JSA / Justice Society of America Appreciation Thread 2022 version

[D.Z]

Anotehr Earth 2 exists thanks to doosmdays clock.

[Frontier]

I've never needed Superman to be the absolute first hero of the DCU.

Like, the JSA have been inactive for decades and then this new hero comes in with power and ability beyond anything anyone has ever seen anymore and ushers in a new age of heroes unlike any that has come before. I think that works.

[Stingo]

Bringing back Earth-Two is my optimal solution.

I don't think WW2 is that important to the JSA. But them having attitudes and personalities from that period including all the social baggage is. The key to a new Earth Two (two is spelled out to specify it's the pre-Crisis version) is placing the time of the current day at 1986. And yes, they will be cries of "no mullets, no outdated trends and tech!" Rightfully so. The retcon I suggest is to change the planet so it has been dramatically affected by the JSA's activities. It's now a retro-future world where hair styles and slang are far from out world's. There we go. Ages fixed, supporting casts and kids, fixed. Villains fixed.

I would buy this pitch, absolutely!

[Psy-lock]

You folks have convinced me: the Justice Society of America I use to know and love can't be saved.

You evolve or you die, there's no middle ground

[John Venus]

The need for Superman to be the first and best hero is always going to be an anchor on the necks of the JSA and also the Marvel Family. Although thankfully Billy seems to have gotten some mileage seeing as he has two movies while we are still waiting for another Superman movie.

To me, Jay, Alan and Ted Grant were the core of the JSA. I always felt that the presence of an older Superman overshadowed them and Hippolyta is just there most of the time and makes you wonder why the writers showed her there if they are not going to use her. Of course, my perception is coloured by the fact that I got into the JSA during Robinson/Goyer/Johns run. I also love the brief JSA series drawn by Mike Parobeck in the early 90's and Jay's appearance in Flash Vol 2.

Personally, I think you guys are over complicating it when the solution has been laid out a few pages back:

Problem: The JSA needs to maintain their ties to WW2 but at the same time they also need to believably survived until the present day and have had kids of various ages.

Some of the Golden Age characters can be allowed to age naturally but the characters we need for the present day need to be kept simple. The more time passes the more complicated family trees become you go from kids to grand kids to great grand kids and cousins which you are going to have constantly retcon into the main timeline.

There is also the fact that some of the JSA members are so powerful that there is no way the present day of the DCU is going to look the same if super powered Gods had existed from the 40's to the present day. Also, retired or not, its hard to believe Alan, Jay or Rex would do nothing for half a century. They're old school heroes, they wouldn't be able to stop themselves from rescuing people from a burning building or foil a bank heist.

Solution: It is simple and has been said before. The JSA was disbanded but the 'House of Unamerican Activities' in the 1955. You can also add in that many heroes were PTSD ridden and mentally broken after the war. In 1957 or thereabouts they briefly come out of retirement to fight Surtur. You can add in that Ian Karkull kidnapped their spouses and kids and lured them to the hell dimension. A fight ensues and the JSA are trapped in the dimension. However, by the time they come out, decades have passed in the real world.

So they choose to retire and settle down with their kids. Dinah Laurel Lance, Jack Knight, David Knight, Jenny Lynn Haden, Todd Rice, Hector Hall and all the other JSA kids are born during this time.

Ted Grant meanwhile trains a young Dinah Laurel Lance, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle. He also becomes a Godfather to Yelena.

It also wouldn't just be the JSA but also some of their villains too like Sportsmaster and Tigress who settled down and have Artemis Crock.

[ultradav]

I proposed a few weeks back what some have said. It doesn't have to be that complicated. They fought in WWII. In 1951 they go into limbo. Maybe it's Ragnarok. Maybe it's the old "Keystone City frozen in time" explanation if you want to maintain a larger world. "Twenty years ago" they came back and settled down and had kids. Present day some crisis motivates them to pick up their mantles again, chronologically in their fifties or so.

There's a million ways to make it work in my opinion. In the hands of a good writer, "society out of time" approach could be really compelling if you went the route of them being time displaced. You could also just say that the Injustice Society tried to trap them in another dimension at the end of the War and screwed up and ended up trapping all of them in limbo for xxx number of years. Marvel doesn't fret about this with some of their WWII characters, so why should DC? Yes there's more moving pieces with the JSA but it shouldn't be over complicated.

Alan & Jay & Hawkman are the only really indispensable ones if you just go the long-lived approach, but that's just my personal opinion. Ted was barely in the Golden Age JSA, but of course he became an important part later on. I really love Joan but I wouldn't say it's essential to keep her if it helps more for her to be just a major part of Jay's past. But like I said there are pretty simple solutions where you could keep some of the supporting cast if you wanted to. The Ian Karkull story involved some of the spouses, there's no reason that can't be canon again either, it was a pretty simple way to explain them all having enhanced longevity. Where've they been all this time? They just retired, later came back. You can move the birth dates of the Infinitors up pretty easily in either this or the time displaced scenarios.

[Alpha]

This myth of the sliding timeine just isn't true. Jon Kent won't be removed from continuity. Damian Wayne is in fact growing up. Jason Todd and Harley Quinn aren't gonna backtrack in their character arcs. We are moving forward. Which means that we won't see a day where Rick Tyler is Rex's great great grandson.

And I like Ted Grant but he really doesn't have to be alive in the present. He will still be one of the best boxers of all time, a legendary guy that stood besides a Green Lantern and a Flash without any powers or gadgets. And he can still train other great superheroes when they were starting out.

I think the idea that the JSA watched society change in front of them this whole time is essential. Not the team that watched society change *with a 20 or 30 year time skip in between

[achilles]

This myth of the sliding timeine just isn't true. Jon Kent won't be removed from continuity. Damian Wayne is in fact growing up. Jason Todd and Harley Quinn aren't gonna keep evolving. We are moving forward. Which means that we won't see a day where Rick Tyler is Rex's great great grandson.

And I like Ted Grant but he really doesn't have to be alive in the present. He will still be one of the best boxers of all time, a legendary guy that stood besides a Green Lantern and a Flash without any powers or gadgets. And he can still train other great superheroes when they were starting out.

I think the idea that the JSA watched society change in front of them this whole time is essential. Not the team that watched society change *with a 20 or 30 year time skip in between

Ted has himself a very nice explanation for his survival; it'd be a shame to waste it.

[Stingo]

Ted has himself a very nice explanation for his survival; it'd be a shame to waste it.

Doesn't Ted's "Nine Lives" (introduced during the Goyer/Robinson/Johns iteration of the JSA) go some distance in explaining his longevity?

[Nomads1]

When was the All-Star Squadron Annual #3, Ian Karkull explanation for the JSA longevity discarded? Post COIE?

Peace

[Stingo]

When was the All-Star Squadron Annual #3, Ian Karkull explanation for the JSA longevity discarded? Post COIE?

Peace

Hi Nomads,

Roy Thomas and his ingenious All-Star Squadron Annual 3 was canon all the way up to Flashpoint, with various and sundry writers referencing it after Crisis On Infinite Earths. Whether or not its still in-continuity AFTER FP may be a whole other matter. As a longtime fan of the JSA, I'm hoping this clever wrinkle in the history of the group - and a lot of other continuity for this team - is still in play.

[achilles]

Doesn't Ted's "Nine Lives" (introduced during the Goyer/Robinson/Johns iteration of the JSA) go some distance in explaining his longevity?

Yes, it does.

[DrNewGod]

Bringing back Earth-Two is my optimal solution.

I don't think WW2 is that important to the JSA. But them having attitudes and personalities from that period including all the social baggage is. The key to a new Earth Two (two is spelled out to specify it's the pre-Crisis version) is placing the time of the current day at 1986. And yes, they will be cries of "no mullets, no outdated trends and tech!" Rightfully so. The retcon I suggest is to change the planet so it has been dramatically affected by the JSA's activities. It's now a retro-future world where hair styles and slang are far from out world's. There we go. Ages fixed, supporting casts and kids, fixed. Villains fixed.

This is as good an answer as I've seen. Couple it with Maggins 1970s idea that time passes slower on E2 and the problem pretty much goes away. IMO, the JSA's real trouble began when writers began explicitly paralleling their calendar to E1's.

Still, purists are such that there is probably no solution that won't result in howls (make that squeaks, given the relative fan base size) of outrage from at least one fan contingent.

[Alpha]

Doesn't Ted's "Nine Lives" (introduced during the Goyer/Robinson/Johns iteration of the JSA) go some distance in explaining his longevity?

But should Ted really have that supernatural nature? Wouldn't it be better to leave him be as one of the legends that relied only on his knuckles and lived / died like anyone else? And deepen his relationship with the Black Canary by making him the husband of the first one, the father of the second one, and the grandfather of the third and current one

Dinah Drake (married to her partner in justice, Ted Grant)


Laurel Grant (married the hippie private investigator Quentin Lance)


Dinah Lance current Black Canary

[The Cool Thatguy]

When was the All-Star Squadron Annual #3, Ian Karkull explanation for the JSA longevity discarded? Post COIE?

Peace

When the time between WW2 and the now grew longer and longer, and more legacy characters came out of the wood work