All Star Comics

All Star Comics was a comic book series published during the 1940s by All-American Comics (AAC), a forerunner of DC Comics. All Star Comics was especially famous for its stories of the Justice Society of America, the first team of superheroes.

Related Topics:
DC Comics - Justice Society of America

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All Star Comics #1 appeared in Summer 1940 and was relatively successful. However, the Winter issue (No #3) of that year is of the greatest historical significance. In that issue the heroes were shown gathered at a meeting of a group called the Justice Society of America, at which they swapped stories about their exploits. From Flash Comics came Flash and the Hawkman, from More Fun Comics came the immortal Doctor Fate and the Spectre, from Adventure Comics came Hourman and the Sandman, and finally from All-American Comics came Green Lantern and the Atom. This new format proved to be so successful that the pretense of individual adventures was dropped and the heroes started teaming up to fight crime as a single group.

Related Topics:
Justice Society of America - Flash Comics - Flash - Hawkman - More Fun Comics - Doctor Fate - Spectre - Adventure Comics - Hourman - Sandman - All-American Comics - Green Lantern - Atom

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

All Star Comics changed over the years as wartime paper shortages shrank its page count and it switched from a quarterly to two-monthly publication schedule. However it never really lost its heritage as an anthology and different chapters of the JSA's stories would often be handled by completely different artists. The JSA lasted in All Star Comics until issue #57 (ironically a story titled "The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives") (Feb.-Mar. 1951). Superhero comics slumped in the early 1950s and All Star Comics was transformed into All-Star Western #58 (with the hyphen). It ran as a western until All-Star Western #119 (1961).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the 1970s the name All Star Comics was resurrected for a series portraying the modern day adventures of the JSA. This new series ignored the numbering from All-Star Western and continued the original numbering by starting with All Star Comics #58. That series ran for seventeen issues before it was cancelled and the JSA's adventures were folded into another title. Since then the name ALL-STAR has been used by DC Comics on a series of projects to denote a connection with the characters from the original comics. Complete reprints of the original series have been published as hardback volumes in the DC Archives series .

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~