All-Star Squadron

On 9 January 1942, at the Smithsonian Institution, the All-Star Squadron holds its first official meeting. Present are the Atom, Commander Steel, Firebrand, Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Robotman, and the Shining Knight. Liberty Belle gives a rousing speech about their purpose in being there, and a few minutes later she is elected as the chair. The Shining Knight mentions that the Seven Soldiers of Victory are ready to serve with the Squadron, individually or as a group, but then also mentions that he has accepted a job as Winston Churchill's bodyguard, and will be leaving the team. Later that day he flies, with Churchill, aboard the flying boat “Berwick,” with Winged Victory in the cargo hold, back to Britain. They arrive over London during a night air raid; and knight and horse soon sally forth, through a cargo hatch, for some aerial jousting. He attacks and knocks down a series of Heinkel He-111H bombers, before the Spitfires arrive. Following the meeting Hawkman and Liberty Belle are once again at the controls of the team's plane, flying again from Washington to San Francisco. Elsewhere in San Francisco, Hawkman and Hawkgirl say some goodbyes before Hawkman returns to his Army Air Force unit. Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick accompany Firebrand to San Francisco to visit her brother, who is recovering from injuries sustained at Pearl Harbor. Firebrand reveals to the others her sudden, deep hatred of the Japanese, because of her brother's injury at Pearl Harbor, but Libby tries to talk her out of that attitude, and now Rod Reilly reveals that his life was saved, at Wheeler Field, by a Japanese-American soldier, who had died moments later. In New York City, Steel checks up on his old girlfriend Gloria, and learns that she has married an Army captain, and her father is dead. He leaves without revealing his secret identity, and tells her that Hank Heywood is dead. In Queens, Robotman returns to his lab, where an emergency is in progress, there's a whole lot of out-of-control electrical arcing and sparking; Chuck Grayson and Joan Carter are unconscious on the floor, and the place is about to burn down or blow up. Robotman crashes through the steel door and drags them to safety, after knocking out the runaway dynamo with one precision punch. Then in his Paul Dennis identity, he gets served with a summons, set up by a sleazy lawyer, Sam Slattery, who wants to have him declared a public menace. Epilogue: In Washington, in his Al Pratt identity, the Atom visits the Jefferson Memorial with Mary James, before he is due to return to his own army unit.