Originally I was going to do a spotlight on Freedom Fighters and tell people why you should be reading it, but since my last article, the series has been cancelled.  So I decided that I would change this instead to a look back on Freedom Fighters.

Freedom Fighters was a series based on characters originally published by Quality Comics, but later acquired by DC in the 1970’s. In DC continuity they were a team from Earth-X in the multiverse, but that has been retconned to them having been from Earth-2 and migrating to Earth-X. Earth-X was a world where WW2 had never ended and the Freedom Fighters were the last line of defense keeping the Nazi’s from winning. This was all detailed in their first appearance in DC continuity in Justice League of America #107-108 titled “Crisis on Earth-X!” published in 1973. The Freedom Fighters would get their own series in 1976 that ran for 15 issues.  They would appear sporadically throughout the 80’s and 90’s most notably in All-Star Squadron, and in Crisis on Infinite Earths where the Freedom Fighters were retconned into only having fought in WW2 and that it ended in 1945 exactly as it should have.  The Freedom Fighters were then made into a government task force and would not appear very much until they appeared in several issues of Justice Society of America.  The last appearance of the pre-Infinite Crisis team was in the pages of Infinite Crisis where they were attacked and killed by the Secret Society of Supervillains in the first issue.

The post-Infinite Crisis team debuted in the Battle for Bludhaven mini-series following Infinite Crisis where they were agents of the government organization SHADE. Following that, there were two mini-series in 2006 and 2007 both titled Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. This all leads up to the current (or rather former) series written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray with art by Travis Moore on pencils and Walden Wong on inks.  The team consisted originally of Uncle Sam (the American spirit, he draws his strength and powers from the American morale), Black Condor (sky and earth elemental given his powers by the spider goddess Tocotl), Human Bomb (he is a living bomb, he can explode a tiny bit of himself or a lot of himself as the situation requires, lives life in a containment suit), Phantom Lady (she can turn intangible, as well as teleport by opening a warp in space), Firebrand (controls fire, has martial arts abilities and carries a bo staff), and the Ray (can fly, has light powers, can turn into laser light).  During the course of the series, when Uncle Sam is defeated, SHADE brings in Miss America (has the power to temporarily transmute one item into another on a molecular level) to lead the team, and she subsequently recruited Doll Man (has the ability to shrink to the size of a doll, used primarily in infiltration) after Firebrand had been taken out.

Although the latest volume of Freedom Fighters only lasted for one story arc, it was a fun filled adventure involving ancient Native American gods, secret metahuman prisons, riots in said prisons, assassination and intrigue on a national scale, and the first arc isn’t even over.  I think it’s a crying shame that Palmiotti and Gray were not able to realize what they had started in this series, though fans of the writing team can rest easy that Jonah Hex is still running strong, despite the recent attempt at a movie (which was unconnected since the pair were never asked for input in the movie). Since this series is having such an early demise, I find it fitting to look back at the beginning.  The first issue started with Black Condor and Firebrand fighting neo-Nazi skinheads who were trying to take over a casino.  The dialogue and the action were so great that it hooked me from the start, then you got into the prison sequence, and the mounting political intrigue, and I loved every minute of it.  Hopefully the next title the pair works on will be longer lived, as everything they write seems to be awesome.

Next time I will be looking at a series that was once a best seller but has now dipped below the dreaded 20k mark in sales, up next: Booster Gold.

Previously on Longbox Treasures….
Secret Six