Per Degaton has once again regained his memories in 1947, and decides this time he will not fail to conquer Earth-2 in the past by going to 1942 this time (having been defeated on Dec. 7, 1941 last time by the All-Stars and JSA). His plan: use the Crime Syndicate to steal nuclear weapons from Earth Prime circa 1962 from Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which in turn caused that world to have a nuclear war) to use for his purposes. Meanwhile, the All-Stars meet up with the JLA and JSA and learn of Earth Prime's fate in 1962 from them, and pledge to help out.
The mastermind behind Akhet and the eye ship stands revealed: Dr. Anton Hastor! Now it's up to Hawkman and Hawkgirl—and the spirits of their past incarnations—to take down their old foe!
The All-Star Squadron elect their chairman! Plus, more background on Firebrand and her connection to the bombing at Pearl Harbor and Steel receives some upsetting news regarding his mentor.
The All-Star Squadron must stop the Feathered Serpent from his plot to place Mexico under Axis domination with his new super-powers and hypnotic control of the nation's native races.
The superhero Wolverine time travels and changes storylines. On Torchwood, there's a pill popped to alter memories of the past. The narrative technique of retroactive continuity seems rife lately, given all the world-building in comics. Andrew J. Friedenthal deems retroactive continuity, or “retconning,” as a force with many implications for how Americans view history and culture. Friedenthal examines this phenomenon in a range of media, from its beginnings in comic books and now its widespread shift into television, film, and digital media. Retconning has reached its present form as a result of the complicated workings of superhero comics. In comic books and other narratives, retconning often seems utilized to literally rewrite some aspect of a character's past, either to keep that character more contemporary, to erase stories from continuity that no longer fit, or to create future story potential. From comics, retconning has spread extensively, to long-form, continuity-rich dramas on television, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, and beyond. Friedenthal explains that in a culture saturated by editable media, where interest groups argue over Wikipedia pages and politicians can immediately delete questionable tweets, the retcon serves as a perfect metaphor for the ways in which history, and our access to information overall, has become endlessly malleable. In the first book to focus on this subject, Friedenthal regards the editable Internet hyperlink, rather than the stable printed footnote, as the de facto source of information in America today. To embrace retroactive continuity in fictional media means accepting that the past itself is not a stable element, but rather something constantly in contentious flux. Due to retconning's ubiquity within our media, we have grown familiar with narratives as inherently unstable, a realization that deeply affects how we understand the world.
The first superhero team from the Silver Age of comics, DC's Justice League has seen many iterations since its first appearance in 1960. As the original comic book continued and spin-off titles proliferated, talented writers, artists and editors adapted the team to appeal to changing audience tastes. This collection of new essays examines more than five decades of Justice League comics and related titles. Each essay considers a storyline or era of the franchise in its historical and social contexts.
Fictional war narratives often employ haunted battlefields, super-soldiers, time travel, the undead and other imaginative elements of science fiction and fantasy. This encyclopedia catalogs appearances of the strange and the supernatural found in the war stories of film, television, novels, short stories, pulp fiction, comic books and video and role-playing games. Categories explore themes of mythology, science fiction, alternative history, superheroes and "Weird War."
