It’s been a few weeks, maybe a few months, since I read all 15 issues of the 1970s Freedom Fighters series, and also all eight issues of the 2006 mini-series Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. I got kind of busy and didn’t write much about the series at the time, and then I forgot about it.
But now that it’s come back to me, I want to say just a few words about the experience, especially about the 1970s series.
I like the Freedom Fighters. I really do. The JLA/JSA team-up with the Freedom Fighters (JLA #107 and #108) is great fun, and one of my favorite of the annual JLA/JSA team-ups, and when you get down to it, the Freedom Fighters are a very interesting collection of characters. (Elsewhere on this thread, you can find a link to an article I wrote about the various characters that make up the Freedom Fighters.)
It’s sort of a GREAT COMIC BOOK TRAGEDY that the Freedom Fighters haven’t had more success as a group. Things just never seemed to click for them.
The ongoing series from the 1970s, despite being enjoyable and entertaining in a kind of lower-rung Bronze Age Bonkers manner, seems to me to be one missed opportunity after another.
For some reason, the Freedom Fighters decide to leave Earth-X and go to Earth-1. I believe the rationale is that Earth-X will now be boring since the Nazis have been defeated after ruling Earth for 30 years or so. Which is just mind-bogglingly stupid.
Re-building Earth-X after those decades of Nazi rule, fighting against the decades of indoctrination, disarming all the white supremacists, defusing any Nazi sleeper Armageddon devices – Geez Louise! Earth-X would have been an unstoppable Bronze Age story engine! And anything but boring!
I can see the real-world reasoning behind sending the Freedom Fighters to Earth-1 – so they can meet Wonder Woman and Superman and Batman and etc. But they should have come up with a better justification for why they were on Earth-1. Some scheme of the Silver Ghost, perhaps? That would be great! Right off the bat, the Silver Ghost drives them out of Earth-X and then pursues them to Earth-1.
Getting back to the series as we have it, the next big misstep is turning them into wanted fugitives.
The Freedom Fighters were initially welcomed by the authorities in New York City. They were even offered the use of an old armory as a headquarters!
It boggles my mind that nothing came of this because the Freedom Fighters became discredited fugitives so quickly. The idea of a super-hero team using an old armory as an HQ is fascinating. To me anyway. So much potential! The building itself could be a story engine! What secrets does the old armory hold? Vast underground chambers! The burial ground of the Mohican elders! The ghost of Peter Stuyvesant! A secret chamber hiding the remains of free blacks and abolitionists murdered during the Draft Riot of 1863!
This set-up didn’t last long enough for there to ever be a single HQ diagram showing where the reception area is or the meeting room or the kitchen or the barracks or Phantom Girl’s bedroom. The Freedom Fighters were fugitives almost immediately because of the scheming of the Silver Ghost.
I can go through these 15 issues and pick out stories that I like, such as the return of the Catman and the last few issues wherein they join Batwoman’s circus. (This was awesome, but it was too little, too late, and the series was canceled before the idea could really develop.)
But overall, the idea of a super-hero group as a bunch of wanted fugitives just didn’t really work in the long run.
A fugitive protagonist can work, as the success of the Incredible Hulk demonstrates. He wandered from issue to issue for 20 or 30 years. And every once in a while he would find a cave or make friends with a deer or a hobo, but then the Air Force would find him again and start lobbing missiles! Puny humans!
But I don’t think it worked for the Freedom Fighters. There’s not much chance for the characters to grow or develop when they are on the run all the time. Relationships within the group are hard to develop because every issue is about getting a fake ID just so you can work or being constantly worried that the person who rented you the hovel will call the cops because they recognized Uncle Sam.
Reading the series issue by issue is frustrating for several reasons, but the worst element is that there’s no real development of the characters and their relationships like you would expect from a team book.
And to be honest, it didn’t help a bit that a lot of the menaces they faced were really really very very silly. (Though, at the end, there was a story developing that sounds pretty darn awesome. It was a cross-over with the Secret Society of Super-Villains. While one branch of the Secret Society (led by The Wizard) was adventuring on Earth-2 and hunting down the Justice Society, another branch of the Secret Society had been hired by the Silver Ghost to kill the Freedom Fighters! This new branch of the Society featured - among others - Chronos, Quakemaster and Killer Moth. Some of the art for these unpublished stories was later included (in black and white) in a Secret Society of Super-Villains reprint volume.)
Returning to the idea of missed opportunities, I want to offer up my own idea for a Freedom Fighters series based on looking at the original characters and making the most of their secret identities.
For one thing, the Washington D.C. connections for two of the characters are very compelling. The Black Condor is a U.S. Senator and Phantom Girl is the daughter of a Senator. A political setting starts to seem like a good idea. And one of the characters – Uncle Sam – is the living embodiment of the American spirit! If there’s anything going on in the government that’s not kosher, Uncle Sam wants to find out and stop it!
And it keeps falling into place even more when you take a look at the other characters as well. The Human Bomb and Doll Man are both scientists, working on projects that would be vitally important to the government in any era!
And the Ray is a newspaper reporter! Update it a little bit and he’s a Washington investigative reporter with a blog who isn’t going to let anybody in the government – the Senate, the White House, CIA, FBI – get away with anything if he can help it.
I can start filling in the details with old Wonder Woman villains, but there’s a pretty strong framework for a good series right there.
(Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (eight issues in 2006 and 2007) used a framework with some of these ideas, but despite a few good scenes here and there, I mostly found it to be a forgettable mess.)
Well, that’s how I feel about the Freedom Fighters. Thanks for listening and keep ‘em flying!