YOUNG ALL STARS

In case anyone out there does not know I'll quote Wikipedia for you (it's okay -there is no leaked information here so we ought to be safe!

"Young All-Stars was a follow-up to DC's popular Golden Age-themed series All Star Squadron, which Roy Thomas also wrote. The intention was to pick up that series' storyline after the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths series, which necessitated writing Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman out of the original series' history since their World War II versions now no longer existed. The characters of Iron Munro, Fury, and Flying Fox were meant to essentially replace those heroes in the new continuity. The new series wasn't as popular as the earlier series and was canceled after thirty-one regular issues and one annual."

I've mentioned All Star Squadron here: http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/all-star-squadron-invaders-machine-man.html

There was another post about the DC Showcase Presents All Star Squadron collection but I cannot find that!

The Young All-Stars were created by Roy Thomas and his wife, Dann along with Michael Bair and introduced in Young All-Stars #1, June, 1987.

Arn "Iron" Munro was based on a pulp fiction character of the 1930s and is, to all intents and purposes, the Superman of the YAS.  Flying Fox was quite obviously Batman -a flying 'fox' being...a bat.  And as for their version of Wonder Woman well it was blatantly the Fury.
                                                                   

The first issue saw the Golden Age character TNT killed by Axis Amerika and his side-kick, Dynamite, was rescued by Munro. I really do hate to write this but there is one very big reason WHY this was less than successful.  All Star Squadron had  artists such as Joe Kubert, Jerry Ordway, Don Heck, Carmine Infantino, Don Newton, Rich Buckler,  Wayne Boring and they even roped in Todd McFarlane, George Perez, Tony DeZuniga to work on the series.

The above, final issue cover.  Look at it: cramped and rather messy.  It's all over the place and therein lay the problem.

The stories in this series started out okay even if there was none of the "emotional attachment" to characters.  They were new.  And, like John Byrne did with Alpha Flight rather successfully, one of the newcomers was introduced to fill in their past each issue. Did it work with YAS?  Maybe 50-50.




But then when all the introductions were out of the way you still had to deal with the artwork which at times was too painful to look at.  Anatomy could be out and....well, it just was not good.  And as the series progressed it got worse.

I've just managed to complete my 31 issue run of the title and I thought #30 was badly drawn and the story seemed a mess -I really did check three times to make sure that it was Roy Thomas writing!

Then came the final all-out issue #31. Bad.  The story just seemed to be all over the place. In fact, I have to write that it just plain stank. "I've killed my son, Arn Munro!" Arn Munro appears. "I didn't kill you but I told both sides I did so not to lose face!"  Followed by a few "I really will kill you this time!"  At which point I screamed "WELL KILL THE FECKER THEN!!"

How did they stop the unstoppable super Amazonian type natives?  They caught the common cold and started dying because they had been isolated from the outside world.  But it was so badly written.  And Arn Munro's dad the super man -how did he get defeated?  He didn't. He flew down an industrial chimney that super exploded (of course).  Anyone check?  No.

And the YAS?  Well they got incorporated into the All Star Squadron and there it ended.

 And what did not help was ugly -ugly- art.

I am not kidding.  I loved All Star Squadron (even though you could not abbreviate it as with the JSA or JLA because All Star Squadron....ASS) but YAS started promisingly and ended in a slow nose dive of death into a paper shredder.





Like Marvel Comics, DC hit the 1990s like an acid-tripping hippy in a vat of molasses and bricks.

I have to think that Roy Thomas had seen one of the best comic series he had written -outside of the Avengers - the All Star Squadron ripped out from under him and sinking all the planned stories (yeah, DC apparently promised ASS could continue as it was ) and then he has to rush together a new World War II series but he was not getting the top artists any more that made All Star Squadron so good.  No Ordway.  No Buckler.

Was he so sick of how his title was being treated that toward the end he just said "Who gives a **** any more?!" -he was one of comics best writers/scripters so the mess that YAS became is just...a mystery.

Now, I need to get me round to finishing my Freedom Fighters run -and the Freedom Fighters also guested in JLA (vol. 1) and All Star Squadron with great storylines.

Oh well, I still have the fond memories and read of my ASS collection.

oooo-er!