The New Golden Age: Discussion Thread

[D.Z]

So what if it is? I'm not the one who's claiming that everything I say is strictly factual and 100% in accordance with the comics.

You word your speculating stuff as facts. And keep enforcing them.

[Dataweaver]

Again, so what? You deal with your open attitude and leave me to handle my own affairs.

[Mantis-Ray]

Here's hoping this goes well cause I'm impressed by the scale of this project.

Johns really wanted the return of the JSA to be an event and its certainly something big. Its definitely something new alright.

[D.Z]

Again, so what? You deal with your open attitude and leave me to handle my own affairs.

You dont leave others alone.

[Dataweaver]

You dont leave others alone.

It's a forum.

[D.Z]

It's a forum.

You told me to leave you to your own affairs.

Nice contradiction pal.

Anyway bye.

[Mantis-Ray]

I'm pretty interested in the focus on kid superheroes here.

Since kid sidekicks have generally fallen out of favor for the most part since the increased focus on realism in the media lead to the whole "child endangerment" meme being taken more seriously. Nowadays the youngest you usually get is teenagers.

Here they are a lot of the kid sidekicks and rather young at that.

[MajorHoy]

. . . Power Girl's age isn't a problem (yet) if you assume that Kryptonians are long-lived under the influence of yellow solar radiation; the tricky thing is that keeping her around without reinstating Superman to the JSA's early history leaves her without a legacy connection to the team. The ages of the originals have several resolutions, from the All-Star Squadron bit about their aging being magically slowed to the post-Crisis Last Days of the Justice Society which linked up to the JLI event Armageddon: Inferno. That transplants the JSA from the part of the timeline that's anchored in WWII to the modern “sliding timeline”.

Aren't the JSA still "anchored to WWII"?
All that other stuff does is create a "sliding timeline" in terms of how long they were absent from the main timeline during Ragnarök, etc.

[Dataweaver]

Aren't the JSA still "anchored to WWII"?
All that other stuff does is create a "sliding timeline" in terms of how long they were absent from the main timeline during Ragnarök, etc.

How long were they in Ragnarok? In particular, when were they pulled out? They were pulled out “X years ago”.

[MajorHoy]

How long were they in Ragnarok? In particular, when were they pulled out? They were pulled out “X years ago”.

But that'sthe "sliding timeline" part, not their being connected to WWII.

It's like Captain America and being frozen. He still was active during WWII.

People like The Punisher are on a "sliding timeline" that removes him from his Viet Nam War connection, just like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm no longer are connected to WWII.

[K. Jones]

Helena Wayne works for me because of Hypertime. That said I'm curious how it's going to work here. But Per Degaton is unfixed from time, or out of phase, so that aspect works regardless. Ironically I feel like it works well with the Tom King "Bat/Cat" future, which is a weird thing to say because that series wasn't exactly great. But again, I think I look at it the same way I look at all the other ALT BAT FUTURES, like Batman 666 for instance. And in this case, Johns really did go for expansive, or inclusive, or "large world-building", because front and center is the Damian Robin costume. A Helena Wayne who is the little sister of Damian is definitely a new take on things - if you factor in the possibility for TDKR homage or Beyond futures it's actually even more interesting, even if those aren't the "favorite things" that Johns is purposefully focusing on (he obviously focuses on the Legion future as his "the future" side of things). There's stuff I really like here. Helena in the Bat-Cave, we even see a glimpse of the snowglobe, and the fact that the snowglobe-and-watch are specifically literally The Flashpoint and that Batman has an ALT TIMELINE universe just as a trophy in the Bat-Cave is kind of hilariously DC Comics Folks levels of awesome.

I've had issues with the sliding timescale and the JSA or the Golden Age being anchored to WWII and how every passing year that creates more narrative issues, but alternatively, the New 52 Earth-2 stuff was still worse. If Hypertiming the amount of time the JSA were "missing from the world" and doing things like adding back in the Golden Age Aquaman and whatever gives storytelling possibilities, I honestly don't hate it. This even factoring in the fact that Aquaman has somehow never been a legacy character until now and I'm not all about it; the O.G. Golden Age "My dad was crazy science Cousteau" concept, that character was fundamentally pretty different from Arthur Curry, and that Arthur Curry is almost purely a Silver Age character notion. I think there's room to play.

[Dataweaver]

But that'sthe "sliding timeline" part, not their being connected to WWII.

It's like Captain America and being frozen. He still was active during WWII.

People like The Punisher are on a "sliding timeline" that removes him from his Viet Nam War connection, just like Reed Richards and Ben Grimm no longer are connected to WWII.

I actually agree with that. What I was saying is that Ragnarok allows them to start out anchored to WWII and later transition to a sliding timeline: everything up to Last Days of the JSA appears to be anxious in WWII while everything from Armageddon: Inferno on is on the sliding timeline. That's what I meant by transitioning from one to the other: not that everything has become a sliding timeline, but that, like Captain America, there's a 20th Century history of the JSA that doesn't slide (1940 to 1985 or so), and then there's a modern history that does slide (roughly twenty years worth of history so far), with the JSA's direct participation starting with Armageddon: Inferno.

There are a few kinks in this theory, which I'll get to in a moment; but on the whole, I think it successfully addresses most of the JSA's history. Those kinks:

1. Silver-Age Justice League was “twenty years ago” (up from the “fifteen years ago” that was originally proposed in Zero Hour's sliding timeline), whereas Silver-Age Justice Society was in the 1960s to the 1980s. That requires Silver Age crossovers between the two to be recast as era-hopping rather than world-hopping, from Flash of Two Worlds to Crisis on Infinite Earths. This gets a bit tricky with the occasional crossover that was originally based on time travel, like the one that brought back the Seven Soldiers of Victory (were they brought back to the 1970s or to “fifteen years ago”?); but for the most part, it works.

2. No Golden Age Superman or Batman. This is less of a problem for the JSA than it is for Power Girl and Huntress. Johns appears to have left Power Girl's arrival in 1976, which is currently over 25 years before Superman's debut “twenty years ago”, while recasting the “Golden Age Batman” stuff that leads up to Helena Wayne as a potential near future. It's not the cleanest solution, in that we now have the 1977–1985 JSA material echoing between those years (for Power Girl) and “twenty six years from now” (for Huntress). This kind of works, but isn't clean.

3. Infinity Inc. was introduced within a year of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Does their debut occur in 1984, or on the sliding timescale? If the latter, the idea that they're the children of the JSA becomes increasingly untenable as the sliding timeline increasingly distances itself from the 20th century. If they debuted in 1984, when and how did they end up on the sliding timeline?

4. Not so much a kink as a question: did anything JSA-related happen between 1985 and the start of the sliding timeline? Currently, that's a roughly 25-year gap, mostly corresponding to the 90s. My own preference would be to leave that blank and say that everything JSA-based that was published in the 90s is part of the sliding timeline and at this point happened in the early 21st century, probably in the early 2010s; but I can also see some potential in leaving some of it left in the actual 90s (e.g., the “90s throwback JSA” cover). I prefer the former because it's cleaner; but the latter fits better with the notion of every generation having its own JSA.

Finally: although I speak of a “sliding timeline”, Johns has actually been featuring a “stuttering timeline”: rather than smoothly shifting forward as the years go by as originally posited in 1970 are revisited in 1995, Doomsday Clock established that Johns' preferred approach is to try to have the “sliding” timeline skip forward every ten or fifteen years, and remain more or less stationary between the skips. That doesn't really affect my analysis here, because you still have the notion of one part of the timeline that's anchored to 1940 (most of the pre-Crisis JSA stuff) and another part of the timeline that's being dragged forward through time. Whether that's a smooth “slide” or something that happens in fits and starts, the overall effect is the same.

Final note: the increasing disconnect between the 20th century and the modern “sliding timeline” makes the “Aquaman is a legacy” thing increasingly a non-issue, because Golden Age Aquaman is increasingly in the past where the Aquaman mythos is concerned. And as I've said before: even where the connection exists, it's more like the way Alan Scott was Green Lantern before Hal Jordan was, but that doesn't make Hal a legacy of Alan.

[Factor]

I actually agree with that. What I was saying is that Ragnarok allows them to start out anchored to WWII and later transition to a sliding timeline: everything up to Last Days of the JSA appears to be anxious in WWII while everything from Armageddon: Inferno on is on the sliding timeline. That's what I meant by transitioning from one to the other: not that everything has become a sliding timeline, but that, like Captain America, there's a 20th Century history of the JSA that doesn't slide (1940 to 1985 or so), and then there's a modern history that does slide (roughly twenty years worth of history so far), with the JSA's direct participation starting with Armageddon: Inferno.

There are a few kinks in this theory, which I'll get to in a moment; but on the whole, I think it successfully addresses most of the JSA's history. Those kinks:

1. Silver-Age Justice League was “twenty years ago” (up from the “fifteen years ago” that was originally proposed in Zero Hour's sliding timeline), whereas Silver-Age Justice Society was in the 1960s to the 1980s. That requires Silver Age crossovers between the two to be recast as era-hopping rather than world-hopping, from Flash of Two Worlds to Crisis on Infinite Earths. This gets a bit tricky with the occasional crossover that was originally based on time travel, like the one that brought back the Seven Soldiers of Victory (were they brought back to the 1970s or to “fifteen years ago”?); but for the most part, it works.

2. No Golden Age Superman or Batman. This is less of a problem for the JSA than it is for Power Girl and Huntress. Johns appears to have left Power Girl's arrival in 1976, which is currently over 25 years before Superman's debut “twenty years ago”, while recasting the “Golden Age Batman” stuff that leads up to Helena Wayne as a potential near future. It's not the cleanest solution, in that we now have the 1977–1985 JSA material echoing between those years (for Power Girl) and “twenty six years from now” (for Huntress). This kind of works, but isn't clean.

3. Infinity Inc. was introduced within a year of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Does their debut occur in 1984, or on the sliding timescale? If the latter, the idea that they're the children of the JSA becomes increasingly untenable as the sliding timeline increasingly distances itself from the 20th century. If they debuted in 1984, when and how did they end up on the sliding timeline?

4. Not so much a kink as a question: did anything JSA-related happen between 1985 and the start of the sliding timeline? Currently, that's a roughly 25-year gap, mostly corresponding to the 90s. My own preference would be to leave that blank and say that everything JSA-based that was published in the 90s is part of the sliding timeline and at this point happened in the early 21st century, probably in the early 2010s; but I can also see some potential in leaving some of it left in the actual 90s (e.g., the “90s throwback JSA” cover). I prefer the former because it's cleaner; but the latter fits better with the notion of every generation having its own JSA.

Finally: although I speak of a “sliding timeline”, Johns has actually been featuring a “stuttering timeline”: rather than smoothly shifting forward as the years go by as originally posited in 1970 are revisited in 1995, Doomsday Clock established that Johns' preferred approach is to try to have the “sliding” timeline skip forward every ten or fifteen years, and remain more or less stationary between the skips. That doesn't really affect my analysis here, because you still have the notion of one part of the timeline that's anchored to 1940 (most of the pre-Crisis JSA stuff) and another part of the timeline that's being dragged forward through time. Whether that's a smooth “slide” or something that happens in fits and starts, the overall effect is the same.

Final note: the increasing disconnect between the 20th century and the modern “sliding timeline” makes the “Aquaman is a legacy” thing increasingly a non-issue, because Golden Age Aquaman is increasingly in the past where the Aquaman mythos is concerned. And as I've said before: even where the connection exists, it's more like the way Alan Scott was Green Lantern before Hal Jordan was, but that doesn't make Hal a legacy of Alan.

Hal was introduced with his own separate mythology, though. Arthur Curry literally wears the same costume as “Adam Waterman”. He has become a legacy character now.
I wish Johns had at least tried to make Adam more distinct so that he could function better as the Alan Scott to Arthur’s Hal.

[NeathBlue]

Read it and enjoyed it, though I’m not sure I understand why all the jumps in the timeline are necessary or what they’re for… Could get more confusing than Westworld.
Personally I wish they’d put them on the original earth two, DC spent decades trying to undo much of COIE, so having done so, use the multiverse.
If the JSA is being brought back, then I’d want the original members still young enough to be active, as mentioned bringing them back from Ragnarok would be the obvious solution to that, and being brought into the future, then more members could be added.
Definitely has got me looking forward to the new series though and hopefully a long run.

[Dataweaver]

Hal was introduced with his own separate mythology, though. Arthur Curry literally wears the same costume as “Adam Waterman”. He has become a legacy character now.
I wish Johns had at least tried to make Adam more distinct so that he could function better as the Alan Scott to Arthur’s Hal.

To be fair, a Who's Who page featuring the original exploits of the Golden Age Aquaman isn't the right place to update his costume. And the costume he's depicted in is the costume he originally wore. Remember: unlike the rest of the Thirteen, the Golden Age Aquaman actually is an actual hero from the 40s and 50s who got removed from the timeline at some point and is only now being restored to it. Harlequins Son is the only other one who comes close (with the possible exception of the Legionnaire, whose identity is still a mystery; all we know is “male silhouette”, and “hair showing”.)

But the point I and others have been trying to make is that the two Aquaman do have different mythologies. The only connection the Golden Age Aquaman has to Atlantis is that his parents set up shop in an abandoned Atlantean base. He is not Atlantean, he doesn't know any Atlanteans, and his powers aren't Atlantean.