I bought this a couple of weeks ago and haven't finished it yet. Partly because I bought other, more interesting comics at the same time and in the interim, but still.

It's mostly notable for Keith Giffen's early attempts at pushing his art style and Paul Levitz's early attempts at managing a large cast. Unfortunately it's also notable Gerry Conway's middle-period and entirely successful attempts at writing shit comics.

The Vandal Savage story does capture a vintage pulp feel, almost turning the stiff art into an appropriate stylistic decision. (These were Wood's last issues, right? Oh, for credits!) The Zanadu two-parter is probably the best part of the collection just for Levitz's ability to juggle several plots at once, even if the villain's name makes me think of ELO and Olivia Newton-John. Good thing he wasn't wearing roller skates. Although since he is sporting purple and yellow platform shoes, why not take it all the way?

Also, Brian Bolland's cover is interesting for two reasons:

1. Power Girl seems to have been driven mad, possibly by constant exposure to her own cleavage.

2. Dr. Mid-Nite is auditioning for Cats.

But hey, Wally Wood, and the appearing/disappearing cleavage panel on Power Girl's bosom.

I snapped this up as soon as I saw it: I still have originals in a box somewhere, but this way I don't have to wade through piles of dust just to get to them, or worry about damaging those worn copies even further

My comics store had sold out of it yesterday when I went in to take a look so I didn't actually get a chance to see it, but what's the point of blanking out the credits? IIRC, all the stories were completely credited at the time. What does DC get out of not telling us which is the work of Gerry Conway, which is Paul Levitz, when Ric Estrada did the pencils, how many stories Wally Wood inked, whether or not Joe Staton came on board by the end? You're right, Greg--those credits don't just fall off by themselves.

I think at that time, we wouldn't have gotten colorist and letterer credits.

Speculating wildly, the credit-blanking may have had something to do with Conway, as I recall, having a writer-editor deal on the book. There may be some weird kind of office politics going on there, with DC wanting to institutionally-forget that such deals ever existed.

It's also the case that the art was coming out of the Wood studio, and so DC may be concerned about credits/reprint payments going to the right people. Not having any credits doesn't seem to be a solution to that, but what do I know? It's pretty clear that nobody put in any serious work on the volume, so they may have used solutions optimized for minimum effort rather than solutions optimized for being right.

I ordered mine through Amazon.com to bump something up to free shipping.

The lack of introduction surprised me too.

1) The 70s All Star started at #58...25 years after #57. That in itself could do with some explaining.

2) A discussion about the creation and tragic future creative history of Power Girl. Power Girl's character defied the Crisis butchering of '85. Despite DCs best efforts, nobody ever bought into the idea that she was anything other than one of the last survivors of Krypton-Two. Because of All Star I was a timid little girl that found a strong female voice through Power Girl.

3) All Star firmly established Earth-Two as a thriving Other Earth with its own unique history.

4)It gave us the platform for the death of the Golden Age Batman and the creation of the Helena Wayne Huntress. IMO the best of all the Huntresses.

5)The creative team was a list of Usual Suspects that could do with an introduction.

In case you couldn't tell I was let down with the lack of an introduction. I did buy it and I am enjoying the stories. I read them as a kid when they first came out. They were among some of my first comics ever. The Zanadu two parter really creeped me out as a kid and a little as an adult.

Isn't Gerry Conway the guy who thought it would be smart to expel Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern from the Justice League of America in favor of Vibe, Gypsy, Steel, and Vixen? Why would anyone be surprised that he thought the Super Squad was a good idea?

To be fair, at that time, Gerry had been writing JLA for seven or eight years, so burnout might not be entirely unwarranted. (Wikipedia suggests that the Detroit era was an attempt to youthen the team along the lines of the NTT and LSH, but that could easily be post-hoc.)

In those seven or eight years, Gerry had turned in some of the best (and best-remembered) JLA stories of the book's history. Tack that onto an era-defining run of Spider-Man and you can't make a joke out of the man's career.

I always thought that JLA-Detroit was an attempt to X-Men-ize the JLA. In terms of general personalities if not powers, there's a near direct instance of each Cockrum-Byrne era X-Man on that team. That might have been Conway's initiative or an edict from above -- who knows?

Conway is interesting as a mainstream superhero comic book writer because he did both very, very good work throughout the bulk of his career, while also doing very, very...questionable work in the same stretch. When he was on, he was, and when he wasn't...Space Circus of Crime.

I always thought the impetus behind the Detroit League was that when the JLA was the "big guns" book, there was a perception that nothing "important" could ever happen. Superman couldn't die because he had two and a half books of his own, and if he was going to die, it would happen in one of those books. GL's identity couldn't be revealed to the world because if that were to happen, it would happen in his own book. And so on. The Detroit League characters were not borrowed characters, and consequently, anything could happen with them.

Jason, I'm sure that was part of the reasoning as well (and indeed, part of the reason for the popularity of the X-Men at that point as well). You couldn't really "go soap opera" with the big guns like you could non-borrowed characters.

The problem with that analysis is that the JLA had ample characters that it "owned" that it could muck with. Red Tornado and Zatanna lead that list, but there's a spectrum of other characters during Conway's tenure that JLA could levy a primary claim on to a greater or lesser degree, including Atom, Aquaman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Phantom Stranger, Elongated Man, Black Canary, even Green Arrow (after GL 123, corresponding to JLA 174, I think).

Heck, Conway only needed to follow in the footsteps of Steve Englehart, who gave us soap opera mopiness with several of the JLA second-tier characters in #143, and even the death of Superman in #145. And his own footsteps, with the mopey Elongated Man in 159-160 (IIRC).

I think the thread drift can stop if we make the changes to the JLA and Detroit League it's own separate thread, perhaps with a more general post about books changing fundamental approaches (like Bob Harras's attempts to X-Menize the Avengers or the various changes to Excalibur), whether or not they work, and if that's a good idea to begin with.

I'm honestly not that concerned about thread drift, Chris, but I can probably spin off your broader topic in a new post.

There are a couple other problems with the "nothing important can happen to the big guns in a team book" argument. One is that usually nothing important happened to them in their own books, either, especially in the pre-Crisis period. Another is that even with a team of brand new characters with no solo books to maintain, Conway still wrote the same old formulaic team-book stories that maintained the status quo, just with a set of characters nobody cared about.

But the main problem, I think, is that team books don't really need to be about important character-altering events anyway--they don't even necessarily need to be about character.

I agree with both points completely. I'm just speculating on what the mindset may have been at the time.

Gerry Conway always was and always will be a second-rater at best. His Justice League of America stories were crap. All the best ones, the only ones worth reading, were by Gardner Fox.

As for anything important happening in comic books pre-Crisis or post-Crisis, the answer is NOTHING IMPORTANT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN THE PAGES OF A COMIC BOOK. Gewn Stacy died = not important. Superman married Lois Lane = not important. Batman killed Robin #13 = not important. Nothing important can happen to these characters because corporations have billions of dollars at stake in the status quo.

You might consider ramping the attitude down a notch or two. Folks'd be more inclined to consider what you say seriously.

I apologize for the lack of credits on the individual stories, an error I persnally found heart-breaking because of its effect on the Origin, which also had a dedication to Shelly and Gardner. The second volume will in some fashion include the credits fro the first, which will be restored if we ever do a second printing. If you have a credits question, these issues are up on the comics.org database, though without perfect data.

Cool! That's good to hear. Is there a rough estimate of when the second volume might be released?

Thank you for clarifying that. It's nice to know that creators will get the respect due to them. For me, losing the individual credits seemed of a common piece with the rest of the volume's neglect--minimum effort all around. The lack of an introduction was probably the biggest hurt, since this is material that definitely benefits from historical commentary.

I can see the beginning of the second volume already:

Introduction

by Paul Levitz

I killed Batman.

...

Just knowing how that decision was arrived at would be fascinating. Plus, you'd finally get proper recognition for creating the Earth-2 Felix Faust :-)