Children of the DCU Golden Age

[NathanS]

Congratulations you found the one character they did a lot of WWII stuff within stories written in the 60s on. how important did they treat WWII when Jay showed up? Alan? The JSA for crossovers? No, they aged some of them 20 years and then stuck them right back into the unaging status quo as everyone else. Black Carny alone shows how little they were thinking about 'they MUST be attached to the 40s and be aging'

[John Venus]

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.

I came here to say the same thing. Any JSA member who needs to be saved for the present day could have been trapped in another dimension ala Ragnarok and by the time they got out decades have passed.

I also like Jim Kelly's idea of giving the JSA the Generations treatment. Maybe that's what the new Earth 2 should be; a world where the original Golden Age stories, 80's Infinity Inc and All Star Squadron happened but it's set in the new 20's or 30's focusing on the grand kids or great grand kids of the original JSA.

[John Venus]

Congratulations you found the one character they did a lot of WWII stuff within stories written in the 60s on. how important did they treat WWII when Jay showed up? Alan? The JSA for crossovers? No, they aged some of them 20 years and then stuck them right back into the unaging status quo as everyone else. Black Carny alone shows how little they were thinking about 'they MUST be attached to the 40s and be aging'

Kingpin wasn't originally a Daredevil villain either but now him and the noir aesthetic are separable from the character.

Saying that its not originally part of their characters doesn't really work since it's something that resonates with the audience.

The Trinity were always updated and kept contemporary. JSA has always had the throwback retro feel to them since 'Flash of Two Worlds'.

[bat39]

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.

Yeah honestly I think this is the best explanation for keeping the JSA on Earth 0. And its the explanation that was already kinda used for Jay Garrick in the Post-COIE retelling of ''Flash of Two Worlds''.

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?

Who said the JSA need to return before Superman shows up? They can return shortly after the formation of the JLA.

Of course, as I write this, I realize its a bit of a problem for Infinity Inc who could be in their late teens at most in the present-day.

Okay, lets assume that the JSA return maybe a decade or less before Superman shows up and keep a low profile, realizing that the world has moved on without them.

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.

Be that as it may, the JSA are today associated with WW2 to a great extent.

[MajorHoy]

Congratulations you found the one character they did a lot of WWII stuff within stories written in the 60s on. how important did they treat WWII when Jay showed up? Alan? The JSA for crossovers? No, they aged some of them 20 years and then stuck them right back into the unaging status quo as everyone else. Black Carny alone shows how little they were thinking about 'they MUST be attached to the 40s and be aging'

You're also forgetting that in 1977 DC published

a story written by Paul Levitz (and later given a post-CoIE version from Roy Thomas).

And back during the Golden Age, there were stories with the JSA that tied in to WWII. Those stories weren't just automatically voided once the Golden Age characters were moved to Earth-2.

[HeartofTheStoriesWeTell]

- Damage (child of Al and Mary Pratt)

i really miss Grant Emerson. I would love to see someone do something with the end of his own series when a version of him from the future had come back to help guide him

[Factor]

If DC actually used their Omniverse well, instead of hundreds of Crisis events, we could have an Earth-2 book focusing on the WWII setting while the main Earth could have the team debut at a fictional war started by someone like Per Degaton.
Earth-2 by contrast would be the Earth that's actually affected by heroes having debuted so long ago and characters could age in real time there.

[kcekada]

The best solution to this was posted years ago.

There was a period when the JSA was trapped in Limbo and did not age. Historically, this was after they had children, but it could be changed so that that they spent time in Limbo before they had children. The amount of time spent there can be increased as needed. So it could be written that they disappeared (became trapped in Limbo) in the early 1950s, and always came back (freed from Limbo) about 20-25 years ago.

[Holt]

Yeah I was gonna say, just change it so they got lost in limbo before having children and then have their return have been 20-30 years ago,

[CaptCleghorn]

Yeah I was gonna say, just change it so they got lost in limbo before having children and then have their return have been 20-30 years ago,

If the JSA are on the main Earth, this works. The JSA reappears years before the advent of modern heroes and they settle down, developing families and aging from experienced heroes to older seasoned veterans. I'd rather see them on an Earth Two where it's still 1986 or so, but because of the years of superheroics, the world has changed dramatically. Styles and technology would be different and more advanced resulting in a future-retro style.

Both are unlikely given DC's apparent attitudes towards the JSA, but the solutions would be fairly simple.

[Jim Kelly]

I'd argue that you can't really call them "Children of the…Golden Age" and not have it be the "Golden Age." Mind you, the publisher has lied before, so they could probably do it again and some fans would accept it. But other fans would be calling them out on the lie. The "Golden Age" of comic book publishing has been established as between the 1930s and the 1950s--that's just the facts.

Otherwise, they could simply stop trying to ride the coat-tails of that era and call it something else, like the "Alabaster Age."

[bat39]

I'd argue that you can't really call them "Children of the…Golden Age" and not have it be the "Golden Age." Mind you, the publisher has lied before, so they could probably do it again and some fans would accept it. But other fans would be calling them out on the lie. The "Golden Age" of comic book publishing has been established as between the 1930s and the 1950s--that's just the facts.

Otherwise, they could simply stop trying to ride the coat-tails of that era and call it something else, like the "Alabaster Age."

I dunno...isn't Barry Allen still a hero of the Silver Age? Even though the current version of him wasn't active back in the 50's and 60's? For that matter isn't Superman still a Golden Age hero?

But yeah, I get your point in general. Somehow, the Golden Age is frozen to the WW2 and immediate post-war era, while the Silver Age is allowed to be on a floating timescale. This holds true for both DC and Marvel.

[MajorHoy]

I dunno...isn't Barry Allen still a hero of the Silver Age? Even though the current version of him wasn't active back in the 50's and 60's? For that matter isn't Superman still a Golden Age hero?

But yeah, I get your point in general. Somehow, the Golden Age is frozen to the WW2 and immediate post-war era, while the Silver Age is allowed to be on a floating timescale. This holds true for both DC and Marvel.

"Silver Age" morphed into the "Bronze Age" and so on and so on for heroes like Superman (Clark) and Batman (Bruce) who didn't noticeably age in their overall stories. There were "Golden Age" versions of Superman and Batman when they had separate versions of Superman and Batman on Earth-2/Earth-Two back in the pre-CoIE days, but once DC started using the unified Earth they were removed.

[ERON]

I dunno...isn't Barry Allen still a hero of the Silver Age? Even though the current version of him wasn't active back in the 50's and 60's? For that matter isn't Superman still a Golden Age hero?

But yeah, I get your point in general. Somehow, the Golden Age is frozen to the WW2 and immediate post-war era, while the Silver Age is allowed to be on a floating timescale. This holds true for both DC and Marvel.

For all but a handful of characters, there was a gap between the Golden and Silver Ages, hence characters from prior to that gap are tied to that era, for better or for worse. Subsequent eras - Silver, Bronze, etc. - were more-or-less seamless, facilitating a sliding timescale.

[ducklord]

It's interesting that there are so many people advocating some variation of the "Jumbo Steve Rogers" package with regards to the JSA and their kids - some sort of temporal shenanigans that deposits the JSA, their mates, perhaps their young kids, and maybe a few members of their supporting casts safely on the shores of twentymumblysomething years ago, so that they and their kids can be reasonably active in the ever-floating-forward present.

Even as a huge fan of the JSA, I find this kind of thing rather awkward and unsatisfying.

Maybe I've gotten a little more comfortable with my own mortality lately, but I think I've gotten to the point where I'm okay with the vast majority of the JSA (not to mention the rest of the Golden Age characters) either aging out or passing away. Sure, some of them are practically immortal, so it's fine for them to be kicking around, doing the whole Captain Marvel/Suspendium thing on them just feels unseemly.