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. 

Is this the first appearance of the Spear of Destiny in DC Comics? (1977's Weird War Tales #50)

One particularly interesting bit of New History of the DC Universe's timeline was the mention of the Roman centurion Longinus "using his spear to pierce the side of Christ on the cross," illustrated by two Dick Ayers and Alfredo Alcala-drawn panels. 

The first shows a longshot of three men on crosses (so, Jesus and the two thieves). The second is a medium shot depicting Longinus with his spear raised at the foot of the cross, of which we only see Jesus' feet in shadow. Yellow narration boxes are in both, referring to Jesus as "Christ" and "our dying savior."

Presumably timeline writer Dave Wielgosz included that entry because it is the origin of the Spear of Destiny. Indeed, the entry includes the sentence, "In future years, the weapon becomes known as the Spear of Destiny."

While the spear appeared in stories like John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake's volume of The Spectre, 1999's Day of Judgement and the lead story in JLA Secret Files and Origins 2004, its greatest import in the history of the DCU was that it was a powerful magical artifact that Adolf Hitler wielded during World War II. His possession of the spear was used as a retroactive explanation for why the Golden Age heroes (be they from Earth-2 or, later, the 1930s and 1940s of the shared, post-Crisis DCU) didn't just fly across the Atlantic and put a stop to the Nazis in couple of hours. 

(I feel like I've read stories featuring at least two different versions of the spear's ability to keep the likes of Superman, The Spectre and Doctor Fate at bay; in one, it erected an impenetrable forcefield over the European theater of the war, while in the other, if heroes got too close to it, it would allow Hitler to take control of them, and wield their considerable powers against the allies. If any of you guys know when the spear was first used as a retcon explanation for why the JSoA didn't fight in the frontlines during WWII, please let me know; I am assuming this was a Roy Thomas thing, likely from All-Star Squadron...?)

Regardless of exactly why Weilgosz included Jesus' crucifixion, I was excited to see it, as it establishes Jesus as a real historical figure with at least some literal magical properties, rather than something more equivocal, as one might find in a book about our universe's Jesus. 

And while DC comics may allude to Jesus, there's usually a degree of separation between the characters or action and Jesus as a historical figure. One quite famous attempt to include Jesus in a DC comic book story was scrapped at the last minute in 1989...although I guess they are finally going to publish it sometime this year.

But Weilgosz's mention of Jesus here, in the context of this timeline, suggests Christ is as much a DC character as, say, The Silent Knight or Tomahawk or Balloon Buster or Black Orchid or Ballistic. I find that interesting. Interesting, if not entirely surprising. As I've noted previously, what Douglas Wolk said about the Marvel Universe in his All of The Marvels also seems to apply to the DC Universe. That is, that there, all mythologies are apparently literally true. And that, obviously, includes Christianity. 

For that reason, I was quite eager to see the comic from which those panels featuring Longinus at the foot of the cross that were used to illustrate the mention of Jesus came from, as they seemed to indicate a retelling of the crucifixion story, which would obviously need to include Jesus as a character, right? Thankfully, the New History timeline also includes notations of which particular comics the events it refers to occurred in. This story of Longinus and the spear was from 1977's Weird War Tales #50, published the same year I was born!

Unfortunately, the issue, like so much of the 124-issue, 1971-1983 series, hasn't been collected (Although I think it would have been a perfect candidate for the old Showcase Presents, black-and-white phonebook-like format...maybe some of it will end up in future DC Finest collections...?) DC doesn't often collect their comics in ways that reflect my own personal reading habits of following particular tangents or falling down particular rabbit holes like, say, collecting all the comics featuring the Spear of Destiny into a single omnibus, for example.

So, it took some doing to track a copy of this issue down. To my surprise, when I finally did, I found that the panels used to illustrate the crucifixion in New History of the DC Universe weren't taken from a comic book retelling of the crucifixion story but rather appear in a sequence illustrating someone else telling a story about those events. So here again is an example of Jesus appearing in a story being told within a story, a level of narrative padding or distance built into a comic seemingly featuring him.

In other words, here is yet another comic which suggests that Jesus is real, but only shows him to us from some distance, acknowledging Jesus without ever exploring him as a character.

The story is entitled "--An Appointment With Destiny!", and it is a 17-pager written by Steve Englehart, and pencilled and inked by the aforementioned Ayers and Alcala. The cover, by Ernie Chan and Vince Colletta, depicts a startled American G.I. being menaced by a skeleton in a German helmet wielding the spear. (Skimming the series' cover gallery on the Grand Comics Database, Weird War Tales seems to suggest that there were an awful lot of skeletons fighting in WWII.)

The story opens on April 30, 1945 in Adolf Hitler's bunker. With a Luger in hand, the Fuhrer shouts to his assembled advisors in English that the Allies are in Berlin, and their shells have begun to shake the bunker:

The end has come for the Reich, and me! But fear not, my loyal and faithful friends!

Another will scale the heights we failed to reach! Wait for him, after I am gone! Wait for--

--AN APPOINTMENT WITH DESTINY!

He and Eva then leave the room and shut the door ("What we must do is not for others' eyes!"), and two big, red "BAMM" sound effects are heard through the door. 

Suddenly there's an explosion, and in charge a pair of American soldiers, their dialogue exchange introducing them as Walker and Baxter. They seem to know exactly what they've found too, calling the bunker "the chief rat's nest!" and mentioning snatching "Uncle Adolf" before "the Russkies" arrive. 

There's a brief, bloodless firefight that takes up all of one panel, and when they question the last surviving Nazi, he says that Hitler is gone and, portentously, "Now, we shall all await--the coming man!" 

No sooner does Walker find the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun—rather tastefully posed and free of blood; DC did still abide by the Comics Code Authority at the time of publication, after all—than he catches sight of another man out of the corner of his eye, a fleeting figure that seems to be wearing a military uniform under a reddish-brown fur coat, with a World War I-era helmet on its head.

The figure flees, and Walker gives chase, climbing into the ruined but deserted streets of Berlin. 

Out of nowhere, a spear flies, and lands bloodlessly in Walker's chest. He falls to his knees, clutching the wooden shaft, and then to his back, surviving just long enough to hear the speech about the weapon delivered by the mysterious figure:

On this day, the Spear of Destiny has brought death to Adolf Hitler, the greatest man our race has ever known!

You could scarcely have been spared.

Death comes to all who encounter this spear. Death--and power!

Power to stir men's blood, and raise a cry of battle! Power to stride unheard through rubble, and kill with unerring accuracy! Yes, and power even stranger than that!

Power--and death!

Which will I savor first, eh?

I-- the coming man!

While delivering that last line, the figure seems to rise into the air, as if he is about to fly away—another strange power of the spear's, perhaps?—or maybe Walker is just starting to lose it as he dies. Throughout these panels, though the "Coming Man" is presented in medium shot looking directly at the reader, his identity is still hidden, his face shaded by the rim of his helmet in two panels, and he appears only in silhouette in another. 

Baxter eventually finds Walker, and hears his comrade's strange story, a story that Walker claims he was only able to tell because the power of the spear kept him alive until he could tell someone. Promising Walker he would get the Nazi that killed him, Baxter sets off in search of the Coming Man.

He finds a trail of footprints in the snow that start out of nowhere, presumably made when the Coming Man came back down to ground. He encounters some Russian soldiers who order him to fall in with them, but he flees—"I've gotta see a man about a spear!"—and they fire on him.

He manages to escape but not without being wounded. Using a stick as a crutch, he carries on, following the trail to a castle outside of Berlin.

Within, he's greeted first by a Chinese servant named Fong, and then the German master of the castle, an aristocrat with a monocle named Baron Kragen, and, finally, Ilse, Kragen's fetching young daughter (I assumed Kragen is a bad guy, perhaps even the Coming Man, upon his initial appearance, simply because he has a monocle. Does anyone other than a bad guy ever have a monocle in a comic book story?)

With the war over—"We Germans are as happy to see this madness end as you are," the Baron says—he offers Baxter his hospitality, and Ilse dresses his wounds. At dinner, Kragen notices Baxter eyeing his missing left hand, and then tells him how he lost it to a tiger and, after Baxter's none-too-subtle questioning, he discusses the history of the Spear of Destiny:

Here is where those panels in the New History timeline are taken. As you can see, they are illustrations of Kragen's story about the spear being told to Baxter. 

The next tier of panels from the page traces it the spear from ancient Rome to the sights of a young Hitler: 

And here we learn that the spear became a powerful magical artifact. Apparently "any warlord who held it knew greatness", although they would eventually die themselves (Of course, everyone dies eventually, so I'm not sure what kind of curse that is meant to be). Alexander the Great, Napoleon "and many others" are named as men who have possessed the spear before Hitler. 

The story of the spear out of the way, Baxter again makes his suspicions that Kragen is the Coming Man known, and Kragen makes it known that he was only being so hospitable because he suspected Baxter of being an advance scout for an American force. 

Downed by poison administered via his fork, Baxter awakes in a cell, beyond the bars of which Ilse and Fong come to...taunt him? Deliver exposition...? She explains how Germany's "first attempt at world domination" (WWI, I guess) had failed, and now this second attempt has failed as well. But that Hitler and her father had "come to terms" previously, so that if Hitler failed, Kragen would inherit the spear and begin the third attempt.

Baxter snatches Ilse through the bars and threatens to kill her unless Fong releases her (He addresses Fong derisively as "Fu Manchu", which seems pretty racist; on the other hand, he does have a moustache referred to as "the Fu Manchu", so...maybe not...?).

Baxter finds a sword in the castle, and with it in hand searches for the Baron, ultimately finding him talking to himself atop a castle turret.

"The Aryan dream will rise again!" Kragen screams at the end of his little three-panel monologue, giving Baxter the opening to reply, "'Cause it's full of hot air, Baron!"

They fight, the Baron employing his laser gun hand and proclaiming himself a "bionic man" (remember, though set in the forties, this was written in the seventies, when that world had cachet) and "the wave of the future!"

The fight lasts about a page, during which Baxter is able to snatch the spear from the Baron's hands—er, hand, I guess—and plunges it into his stomach ("Gott im Himmell! I--I am murdered!"). Now it's Baxter's turn to make a bit of a speech ("You were fightin' the next war, but I had to finish this one!"), after which Ilse, one of the straps of her dress now broken off, charges Baxter with a dagger, and he impales her on the spear. 

With tears in his eyes, Baxter's wonders, "Could it be this peace we fought so hard for--won't last forever", but before he can even pronounce a question mark, Fong cuts him down with a volley of machine gun fire from behind. (So Baxter obviously won't live to see 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine setting off another land war in Europe, or 2025, when the Trump administration and its allies began their attempt to introduce a new, dumb version of fascism to the United States).

Here are the last two panels:

For the story's protagonist Baxter, it's obviously a tragic ending, with him ultimately losing his life while making the realization that even a peace as hard-fought as World War II's may be doomed to be temporary. 

It's interesting how Englehart frames the Spear of Destiny as a sort of artifact that inspires war wherever it goes, drawing a direct connection between the spear falling into a Chinese man's hands and the culmination of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949...connecting it to the wars that followed it until the present of the 1970s, from the Korean war to Vietnam. 

Englehart further tries to predict the next global hotspot, the Middle East or Africa. 

Now, when Englehart wrote this story, he definitely wasn't thinking about DC comics continuity, as in 1977 the DC Universe wasn't nearly as coherent a shared setting as it would later become and, I have to confess, I have no idea which "Earth" in the DC multiverse their war comics (and many of their other non-superhero genre offerings) were meant to be set on. The more popular characters from their war comics—Sgt. Rock, The Unknown Soldier. The Haunted Tank, etc.—would eventually meet with various DC heroes and share adventures, suggesting they did indeed exist in the DCU (and both History of the DC Universe and New History of the DC Universe suggest their adventures ocurred in the DCU shared-setting).

But Englehart's seems to at least partially line-up with the history of the Spear of Destiny that John Ostrander wrote in a 1994 four-issue arc of The Spectre. In Spectre #21's "Troubled Waters," the spear goes from Longinus (depicted by artist Tom Mandrake standing at the edge of the giant eye socket of a giant skull upon which there are three crucified men in the distance, the artists play on the fact that Chris was crucified at Golgotha, Latin for "the place of the skull") to Saladin, then St. George, then Hitler.

After the war, though, rather than falling into Chinese hands, it is found in Berlin by the Russians, and spends years in the collection of "a high-placed Soviet official". Eventually, supervillan/terrorist Kobra gets his hands on it, and then U.S. operative Nightshade steals it from him, delivering it to Sarge Steel. 

No one in the U.S. seems to actually possess it, though; rather, it ends ups lost in a Washington, D.C. warehouse until a special operative assigned by the then-president Clinton finds it and gives it to Superman.

So it would seem that the main difference between Englehart's 1977 predicted future of the spear and Ostrander's 1994 history of the spear would only contradict one another as to where it was between World War II and whenever Kobra got it, which wouldn't really be too hard to reconcile (For example, it could have gone to China and been in Asia between the end of WWII and when the Soviet collector acquired it). I'm murky on when exactly—like, what decade—it would be when Kobra had it, though; according to The Spectre, it was right about the time the JSoA entered Ragnarok, which I guess would be in the 1980s...but I'm not sure whether those events still "happened" or not in current DC continuity (New History remains very, very vague about Justice Society history).

At any rate, the spear spent about a decade in space (The Spectre put it in orbit in 1994's Spectre #22, then the heroes recovered it to sue against a rogue Spectre in 1999's Day of Judgment before the Sentinels of Magic sent it to the sun in its aftermath), and the last I saw of it was the lead story in JLA Secret Files and Origins 2004, but it looks like it's last, still in-continuity appearance may have been 2009 Final Crisis tie-in miniseries, Final Crisis: Revelations...? 

Hmm... Maybe after I finish reading all of Detective Chimp's appearances, I can start tracking the Spear of Destiny trough DC history...