Busting out again! – All-Star Comics #58

All-Star Super Squad

All-Star Comics #58

Cover Date: January / February 1976
Released: 9th October 1975

It’s been a long three years, and quite challenging for many. In that time this blog has gone from an occasional thing to a (mostly) regular thing. I’ve even hit fifty views on a post, though I’m not sure why which might not seem much but is a big thing to me! More importantly, today, or the 9th of October for those in the future, is the birthday of the first appearance of Power Girl!

Now, forty-six isn’t much of a momentous occasion but I can’t guarantee I’ll make it to 2025 and her fiftieth. If I do I’m sure I’ll figure something out! One thing I do like to think is that I’ve improved in my style and I looked back at my early attempts and wish I could have done better. So this birthday is a chance to show how I’ve improved, if it’s popular I may look at redoing the other earlier posts.

So imagine it’s 1975 and you run across All-Star #58, which would be a surprise to some as this would be a whole new comic. The last issue of All-Star comic was in 1958 and without modern methods, (again thank Mike’s Amazing World!) people wouldn’t have known that gap, in more modern times this would have been an issue #1 of volume 2, but until the 90s the idea was that the higher the number the more reliable a comic series was.

So we start with establishing Earth-2, in a header despite alternative Earths being too complicated for most, and the current rollcall of The Flash (Jay Garrick), Dr Mid-Nite (Charles McNider), Wildcat (Ted Grant), Dr Fate (Kent Nelson), Green Lantern (Alan Scott) and Hawkman (Carter Hall). Wildcat and Dr Fate are new, along with the two we’ll meet later, and we’re missing the heavy hitters of Wonder Woman, Black Canary and (I guess) the Atom.

To get to the plot a mysterious message claims that a series of disasters will hit various locations around the world, Seatle, Cape Town and Beijing (still called Peking at the time). Despite some doubt amount the team they decide to split up and investigate the locations. Whilst they all get into position we meet the Star-Spangled Kid (Sylvester Pemberton) who just happens to be in Seatle fighting a bank robbery at the same time. We get a couple of pages of him showing off exactly what he can do with his power rod. We then get his back story that he’s time-displaced from the 50s, even though the rest of the JSA carrying on as if the last comic wasn’t also in the 1950s as well. Mostly this is because he was reintroduced in the JLA #100-102 back in 1972 where the Seven Soldiers were scattered in time and space. Then the main plot catches up with us with an Earthquake and Star-Spangled Kid start to help people whilst Dr Mid-Nite and Hawkman arrives on the scene. They decide to do nothing for now as apparently Star-Spangled Kid needs to regain his mojo.

We then get a cut to a space station where it’s revealed that the cause of all this is Brain Wave, surrounded by pieces of art (possibly stolen) and technology. He reveals that his time in jail plotting his revenge on the JSA, maybe going a little mad in the process.

In one of those strange comic books coincides Robin (Dick Grayson) is conducting business when there’s an explosion in the distance. Donning his Robin costume, but the pants because he’s a big boy now, he goes to investigate. Meanwhile, Dr Fate and Green Lantern have arrived on the scene to discover that it’s releasing a deadly gas, between them they manage to plug the source of the gas release only to find the unconscious form of Robin. In an almost immediate reversal, the other two are knocked out when the plug fails and only Robin is left standing.

But we have no time for this as Flash arrives in Beijing with Wildcat literally in toe, to see a volcano above a rather provincial looking city. I can’t speak for Beijing back in the 1970 and it’s not the worse depiction of the Chinese, though they don’t seem to be doing anything but fleeing whilst the white heroes sort out the issue. talking off the Flash digs a trench to collect the lava from the volcano.

And it’s here, seven hundred words into the story we finally get the arrival of the character who this blog is about, Power Girl (Kara Jor-L)! She proceeds to beat back the lava with her bare hands, sealing up the volcano with the lava. Though I’m not sure if lava should be quite so pink, but we’ll let them off this time. We get her introduction and a quick rundown of her origins which is basically Supergirls, minus being sent to an orphanage, with her being kept a secret a few years longer. We then get a less sensitive portrayal of the Chinese as the three have to deal with the Red Army, on motorbikes for some reason, defending their homeland from these Western invaders.

That unfortunate part out of the way we get Power Girl reveals that she has an idea of who might be involved and that these disasters are a distraction from the real event. Here seem to know exactly what’s being going on, to who’s up and whos unconscious, like she’s been reading along with us all. Obviously, the Fortress of Solitude has some really impressive hookup allowing her to watch everything unfolding on Earth-2! Also as it’s something that I’ve dwelt on before, Kara is most definitely flying here and not the leap tall building that she’ll be reduced to in later issues of All-Stars.

So our comic ends with our (present) heroes learning who’s been planning all this Brain Wave! Which 

would have been a bigger deal if we’d not already had seen him a few pages ago.

Looking back for kindly that snarky me was two years ago this comic does an impressive job of setting up a whole new team, though the All-Star name never really stuck. And giving our new character a lot of the heavy lifting. Indeed whilst Power Girl only appears in four pages she carries most of the important plot exposition, including who the big bad is for this story. None of the later tension is there between the teams and she’s actually pretty polite to them all. And yes she’s just as busy now as she’ll be throughout the series, if anything her teeny tiny waist makes her look more unbalanced than anything else.

A good solid, if not amazing, start to this run of All-Stars.

 ⋅ Writer: Gerry Conway ⋅ Penciler: Ric Estrada ⋅ Inker: Wally Wood ⋅ 

⋅ Editors: Gerry Conway / Paul Levitz ⋅