The call, when it came, spread across the world in the space of a few seconds and rebounded in the brains of those meant to hear it, the echoes doubling and redoubling like the clanging of a great bell and only eventually fading away.

Dr. Watt heard it first; leading the Marines across the rocks of Truk, he was using his Electro-Gun to clear out a machine-gun bunker when he heard The Voice. Dr. Watt waved the flamethrower unit behind him forward and let them finish off the Japanese inside the bunker as he ran to the rear and sought out the Captain in charge of the push.

Captain Sheffield said, "What can I do for you, Doctor?"

Dr. Watt said, "Sorry to tell you this, Captain, but I'm being called away."

Captain Sheffield frowned and said, "That's going to hurt our operations here, Doctor. We need you."

Dr. Watt said, "I'm sorry, Captain, but this is All-Aces business."

The Captain slowly nodded. "I...see. Very well, I can't really argue with that." He reached out and shook Dr. Watt's hand, saying, "Can you at least tell me what this is about? Is this the Blue Queen again, or Kapitan Deutschland, or--"

Watt shook his head. "I don't really know. He...I've just been told to return to headquarters as soon as possible." And with that he activated his jet-boots and took to the skies.

Carnifex heard the call in Berlin, but shut it out of his mind for a moment and concentrated on the task at hand. He watched the Reichstag and the military cars arriving in front of it, his eyes squinting into his binoculars and his lips moving silently as he counted; he watched as the last of the cars disgorged their black-uniformed passengers, and watched as they slowly walked up the steps of the Reichstag, chatting among themselves.

When he was sure that the last of the generals and their adjutants were all the way in the building, and he was more or less certain that they would be sitting down to their meeting, he flipped the three toggles on the small black box he held, and then pressed its central button.

Although Carnifex was two blocks away from the Reichstag, he was still thrown off his feet by the force of the explosion, and it took some quick rolling and dodging to avoid the shrapnel. He grinned with a feral pleasure and punched a combination on the mechanism he wore strapped to his left arm, and within a minute's time a small, oddly shaped plane with four Xs pained on each wing dropped from the sky, abruptly braked twenty feet above him, unrolled a rope ladder, and then took off as soon as the Carnifex was three rungs up the ladder. When the SS arrived on the rooftop an hour later, the only evidence they found of the Carnifex's presence was the decapitated body of Reynhard Heydrich, along with Carnifex's card, bearing his headsman's-axe crest, pinned to Heydrich's body.

H2O was in the Philippines Sea when he heard The Voice. H2O did not pause in what he was doing, but continued on, because he knew that stopping would destroy his plan. In his watery form he continued pushing the water before him. 180 pounds - about 25.7 gallons - of water is heavy, but not necessarily dangerous to a warship. H2O, given the ability to change his body into water by a chemical solution of his own creation, knew this. However, in his 2 years of crimefighting, he had learned much about water, both from experience and because he had made a point of asking scientists about it. So when H2O had found the Japanese fleet (in mist form he'd floated, spread into a mile-wide cloud, across the Pacific until he'd located them) he'd dropped into the ocean, retreated about 30 miles, spread himself into a hard rectangular bar of water about 300 yards wide, and began pushing himself, and the water in front of him, forward. Water is easy to push in small quantities, but in large amounts it is extremely difficult to move. Unless, of course, there is something in the water itself, continually pushing it forward. Propelled forward by H2O, and aided by momentum (a remorseless law which knows no exceptions), the water grew in size and speed, so that by the time it reached the Japanese fleet it was a 100' high wall - a liquid fist aimed at the face of the Japanese fleet. Admiral Yamamoto and his staff, along with over 5,000 of the men on-board the 23 battleships and destroyers, did not survive H2O's first pass. The remaining ships, which scattered at flank speed, were picked of by H2O's second and third waves. At that point H2O changed back into cloud form and jetted towards the United States.

In Leningrad the Revenant heard The Voice particularly strongly; as a ghost he was peculiarly vulnerable to certain kinds of magics, and the call of The Voice was one of them. Like the other All-Aces, however, he felt that his immediate task was more important than whatever it was that The Voice's master wanted at that moment. So the Revenant continued his work. He sent one final plea to the German soldiers; the Revenant had been a child when he died, and although he had been killed when a German submarine sank the passenger liner he was on, he bore the Germans no particular ill-will, and still had a child's softheartedness. The German soldiers, in their bunkers and in the burned-out buildings and crouched behind the rubble that had been Leningrad, were frightened by the sight of the spectral, white-turtleneck-wearing Revenant, looming over the smoking, ruined landscape of Leningrad, his eyes pleading as he asked them one last time to give up. But the Germans and Finns and Hungarians and Romanians and Italians were more frightened of those above them in their armies, and so they launched another attack.

The Revenant, saddened, looked at his companion and keeper, Kadashiel, of the lesser order of the Grigori, the order of angel called The Watchers, who slowly and sadly nodded. The Revenant said, in Russian, "Comrades! Awaken from your deep sleeps and stony beds, and take up arms to defend the Motherland again!"

To the horror and terror of the Germans and their allies, from all around them dead Russians stirred and rose and began to attack; those who could still hold weapons using them and those who could not using their hands and teeth. The Germans fought back, but after the corpses were destroyed their spirits continued to fight, and this the Germans could not bear to face, and so they threw down their weapons and ran, quickly pursued by Russians living and dead. Within an hour Leningrad, mostly-destroyed and much reduced, was free of Axis forces. Only then did the Revenant and his keeper vanish from the slate-grey morning sky of Leningrad and reappear in the Washington headquarters of the All-Aces Squad.

The Pussy Cat heard The Voice crouched in the upper branches of a palm tree at the edge of the main Japanese encampment on Guadalcanal. She waited until its echoes faded away, then leapt forward, sneaking like her namesake into the camp, using the steel claws in her gauntlet and her garotte and knife on the guards she encountered. In the middle of the camp she began dropping lit dynamite down the smoke pipes of the troop barracks and throwing the dynamite into trenches and tents. In the carnage and confusion she slipped out of the camp and then began running for the American lines. Her work on Guadalcanal was not done, but obviously something important had come up back home, and the All-Aces needed her.

Kid Comet was in hot pursuit of a large number of German Messerschmidts and Stukas when the call came. With his talent for what later generations would call multi-tasking, the Kid muttered, "Yeah, yeah" as the Comet, the jet plane that he had built from scratch, roared after the 32 bogies. He'd caught them on their way to England, over the Channel, only a few miles from the British shoreline. The Kid thought it said something for their discipline that they did not immediately break formation and flee when he appeared; although he and the other All-Aces had, like America itself, only been in the war for a few days, he'd made the curve-winged silhouette of the Comet feared among Axis pilots in that short amount of time. There were 78 stenciled planes on the side of the Comet, and after today he'd be adding a couple of dozen more.

Although the German planes hadn't run when he'd first encountered them today, most of their fighters had flown up to meet him, ignoring the potential danger of whatever RAF pilots might also be on the prowl; the Kid felt some pride in the fact that the German pilots not only feared him more than anything else, but that each wanted to be the one to boast that they had been the one to shoot down the feared and famous Kid Comet.

The Kid, of course, knew that wasn't going to happen; he was a match for any kraut fighter, no matter how good they might be. (That his fighter was better than anything the Germans might produce was merely a happy accident of war.) And he was proving it again today. His first pass had taken down 4 Stukas, his .30s riddling them and sending them down in slow, flaming spirals. The pursuing fighters had not been able to match his high-G turns, and the pursuers had quickly found themselves pursued, and then dead.

It had only taken 90 seconds of that for the Germans to choose the better part of valor, and now what was left of their mighty bombing run was high-tailing it back for friendly skies. Unfortunately for them, however, Kid Comet was not about to let them get away that easily. He made two more passes, swooping down from above and riddling everything in sight with his machine guns. Then, over the forests of Alsace-Lorraine, when the ack-ack was getting too thick even for him, he thumbed the newest weapon of the Comet, the one designed for him personally by 4X, Night Flyer, and Inquisitor, and sent his full compliment of heat-seeking missiles after the fleeing planes, shooting down sixteen more of them. In all, of the 78 fighters and bombers that had left Germany, only 7 made it back to describe what had happened to them.

Content with his night's work, Kid Comet turned his jet to the East and started the long flight back to Washington. When he radioed ahead to the All-Aces headquarters, he was not given a satisfactory answer as to why everyone had to be there, but he'd come to expect ambiguity from some of the other All-Aces, and he was not irritated.

"Mmmwwhaa? Yes?"

"Sorry to interrupt your sleep, sir, but I'm thinking you'll want to see this."

"Very well, Captain."

"You see what I mean, sir?"

"Mmmm. Yes, I do. Very well, Captain, give the orders to the crew. Prepare the brig."

"But...sir. My ship isn't equipped to hold prisoners like...that."

"Captain, when Future Boy and the Night Flyer tell you that they've got the Crimson Claw and Kapitan Deutschland and First Man for you, and they want you to hold them for you now, you don't question it. You just do as they say, and figure it out later."

"I'm Edward R. Murrow, and this...is London. To the people of Britain, and especially London, this war has come to mean one thing: misery. The misery of fear, as they huddle in the bomb shelters, awaiting the next air raid. The misery of privation, as the Germans daily take away their food, leaving everyone with tightened belts and growling stomachs. The misery of hopelessness, as the Luftwaffe and the German super-men kill the brave defenders of Britain - kill without mercy, without feeling for fellow man - kill, because their Fuhrer demands it. The misery of loss, of losing homes and loved ones.

"And the British have borne this misery without complaining, in a show of unity and courage that would do any country proud. They have done this secure in the knowledge that they would eventually defeat the evil that is Nazi Germany.

"With the entrance of the America into the war, the misery of London began to lighten; a country that had lost its own super-men in the dark days leading up to Dunkirk, and whose army was hard-pressed in Africa and elsewhere, could take comfort in the imminent entrance into the conflict of a new army, a new navy, and a new team of super-men.

"No one, however, anticipated...this.

"Behind me you should be able to hear the cheers of London. The war, to them, no longer means just misery. It is coming to mean something else: triumph.

"America has been at war with the Axis powers for exactly five days. In that time the famous All-Aces Squad has almost single-handedly turned the conflict around and ended the war.

"Above me Mr. and Mrs. Bullet and the Inquisitor are flying slow and triumphant victory circles. All of London has emerged from their shelters to see this. Just as Kid Comet had early today turned back the last and final raid by the Germans on this proud city, so too have the three All-Aces taken the war to the Germans themselves. England has just received word that only scant hours ago the three mounted a raid on German airbases across Occupied Europe, and even into the motherland of Nazism itself. The Bullets, with their ability to repel both gravity and metal, and the Inquisitor, in his special airship, swept across France and Germany, destroying all in their path. Now German air power lies in ruins, their ability to strike beyond their own borders reduced to nothing.

"And now London, so long besieged by the forces of Germany, knows another feeling: joy.

"I'm Edward R. Murrow, and this is London, on December 13, 1941."

From the New York Times' 1953 review of the documentary The Seven Days' War:

"...unique in history, in that for the first time motion picture cameras accompanied the combatants, allowing an unprecedented viewpoint, for bystanders, of the action, and preserving it so that generations to come could understand what the conflict had truly been like.

"And no viewer, seeing this film, could come away with anything less than an understanding of what modern war will be like. As long as the super-men are a part of our world--and there is no indication that they are going away--modern warfare will have a distinctly Hobbesian tone: nasty, brutish, and above all short.

"No one, seeing the fifteen minutes of Normandy footage, could have any illusions about what future wars will consist of. The German fortifications along the coast were truly impressive; they looked to be proof against any assault by American or British forces. But in ten short minutes the Magnetic Man reduced them to rubble. And we see it all.

"The government censors are to be applauded for allowing this footage to be released. And Welles is to be applauded for incorporating the minutes directly before and after the attack into the film, the touch of a film director new to documentaries, who sees real life through the eye of a man more accustomed to the rhythms of art. We see the Magnetic Man, chatting with the pilots of his transport; film like this gives the viewer a unique insight into the character of the Magnetic Man. And we see him after the attack, and although we see him trying to cover it up, we see that the deaths of so many German soldiers--the deaths that he has caused--have affected him.

"My only criticism of this sequence is that Ernie Pyle's narration, while customarily terse and incisive, is at times unnecessary. Some images--that of the surviving Germans surrendering to the Magnetic Man, and to the British commandos and paratroopers landing in the wake of the Magnetic Man's attack--are so powerful, even 12 years later, that no narration is necessary..."

By Sidney Hudgens

Here in Los Angeles we get all kinds, from the off-duty cops milking Mickey Cohen's cows and skimming the cream to the Hollywood stars and starlets spreading goodwill around in exchange for getting their maryjane busts squashed. And we hear all sorts of things, too: the "actresses" staying at the secret apartments of certain reclusive millionaires who just happen to own films of these same "actresses" involved in animal shows down Tijuana-way; crime-busting police who bust heads for pay if the heads belong to picketers who want better living conditions and health insurance--especially if they want these pricy items from those same reclusive millionaires; D.A.s who prefer the company of gentlemen, especially if the gentlemen can be found in the restrooms of certain truckstops; resort park builders who share more than dollars with their assistants and best friends--like, say, a certain Mexican beauty not quite old enough to vote. And, hey, hepcat, that's okay with us. We're from Hollywood, and nothing shocks us, especially rumors of the lifestyles of the rich and (in)famous.

But sometimes you hear whispers that are too good to pass up, especially when they're corroborated. So dig this, hepcats: when you take a trip south of Jefferson Avenue on a Friday or Saturday night, you might run into a war-hero, cruising for a dusky deelite.

We've got nothing against the men who bravely risked their lives for us in the One Week War, understand, and whatever sinuendo we hear about them is surely their own business. But we also believe in the truth--even The Truth--and when the Yankee Doodle says, "If I'm lyin', I'm flyin'" and then flies away, we have to start to wonder if it's not just the bad guys that he's beating up, but the truth, as well.

So stroll down to Minnie Roberts' Casbah, the happinest colored cathouse on L.A.'s southside. Get your hair marcelled, toss on your best purple sharkskin suit, and grab a booth in the corner, and watch the night life flow through the doors. Pay special attention to those who want to trip the dark fantastic.

Like the Yankee Doodle and the Green Fog, these past five weeks. In town to try to rein in the sprawling crime empire of Mickey C., they blow off steam on their off-hours by seeing if it's true--that the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. The pair, who sinuendo has sometimes linked to something sticky that doesn't involve women, seem to have better things to do than play the fruitfly: they've spent their Friday & Saturday nights busy with some Congo cuties. Nobody knows who the two costumed crime-fighters are, of course, and whatever long-suffering hausfraus they have remain a secret, even to us, but we have to wonder if they know that their hero husbands are patrons of the Darktown Strutter's Ball. The drinks are tall, the jazz is cool, reefer smoke wreathes the lights, and a wailing tenor sax counterpoints some black-white love for the costumes.

Of course, they aren't alone in this. A secret Hush-Hush correspondent whispered to us that the Cat (who you'll remember from the Gotham Gaslight case, broken first by Your Humble Newspaper) likes his kittens dark, Daddy-O, as in midnight-black. He's a regular on Thursday nights at certain nightspots in Harlem's Sugar Hill, where he digs the jazz hot and cold and likes to party slow and long with les femmes long and leggy, zesty and chesty, and dark and dusky.

Finally--and we know you're sobbin', but even we have limits to what we can say, at least for today--a little birdie chirped in our ear that birds are just what the Flame, war-hero and twenty-year crime-fighter with a string of arrests to make J. Edgar proud, is not interested in. Seems this little birdie was at a certain bar in Chicago's Gold Coast--a bar catering to That Certain Kind Of Gentleman--when he saw Heat Wave dancing, cheek-to-cheek, with an older, grey-haired fellow. Of course, it was a costume ball, and many of the Nancys in the crowd were dressed up as other heroes--our winged friend says that the Red Death & Crimson Kid duo were particularly popular--but then the Flame lit his date's cigarette with his finger--and only the genuine McCoy can do that sans lighter. The two left, hand-in-hand, for some midnight rendezvous, no doubt in a swish--sorry, posh--Evanston apartment.

Hey, hepcats, don't look at us, we don't make this sort of thing up, we just report it. If the cold, cruel, outside world wants to make something of it, well, that's their affair.

Remember, dear reader, you heard it here first--off the record, on the Q.T., and very Hush-Hush.

From the Partisan Review's 1962 review of We Never Called Ourselves "Sidekicks":

"...what's truly frustrating about this 'autobiography' is not what's included, but what is left out.

"Anyone who has paid attention to the histories of the Seven Days War written in the years afterwards has pieced together the answers to some of the common mysteries of the war, even the ones that the government does not want us to know about. "Sidekicks" does confirm several of them, and even gives us answers to other questions, some we did not even know to ask. But other questions, ones that have plagued the public consciousness for over twenty years--since before America even entered the war, in fact--are not only not answered, but never even addressed.

"Was it true, for example, what was long-rumored about the Protector and the Red Death? It was always denied, and indignantly so--and if it wasn't true, then they had some right to be angry. But no one can be blamed for thinking it peculiar that two grown men would run around in tights, fighting crime, accompanied by two pre-pubescent boys. Especially given the now-famous statements of certain psychiatrists, most notoriously Dr. Wertham, to the effect that the "kid sidekick" was in effect an open invitation to other pederasts. So why not at least address this issue? It's not as if nobody was thinking about it.

"Similarly, absolutely no mention was made of the infamous Hero Scandals of the mid-Fifties. Why? If what the scandal rags said about Heat Wave and the Cat and Yankee Doodle and the Green Fog wasn't true, shouldn't the rumors be addressed and definitively rebutted? And if it is true, why not take advantage of this opportunity to explain and justify onesself?

"And who killed Hitler? Oh, everyone knows the story that the heroes told: that Carnifex and the Night Terror and the Commando stormed his bunker and that he died in a firefight. But is it the truth? Why was Hitler's body never found? The Russians are mum about this; even after Future Man and the other All-Aces brought about the end of the Communist regime and the beginning of a democratic system, the Russians still refuse to talk about some things--the Katyn Forest massacre, for one. Why won't they discuss what happened to Hitler?

"Similarly, where did Hirohito and Tojo and the rest of the Japanese High Command go? The Crimson Kid was close to the Red Death, and he and Special Agent America were the ones known to have gone on that final attack into Tokyo. Were the Japanese leaders killed? After Future Man insisted on dismantling MIDI and the Diet, and bringing true democracy to Japan, many of those who had committed war crimes against the Chinese and the British could not be found to be brought to justice, and have never resurfaced since. Where did they go? Were they killed during the war? If so, why are the Red Death and the others afraid to discuss it?

"And what about the Union of South Africa? It's known that Future Man, Future Woman, and Future Boy were active there immediately after the war, and given the abrupt reversal in racial policies, with whites suddenly ceding power to blacks and Indians, and a true democracy arising from what had been a state-run government of inequity, it's obvious that the Future Family did something to change matters there. But for twenty years the South Africans have steadfastly refused to discuss the matter, even off the record. And now, with an 'autobiography' partially penned by Future Boy himself, there is not one word even obliquely referring to whatever happened in Johannesburg in December 1941 and January 1942. This omission cannot be accidental..."

"I Am There" by Jascha Schwartzberg, from the Oregon Poetry Review, v2 n4, March 1969.

I am there, in the camps, when they come to free us
I and many like me
I who was forgotten, abandoned, cast aside by the rest of the world
By you.
I am there, bony fingers on barbed wire, staring eyes in sunken eyesockets
I am there, in Chelmno and Lodz.
I am there.

"Seven Days War," they call it.
Not for me. For me the war began eight years ago, when he came to power.
When he began telling others that I was evil, and that I needed killing.
Me, and hundreds of thousands of others like me.
For me the war began eight years ago
For me the war began five thousand years ago.
A long seven days.

You knew what they did to us. There was plenty of warning.
You didn't care.
Only when the Japanese threatened your oil, and then sank your ships, did you get involved.
I am there in the ships you turned away, our hopes for a new home crushed.
I am there when we are forced to dock in Holland.
I am there when we find out that Holland is not safe for us.

He cared, though. The man with the lightning bolt on his chest.
And I am there when he comes. He and the others of his family.
The boom of the sound barrier falling, the explosions and screams as the guard towers go down.
I am there, looking up in wonder, as the Germans fight and then surrender - the "master race" humbled by three people.

I am there when we are returned to our homeland.
Returned, after centuries away.
Returned, when those who took our place try to stop us.
I am there when the rivers are dug and the kibbutzim are founded.
I am there when the Arabs try to war on us, and the man with the lightning bolt on his chest stops them.
I am there when the United Nations accept us.
I am there when the Inquisitor joins us, a man whose name meant death for me, centuries ago.
I am there when the desert blooms, and my children are born and never know the fear of the diaspora, or the terror of Cossack hoofbeats in the night.
I am there when my nightmares begin to fade, and I finally sleep at night without dreams, and when a new generation of children see the numbers on my arm only as a curiosity.

I was there.

"Muezzin, why have you called us together? We were...I was busy. There's a lot to be done, still."

"Yeah - there are a lot of islands out there the Japs are still on, and they aren't leaving until we make them."

"There is a danger above and beyond that of the Germans and Japanese. I have felt it, and the Sceptre has felt it, and we must respond to it. Now."

"Very well, then, Muezzin. What's this danger?"

"Several universes away, there is a crystal that holds the key to the Multiverse. It is in danger..."

Author's notes:

You might say that part of Liberators: Another World, Not My Own has been my attempt, among other things, to tell a couple of different World War Two stories from the ones I've been telling in my other books. The Earth-S issue was my take on WW2 and the immediate-post-WW2 world of the DC heroes, if the (lame-ass Roy "Hack" Thomas idea) Spear of Destiny concept was true, and the heroes had to cool their heels on the homefront. The Liberators proper is my take on how WW2 might go with Marvel's Golden Age heroes. This issue is my take on what I think might really happen if there were superheroes around when Japan declared war on the United States: the war would be over in a matter of days.

Hush-Hush (not my creation) is a fictional version of the great scandal mags of the 1950s. And, yes, they did write like that, only with a punchier lingo than I could manage.

The All-Aces Squad of Earth-N was as follows

Carnifex - Hangman, The Cat - Catman, The Commando - Commando Yank, Dr. Watt - Blue Bolt, 4X - Blue Beetle, Future Boy - Captain Marvel Jr., Future Man - Captain Marvel, Future Woman - Mary Marvel, G-Boy - Crimebuster, Green Fog - The Green Hornet, Heat Wave - The Flame, Hotshot - Daredevil, H2O - Hydroman, Inquisitor - Spy Smasher, Kid Comet - Airboy, Magnetic Man - Magno, Mr. Bullet - Bulletman, Mrs. Bullet - Bulletwoman, Muezzin - Ibis , Night Flyer - Captain Midnight, Night Terror - Black Terror, Protector & Kid Protector - The Shield & Dusty, Pussy Cat - Black Cat, Red Death & the Crimson Kid - Mr. Scarlet & Pinky, Revenant - Kid Eternity, Special Agent America - Minuteman, Yankee Doodle - Fighting Yank