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  1. #16
    Extraordinary Member superduperman's Avatar
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    Earth 2 Aquaman appeared in All Star Squadron #59 just before the reboot. Given how close they were to rebooting the universe back then, I'm kind of surprise they even bothered. This was when Mekanique held back the timeline.
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  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    Earth 2 Aquaman appeared in All Star Squadron #59 just before the reboot. Given how close they were to rebooting the universe back then, I'm kind of surprise they even bothered. This was when Mekanique held back the timeline.
    Just my opinion, but I kind of suspect that was Thomas doing all he could to pay a respectful homage to DC's magnificent history before Wolfman and Perez overwrote it. I think he echoed that by making the Post-Crisis All-Star Squadron's first collection of Big Bads be The Axis Super-Friends +Green Arrow.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by mrjames21 View Post
    I believe that the reason the JSAers had their kids in the late 50's/60's was due to McCarthyism which tried to force them all to reveal their identities or retire. They chose to retire.
    They retired in 1951, which was uncoincidentally when their comic was cancelled, but that leaves more than a decade of retirement before any of them start having kids. What were they doing during all that time? Seems like something ripe with story potential.

    Although, I suppose that DC was already a little gunshy about the ages of the JSAers even as far back as the 80s, so they probably didn't want to draw attention to it.

  4. #19
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    It's a tail wagging the dog thing. The reason Levitz wrote that story where the J.S.A. drops out of sight in 1951 was because they were cancelled in 1951--ALL-STAR COMICS became ALL-STAR WESTERN. So Levitz was simply inventing an excuse for something that had already happened. The reason Infinity, Inc., were all young was because young super-hero teams were all the rage at the time--so they had to be young for the purpose of the market. I'm not sure it would be any different now--a writer would have to find an excuse why all the heroes were in their teens or twenties, because those seem to be the only characters that comic book readers care about.

    I recall that Roy Thomas had said in an interview that he made the deal with D.C. to do the All-Star Squadron--which was a risk because it wasn't the kind of thing that was popular at the time--but if that didn't work out, he had another concept that would be the kind of thing that was popular. So I'm guessing that was Infinity, Inc. Although, it seems like the All-Star Squadron had proved popular--and Thomas simply created the Infinitors as an added bonus for the specialty market. And it doesn't seem like sales killed the Squadron--it was simply D.C.'s shifting continuity that made the original concept impossible. So then Thomas created yet another young super-hero team to fill the void--the Young All-Stars.

    And he probably introduced Earth-Two Aquaman near the end of the Squardon's run, because he already knew he was going to invent a character to take his place in the post-Crisis continuity--so he wanted to establish that parallel.

  5. #20
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    All that about Aquaman is interesting. I still maintain though that DC should do a mini...or more likely a maxi series on the original Earth 2, showing it's history and principle characters while introducing modern readers to the JSA, Infinity Inc, the Injustice Society, (now undoubtedly influenced by the version in Stargirl the TV show), and others DC might want to sweep under the Earth 2 rubric, mostly period or non superhero types like the Challengers of the Unknown, sundry war comics, and the like, possibly others.

    And I think an overall theme for Earth 2 should be a surprisingly advanced retro future place. Hope, and looking toward the future with optimism, should be the overall feeling you take away from reading any Earth 2 mini, maxi, or ongoing.

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    ...I suppose that DC was already a little gunshy about the ages of the JSAers even as far back as the 80s, so they probably didn't want to draw attention to it.
    Bates and Maggin proposed what I thought a fairly elegant solution to the entire JSA age thing back in 1975: simply assume time passes more slowly on E2 than on E1.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    Bates and Maggin proposed what I thought a fairly elegant solution to the entire JSA age thing back in 1975: simply assume time passes more slowly on E2 than on E1.
    I dunno. I've heard about this but don't think I've actually read any stories actually suggesting it.

    The prevalent view seems to be that E2 was in 'real time' while E1 had a 'floating timeline'. Exposure to energies from Ian Karkull kept the JSA'ers relatively young.

    As for how E1/E2 crossovers worked due to the differing ways time was handled on those worlds? America vs. the Justice Society suggested that while it was 1963 on E2 when Barry and Jay first met (the year "The Flash of Two Worlds" was published), Barry came from a later year on E1. So it was 1963 for Jay, but probably around 1973 or so for Barry.

    The trouble with this is that it suggests that the passage of time is actually faster on E2. Because by 1985, both E1 and E2 heroes were in the same year. So this means that Jay knew Barry between 1963 and 1985, while Barry knew Jay between 1973 and 1985. A 22 year period of time on Earth 2 was close to a 12ish year period of time on Earth 1.

    Then again, there's never been any real clarity about the passage of time on E1 and how long passed between the early careers of Superman and Batman, and COIE. In "The Player on the Other Side", the Batman special that introduced the Wrath, the Wayne murders are said to have been 25 years ago. Assuming Bruce was 8 when they died, he would be 33 in the 'present' shortly before COIE, which suggests a Batman career of around a decade (Dick's age would bear that out). But I'm sure there are other sources that would contradict that (there's a 70's JLA story which gives a firm date of 1959 to Hal's origin as GL, and the period just before the League formed).

  8. #23
    insulin4all CaptCleghorn's Avatar
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    As much as I would like to see a canonical explanation to time passing between Earths One and Two, I can understand why DC is reticent to do such a thing. It would be impossible to come up with a fool-proof system that someone could punch holes in and find problems. The focus goes from stories to finding bugs and that, IMHO, shouldn't be DC's intention. Any actual Earth Two stuff was pre-Crisis when real life passing of time was feasible with an Ian Karkull to squeeze a few more years out of those ages. But Flash 123 and JLofA 21 were written back when the question "But what will we so in 2020?" wasn't a concern.

    DC still hasn't done much with bring the JSA back and with this years cluster***k of events, it's understandable that may not be high on their Honeydew list. Doesn't mean I'm not screaming "I WANT MY JSA!" but I get it.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by bat39 View Post
    I dunno. I've heard about this but don't think I've actually read any stories actually suggesting it..
    JLA 123 didn't suggest it, Bates and Maggin explicitly stated it. Just nobody else ever picked it up.
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    Quote Originally Posted by CaptCleghorn View Post
    As much as I would like to see a canonical explanation to time passing between Earths One and Two, I can understand why DC is reticent to do such a thing. It would be impossible to come up with a fool-proof system that someone could punch holes in and find problems. The focus goes from stories to finding bugs and that, IMHO, shouldn't be DC's intention. Any actual Earth Two stuff was pre-Crisis when real life passing of time was feasible with an Ian Karkull to squeeze a few more years out of those ages. But Flash 123 and JLofA 21 were written back when the question "But what will we so in 2020?" wasn't a concern.

    DC still hasn't done much with bring the JSA back and with this years cluster***k of events, it's understandable that may not be high on their Honeydew list. Doesn't mean I'm not screaming "I WANT MY JSA!" but I get it.
    I agree, it wouldn't be easy, but it would side-step all the nagging age questions.

  10. #25
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    Off topic: It would be nice to have a comic collection of every title numbered 123.

  11. #26
    Extraordinary Member superduperman's Avatar
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    In the America vs. The Justice Society mini, the whole time passing slower thing was hinted at. They don't go into a lot of detail about how it works but Flash is testifying and talks about meeting Earth 1's Flash in 1961 but he wasn't sure time worked the same over there as it did on Earth 2.
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  12. #27
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    I seem to recall other stories besides the Bates & Maggin one where they gave some explanation of the time differential. Really, you just have to accept that there's some reason for it, but let's not get too worried about it. Like with everything in super-hero comics.

  13. #28
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    Earth-2 is really a 1961-1985 invention that pretended to be the continuation of 1938-1951 comics, but added quite a bit and there was no consistent Golden Age continuity in the first place. Some of the superficial characteristics that were supposed to distinguish the Earth-1 Superman from the Earth-2 Superman occurred before the 1947 story that showed Superman and Batman both appear in a JSA adventure in All Star #36. For example, Perry White was first shown in November 1940, one month before the debut of the Justice Society, and Clark Kent's newspaper was already the Daily Planet by that time. Superman's family name changed from "-L" to "-El" before 1947.

    The Silver Age invention of the Earth-2 world imagined, basically, that any detail in Superman's early publications that changed were "Earth-2" before the change and "Earth-1" after the change even if the change occurred before 1947. The oval-less Batman costume was posited to be the "Earth-2" costume even though it was what Batman wore for the first few years of JLA stories, not to mention over a decade of team-ups with Superman that began with Superman #76 in 1952.


    http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2015/02/h...1935-1985.html

  14. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rikdad View Post
    Earth-2 is really a 1961-1985 invention that pretended to be the continuation of 1938-1951 comics, but added quite a bit and there was no consistent Golden Age continuity in the first place. Some of the superficial characteristics that were supposed to distinguish the Earth-1 Superman from the Earth-2 Superman occurred before the 1947 story that showed Superman and Batman both appear in a JSA adventure in All Star #36. For example, Perry White was first shown in November 1940, one month before the debut of the Justice Society, and Clark Kent's newspaper was already the Daily Planet by that time. Superman's family name changed from "-L" to "-El" before 1947.

    The Silver Age invention of the Earth-2 world imagined, basically, that any detail in Superman's early publications that changed were "Earth-2" before the change and "Earth-1" after the change even if the change occurred before 1947. The oval-less Batman costume was posited to be the "Earth-2" costume even though it was what Batman wore for the first few years of JLA stories, not to mention over a decade of team-ups with Superman that began with Superman #76 in 1952.


    http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2015/02/h...1935-1985.html
    Agreed. This is why I think Doomsday Clock's new explanation for the creation of Earth-2 was so elegant. It explains the differences between the Earth-1 and Earth-2 Superman in a way that makes far more sense than the idea that this was the Superman from every comic prior to 1950-something. The notion that Earth-2 was the Metaverse's way of preserving that early version of Superman works much better for me.

  15. #30
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    My recollection from a Bob Rozakis answer column is that the unnamed copy boy at the Daily Star/Planet on Earth-2 was not Jimmy Olsen but was Beany Martin, a nod to the copyboy from the radio serial who would fill in for Jimmy on Thursdays.

    https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/Beany_Martin

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