Anthem #1
I ran across Anthem in the back issue bins of the comic shop I work at. I flipped through it during some downtime, and knew that I had to have it. First, it's by Roy Thomas, whose writing I love- especially on Golden Age characters, and these were characters he created for a Golden Age setting. Second, because I discovered that the characters were named after lines in "The Star Spangled Banner" -an idea I had about a year ago. Figures someone beat me to it.
Why would anyone name characters after lines in that song? Honestly, I think it starts with "red glare," or at least that's how it started with me. "Red glare" makes me think "heat vision," which means "Superman," and you just kind of snowball from there. For me, it was a superman named Rocket who had a "red glare" heat/energy vision type power. For Roy Thomas, it was "Rockets" Redglare, a guy in flying armor. I had a "Bomb-Burst" too, but female, not male like Thomas' character. He got further than I did though, adding Dawns Earlylight, Liberty, Stars & Stripes, and "Stonewall" Jackson.
The entire team is part of Project Anthem, a team of World War II heroes that is awakened in the present from suspended animation to find out that the Nazis won. Partly because of a Japanese monster unleashed on America, named Gojira. That's right- Godzilla helped the badguys win World War II. Let's hear it for public domain characters.
If this idea seems a bit familiar to you, it's because Roy Thomas was also responsible for All-Star Squadron- DC's book about the heroes of Earth-2, which were stuck in a perpetual war against the Nazis. 'Squadron was a great book, but was made obsolete by the universe-changing Crisis On Infinite Earths, meaning it's a story Thomas didn't get to finish. With Anthem, he had created his own chance to revisit the idea. Was he successful? I don't know. It went five issues, and I've only read the first, but the first was a blast! At least it was for the kid inside me that remembers reading All-Star Squadron! This issue is a lot of setup- establishing the characters and the history of this strange Earth. I thought it was terrific, both story and art.
My only, teensy-tiny, minor, most miniscule complaint is that Stonewall referred to himself as "Mrs. Jackson's blue-eyed boy." As he's a giant, grey rock-man, it riffed way too hard on Marvel's Thing, who has in times past referred to himself as both "Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew," and the "ever-lovin', blue-eyed idol o' millions." This complaint is really minor, and I'd only take a half-star from the score if I could still do that. Since that's not possible anymore, minus one star for the Thing-copy.
I really want to find the rest of this series so I can read it in its entirety. Score for this issue: four stars.