Inspired by Supergods, and Morrison's rhapsodic descriptions of Roy Thomas's prose, I pulled out some issues of All-Star Squadron for a reread. For those who don't know, the series dusted off some old, unused Golden Age characters, mixed them together with the Justice Society, and set the whole thing at the start of American involvement in World War II. The attack on Pearl Harbor happens in issue 1, but he team doesn't actually see the devastation until the next day (issue 4).
It's a moving scene, as the heroes are clearly shook up by seeing the aftermath of the attack. The scene read differently to me now than it did then, back when it was written -- now that we've lived through the attacks of Sept. 11, eleven years ago. I was bringing experience to the page that as a 12 year old kid, I just didn't have. (Roy Thomas, on the other hand, certainly did, although from a child's secondhand perspective, as he had just turned 1 when the attack occurred.)
And I thought.... this was published in Sept, 1981 -- almost 40 years after Pearl Harbor. And at that remove, Pearl Harbor didn't seem raw to me, the comics-reading audience. It was simply a historical event.
And it occurs to me... here we are with a brand-new DC universe, with a bunch of awesome characters gathering dust. 30 years from now, could we have a historical comic, where President George W. Bush organizes such left-behind heroes as Connor Hawke, Wally West, Donna Troy, and Steph Brown to fight the War on Terror?
Politics aside, I have to think that would be kind of a blast.
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