostrander had read it when it was originally published, or if he had encountered in when doing research for his 1992-1998 series The Spectre, which revealed that the "astral avenger" wasn't simply a powerful vengeful ghost, but was in fact the embodiment of God's own wrath. Indeed, in The Spectre #14, The Phantom Stranger tells us that The Spectre was literally the angel of death that went among the Egyptians in the Exodus story. 

If Ostrander did not read this scene in this particular comic book, though, he definitely read it in Secret Origins #31. In 1994's Spectre #20, an elderly Johnny Thunder tells a story of the first time he met The Spectre, when they were fighting "a holding action against a German invasion fleet that was in the English Channel." Johnny's story is only five panels, the first of which is a splash page showing a gigantic Spectre ankle-deep in the channel, holding aloft a German ship as if it were a toy. The remaining four panels show a German officer looking The Spectre in the eye, in which he sees the image of a skull. This retells a scene from both DC Special #29 and Secret Origins #31, although here it's a little more deadly sounding: "All them Germans that looked The Spectre in the eye--they all died screaming, you know that? Every one..." (Of course, Johnny Thunder wasn't present for the battle in the channel in either previous telling of that story, but then, by the time he's telling it, his memory had started to fail, so perhaps he was confused about the first time he had met the Spectre...or if he himself was even at the channel that day.)

Back in Berlin, the heroes finally beat back the Valkyries, and the furious Fuehrer grabs nearby underling Professor Stauffen by the lapels, demanding that he send their experimental long-range bomber to attack America immediately, despite the fact that the U.S. wasn't yet officially at war with Germany, and that the bomber was one of a kind, its early deployment risking the whole program.

Hitler is unmoved: "Set a course for Washington, D.C.--I want the Amerikaner president and capitol destroyed!"

As the plane takes off, the Valkyries reappear around it, acting as, in Levitz's words, "an unholy honor guard." The heroes, who have by now all gathered on the beaches of England, see the accompanying Valkyries pass nearby on their way across the Atlantic, and again they clash in the skies (Batman, Hourman, The Sandman and The Atom are carried aloft on a Green Lantern ring-generated platform, while Staton again draws The Flash with a little tornado beneath his feet as he runs in the sky). 

Even with The Spectre's help, the two sides seem evenly matched, and they fight all the way across the ocean and into the airspace above Washington, the heroes never able to overcome the warrior women and get their hands on the plane.

In the last panel on one page, something seems to catch Green Lantern's eye below. "Look--leaping up from the press building--" he starts. 

A turn of the page reveals a striking splash, depicting Superman soaring up into the air and breaking fist first through the Nazi plane (with men parachuting to safety in the background, presumably to assure readers that Superman had not, in fact, just killed the plane's crew). In the upper left corner are two big words in bold red, the last two words of Green Lantern's sentence: "It's Superman!" That last word is the character's familiar logo.

After destroying the plane, Superman then catches the massive bomb it was carrying (With a big blue "OOF!" on the Man of Steel's part). 

The Valkyries fight on, though, and one manages to leap through a window into President Roosevelt's office. She takes aim with her spear, and from its tip leaps some kind of energy beam. Before the beam can strike the president, though, The Atom leaps in front of him, taking the blast himself.

After this, the Valkyries disappear again, and Roosevelt asks after "the little fellow" who had just saved his life, as the wounded Atom, his costume ripped at the chest, is being cradled in Hawkman's arms. 

"F-Fine, Mr. President," The Atom manages. "Don't you know--you can't split an atom?"

Well, not yet Al, but they're working on it...!

It is here that Roosevelt says it would be a shame to split this group up, as "you'd make a snappy army regiment!"

Superman immediately replies that he doesn't think that's possible, while The Spectre disagrees, almost quoting Shakespeare to the Man of Steel: "More things are possible than you know, Superman--"

Doctor Fate finishes The Spectre's thought: "--And this one is necessary--if we are to battle the great evils I see in the days ahead!"

It is here that Hawkman suggests the formation of a "special super-batallion" [sic], and Superman corrects him, giving the team it's official name, which appears on the last page of the story, a splash featuring all ten heroes posing with their hands on their hips or their arms crossed...well, all except The Atom, who still looks a little worse for wear after taking a blast to the chest. 

Now, as to why these heroes didn't just return to Europe the next day to take care of the Nazi threat, or do so when the U.S. officially entered the war the following year, this story never offers an answer. It would be up to future stories by later writers to explain how in a world where the likes of The Spectre, Superman and Doctor Fate could fight for the allies that the war lasted as long as it did. 

I had some issues with Justice Society of America: Supertown

Justice Society of America: Supertown collects the sub-titular story arc from last year's JSoA #44-#49, or the first half of writer Marc Guggenheim's aborted, 12-issue run on the title (I reviewed the second half here).

It is, on balance, a fairly decent collection of comics. Guggenheim had some interesting ideas, including making the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick the principal character, Alan Scott the main supporting character, and the rest of the team more-or-less the supporting cast. He introduced a DC Universe-style faux city they could call home (Monument Point, an apparently pretty big city just outside Washington D.C.). And he tried tackling the "Society" aspect of the team from a different angle; when this volume of the series launched, Geoff Johns and co-writer Alex Ross looked at "society" as a sort of large, social club and support group, with the many members of the team forming a sort of caste within the DC Universe, while Guggenheim entangled the super-team quite directly with the affairs of their new city and the people who live there, apparently wanting to eventually make the book about the Justice Society as they operate within "society."

He, of course, never quite got there, as the book was apparently quite suddenly canceled...although its too-swift end isn't evident in this, the first chapter.

There's also a pretty cool new freelance supervilain, a Dr. Chaos, who talks like a giggly Warren Ellis character.

And while Scott Kolins' art is perhaps (okay, definitely) over-colored and over-produced, he at least hit his deadlines, so there's a consistent look to the book (in the next volume, he would be replaced by Tom Derenick, whose style wasn't totally incompatible, especially since it was similarly over-colored, but then Jerry Ordway came in, and while he's probably the best of the three, his work looked nothing like theirs).

That said, I had some pretty serious problems with this book, one set of which is political (as in, "Wow, the politics of this comic are pretty fucked up!"), the other set of which are pretty anal-retentive in the way fans of superhero universes (like me) can be, but, well, the comics brought it on themselves.

First, take a look at the panel at the top of the post.

A half-dozen members of the JSA are off to fight a super-powered terrorist, or super-terrorist, who has attacked Monument Point. Lightning, the yellow lady with a mane of cartoon lightning bolts emanating from her, says, "Terrorists? Like real terrorists? Like Al Qaeda-type terrorists?"

Wildcat, the guy dressed like an agry cat, responds, "Are there any other kind?"

And Mr. Terrific, the guy reading some iPads that his floating Phantasm balls are carrying for him, says,

"Actually, yes. But that's not what's important right now...Minutes before he attacked, he released a statement on the Al Jazeera website announcing his intentions."

Let's tear this apart a bit, shall we?

Wildcat, AKA Ted Grant, was probably born sometime in the 1920s, having come of age shortly before World War II (as did Garrick and Scott). He and his fellow founders of the JSA were already old-ass men when Islamic terrorism became a serious concern of governments beyond those of the Middle East in the 1970s. On 9/11, dude would have been somewhere in his eighties. At least. For Wildcat and company, the anarchist bombers of the first two decades of the 1900s would have been just about as relevant as go-to examples of terrorists as those affiliated with Al Qaeda. And these guys have been fighting terrorists for at least seventy years. Is there any other kind? Yeah, fuck you, you dumb comic book! Even if you want to ignore the real world—although referencing Al Qaeda and Al Jazeera is a pretty poor way of ignoring it—there's still the DCU terrorist organization Kobra, whom these guys fought in the previous volume of this series.

And then there's that bit about Al Jazeera. "Minutes before he attacked," Terrific said, "he released a statement on the Al Jazeera website announcing his intentions."

Not to but on; as in he didn't email a statement to the news organization Al Jazeera, to either report on or ignore, but he posted it directly onto their website, as if he was, like, working with them, or at least had a user name and password to post on their site.

Even if the only place you've heard the word "Al Jazeera" before was on Fox and Friends, try this: change the word "Al Jazeera" to "CNN" and see if that sentence makes any sense. Because that's what Al Jazeera is, a news organization akin to CNN (only not as anywhere near as lame), albeit it one with a foreign sounding name. And oh my God, it has the syllable "al" in it, just like "Al Qaeda"...they must be practically the same damn thing, then!

God, what an ignorant fucking panel...

Weirdly, the comic never explains what this super-terrorist, whom we'll eventually learn has been codenamed Scythe, is all about. He just appears in Monument City and starts destroying it. What makes him a "terrorist" instead of a monster or supervillain? What's the difference between Scythe and, say, Doomsday or Solomon Grundy? That he released a statement...?

The JSA never really talk about what's in the statement, although Mr. T is apparently familiar with it and, despite his professed ignorance of it here, Wildcat later expresses familiarity of it, saying only that it was "pro-terrorist" (which is kinda weird, as the definition of terrorism includes the qualification of a goal or purpose to the violence...whether or not it actually makes sense to anyone other than the person committing it).

Wildcat later derisively refers to Scythe as "Bin Laden," and Alan Scott mentions Scythe's "politics", but Guggenheim never explains what the guy has in common with Bin Laden, save the obvious—a desire to attack an American city—or what those "politics" might be.

All we learn from this comic is that he spent five years in a CIA black prison in Afghanistan and that he was created as a living super-weapon by Nazi scientists in the 1940s. The only things he says in the entire book are:

"I do. I do speak English. Ted."

"DEEEAAATTHH"

"All right."

"Stay down. You don't have to die today. My quarrel isn't with you. It's with them...Not your concern. Monument Point never was. In your next life, don't meddle in affairs not your own."

("Next life," huh? Sounds more Hindu or New Age than Islamic, Wildcat).

In other words, this comic book was suggesting he's some sort of Islamic terrorist now simply through word association—Al Jazeera, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden—and that's pretty fucked up.

Okay, now on to the second point.

The story arc opens with Jay Garrick and Alan Scott out to dinner with their practically dialogue-less wives (Scott's wife Molly says, "Where is this coming from, Jay?", and that's it for the female half of their table), with Jay telling Alan he's thinking about retiring from being a superhero, since his successor Flash II Barry Allen is back from the dead and there are so many speedsters around now, who will miss him?

Then the two of them receive some sort of distress call on their "coordinated J.L.A./J.S.A. response system" doohickeys, and meet up with Lightning, Wildcat, Mr. Terrific and Dr. Fate to respond to the already in-progress "terrorist attack" in Monument Point (Wait, if Scythe announced his plan to attack Monument Point ahead of time to or, sigh, on Al Jazeera's website, why weren't any superheroes on site to stop him before he started knocking down buildings and killing folks?)

Within the first seconds of their conflict, which a caption helfpully tells us begins at "10:06 P.M. E.S.T.", three weeks later than five months earlier than two months earlier than whenever (modern super-comics are weird, aren't they?), Scythe tears the throat out of/snaps the neck of Green Lantern Alan Scott (the art's not clear on this), the JSA's most powerful member, mortally wounding him (he pulls through, but at the cost of complete paralysis).

The remaining members of the small JSA contingent fight against Scythe for the next seven-and-a-half hours. It is 5:30 A.M. E.S.T. when Lightning zaps him hard enough with lightning that Dr. Fate can magically bind him in a glowing bubble.

This is extraordinary for several reasons.

First, none of them get their throats torn out or spines broken over the course of 7.5 hours, despite the fact that only three of them have any powers at all. Flash has super-speed, Lightning has lightning and Fate has undefined magical powers, but Wildcat is basically just a retired boxer dressed up like a cat and Mr. Terrific is a really smart guy in really good shape. They all somehow last almost an entire work day against a guy who practically killed Green Lantern in the space of a panel (for a good illustration of how powerful Alan Scott is, he fought some 20 superheroes for a half-dozen or so issues in the JLA/JSA crossover immediately preceding this story arc).

Next, NO ONE ELSE ever bothered to show up to help them fight Scythe, despite the fact that the fight lasted almost eight hours. (That's a very long time. How long? Well, let's put it this way. I have no superpowers, but if I was listening to NPR while writing this post, and I heard Scythe was attacking Washington D.C., I could grab my pants, put on my shoes, hop into my 2002 Buick Century and be there in 6 hours and 54 minutes, according to Google Maps. I'm assuming most DC superheroes have the means to travel about the country faster than I).

Now, that is of course one ongoing problem with shared superhero universe settings. If Superman can fly at super-speed and see and hear everything going on around him (at least in his hemisphere) and is pals with all the other superheroes, shouldn't he constantly be guest-starring in everyone's books all the time? The Flashes—all three of 'em—can be in Gotham City within seconds of an Arkham break out. The Green Lanterns—there's four of those guys on Earth, five if you count Alan Scott!—can similarly travel the country at phenomenal speeds. Hell, the Justice League has a teleportation system, and the DC heroes even have (well, had) a lady who spent most of her waking hours in front of a bunch of computer screens, relaying information to all the superheroes in the world and coordinating their responses to various threats.

Realistically, Batman shouldn't ever have to fight Killer Croc without a Flash, a Green Lantern and Superman or Martian Manhunter spotting him. It's that whole cake issue that Kurt Busiek explained so well.

So in most DC superhero comics, the writer has to sort of ignore these questions, and we readers are more than willing to suspend our disbelief, imagining that Superman was busy in space and The Flash was asleep and Orcale was taking a bath whenever a villain has Batman on the ropes or whatever.

It only really becomes a problem when the writer really pushes the fact that there's a big, huge, public threat going down in the DC Universe that will affect the setting itself (for example, the Justice League had to fight Doomsday at some point before Superman gave his life fighting him, and Superman and other heroes had to at least check in on Gotham City during the year-long "No Man's Land" crisis), while the writer simultaneously emphasizes the fact that the DC Universe is a shared universe full of plenty of other superheroes. And oh boy does Guggenheim do that here. I've got a lot of practice suspending my disbelief, but good God, it's impossible to suspend one's disbelief this hard.

Scott and Garrick learn about the Scythe attack via a JLA/JSA communicator that they mention was designed by Batman, right? So where exactly were the Justice League? Where was Batman? Where was the rest of the JSA? (Mr. America and Dr. Mid-Nite appear in later issues; Power Girl, Citizen Steel and the rest of the "JSA All-Stars" don't show up until the last issue of this story arc).

As the fight goes on for a few pages, Lightning asks, "Who the hell is this guy?" Mr. Terrific replies, "Oracle's never heard of him," implying that he's just called Oracle, who responded with, um, "Sorry bro; I've never heard of him," and hung up rather than sending in her own personal strikeforce of superheroes,

or any of the Bat-people she knows so well.

And just a few pages prior to that, Garrick was introduced as the "third fastest" man, after Barry Allen and Wally West, and said he was thinking of retiring, since there are so many other speedsters no one would even miss him. Where on Earth were Barry and Wally and all those other speedsters, then? (On that point, it may have been that Guggenheim was purposefully contradicting what Garrick said with the reality of the situation—that is, that he was still needed, since obviously Barry and Wally and Jesse Quick and Kid Flash and Impulse II didn't show up to the fight but Garrick did, but it still doesn't explain why those characters didn't while also cueing the reader to think about it).

Essentially Guggenheim repeatedly reminds us that this is a world full of superheroes and, for some reason, none of 'em much care about Monument Point and/or the fate of a half-dozen of their peers (Especially weird? Alan Scott is almost killed, and his superhero son Obsidian, his superhero daughter Jade and the four dudes calling themselves "Green Lantern" never show up to lend a hand...although Obsidian does come looking for revenge after the fact. Similarly, Lightning's dad is also superheroes, and her father even lives in the next town over, as is explicitly mentioned in a later chapter, but he never comes to help his daughter fight for her life...?)

A reader can rationalize these few heroes standing up against an unstoppable villain all by themselves for a while, but for seven-and-a-half hours? In all that time, no other superhero cares to stop by and lend a hand? In all that time, none of the assembled JSA members call for back-up? Bullshit.

In the next issue, Superman does finally arrive, at "7:30 AM EST, TODAY". Or, in other words, nine-and-a-half hours after a super-powered terrorist began attacking a major American city and attempting to kill the JSA.

"I was with the League actually," Superman tells Lightning, "Dealing with an incursion from Dimension-3181...I'm sorry I wasn't here to stop this." So that's something. Of course, it's an issue too late (that explanation would have come one month after reading this serially, as it was originally published), and only goes so far in explaining where all of the other superheroes in the world were. And "The League" was, of course, at that point not Every Other Superhero In The World, but just these guys:

So, like I said, bullshit.

After that first issue though, the weird politics and poorly formulated aspects of the plot (like, if that fight lasted one hour instead of seven-and-a-half, nothing would have changed saved how hard it was to swallow it really going down like that), it's not a half-bad read.

******************

Oh, and this collection contains the story where in Alan Scott adopts his new Green Lantern costume, which is green and white instead of green and red and purple and gold, and makes him look like an actual green lantern with arms and legs and a head and a cape.

It's a super-goofy costume, but I like it. Alan Scott is technically made out of pure energy now, so the fact that he could have his neck broken at all is kind of impossible. The in-story rationalization is that Alan is using SO much willpower containing the power of the Starheart (explored in JLoA: Dark Things) that he doesn't have enough left over to convert his broken bones and damaged nerves into energy enough to repair 'em or whatever.

So the new costume, which looks kind stiff and has, like, a lantern handle connecting to his head, is apparently to keep his head and neck immobile. (Although I imagine the real reason is they just wanted to change his costume). Anyway, Alan Scott dies in the next storyline anyway, taking his new costume with him, and then DC rebooted the DC Universe so that he never existed at all anyway, but there's a guy named Alan Scott who is also Green Lantern in a neighboring parallel universe. And that guy's gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But I probably won't read about that for a few more months.