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hat if… instead of selling his half of All-American Publications to National/DC co-publishers Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz in 1945, Max Charles Gaines had instead purchased DC from them? That’s the premise of this inventive fantasy series previously seen in Alter Ego #76 & 78, and in our TwoMorrows sister mag Back Issue #28 and future issues—and set on an “Earth-22” where events in the comics field happened a bit differently from the way they unfolded in the world we know. Author Bob Rozakis was a longtime writer, editor, and production director for DC…
and, unless noted, all comics images on the next 6 pages are copyright ©2008 DC Comics. Just imagine… a comic book industry in which, due to the domino effect of actions related earlier, Superman and Batman had been relegated to the sidelines early, and it was instead The Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman who became the company’s big stars. Not a dream, not a hoax…but an imaginary story of an alternate universe and…
The Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc. Book One - Chapter 3: The 1940s-50s Media Blitz by Bob Rozakis
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nthony (“Tony”) Allan is a noted author, whose books record the multi-media adventures of the AllAmerican Comics characters. He has written liner notes for collections of radio recordings, as well as DVD collections of the TV series. He is currently working on I Saw It on the Radio, a timeline history detailing which elements of the comic books actually came A recent photo of from the radio programs and other media, to pop-culture author Tony Allan. be published later this year by TwoMorrows. In this installment, Tony answers Bob Rozakis’ questions about the radio, comic strip, movie, and television adventures of Green Lantern, The Flash, and the rest of the AA Universe in the 1940s and ’50s.
BOB ROZAKIS: A lot of people think The Adventures of Green Lantern TV show in the ’50s was the first time an AA character appeared outside the comic books. I know that was my first impression. TONY ALLAN: Oh, there was a lot more, as you have since learned. BR: [laughs] Yes, much of it I now own, thanks to DVDs and audio CDs. So it was the Fleischer cartoons that came first? ALLAN: The first Green Lantern appearances, yes. What a lot of people don’t know is that Max and Dave Fleischer’s original
Holding Pattern Fleischer Studios’ proposed animated Superman series never made it past the stage of this test reel, prepared in 1940. It was first printed in Les Daniels’ 1995 coffee table book All-American Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes.
intention was to do Superman cartoons. They had worked out the deal with Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, and there was even some preliminary animation done. Because of potential legal issues, very little was done beyond the opening sequence. It is believed that the early scripts for these cartoons were rewritten to star Green Lantern and Wonder Woman. According to people I’ve interviewed, Jerry Siegel got wind of the cartoon deal and went to Donenfeld to ask what his and Joe Shuster’s cut was going to be. Whatever amount Donenfeld told him, Siegel decided it wasn’t enough and started talking about suing. BR: So that could have been the first time the idea of a lawsuit over who owned Superman might have come up? ALLAN: Probably. As the story was told to me, Siegel called Fleischer directly, but there is no one alive who can confirm that. In any case, Max Fleischer shows up at the offices and says he’s canceling the deal because DC couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be any trouble over who owned the rights.