The Justice Society of America | The Metal Man Comic Book
All-Star Comics
These best stories of the comic books are preceded by their issue number.
The First Meeting of the Justice Society of America (1940). Writer: Gardner Fox, based on a plot by Sheldon Meyer and Fox. Art: Various. Origin of the Justice Society. Each member tells a separate story, unlike most later issues, in which the JSA members all work on related tasks in connected tales. In fact, Fox tries to make these stories as varied as possible, to create a pleasing variety. Quite a few of the stories are strongly science fictional, too.
No one today knows who first suggested bringing the comic heroes together, to share a story. It is unprecedented in comics history. My guess is Fox himself. Fox would go on to write another formally unique kind of collaborative story: "Flash of Two Worlds" (The Flash #123, September 1961). Both involve a kind of formal experimentation with the process of narrative itself. Fox's life-long interest in Fox cycles also is a form of narrative experimentation.
Many of the tales begin with Fox's summary of the super-hero's background, super-powers, and individual characteristics. These little mini-summaries can be regarded as among the first comic book criticism. They are the attempts of an outsider - Fox only created a few of these characters - to set forth everything that made each character unique. Fox's analysis is especially crisp. Each super-power, technological gimmick, weakness, and aspect of the character's life is itemized methodically. And in an explicit way that is not always encountered in the original tales involving the character. Fox is NOT interested here in the characters' origins. Only their on-going powers are the subject here. If the character has no super-powers - like the Sandman or the Atom - Fox mentions this explicitly, too. Such a methodical, systematic approach anticipates the way the Superman mythos would be set forth in 1958-1966. It seems less common in the Golden Age. Even when Fox does not summarize each aspect of the character's powers, the stories themselves form an unusual methodical exploration of what the characters can do: see the Spectre and Green Lantern stories, for instance.
The Flash's tale, like his episode in the next issue #4, is a sea adventure: the Flash had appeared on boats in his own magazine, in a story written by Fox, as well, "The Gambling Ship" (Flash Comics #4, April 1940). Both stories have a delightful, light-hearted feel, with the Flash exploring his own powers, and having fun. This JSA tale is a model of breezy adventure, as the Flash makes short work of the "sunken treasure at sea" plot. Fox actually has him speed the storytelling up, jumping over all the clichés of the genre in ingenious ways, and leaping over story-telling conventions. There is something reflexive about such a work. Her Fox is offering variations on a widely used set of story-telling plots - just as he will later provide variations of his own Fox cycles in later works.
The Hawkman tale is of a kind Fox frequently wrote for his hero: the Hawkman goes to a remote corner of the globe, and meets a race of exotic beings. Interwoven with this, is a plot about a sinister inventor who creates advanced machinery to attempt world conquest. The story combines approaches used in the only two good Hawkman stories from his first year of existence. "The Globe Conqueror" (Flash Comics #2, February 1940) has a sinister, ambitious scientist with one of Fox's frighteningly plausible weapons; "The Creatures From the Canyon" (Flash Comics #9, September 1940) has the poetic fantasy about the strange race of beings. This story also anticipates later Fox work, in that the hero visits a real, remote locale, (here the Krakatoa volcano near Java), anticipating all the visits Adam Strange would make to Southern Hemisphere locales.
This seems to be Fox's first Spectre tale. He emphasizes the science fictional elements of the Spectre, including the telephone trick, and travels to outer space.
The Hourman story deals with what would be a beloved plot in the comics, other men who impersonate the masked super-hero. Fox has fun with this. It is part of Fox's long time interest in doubles. The story is also an early example of a locale that will be common throughout comic book history: the costume party.
The Sandman encounters giant monster animals: like Fox's Flash tale "The Giant Animals" (Flash Comics #9, September 1940), which appeared just a few months previously.
The Atom meets crooks who impersonate using uniforms of social authorities - also an early comic book favorite.
Finally, the Green Lantern tale deals with another kind of archetypal comic book story: the hero cleans up a corrupt city government. This is also Fox's first encounter with Green Lantern. He introduces the tale with a background sketch of Green Lantern, summarizing all his powers. And once again, the story emphasizes the use of GL's most unusual and characteristic abilities, in the way that the early tales written by GL's first writer, Bill Finger, do not always do.
Five Hundred Years into the Future with the Justice Society of America (1942). Writer: Gardner Fox, based on a plot by Sheldon Meyer and Fox. Art: Various. The Justice Society travels to the world of 2442, to get a formula that can protect the United States from bombing attacks. Fox is showing his pacifism here. Bombing attacks are considered a deeply evil military tactic, used by what he calls "totalitarian militarists" of the Axis. The formula here will give people a defense against such attacks. It is purely defensive; it is not an offensive weapon of war in any sense.
Many of the early Justice Society stories show Fox approaching the "cycle" story construction that will be so prominent in his later Silver Age work. (Please see the article on Adam Strange for an in-depth discussion of Fox cycles). Each issue of All-Star Comics has a frame tale, starting and ending the issue, in which the entire Justice Society plays a role. This sets up some goal. Then each Society member has an individual adventure, all of which tend to show them working towards this goal. The stories can seem like "variations on a theme". Each has a common basic plot goal; they also can reflect similar ideas and approaches along the way. It takes ingenuity to come up with 8 tales, all variations on each other, that are not boring or repetitive. The variations in fact tend to add interest to the story; it is fun to see how the Atom or Starman use different approaches to the same challenge. Some of the All-Star issues are fairly loosely coupled, with only a little common material. Others show many repeating sub-themes. This tale, "Five Hundred Years into the Future with the Justice Society of America", has so many common ideas between the stories, that it almost, but not quite becomes a Fox cycle in the classic sense.
Some of the common ideas:
Not all of these ideas recur in every tale. In Fox cycle stories, each step occurs nearly ever time a cycle is run. Here, the steps are more optional: the approach should rather be characterized as a "theme and variations" rather than as a true cycle. Still, we are very close to real Fox cycles here.
This story sends each member into the future; when they complete their mission, they return to the present. This is close to a key idea of a true Fox cycle: the journey is circular, with the protagonist in the same position and same state at the end as at the beginning. Fox explicitly invents a ray machine that takes the members to the future, then a small portable ray that returns them to our time. This is for all the world like the return of Adam Strange to Earth after his adventures on Rann. However, Adam Strange's zeta-beam wears off whether he wants it to or not, automatically causing the cycle to complete, whereas the Justice Society has to choose to complete the cycle.
This is hardly the first comic book story to send its heroes into the future. Siegel and Shuster looked at future times in Federal Men tales, such as "Federal Men of Tomorrow" (Adventure Comics #12, January 1937) or "Junior Federal Men of the Future" (Adventure Comics #25, March 1938), while they actually sent Slam Bradley and Shorty Morgan forward in time to "In Two Billion A. D." (Detective Comics #23 and 24, January and February, 1939).
The Starman episode has him caught in a trap, from which he has to find an ingenious means of escape. This anticipates the traps into which Fox will place Adam Strange. Both heroes use intelligence to escape from the trap. The story also involves a landscape filled with high tech devices used for athletic stunts; such landscapes will recur in some of Fox's Star Rovers tales.