James Robinson first caught my attention with this storyline when it was coming out back in '93 and '94 with his gift for characterization and general writing style. It helped, of course, that he understood that giving a superhero great characterization does not mean showing the superhero beating up really big tough enemies on every other page in order to show how much tougher he is. Until the final quarter of the story, violent confrontations are a very small portion of the material provided (and when the big one comes, there is excellent reason for it). Rather, Robinson concentrates on getting inside the head of people who wore fancy costumes during the WWII era and then tried to fit back into the mainstream afterward. You feel as if you really know these people and empathize with their discovery of all the problems that having superhuman powers doesn't do a thing to solve.
Superman jump-started the Golden Age of comic book superheroes by being the first to appear on the scene, way back in 1938. Within the next few years, dozens upon dozens (possibly hundreds upon hundreds - I've never seen a complete list) of costumed "superheroes" were running wild on the newstands. Somehow their popularity faded after World War II was finally over, and a lot of them disappeared into obscurity (i.e. they were no longer being featured in monthly comic books). You won't find Superman in the pages of this story, but you needed to know the background so you could understand why writer James Robinson took the tone he did in this story. In effect, he was trying to explain why the colorful and optimistic "heroes" of the war years suddenly faded from the scene in the post-war era, giving it convincing in-character explanations instead of just saying, "Oh, the comic-book-reading public somehow lost interest." Robinson wanted this storyline to become "official continuity" in the DC Universe to explain why the 1950s are not remembered as an era with a superhero on every block, but the editorial staff didn't go for it so the storyline was published with the one-size-fits-all Elseworlds logo printed on the covers. Elseworlds is DC's little way of saying, "This story uses some characters we have previously copyrighted and used in our regular comic books, but nothing that happens to them here is official. Take this story on its own merits, and be warned that anybody could die."
Robinson concentrated on obscure old superheroes who don't appear every month in the modern comics, and have never had their own TV shows, movies, action figures, video games, and all the other perks that accompany such old campaigners as Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash. (In current DC continuity, no version of Superman or Batman ever fought in World War II, and never mind the monthly comic books they were featured in during those years. It's a long story, one which I will try to untangle when I get around to doing a review of the trade paperback collection of Crisis on Infinite Earths.)
One problem Robinson had to address was why the war lasted until mid-1945 after the United States entered the fray in December 1941 - if high-powered superheroes were available for the war effort. Green Lantern's power ring was supposed to be capable of doing just about anything that he could visualize while exerting his will power through it; the Flash was supposed to move faster than the human eye could see; Starman had a gravity rod that could let him fly through the air and do other high-powered feats, and there were others who also fire energy blasts, create large explosions, et cetera. You'd think they could have sunk a few battleships, blown up a few command posts, and hastened the end of the war. Robinson comes up with an interesting gimmick: Hitler had his own corps of superhuman operatives, one of whom had the power to negate the special powers of anyone else who got too close to him. This was discovered the hard way, and some of America's superheroes just barely survived the discovery. FDR decided the public death of some of America's most powerful superheroes would be too devastating to morale, and ordered them all to NOT go overseas where the battles were taking place.
In the first quarter of the storyline, all the important characters are introduced, with a look at their post-war status. I'll cover some of them for you, but leave some in limbo so you're caught by surprise.
Hourman was a research chemist (Rex Tyler) who invented a substance he called Miraclo. Gulp down one pill of it, and you are quickly endowed with superhuman strength, resistance to injury, and enhanced senses. For one hour. Then the Miraclo dose faded away and you were back to normal. If you were in the middle of a fight at the time, you had a problem because what were the chances the bad guys would agree to back off for a moment while you opened up a pill container and gulped one down? (Evidently Hourman was afraid to experiment with swallowing a second pill before the sixty minutes were up, for fear that a double dose in his bloodstream might have a destructive effect on his metabolism.) But in Robinson's view of things, in the post-war years Hourman suddenly finds himself reverting back to normal only 24 minutes after he had gulped down his latest dose. You know how it is with drugs: you take them every day, the body may start to develop a tolerance that reduces their impact. You might even get addicted!
Robotman was the brain of a slaughtered scientist, transplanted into a robotic body, thus gaining incredible strength. My understanding is that in the stories of the 40s and early 50s he was very much a kind human being who was trying to overcome the prejudice some people have against walking, talking machinery. He even had a bittersweet romance with a young lady, bittersweet because what's the point in trying to marry a hunk of cold steel? But in this version, spending the last several years without the use of all the usual human senses and feeling virtually indestructible is turning Robotman into a sadist who seizes any excuse to maim street criminals with his vast strength and sneer at their soft fleshy nature. Sooner or later you just know he'll move onto to non-criminals if the supply of felons runs a little low.
The original Green Lantern was a radio executive named Alan Scott. He had a magic green ring that could use his willpower to achieve all sorts of effects using bright green energy. Its only drawback was that it had absolutely no effect on wooden objects. (There have been other Green Lanterns since then, although the last time I checked Alan Scott was still supposed to be alive and kicking in the superhero comics set in the modern day.) In this version of the story, he's looked at the remains of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thought, "I could probably do the same thing with my ring. Does anyone really deserve to be trusted with the power to do that to an entire city on an impulse?" and so he's quit using the ring and is concentrating on the radio broadcasting business instead. And he has his hands full, because the House Un-American Activities Committee doesn't like the discovery that some of Scott's staff writers used to be affiliated with the Communist Party or other socialist outfits (I can understand why. Remember the days of the Great Depression when many people were afraid it proved capitalism was dead and socialism was the only hope for humanity?). Scott's legal counsel advises him to wash his hands of the whole situation by firing anyone "tainted" as quickly as possible, but he's too stubborn for that and makes a note that he needs to find a better lawyer.
Johnny Quick (a speedster, like the Flash) and Liberty Belle (superheroine, felt "charged up" whenever she heard the original Liberty Bell ringing) apparently got married toward the end of the war . . . but separated later. We see Johnny's reflections on the subject, and he evidently blames himself. Meanwhile, Libby ended up moving in with another former superhero, Jonathan Law, the Tarantula, who was a writer of mystery novels in the 1930s and then, as the war ended, wrote a nonfiction book about all the costumed characters he associated with. Since then he's been working on the Great American Novel. Or at least he's trying to. He's not getting anywhere. He starts hitting the bottle pretty hard, and strangely enough this doesn't seem to cure his writer's block problem.
And most importantly, we have Tex Thompson, formerly Mr. America, later known as the Americommando! (No, don't feel foolish at your lack of reaction to that name -- I had never heard of him before either.) It seems that way back before the USA went to war, comic books being published showed how Tex Thompson (youthful millionaire thrill-seeker) decided it would be ripping good fun to put on a red, white, and blue costume and go beat up street criminals! (No, he didn't have any superpowers - just his fists and some clever gadgets.) Being a patriotic fellow, he called himself Mr. America. Tex Thompson eventually volunteered for hazardous undercover duty in Nazi-dominated Europe, and ended up infiltrating the enemy as an officer of the SS who committed sabotage from the inside when he could. His new codename was the Americommando. All this was actually happening in the war-era comics, but near as I can tell Thompson quickly fell into obscurity afterward. James Robinson took the concept and spruced it up a little. In the early pages of this storyline, we see him standing in a blue uniform with bits of red and white to round up the theme, as the centerpiece of a triumphal parade moving through the heart of New York City with confetti filling the air around him. It is stated that he killed some of the Third Reich's most dangerous superhuman operatives, as well as finally penetrating Hitler's bunker and skragging the Fuhrer himself in the final days of the war. (Of course, by that time it didn't really matter whether Hitler died or not, if you want to be picky. Killing him back in 1942 might have saved everybody a lot of misery, though.)
Tex Thompson seems to be one former masked hero who has an especially bright future ahead of him, with this media blitz making him America's greatest warrior or words to that effect. But there signs of decay and we don't know quite what they mean. It all starts when we see a bit of a newsreel interview in which he comments modestly that it is not yet certain that he'll be appointed to fill the Senate seat of a gentleman who just died in mid-term. (But of course he gets it, and probably lobbied hard to get it behind the scenes.) For the more perceptive of us (I say modestly), this was the very first sign that there was something fundamentally wrong with his soul.
But I will admit that even nice, decent Americans sometimes end up in the Senate through some miracle. However, a scene we see a bit later shows us just how ruthless Tex Thompson can be when it comes to maintaining the right image. It turns out that back around 1941, when he was still local crimefighter Mr. America, he had a sidekick who was a roly-poly little man who wore a wooden bucket over his head, carried a mop as a weapon, and was creatively called Fatman (real name: Bob Daley). Bob has fond memories of his old friend Tex, and finally manages to get an interview with him after he goes to Capitol Hill. I'll give you the dialogue from that page.
TEX: Sorry I can't give you more time, Bob. It's the same reason I haven't been returning your calls. Work, work, work . . . there just aren't enough hours in the day. [Pause as we move to the next panel.] Bob, our friendship belongs to yesterday . . . Mr. America and Fatman's time. Now I want -- I have -- to be remembered for my wartime exploits. Not for what went before . . . the dumb costume.
BOB (head hanging, looking down at the floor instead of at his old buddy): The dumb sidekick?
TEX (now shaking Bob's hand at the door): To put it bluntly, it's all a bit of an embarrassment. You, Bob, are a bit of an embarrassment. You understand me? This is goodbye.
BOB: Yes . . . I understand.
CAPTION: Bob Daley's hands are shaking.
BOB (as he walks away outside): I understand perfectly.
We see Bob taking out a treasured photo of Mr. America and Fatman posing for the camera way back when, and we see him rip it to shreds and throw them away over his shoulder.
Now, you know and I know that this is not the way a hero is supposed to act. So it's a very bad sign when we see Senator Thompson start recruiting other old "superheroes" for a special federal project. One of them is Daniel Dunbar, the former Dan the Dyna-Mite, teenage sidekick of the masked crimefighter T.N.T. during the war (again, you shouldn't feel bad -- I had never heard of them before either). T.N.T. died at the hands of Axis agents, and Dan is now being dismissed from Princeton because of his terrible grades. Just then Senator Thompson enters, saying, "America needs you." It turns out that Thompson has an idea for creating a new and improved superhero in a process involving surgery, chemical injections, and being exposed to a mushroom cloud in order to stimulate certain physical changes. The process appears to work great, and soon we have the new defender of democracy: Dynaman! He has great speed, strength of a thousand men, flight, invulnerability, and he wears a colorful costume, essentially a red bodysuit with blue shorts and a blue cape. (You may have noticed that Superman's costume is essentially blue shirt and trousers with red shorts and a red cape. The resemblance is obviously not a coincidence, although in this continuity no one has ever heard of Superman yet.)
So, on the face of it, the United States has just created the most powerful superhuman ever. This sounds great! Assuming, of course, that you have perfect faith in Dunbar's ethics in using his power, and in his mentor Tex Thompson's motives in creating him and telling him what to do. In which case you probably also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy . . .
(Incidentally, Robinson didn't just forget about poor rejected Bob Daley after that poignant scene I quoted. The man ended up doing playing an important role in later developments, demonstrating that even short chubby Americans who wear glasses can be just as courageous as any of those tall musclebound extroverts in skintight outfits when the chips are down. That's a group that is normally neglected when heroic deeds are being done in the comic books, presumably because they just aren't very photogenic. (Comicgenic? Graphicnovelgenic? You know what I mean!))
Everything is properly wrapped up at the end, although this does not mean that everyone who deserves a happy ending really gets one. By "properly" I only mean that we feel a real sense of resolution. Some people die, some people are still struggling with the aftermath of what happened to them during the story, some people actually seem to be getting their act together.
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