Once upon a time, James Robinson was one of my favorite comic book writers. His Ultraverse series Firearm, about a Private Investigator involved in superhero related crimes, was amazing and his DC series, Starman, was fun and quirky and stood out in a sea of DC sameness when it came out. But, either he changed or I changed, and I lost interest in his work. But, just before he started on Starman, Robinson set out to write a new interpretation of the original DC superheros and what happened to them after WWII. This book, The Golden Age, was an interesting failure, but definitely worth looking into. So, let’s see what happened to our Golden Age heros.

Covering both the reasons why most super heroes didn’t participate in WWII and the McCarthy hearings, Robinson takes the Golden Age heroes through a tour of post WWII America. Previous stories had talked about a relic called the Spear of Destiny as the excuse for heroes not being able to go to the WWII theater. This Spear of Destiny was held by Hitler and could turn any hero over to the German side. But it wasn’t the Spear in Robinson’s story, it was a German hero who could neutralize super heroes. But a few heroes were active in Germany. Among them were the Americomando (Tex Thompson) and Manhunter (Paul Kirk). Though they were doing related missions, Tex came back a hero and Paul came back with amnesia and hunted by unknown people.

Tex rides his heroics to a Senatorship and secretly puts together a team highlighted by Robotman, Atom,Johnny Thunder and Dan the Dyna-Mite. Meanwhile, Alan Scott is running a newspaper and getting into trouble with the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) for some of his reporters left wing activities pre-war. Hourman (Rex Tyler) is finding his Miraclo pill is no longer giving him the powers for one hour. And he is finding that he might be addicted to the pills or the pill’s results and is spending more and more time trying to reformulate it to give him the powers again. Starman (Ted Knight) is trying to rebuild his gravity rod and is insane during the day and a genius at night. And others are having trouble readjusting to life.

The main story revolves around Paul Kirk trying to regain his memory and Tex Thompson putting his team together. The stories eventually dovetail with an interesting twist that leads to a huge JSA battle.

Overall, the story is fairly mediocre with some interesting characterizations. I loved the side stories of Rex Tyler, Alan Scott and Captain Triumph (Lance Gallant), but found the main characters (Paul and Tex) fairly boring. Paul Smith’s art is well designed, but I wasn’t thrilled with the muscle bound superhero look he went with. Robinson seems to have been trying too hard to tie the main story into McCarthy hearings and it doesn’t work well. In addition, the story seems rushed in places. There are a lot of plot points that are not given a lot of room to breathe and don’t tie into the main story too well. The book is worth reading, but not spectacular. Mildly recommended.