All Star Comics

This article is about the 1940s comic book series. For the DC Comics imprint starting in 2005, see [[:All Star DC Comics]].

All Star Comics is a 1940s comic book series from All-American Publications, one of the early companies that merged with National Periodical Publications to form the modern-day DC Comics. The series is notable for its introduction of the Justice Society of America, the first team of superheroes.

All Star Comics #1 (Summer 1940). Cover art is a collage of previously published panels by various artists.

All Star Comics #1, an anthology title of primarily superhero stories (with All-American's Golden Age Flash, Hawkman, Hour-Man, and Ultra-Man, and National's the Spectre and the Sandman , plus the adventure strip "Biff Bronson" and the comedy-adventure "Red, White and Blue", premiered with a Summer 1940 cover date.

Issue #3 (Winter 1940/41) is of greatest historical significance for depicting the first meeting of the Justice Society, at which its members swap stories of their exploits, subsequently depicted in the book's array of solo adventures. In addition to the Flash, Hawkman, Hour-Man, the Spectre, and the Sandman were Doctor Fate, from National's Adventure Comics, and Green Lantern and the Atom from All-American's flagship title, All-American Comics. This new format proved to be so successful that the individual adventures were dropped and the heroes started teaming up to fight crime. Different chapters of the JSA's stories would often be handled by different artists.

All Star Comics increased its frequency from a quarterly to a bimonthly publication schedule, and the JSA lasted through #57 (March 1951) — ironically, a story titled "The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives". Superhero comics slumped in the early 1950s, and All Star Comics became All Star Western from #58-119 (in 1961).

In the 1970s the name All-Star Comics was resurrected (with a hyphen) 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, premiering 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 that original title.

Reprints of the original series have been published as hardback volumes in the DC Archives series.

A 1999, two-issue All-Star Comics series was published as a part of the Justice Society Returns storyline.

References

• The Grand Comic-Book Database: All-Star Comics