Children of the DCU Golden Age

[ducklord]

Hey all,

I've been doing some deep thinking about the DCU, because it beats working.

If, as seems to be the case, DC's going to continue to go with a "clutter-Earth" version of Earth-0/Prime/Whatever we're calling it this year, I'm increasingly in favor of keeping most of the Golden Age pinned to WWII (and thereabouts). Why? Two reasons:
1) It's kind of their thing. The Justice Society in particular is deeply entrenched in the milieu of WWII, and removing them from it just feels wrong.
2) As the years go on, having the DCU's Golden age firmly attached to the 40's and early 50's gives a lot of narrative breathing space between the "first" age of super-heroes, and the ever-floating "modern" age. By 2040, characters in the modern DCU will be able to say "A century ago, there were costumed heroes that rose up against the forces of oppression. They eventually faded away, but now they're back!" The more separation between the costumed hero eras, the better, sez I.

But this creates some problems. There are a number of extant biological children of Golden Age heroes stumbling about the DCU. And really, their continued presence is increasingly anomalous - it's downright weird to pretend that, for example, that the modern Black Canary is the thirtysometing daughter of a crimefighter that was active in the 50's (realizing that this may no longer be the case already)

So in this thread I'd like to talk about the various characters who have, in the past, been children of Golden Age DCU superheroes, and how their stories might be reworked going forward.

I'll open with a few easy ones:

Black Canary
Although it appears that the first Black Canary is back in continuity as per the recent Deathstroke series, I'd propose a tweak - keep the original BC as a member of the post-War JSA, and remove the mother-daughter relationship between the two characters. Insert as many generations between the modern and original BC as necessary, and make the modern one's Canary Cry simply the result of the metagene. The mother-daughter relationship between the two was a retcon to begin with, and they never interacted much in the modern day. The modern one can simply honor her great-whatever-grandmother by taking on her nom de vigilante.

Zatanna
Although originally a Golden Age character, and a member of the All-Star Squadron at that, Zatara was always rather tenuously connected to the capes and cowls community. As such, I think his career can be slid forward to match Zatanna's present without diminishing the break between the Golden and Modern ages. This seems to be the approach that's been taken in the JLDark corner of the DCU. so yay.

Fury II
Although currently dead, Lyta Trevor's spot in the DCU is arguably important, since she's the mother of the mortal shell of the current incarnation of Dream. In her case, I'm willing to go with "Fury I is effectively immortal, so she had a baby approximately 20something years ago, and gave it up for adoption."

Any others?

The circle I can't square is Jack Knight. His story is *so* deeply connected to his father's that it would seem a shame to retcon extra generations into his story. But turning him into a period character also seems wrong, too.

[ducklord]

Two more:

Jade & Obsidian
These two are currently the children of Alan Scott, the Golden Age GL. Now, given that Alan is effectively immortal on account of the Green Flame, that's not really a problem on his end, but there's increasingly a few other problems with their status as Alan's kids.

Firstly, there's the question of their mother - in the original telling, their mother was the villainous Golden Age Thorn, who had a weird affair with Alan back in the late 50's. This, of course, gets biologically problematic as the timeline stretches further and further out. Currently, Thorn would have to be in her 60's to produce children's in their upper 20s today - in a few years, she'd have to be in her 70's. So that's a problem.
Secondly, there's the issue of Alan's retconned sexuality. It's an issue that needs to be addressed delicately. For my ten cents, it's much easier to imagine a young, closeted, Alan Scott having an ill-advised heterosexual encounter than a much older (albeit still closeted) version.

So, here' my opinion - Jade and Obsidian need to be retconned into being descendants of Alan Scott, rather then children. Keep Alan Scott's peculiar (and damaging) relationship with Thorn intact, have her secretly have a child that she gave up for adoption, then have Jade and Obsidian's origin story involve seeking out Alan, the source of their mysterious powers. He's still their mentor and father figure (particularly if their birth father is dead), but we no longer have to squint at the timeline.

[Restingvoice]

Last time, I went with the same slow aging rate for everyone, so WWII JSA are still around 55 years old while JLA are in their 40s, and so are everyone else including the civilians and supporting characters

[ducklord]

Last time, I went with the same slow aging rate for everyone, so WWII JSA are still around 55 years old while JLA are in their 40s, and so are everyone else including the civilians and supporting characters

That was kind of okay back in the 80's and 90's, but as time marches on it just gets comically weird.

I mean, even granting the slow aging idea (which is slightly canonical on account of the whole Ian Karkull thing), what accounts for the JSAers suddenly deciding en masse to start having kids in their (chronological) 70's (and soon, their 80's)?

"Well, Shiera, I know we've been putting it off since the mid-40's, but it's 1990 now, and the Knights have started having kids, so I say, let's start making some babies!"

"Rex, darling, can we have kids NOW? I know you've got some issues on account of the super-steroids you've been taking for half a century, but the Knights and Halls are pregnant, and my biological clock is (slowly) ticking."

Weird.

[Restingvoice]

The kids who are around Dick Grayson would already have been born and the ones around Tim Drake's age would be born in the 40s
If they all start having kids in the 80s and 90s, they would be the same age as Damian Wayne and Jon Kent

I know. Things didn't happen the same way, or at the same time, but that's a given when you try to change things.

[ducklord]

The kids who are around Dick Grayson would already have been born and the ones around Tim Drake's age would be born in the 40s
If they all start having kids in the 80s and 90s, they would be the same age as Damian Wayne and Jon Kent

I know. Things didn't happen the same way, or at the same time, but that's a given when you try to change things.

Even so, it's just something that gets weirder over time. Why'd they *all* wait so long to have kids?

I just think it's easier, in most cases, to make a clean break with regards to the lineage.

Other characters that need accounting for:
- Damage (child of Al and Mary Pratt)
- Rick Tyler (Child of Rex Tyle and his wife, whose name escapes me)
- Jesse Quick (Child of Johnny Quick and Libby Lawrence)
- Plastic Man's son (if he still exists)

[ERON]

Maybe they could do a "JSA: The Lost Years" miniseries that establishes that the Golden Agers were trapped in some sort of time loop or something from the early '50s up until about 25 years ago, and thus are physically only in their 40s or 50s.

[ducklord]

Maybe they could do a "JSA: The Lost Years" miniseries that establishes that the Golden Agers were trapped in some sort of time loop or something from the early '50s up until about 25 years ago, and thus are physically only in their 40s or 50s.

I'm not averse to those kinds of shenanigans in isolated cases (eg Captain America), but I think a blanket "time warp all the Golden Agers (and possibly their spouses) to a convenient spot in the present" approach is narratively suboptimal.

For one thing, it gives all the Golden Agers a weird "man out of time" storyline, which is not as much fun when it's not unique.

For another, it makes the modern age less "special." If all the Golden Agers are still hanging around and in reasonably good shape when Superman arrives on the scene, how special *is* Superman?

[MajorHoy]

The easiest solution is to bring back the pre-CoIE version of "Earth-2"/"Earth-Two" for the Golden Agers so they don't steal the "specialness" of the more "modern day" heroes like Superman, etc.

When you do that, you can have the Golden Age generation go through whatever means you prefer to slow down their aging so they can have kids without the parents being closer to 100 years old but still maintain their ties to the WWII-era.

Frankly, DC still needs to establish what's the story with the Golden Age generation before worrying about their offspring. You're putting the cart before the horse if you focus on the kids before we know what happened to their parents.

[Jim Kelly]

I prefer the Justice Society to be on its own Earth, where everything happens in real time. A lot more like John Byrne's GENERATIONS. On that Earth, everything happens when it happened in publishing history, so Infinity, Inc., starts in the 1980s. The Crisis never happened and future generations followed. Most of the original Justice Society died off long ago, but a few remain because they have powers and abilities that make them nearly immortal.

As far as crossovers go--if the mainstream universe Justice League met the Justice Society, there was simply a time differential. The Justice Society came out of retirement in the early 1960s, just like in the actual comics. The Super Squad came on the scene in the 1970s, with Power Girl landing on Earth.

Dinah Drake Lance either died with Larry in 1969 and their daughter crossed over to the other Earth (but with the time differential) or original Black Canary came to Green Arrow's Earth but because of the worlds being out of sync, it wasn't 1969 on the mainstream Earth. Or there was a version of Black Canary and some other characters on the mainstream Earth, who had similar lives to the original characters but not to a great extent.

[ducklord]

I prefer the Justice Society to be on its own Earth, where everything happens in real time. A lot more like John Byrne's GENERATIONS. On that Earth, everything happens when it happened in publishing history, so Infinity, Inc., starts in the 1980s. The Crisis never happened and future generations followed. Most of the original Justice Society died off long ago, but a few remain because they have powers and abilities that make them nearly immortal.

As far as crossovers go--if the mainstream universe Justice League met the Justice Society, there was simply a time differential. The Justice Society came out of retirement in the early 1960s, just like in the actual comics. The Super Squad came on the scene in the 1970s, with Power Girl landing on Earth.

Dinah Drake Lance either died with Larry in 1969 and their daughter crossed over to the other Earth (but with the time differential) or original Black Canary came to Green Arrow's Earth but because of the worlds being out of sync, it wasn't 1969 on the mainstream Earth. Or there was a version of Black Canary and some other characters on the mainstream Earth, who had similar lives to the original characters but not to a great extent.

A return to the original Earth-2 is something I'd be kind of interested in, too. But:
a) It seems unlikely too happen.
b) Even so, it doesn't really do much for the original problem. Infinity Inc. should still be pushing 70 years old. Black Canary II is still too old.

[NathanS]

Honestly, nothing really connects the Golden Age heroes to WWII... until Roy Thomas made it his mission to make that the defining thing for them. And I think in the long run it's just proven to be a mistake. Better to just drop it than to jump through a million hoops to get one fanboy's pet project to outlast him.

[Factor]

To me the best solution is saying that after the JSA disbanded in the 50s, they (along with those connected to them) were displaced in time. I’d personally use Johnny Thunder as the means for that.
They’d return a few years earlier than Superman’s debut, only to realise their past activities would be considered as urban legends. Fearing the world was no longer ready for the reemergence of metahumans, they’d have kids and live “normal” lives until the dawn of the new age of heroes would prompt them out of retirement to reform the JSA.

This way, there’d always be a variable decades-long gap between their original adventures and their return to the “present”, but it would be easy to explain why so many original JSAers would still be active and why their children could be in their prime.

[Jim Kelly]

A return to the original Earth-2 is something I'd be kind of interested in, too. But:
a) It seems unlikely too happen.
b) Even so, it doesn't really do much for the original problem. Infinity Inc. should still be pushing 70 years old. Black Canary II is still too old.

Nothing I wish for ever happens. But I see it as an opportunity not a problem. There's no law that every story has to be set in 2022--the Infinitors would be young in the 1980s, then in the 1990s some of them pair off and have kids (the Sandman is their kid in one universe) while others die or go off on a cosmic quest, then in the early 2000s a new generation replaces them, allowing the creation of a bunch of new characters.

As for B.C., I gave a few different options. If she remains on that Earth, she suffers the same fate as everyone else. If she leaves that Earth, she can arrive on another Earth in any time period (there's no law that all the universes have to be in sync).

Absent any of this, we have the present reality that doesn't take enough advantage of the Multiverse and only pays lip service to the "Golden Age" by peppering their current universe with bits and pieces ripped from the original continuity.

[MajorHoy]

Honestly, nothing really connects the Golden Age heroes to WWII... until Roy Thomas made it his mission to make that the defining thing for them. And I think in the long run it's just proven to be a mistake. Better to just drop it than to jump through a million hoops to get one fanboy's pet project to outlast him.

I'm curious where you get your "facts" from.

Roy Thomas had been with Marvel Comics prior to going over to DC, and that didn't happen until the early 1980s.

DC had already been connecting the Golden Age heroes to the 1940s / WWII prior to then. A perfect example is the first season of the Wonder Woman TV show (the movie pilot came out in 1975) which was set during WWII. The DC comic book Wonder Woman changed from starring Earth-1 Wonder Woman in the present day to the Golden Age Wonder Woman of Earth-2 in late 1976/1977 for about a year to coincide with the first season of the TV show.