Posted: 31 July 2008 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | 2
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And now, the Justice Society as you've never seen them, by Bob Layton (based on the cover to Strange Adventures #35)
For those of you who might be wondering (not to mention that I put a lot of thought into this so I want it documented somewhere!), this is a threefer "Real World What If?"
1) What if DC had kept All-Star Comics as a JSA book well into the 50s?
2) What if they kept the original storytelling structure (group intro, solo chapter for everyone but Wonder Woman, group resolution) and continued to trim the team based on shrinking page counts?
3) What if the "rules for membership" hadn't changed? In particular, even representation from the anthology books, and a character had to have their own series but NOT a solo book. (Wonder Woman got around the latter by almost never appearing in a solo chapter.)
(Action and Detective weren't used as "character sources" when All-Star debuted, but by this time options were a lot harder to come by so I figured they would have started letting those characters into the club by the late 40s/early 50s).
I picked #67 when I decided to ask Bob Layton to do it since he was the inker for the true All-Star Comics #67. From there, I capped the membership at 4 (not including WW) based on then-current page counts and looked for who would be available when that issue would have come out.
The choosing process wasn't particularly difficult. Aside from Adventure Comics, and not including the Big Two, each of the "normal" anthology series (i.e., not World's Finest) only had one superhero feature: Vigilante in Action, Robotman in Detective, and Captain Comet in Strange Adventures. Adventure had three to choose from: Green Arrow, Aquaman and Johnny Quick. The latter was picked to represent Adventure by using logic to justify personal preference. ;-)
(And while I was at it, I figured I might as well take care of that JSA vs. Dr. Doom thought that had been brewing... :-) )
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