Synopsis: While capturing spies, Tarantula and Wonder Woman stumble upon evidence of an untold JSA case.
Following their donation of a million dollars to war orphans [Fox, Gardner. "$1,000,000 for War Orphans", All Star Comics, vol. 1, #7], Green Lantern and Dr. Fate prevent the assassination of President Roosevelt by Ian Karkull?s shadow-men. After learning about several other planned assassinations, they contact the other members of the JSA to protect the targets.
Each JSAer successfully defeats their opponent, but Green Lantern fails to protect a young boy from Wotan. Once their individual foes are defeated, the combined membership, along with Starman, Hawkgirl, and Robin converge upon Karkull himself.
The combined power of the Spectre, Green Lantern?s ring, and Starman?s gravity rod, is able to destroy Karkull and bathe those present, including Lois Lane and Joan Williams, with radiation.
Hourman decides to take a leave of absence, having experienced the side effects of Miraclo. Green Lantern also leaves active duty and chairmanship, claiming fatigue from both solo adventures and JSA duties prevented him from saving the boy. Finally, Dr. Fate returns to his Salem tower to investigate Nabu?s possession of him through his helmet.
Unknown to the JSA, the assassination targets were all future presidents of the United States. Synopsis drawn from dcindexes.com
Notes: This is an important "bridging" issue. Not only does it include recaps and reference to things in All-Star Comics, vol. 1, but a lot of things in this issue were picked up on in post-Crisis continuity. Interestingly, the events of this issue actually fit between All Star Comics #7 and #8. In some ways, it seeks to explain changes in some of the characters between those two Golden Age issues.Among other things, this is the issue in which some dramatically useful weaknesses were given to Hourman, Dr. Fate, and Green Lantern (I).We see that the Hourman's Miraclo is, as we've known since the 40s, a drug. A real, honest-to-god pharmaceutical with potential side effects. As is explored later in the pages of 1999's JSA, one of these nasty side effects is addiction--and Rex Tyler is hooked on the junk.Also re-iterated here is the nature of the symbiosis between the wearer of the Dr. Fate helm and Nabu. Following this tale (and, again, that means both in All-Star Squadron and in All Star Comics), Nelson would choose to depower himself by wearing a half-helm, in favor of retaining more of his own personality while in costume. Though he, and all later incarnations, eventually return to wearing the full helm (for reasons that have, as of 2005, never been adequately explained), later writers would generally make a greater point of stressing the extent to which the wearer is "not themselves" while wearing the full helm. (The 1999 JSA run has a number of panels peppered throughout the run where characters will ask Hector Hall to take off his helmet so they can talk to him alone, or where it's otherwise clear that there is a difference between "Hector Hall" and "Dr. Fate".)
Alan Scott's basic humanity is made clear here, as we would continue to see post-Crisis. This hero is not perfect, nor omnipotent, and his reaction to failing to save the boy is something we'd continue to see in moments of high stress. He doesn't brush it off as a mere "casualty of war", nor does he really go off the deep end, put the ring away forever, and step back from being a Green Lantern. Instead he assesses that he's overextending himself and steps back from some of the burden on his plate. This ability to reasonably assess his limits and to take clear responsiblity for his failures has been explored from time to time post-Crisis to the point that looking back historically on this issue we see it as an "in-character" decision for him to have made. Had later writers not continued on from where this issue placed Alan Scott, we might've just seen it as a "gimmick" to get Scott to step down as leader.
