Master of Worlds and Time
All-Star Squadron #15
Cover Date: November 1982
Released: 26th August 1982
The first few pages, obviously working on the idea readers of All-Star Squadron don’t read the JLA, sum up the story so far as told by the big bad of the story Per Degaton. It does start with a lovely splash page of the three teams, though they’re not standing quite with how the captions explain the two teams. As usual, it seems Firestorm is hitting on Kara again, alas we don’t hear the pitty putdown it looks like she’s about to deliver. The explanation cuts to the heroes as the JSA explains how they went from the future 1986 back to 1942 and how the nuclear explosion threw them about and needed reusing in the last issue.
We then get the President explaining that unless the heroes can find all the nuclear missiles they’ll have to surrender to stop the millions of casualties that the attack would cause. And after all that we’re now off and onto the plot.
As is traditional they split into small teams to try and find all the missiles in time, starting with Superman, Dr Fate and Robotman flying into space to check out the satellite Per Degaton has been dropping hints about for the last few issues. It’s empty obviously, the heroes having missed the only, anachronistic, airliner on the entire planet, but the villain has left a few surprises for the heroes. One is a lump of Kryptonite, that Robotman opens not knowing its effect on Supes, the other is Ultraman who uses the opportunity to knock Supers and the Kryptonite into orbit whilst he fights Dr Fate. It looks like Ultraman has just been floating there waiting for an attack, which couldn’t have been a fun time for the villain. Anyway, Robotman gets himself knocked into orbit nudging away the kryptonite and allowing Supes to come back and save them all from Ultra. Supes then has to quickly stop Robotman from burning up in orbit.
With that all wrapped up we cut to the pacific where Liberty Bell, Aquaman and Starman are looking for missiles on a small island in the region, occupied by Japanese troops who have mysteriously been rendered unconscious. Aquaman goes into the ocean to look whilst Liberty Bell and Starman go looking in a cave system finding some of the missing missiles. Unfortunately, they’re guarded by Superwoman who pretty quickly defeats the two heroes pretty soundly, at that point Aquaman bursts through the wall on the back of a fricking Blue whale! island destroyed and Superwoman captured they start to make their way home.
We then cut to Hawkman, Johnny Quick and Huntress somewhere in the midwest just running around with a Geiger counter trying to get a lucky hit. After a quick round of Huntress not telling the other two their future, and dissing on this Hawkman in favour of Earth-2’s own, they find out that the missiles are hidden in grain silos. At that point Power Ring, which must be the laziest of supervillain names, turned up as the guardian of the missile. A job he does so well that his power ring accidentally launches one of the missiles! Luckily Johnny is able to quickly dismantle the missile in flight, before being caught by Hawkman. Then he just goes around dismantling the other and we’re as good as down here.
We then close out with Per Degaton monologuing about a final ace up his sleeves, with his two guards throwing shade on the whole thing!
A pretty by the numbers middle issue of a team-up with everyone getting a chance to show off what they can do, something I’m sure Thomas can do in his sleep right now. A little kara light, but I’m sure we’ll get more of her in the final issue and hopefully, we won’t get the rushed ending that seems to bug most of these annual team-ups.