This special is the result of a letter to All-Star Comics about the origin of the Justice Society. Someone wrote in wondering about the canon, and, after diligently doing some research, DC staffers discovered the 1940 comics didn’t come with an origin issue for the Justice Society. The team was already together in their first appearance. So the All-Star team of writer Paul Levitz, penciller Joe Staton, inker Bob Layton, and editor Joe Orlando are doing the first-ever origin of the Justice Society of America right here.

It’s not good. It’s not a good story, let alone good origin story. Levitz front-loads the narrative, too, and not just in terms of pacing; the Spectre will eventually show up in the comic and be able to kill anyone with a glance. He will not, however, be able to impede in any way the enemy demigod Valkryies. Now, the Valkryies—the exposition boxes point out multiple times they’re German (called to Earth on the side of the Führer), though it sure sounds like they’d know Thor (and he’d be on the Nazi side). The human heroes will either be able to jostle the Valkyries easily or they will be utterly impervious to all pain and damage.

Including from the Spectre.

So there are no real stakes in the comic. Not even when it comes to the team-up value. Nine of the world’s most powerful mortals (though the Spectre and Dr. Fate aren’t really mortal) meet for the first time and it’s done without dialogue and just a bunch of handshaking. None of the heroes have much personality: Superman will be a dick, but otherwise, it’s just Dr. Fate. And only because he’s the one who knows what he’s doing. And the Atom gets a lot more dialogue in the second half than anyone else. This comic is always trying to find new levels of perfunctory.

There are a handful of solid moments. The Spectre reaching out over a Nazi fleet is cool. Except then he’s got no significant advantage fighting the Valkryies. In the exposition, Levitz routinely tracks how many heroes are fighting the good fight and how the increasing numbers and power sets never help. It’s weird. Especially when he uses it to set up Superman, who will come in and save the day, talk shit about not being some touchy-feely foreigner, which FDR will cosign, and then Supes will demand “Justice” is in the title of their club.

The art’s often odd. The Batman take is visually very Adam West, not Bob Finger. Staton and Layton do not do a good Superman. As a reader of All-Star, which had at one point Wally Wood (and Keith Giffen) doing very careful, respectful, Golden Age Superman—-it’s jarring. Not only isn’t it good, he looks forty-five.

But the Franklin Delano Roosevelt… good grief. Levitz writes FDR as a vapid jingoist while Staton draws him… puffy. Like exaggerated puffy; like a blowhard. It’s very strange. The Special feels like it’s being targeted at seven-year-olds in 1940, while acknowledging they’re in their forties now. By creators whose nostalgia—even when they bother with it—never comes off as sincere.

They do get through it, which is an accomplishment for all involved–particularly the reader—but it is a combination of wasted opportunities, bad ideas, and creative limitations.