gentlesatirist
12-29-2006, 09:46 PM
My wonderful wife gifted me with All-Star Comics Archives Vol. 1 for Xmas, thus giving me a chance to read not only the classic AS 3 but also the next 3 issues, including AS 4.
This is really the first JSA story, since in 3 there's no common villain to fight. The team is formed, then they sit around telling stories. In 4, writer Gardner Fox sets the pattern of establishing a common foe, then splitting up for separate adventures, then reuniting at the end to vanquish the common foe.
IN AS 4, this common foe is...Fritz Klaver, some type of fascist organizer based in...Toledo, Ohio.
As a lifelong Ohio resident, I found this choice baffling. This comic was released in early 1941, so Fox probably wrote it in late 1940. At that time - as now, pretty much - Toledo was a mid-level industrial town, firmly in that second tier of American cities. In Ohio parlance, it gets lumped in with Dayton, Akron and Youngstown, a step behind Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
I don't know where Fox was from, but I'm guessing he was based in NY at the time of the writing. Maybe Toledo was chosen because its central location allowed the JSA members to go there after fighting other fascist types in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, New England, etc. as they do in the story. That's the best reason I can think of.
I believe Fox wrote each chapter and not just the framing device. If so, he's expert at writing in the style of each character at the time. The Spectre/Dr. Fate chapters are mystical, the Flash/Atom chapters are lighter in tone. each chapter of course is drawn by the character's main artist, allowing us to admire Bernard Baily's work on Spectre/Hourman and Howard Sherman's on Fate. Sheldon Moldoff's art on Hawkman also is swell, although I'm guessing he had a phonebook-sized file of Alex Raymond swipes that he used.
Ben Felton's art on Atom and Creig Flessel's on Sandman are pretty amateurish. I don't know how Flessel crafted such classic covers and tossed off his interior work in what looks like 10 minutes effort.
There are some great moments here that show the comic field evolving.
When Shiera Sanders wakes Hawkman to tell him the bad guys are approaching, he's sleeping bare-chested, but in full bird helmet.
There's also a segment where Fate writes the Klaver/Toledo message in the Texas sky, then flies by and taps Sandman on the arm to point this out. Even as a 7-year-old, I'd have to wonder why Fate doesn't just verbally relay this to his teammate. Fate also runs into Flash on the same page, so maybe Fox just needed to show some team interplay and this was the best he could do on deadline.
The kicker is that when the JSA confronts Klaver, he's just a regular guy looking like a mean high school principal. The whole showdown lasts a single page - after a full-issue buildup - in which Klaver appears in a total of 4 panels. The JSA wins when Fate stops time, preventing Klaver from blowing up the house - in Toledo, mind you - in which they're all standing. A tad anticlimactic.
But the issue does successfully set up the JSA story pattern which would endure for a great many issues. It's easy to see why the book was a sales success, jumping from quarterly to bi-monthly status as of AS 4 and continuing for 53 more issues. It clearly was like nothing else on the market at the time.
- FE
Wickliffe OH
This is really the first JSA story, since in 3 there's no common villain to fight. The team is formed, then they sit around telling stories. In 4, writer Gardner Fox sets the pattern of establishing a common foe, then splitting up for separate adventures, then reuniting at the end to vanquish the common foe.
IN AS 4, this common foe is...Fritz Klaver, some type of fascist organizer based in...Toledo, Ohio.
As a lifelong Ohio resident, I found this choice baffling. This comic was released in early 1941, so Fox probably wrote it in late 1940. At that time - as now, pretty much - Toledo was a mid-level industrial town, firmly in that second tier of American cities. In Ohio parlance, it gets lumped in with Dayton, Akron and Youngstown, a step behind Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.
I don't know where Fox was from, but I'm guessing he was based in NY at the time of the writing. Maybe Toledo was chosen because its central location allowed the JSA members to go there after fighting other fascist types in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas, New England, etc. as they do in the story. That's the best reason I can think of.
I believe Fox wrote each chapter and not just the framing device. If so, he's expert at writing in the style of each character at the time. The Spectre/Dr. Fate chapters are mystical, the Flash/Atom chapters are lighter in tone. each chapter of course is drawn by the character's main artist, allowing us to admire Bernard Baily's work on Spectre/Hourman and Howard Sherman's on Fate. Sheldon Moldoff's art on Hawkman also is swell, although I'm guessing he had a phonebook-sized file of Alex Raymond swipes that he used.
Ben Felton's art on Atom and Creig Flessel's on Sandman are pretty amateurish. I don't know how Flessel crafted such classic covers and tossed off his interior work in what looks like 10 minutes effort.
There are some great moments here that show the comic field evolving.
When Shiera Sanders wakes Hawkman to tell him the bad guys are approaching, he's sleeping bare-chested, but in full bird helmet.
There's also a segment where Fate writes the Klaver/Toledo message in the Texas sky, then flies by and taps Sandman on the arm to point this out. Even as a 7-year-old, I'd have to wonder why Fate doesn't just verbally relay this to his teammate. Fate also runs into Flash on the same page, so maybe Fox just needed to show some team interplay and this was the best he could do on deadline.
The kicker is that when the JSA confronts Klaver, he's just a regular guy looking like a mean high school principal. The whole showdown lasts a single page - after a full-issue buildup - in which Klaver appears in a total of 4 panels. The JSA wins when Fate stops time, preventing Klaver from blowing up the house - in Toledo, mind you - in which they're all standing. A tad anticlimactic.
But the issue does successfully set up the JSA story pattern which would endure for a great many issues. It's easy to see why the book was a sales success, jumping from quarterly to bi-monthly status as of AS 4 and continuing for 53 more issues. It clearly was like nothing else on the market at the time.
- FE
Wickliffe OH