DC Finest: Justice Society of America: For America and Democracy

DC Finest: Justice Society of America #1940–1942

by Gardner Francis Fox, Sheldon Mayer (Illustrator), Jack Burnley (Illustrator)

A major new line of DC collected editions begins with the earliest stories starring the Justice Society of America!

Welcome to DC Finest, a major new publishing initiative presenting comprehensive collections of the most in-demand and celebrated periods in DC Comics history, spanning genres, characters, and eras!

DC Finest: Justice Society of America: For America and Democracy is a must-have for any superhero fan!

Collects All-Star Comics #3-12

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels

608 pages, Paperback

First published December 3, 2024

About the author

Gardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer known best for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic book historians estimate that he wrote more than 4,000 comics stories, including 1,500 for DC Comics.
Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, and was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!"

Pseudonyms: Gardner F. Fox, Jefferson Cooper, Bart Sommers, Paul Dean, Ray Gardner, Lynna Cooper, Rod Gray, Larry Dean, Robert Starr, Don Blake, Ed Blake, Warner Blake, Michael Blake, Tex Blane, Willis Blane, Ed Carlisle, Edgar Weston, Tex Slade, Eddie Duane, Simon Majors, James Kendricks, Troy Conway, Kevin Matthews, Glen Chase

Reviews

[Arianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

It found this to be a charming and fairly entertaining collection, best enjoyed with a 40's instrumental music playlist in the background. It's wonderful to have a real view into the thoughts and sensibilities of the people from a certain time.

Characterization is the major flaw of this book. Every hero has the same personality, and they only differ by their levels of competence. Although it's a "team book", it mostly follows one character at a time as they do whatever it is that their mission requires of them. Since they're all the same person but with different costumes and powers, it all ends up feeling very repetitive. That is, unless Johnny Thunder is involved.

Despite this being a war book, I found the most interesting part to be when (admittedly, as part of a war effort) the whole crew is sent to the future. No iteration of the Legion of Super-Heroes can beat this book as far as unrealistic depictions of future times go. In fact, it seems like the writer forgot the story was supposed to be set 500 years in the future and instead started to include "Gulliver's Travels" adjacent subplots (which also show up in Batman comics from this time period). To give you an idea, the Atom is captured by giants and kept as a pet in a bird cage, but he manages to get free since the Hawkman had previously taught him bird language and so he convinces his cagemate (an eagle) to help him escape...

[Space Dragon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to dig into what is the first DC team book. I have recently read the DC Finest Superman collection from the same time period, so as an amateur historian and one of those bastards that love allegories and subtext, that was fun.
Another interesting aspect was finally reading some of the oldest stories with Hawkman Man, Doctor Fate and Spectre. I have always found interesting side characters .
I am definitely gonna get the Spectre and Hawkman Finest collection, which comes out later this year.

The down side with this, is as with a lot of older comics. Text heavy, repetitive plot and one dimensional characters.

The drawing styles and how the pictures are structured in this one, is a mixed bag. The chapters with Hawkman had something to it. Some were kinda meh to look at.

So if you are interested in experiencing some of the original stories with characters like Spectre, Dr Flash, Hawkman and the first Flash and what comics for kids in the 40s. were, this collection is for you.

[Chris Landvick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the DC Finest line. Reading this was like walking through comics history. I could see the building blocks of today’s stories.

[Beastyos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let's start with the positives, even though I would've prefered a genuine team book, it was to be fair, pretty nice to read this as an introduction to many Golden Age characters, many I would never had read otherwise, or at least not in the Golden Age era. It was also nice to see some more unique comic artstyles, I was under the wrong assumption that they didn't expirement much yet in the golden age and everything looked like superman, which is not true, sure there's no out there artstyle in here, it's still very classic comic book like, but there's still variation, especially in the inking.

Now onto the bad, I was hoping to say that it's crazy how non offensive these Golden Age stories are, because that's what I said about Superman, but it turns out that I couldn't be further from the truth, almost instantly there are racial stereotypes, like a lot of them. And then I was thinking, "Hey at least it's not that sexist" and then Wonder Woman showed up.

Lets talk about the team for a second, because it's genuinely the most insane team ever, with some super-ultra powerful beings that are too dumb that use their to its fullest, and just regular guys. Let me go over each member so you get what I mean (except Batman and Superman)

A god like divine space ghost
A god like magician
A really annoying guy that make anything happen by just asking
A guy invincible to metal objects with incredibly vague mystical will powers
A woman with a laso and superhuman abilities
A guy with wings
A really fast guy
A guy with a magic rod that makes him fly
A guy who takes perfomance enhancing drugs that help him for an hour
A guy with a sleep gun and hookshot from Ocarina of Time and the Arkham games
A small guy non superpowered guy that just works out
A guy that can see in the dark

Notice how there's some serious contrast between some of these, how Atom got involved with these guys is beyond me, nothing against Al Pratt, at least he has muscles and doesn't need to take a pill for it.
Am I wrong in saying that Johnny, Spectre and Doctor Fate could totally stop the war as indiviuals, like "Say you, kill hitler" are they stupid!?!?!?!?

That brings me onto WW2 and my main reason for not loving this book, because I have to be honest here, I honestly had fun with most of the stories, except the war one's. Who would've thunk, a book called Justice Society of America: For America and Democracy is littered with absolutely disgusting, aggressive American military propaganda targeted at children. Look, I hate nazis, I think we can all agree they're the worst of the worst, but you can't make a whole issue about "those scummy bastards use propaganda targeted to our youth!" in a book which in itself is propaganda targeted at their youth.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were probably forced to make military stories because of the time it's from, they want their children at their most patriotic and especially the older people in the audience that can inlist. There's just something so gross about the way they do it, like actually fucking vile and creepy North Korea type shit, also to then have the guts to say "look how evil other people are for doing this exact same thing that we're doing" is obscene, just a whole other layer of disgusting, I get why, but still, you can punch nazi's and tell people about the dangers of propaganda without sucking the governments cock.

Anyway, when they changed Dr Fate's mask I got fucking pissed, he looked silly instead of ominous and divine, when they changed The Sandman's design, that was on another level, I wanted to kill myself, that was insane choice, first never really allow him to use his main weapon that makes him the Sandman, his sleep gun, and then take away his entire unqiue costume to replace it with a generic superhero costume, I will not stand for this, we will storm dc's headquarters! #NotMyWesleyDodds

nice to stumble on the creation of Hawkgirl I guess

fuck Johnny Thunder!!!

[Ángel Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tengo que reconocer que me ha costado horrores terminar este tomo, y eso que era uno de los que, a priori, más me interesaban de la colección DC Finest.

Los problemas son varios: en primer lugar, lo heterogéneo de los dibujantes, que van desde el excelente Sheldon Moldoff (que se ocupa de las historias de Hawkman), hasta el espantoso Stan Asch (que, lamentablemente, es el encargado de plasmar las simpáticas desventuras de Johnny Thunder). En segundo lugar, el hecho de que la Sociedad de la Justicia nunca actúe como un auténtico equipo: cada miembro se ocupa de una parte de la misión, por lo que apenas se les ve cooperar, excepto cuando Johnny la caga y los demás tienen que sacarle las castañas del fuego. Por último, está lo repetitivo de las historias, en las que pasa siempre prácticamente lo mismo: los malos (que indefectiblemente son nazis, quintacolumnistas o toscas caricaturas raciales de lo que los autores pretenden pasar por japoneses) roban algún secreto o raptan a algún científico, o algo por el estilo, y la Sociedad se desperdiga para resolver el caso. Además, para rematar la cosa, no aparece ni un solo súper villano digno de tal nombre, y Flash y Linterna Verde desaparecen bien pronto, para ser sustituidos por el Doctor Mid-Nite y Starman, que, bueno, tampoco están tan mal, pero no cabe duda de que no son ni muchísimo menos tan icónicos como los personajes a los que suplen. Siempre da la sensación, por cierto, de que entre el Espectro y el Doctor Fate se podrían haber ocupado de cualquier situación ellos solos sin despeinarse, pero bueno... y habría que haber asesinado lentamente al tipo que se le ocurrió que el magnífico atuendo original de Sandman, con su característica máscara antigás, debía ser sustituido por un pijama cutrón amarillo y violeta. Pa matarlo.

Una cosa curiosa que me pasó mientras leía el tomo, es que pasé de odiar profundamente a Johnny Thunder a tenerle bastante simpatía, e incluso a lamentarme de que no lo dibujara un artista más talentoso, ya que sus historias eran tan increíblemente imbéciles que acabaron siendo mis favoritas. Johnny es un pobre diablo, un cretino, un fantoche ridículo que ni siquiera sabe cómo usar sus casi omnímodos poderes (a veces, hasta se olvida de que los tiene). Le dejan mensajes en bidones de basura y cosas así para que parezca todavía más ridículo e indigno, y al final, para qué negarlo, se le acaba cogiendo cariño.

En fin, una colección indispensable para el aficionado veterano porque es el primer súper grupo de la historia y por el arte de Moldoff y de algún otro dibujante (Jack Burnley, el de Starman, es también realmente bueno), pero es café para los muy cafeteros. Abstenerse lectores casuales, please.

[Jörg Schumacher · Rating 3 out of 5]

DC starts to republish comics since the beginning of the Golden Age. With this issue we get the start of the first superhero group in the DC Universe. In this group the second line of heroes are featured and the first line with Superman and Batman and later joined by Flash and Green Lantern are referred as honary members. So early in the invention of the superheroes the creators didn't yet figured how to tell stories featuring team-ups of the heroes. So the team is fixed to 8 members, so in each issue each member gets 6 to 8 pages for himself and the team only appears at the first and last pages in their meeting exchanging their stories. In a issue the stories of each hero follows very similar plots, as they all hunt down spies or try to bust criminal rackets. Between the heroes there are not very big differences. The superpowers are mostly used for transportation and rescue from bullets, but when it comes to fighting the bad guys even powerhouses as Green Lantern or Dr. Fate resume to fistfighting.
The exception being The Spectre who often uses his Powers to intimidate the goons into surrendering.
A fascinating view of the beginning of superhero storytelling and the way it's gone since this very first steps. For hardcore comic nerds this is thrilling, for every casual superhero reader it may be a little slow.

[Tom Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume collects the earliest Justice Society tales from All-Star Comics. while the JSA have been longtime favorites of mine, I have to admit that this was a bit of a slog. These golden age stories all follow a formula of the team being introduced to a threat, breaking up to tackle individual assignments, then coming back together at the end. While it shines a spotlight on each character there's little time to watch the interactions between the characters. And, at times, the individual stories for some of the characters feel more contrived than others.

The art for each story chapter is handled by a different artist of the time, resulting in widely inconsistent art throughout, with some solid art surrounded by much rougher material.

Also, while understanding the attitudes of the time, it was still hard to get through sometimes blatant racism and sexism. Ironically, writers and artists in later decades would retcon greater diversity into the team, but these early stories, while entertaining to a point, really show how far the writing and art would need to go.

[Jedi Master Nate Lightray · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection is great. I love these old stories. But they are definitely an image of an era. These guys never fought together. The stories were a bit repetitive. And the racial stereotypes are rough in 2025. That being said, we were at war with the Japanese, so it’s hard for me to not understand what the writers were thinking. After all, the modern right and left create cartoon images of their political opponents and fellow Americans today. I imagine with so much on the line (expanding world powers), it’s easy to slip into creating caricatures of international opponents.

I’m sure my bias to these editions collecting these old stories are what gives this a 4. If you are new to DC Finest editions and comics in general, I wouldn’t start here.

[Ruz El · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well made collection as an object, but a terrible read. It's a team book where they never team up so it's nothing but issues of mini-gangster stories with interchangeable plots as each member goes out on their own. 2/3rds of the team is garbage, with Johnny Thunder and his antics not even being readable. The last two issues have them enter WWII, and the excitement of Wonder Woman joining the team is dampened by the gross stereotypes, and Wonder Woman being related to secretary in the last issue of this.

I rarely feel cheated by books, but this one was borderline insufferable. I hated it.

[Doug Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a lot of respect for this book as I recognize it was the first team based superhero stories. with that said, almost every story served as standalone mini shorts for every character while they went off and did their own thing so it kind of feels like they cheated a little with the concept. I didn't feel drawn to wanting to read any of these stories really, but I appreciated this for what it was all the same.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to like this more than I can…

Its historical significance outshines the clumsy plots.

I always sigh with these earliest stories as they’re less a team book and more a “here’s a dinner with heroes recounting solo stories” anthology.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Justice Society of America may not make for the most compelling contemporary read, a history is to be found here in the first ever series dedicated to crossing over multiple superhero titles into a single team.

[Matt Fuller · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were too many unique stories in this with characters not seen as much anymore to not give it a high score even with all the war propaganda. It was a really good insight into history during WWII. Covers 1940-1942.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A high-quality edition of the early JSA stories. I hope DC continues to publish this line.

[Jack T · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5