Last time, in our first “Continuity Cop” outing, I laid out some basic groundwork for what exactly continuity is. For this second installment, I’d like to take a look at how this large-scale metatextual network first got started.

In my opinion, the birth of continuity as we know it today can be traced to one single comic book – 1940’s All Star Comics #3. In my opinion, this is the second most important single issue in comic book history, beaten out only, of course, by Action Comics #1 (sorry, Fantastic Four #1 and Detective Comics #27, you’re a close third and fourth, respectively, but you were both influential re-processings of previous concepts, and not quite as ground-breakingly original as Action and All Star were).[i]

All Star Comics #3’s importance is indicated right on its cover, with the now-iconic image of The Atom, The Sandman, The Spectre, The Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, and Hourman seated around a large table at, the copy tells us, “the first meeting of the Justice Society of America.” This is further refined on the opening splash page, which informs us (while daringly ignoring basic grammatical rules of repetition) that, “Gathered in the Justice Society club meeting rooms for their first meeting are the mightiest champions of might and justice in the world!”[ii]

If it weren’t already clear, what I find so important about All Star Comics #3 is that, in its pages, writer Gardner Fox, editor Sheldon Mayer, and a passel of classic Golden Age artists created the world’s first superhero team, the Justice Society of America. Not only was this the first team of superheroes, but it was (at least to the best of my own knowledge and research – please let me know if I’m wrong here!) the first time that a comic book publisher recognized that all of its heroes coexisted in one universe. Indeed, All Star Comics #3 even mixed in some of DC’s[iii] humor characters, specifically the magic-thunderbolt-wielding Johnny Thunder, and the cooking-pot-wearing Red Tornado, aka “Ma” Hunkel. Though Johnny became a member and sort of a mascot to the Justice Society (and a useful plot device, as on more than one occasion his magic thunderbolt was used to bring together the rest of the members from their separate adventures for the final few pages of group wrap-up[iv]), the Red Tornado was unfortunately not accorded as much respect. After she shows up and disappears quite suddenly in the course of a page, we learn from the Flash that, “She must have caught her costume on something while coming thru the window, and look—here’s the seat of her trouble! She lost her pants!”[v] Had she not experienced such a horrendous wardrobe malfunction (and how did she even get home without any pants on?), poor Ma Hunkel might have been the first woman to join the Justice Society, predating even the first appearance of Wonder Woman by about a year.

As for the main story of All Star Comics #3, comedic bits aside, the dastardly menace that first brings the Justice Society together is one of such unparalleled evil that— Well, all right, no, they actually just get together for dinner, to hang out and swap stories. Not quite as epic an origin as Superman’s, or as tragic as Batman’s, but at least it was somewhat realistic (if you don’t take into account the magic rings, walking ghosts, and pink genies around the table). However, near the end of the issue, something akin to a plot does begin to emerge, as a courier comes by (apparently, despite Johnny Thunder directly asking, “How’d you get in? Only the finest in the country can come in here!”[vi], we are led to assume that like rain, sleet, and snow, massive superheroic security considerations are also unable to stop the faithful mailman) to pass on a letter, “from the F.B.I. chief in Washington,” that asks for, “a representative of the Justice Society [to] come down there and discuss something of vital importance!”[vii] The speediest of the lot, the fleet-footed Flash, is of course chosen to be their representative, and in fact he returns on the final page of the issue, informing his fellows that, “Of course, I had no trouble getting in to see the F.B.I. chief – and incidentally – he’s one swell guy! Well… he wants all of us members of the Justice Society to come down and see him – All Together! I told him I thought next Tuesday night would be okay!”[viii] Apparently brushing aside the subtle innuendo that, “Hey, kids, authority figures sure are swell and should be listened to at all costs!”, the Justice Society agrees to go to Washington, and All Star Comics #4 picks up with the heroes meeting the F.B.I. director, before splitting up to individually go on various spy-smashing missions.[ix]

Thus, in the context of what it meant to future continuity, All Star Comics #3 was crucial for two reasons. First, and most centrally, it was the first story in which readers learned that their favorite heroes (or at least all of those published by the same company/sister companies) lived in the same world, and met up to fight the foes that no single superhero could withstand (hm, that sounds like a good catchphrase…). As DC writer/editor Bob Greenberger put it in an introduction to a reprint of All Star Comics #3: “In retrospect, it seems obvious that the premier characters from a single comic-book publisher should band together to form an unbeatable team. Nevertheless, in 1940 the concept of a super-hero team was unprecedented. And it is the success of the Justice Society of America that has proven the validity of the basic ideas—as have the many teams that followed in the JSA’s wake.”[x] Not only, then, did this issue blaze the trail for future super-teams, but it also “proved the validity” of the basic concept of a comic book “universe,” rather than just individual, unrelated comic book stories. Though it wouldn’t be until the Silver Age that these universes began to actually find an editorially-unified shape[xi], with Julius Schwartz and Stan Lee’s contributions to comic book history (a subject for future columns, of course), the simple fact of the heroes being able to encounter each other, even if it was just sitting around a room eating a meal, was ground zero for comic book continuity.

The second contribution that All Star Comics #3 made to the history of continuity was that, as Greenberger writes, the issue was, “one of the first publications to foreshadow coming adventures.”[xii] As All Star Comics #4 would open with the Justice Society in Washington D.C., the story from issue #3 had essentially been continued, something almost unheard of at that time.

If comic book readers of the time were stunned by these new innovations, one can only imagine how they would have felt if they had been exposed, thanks to some scrying of the future by Dr. Fate or The Spectre, to 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. The leap between All Star Comics and Crisis is a tremendous one, both chronologically and linearly, but it is to there we will turn in our next column, as Crisis was to the birth of contemporary continuity[xiii] what All Star Comics was to the birth of continuity in general.

[i] Apologies also to Zap Comix #1, MAD #1, Amazing Fantasy #15, and the many other books which might be in the running for that top slot.

[ii] Gardner Fox, writer, and various artists, All Star Comics #3 (New York: All-American Publications, 1940), 1.

[iii] All Star Comics was technically a release of All-American Publications, which at the time was affiliated with economically affiliated with, but editorially independent from, National Comics. However, it utilized several National characters (Doctor Fate, Hourman, The Sandman, and The Spectre) before National absorbed All-American and became (popularly at first, then later officially) DC Comics. For more on this merger, and on the fascinating politics and personalities of the Golden Age in general, see Gerard Jones’ indispensable history of the era, Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book (New York: Basic Books, 2004). It’s interesting to note, however, that since All-American and National were different concerns at the time of All Star Comics #3’s publication, the issue was technically not only the first superhero crossover, but also the very first intercompany crossover, as well. For convenience’s sake, I refer to All Star Comics as a DC Comics publication.

[iv] See, for example, Gardner Fox, writer, and various artists, All Star Comics #8 (New York: All-American Publications, 1941), and Gardner Fox, writer, and various artists, All Star Comics #12 (New York: All-American Publications, 1942).

[v] Gardner Fox, writer, and various artists, All Star Comics #3 (New York: All-American Publications, 1940), 30.

[vi] Ibid, 52.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] Ibid, 60.

[ix] Gardner Fox, writer, and various artists, All Star Comics #4 (New York: All-American Publications, 1941).

[x] Bob Greenberger, “All Star Comics #3: Comic’s First Super-Team,” in Millennium Edition: All Star Comics #3 (New York: DC Comics, 2000), 1.

[xi] However, even in these Golden Age Justice Society adventures, changes to the characters were reflected in theirAll Star Comics appearances. On a meta-textual level, if a character gained his own book, he was not allowed to serve as anything more than an honorary member, and had to leave active duty (except for Wonder Woman, who was “allowed” to stay on as secretary). On a more story-driven level, costume changes, such as the Sandman’s switch from gas-mask-wearing terror of the night into a Simon & Kirby purple-and-yellow clad spandex suit, were represented in All Star Comics, as well.

[xii] Bob Greenberger, “All Star Comics #3: Comic’s First Super-Team,” in Millennium Edition: All Star Comics #3 (New York: DC Comics, 2000), 1.

[xiii] What I call “post-modern” continuity, to differentiate it from the kind of building-a-word-but-not-slavish-to-the-details “modern continuity” of Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz in the 1960’s. Again, this era, and the modern/post-modern continuity distinction, will be explored further and teased out over the course future columns.