Welcome, One and All

December 7, 1941. A day that will live in infamy.

December 8, 2006. A day when the Perisphere, a site dedicated to the All-Star Squadron is launched.

Ok, so today you really can’t compare the two, but I thought it would be a dramatic and at the same time slightly humorous way to kick this whole thing off.

Hello there and welcome to the Perisphere. As was previously mentioned this site is devoted to the All-Star Squadron, the largest and to my mind the greatest team of super-heroes ever assembled. My name is Michael Bailey and I will be your host and guide through what will hopefully be a fun and informative site where fans of the All-Stars, both old and new, can come and either relive the adventures of the initially Earth-2 based heroes or learn about them for the first time.

So what can you come to expect from this site/blog? Well the answer to that can be broken down into three sections.

Indexes: Every issue of both the All-Star Squadron and the follow-up series Young All-Stars will be read and indexed. The format will be similar to the indexes published in the mid-eighties by ICG with a few modifications on my part. The synopsis will be detailed and I will try not to make them boring or long winded. Also there will be annotations, cover scans and other assorted bits of business from the individual issues.

Who’ Who Entries: This will be split up into two categories the first being pictures and text from the original Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe, which originally ran for twenty-six issues and had two Updates in 1987 and 1988 in addition to a binder format Who’s Who that DC published in 1991. I’m also throwing in entries from two Role Playing sourcebooks that I have in my possession. Even though I am basically copying information from other sources I hope that the graphics and the text will serve as kind of a shrine to the hard work of the original writers and artists.

Eventually, though, I’ll be writing original entries as I go through the series and chart what specific characters did during their time with the All-Stars. I’ll also do some research and create Who’s Who entries for the historical figures that came and went in the pages of All-Star Squadron, like President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. I thought those would be a nice touch to the whole thing.

Articles, Reviews and Editorials: Eventually I hope to compile some detailed articles on the creation of the All-Star Squadron and the creators involved. I don’t expect to do these any time soon, but they are in the planning stages for down the road. I also plan on writing articles about the books themselves to examine certain aspects of the series and specific characters.

As for reviews, well I don’t plan on reviewing the issues of the All-Star Squadron or Young All-Stars because anything I have to say will be covered in the annotations. What I will review, though, are any new books DC publishes featuring Golden-Age characters and their descendents. Down the road I hope to do an Infinity, Inc. site and way down the road I want to do a pretty detailed site chronicling the Justice Society from the seventies until today. For right now, though I want to focus on the All-Stars so these reviews will scratch the itch I have regarding the modern adventures of the Justice Society and any other teams and characters associated with DC’s Golden-Age.

One of the problems I see down the road is dealing with the continuity problems that resulted from the Crisis on Infinite Earths. All-Star Squadron was initially set on Earth-2, a concept I love even though I came into collecting comics after it had been done away with. The reason that Young All-Stars was created in the first place was to give Roy Thomas a way to re-imagine his team after the rug got pulled out from under him. This won’t have a huge impact on the index portion of the site because everything is pretty much spelled out in the synopsis. The Who’s Who entries are another matter, but I’ve come up with something akin to a solution. As far as the entries that reprint materials from other sources just check the original date of publication and if it is on or after 1987 assume that it is Post-Crisis continuity. When it comes to the original entries I plan to structure the entries to go over both Pre and Post-Crisis continuities because, well I’m anal-retentive and I thought it would be a rather nifty thing to do.

I hope this site will be as fun for you to read as it is for me to create. I plan to update the site weekly but I may post new material at odd times once I get it done. In any case come back every Friday to check out the latest updates. As always feedback is most welcome so if you have something to say either use the comment feature at the bottom of each entry or go ahead and e-mail me at supermanearth2@bellsouth.net. I want as much interaction as possible, so if something makes you happy or upset or if you think something I’ve posted is inaccurate go ahead and let me know.

For right now though enjoy the site and keep ‘em flying.

Or something like that.