The “New” History of the JSA: *New Golden Age SPOILERS*

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Closing off potential stories isn't inherently a bad thing. Especially if it means closing off potential bad stories, which is exactly what we get every time DC messes with a character's backstory like this and writers have to come up with convoluted explanations to reconcile the contradictions.

Every choice a writer makes is going to close off potential stories.

This is kind of a chicken and an egg situation then. We can't restore WW's JSA history because DC messed up her backstory so if he do that we'd be messing up the backstory that we originally screwed up which would screw up her former backstory which screwed up the backstories of a bunch of other characters.

DC's continuity has been a mess since 1986. There's no putting the humpty dumpty of DC continuity back together again so I've got no problem with them adding back more elements that creators haven't been able to explore through a modern perspective yet. Diana's time in the JSA is exactly that kind of thing.

If any creators want WW to only be a modern age superhero, they don't need to mention her 1940s exploits, just like Superman creators don't need to bring up Superboy or Lex Luthor in Smallville...unless they want to.

Like I said, any hope of DC having some kind of tight internally consistent continuity sailed a couple decades ago. I say embrace the messiness of it all and just let creators tell the stories they want.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Maybe not, but she's generally treated better in her own book than elsewhere and isn't usually an afterthought.

Better, yes, but "she's usually not treated as an afterthought" is hardly high praise.

She's certainly been treated better across the board since Javins took over, thankfully.

[Digifiend]

Diana being in the JSA could lead to things like Fury being her and Steve's daughter again and rescuing Donna from the fire. But also has the drawback of Steve being dead by the modern age, so they have to jump through hoops to de-age him or revive him if they want to use him, and it doesn't line up with any previous continuity where he is always around in some form.

Just having Power Girl and Fury be time travelers like Helena is shaping up to be and arrived to join the JSA in the Bronze age equivalent in the timeline might be easier?

Just do what the 70s TV show did. Season 1 was set in World War II, but then it retooled to the present day. They kept Steve's actor on and had him playing Steve's namesake grandson.

Power Girl should just keep her original alternate universe origin.

Question: was SHAZAM! and any of the old Fawcett properties were considered to be a part of the JSA, or affiliated with the JSA, like the Squadron of Justice? Certainly, the All-Star Squadron era would have had the JSA, the Freedom Fighters and the SJ meet, since the All-Stars was suppose to be some sort of umbrella organization.

And Plastic Man has been hinted to have been around for YEARS, depending upon the needs of DC.

When the All-Star Squadron comics were published, Shazam was still an AU, wasn't it (Earth-S)? And nowadays they're simply not there on account of having been rebooted at least twice (when they were folded into the DC universe, and in New 52).

Plastic Man is immortal, so yeah, it's entirely possible for him to be in the ASS.

I think there are multiple ways of keeping OG Steve & Etta around in the 40s without negating their modern day counterparts.

My preference would be to have Steve die in the 1940s but be resurrected in the modern day by Olympus (which happened twice Pre-Crisis due to the many, many attempts to kill off Steve). However, making him the decendant of the original Steve is also an option but I'd prefer that's the route they take with modern day Etta. Have the OG Etta be her great-grandmother or great-aunt.

It's comic books, there are so many ways to explain these things in order to not close off potential stories creators can tell. Again, that doesn't mean the modern comics have to constantly refer back to the 1940s if they don't want to, but leaving the possibility for exploration available to present and future creators is a good thing to my mind.

Both Steve and Etta should just be descendants of 1940s namesakes. Of course this explains why modern Etta is black and classic Etta is white, too.

They are definitely decoupling clark and power girl

They definitely are not. You do know Karen's getting a backup story in Action Comics, right?

[SiegePerilous02]

For the record, I'm not defending any of these changes. I just think keeping her origin, characterization and supporting cast consistent takes priority over her connections to the JLA and Donna.

Donna is part of her supporting cast though. If not in actual practice, the expectation that she is will always be there by virtue of her being called Wonder Girl.

I think there are multiple ways of keeping OG Steve & Etta around in the 40s without negating their modern day counterparts.

My preference would be to have Steve die in the 1940s but be resurrected in the modern day by Olympus (which happened twice Pre-Crisis due to the many, many attempts to kill off Steve). However, making him the decendant of the original Steve is also an option but I'd prefer that's the route they take with modern day Etta. Have the OG Etta be her great-grandmother or great-aunt.

It's comic books, there are so many ways to explain these things in order to not close off potential stories creators can tell. Again, that doesn't mean the modern comics have to constantly refer back to the 1940s if they don't want to, but leaving the possibility for exploration available to present and future creators is a good thing to my mind.

Steve dying and getting resurrected a lot didn't exactly set the world on fire in the pre-Crisis days, which probably played into Perez's decision to remove him as a love interest. The botched way they did it in WW84;got a pretty big WTF reaction too. Trying to have Steve in multiple eras has historically not given us great content, why try for it again?

They don't constantly have to refer back to the 1940s, but her timeline is always going to be the elephant in the room. Again, Earth-2 is just the cleaner solution that DC should just embrace if they are hellbent on keeping Diana with the JSA or wanting Helena Wayne around

[sifighter]

The super creepy guy is Per Degaton, right? Red hair, emo coat. Has to be him!

Yup he is a villain but he enjoys just time traveling to watch little moments of JSA suffering. He’s done this before like when he watched Stargirl crying after Shazam broke up with her because he kept his Billy Batson identity hidden from most of the JSA and didn’t want people thinking he was creeping on a teenage girl.

[Gaius]

Diana's tenure on the JL has not been kind to her, but I also don't think removing her from the team is a good idea either, nor is diminishing her status because of poor precedent. We should demand better of her treatment on JL, not discount her being there or being considered as important to it as Clark or Bruce.

I mean I supposed it gets down to about how much you care about JL/JSA in general. I doubt I particualry would even if she was treated better but the consistent track record has pretty much convinced me this is an unworthy venture until there's a fundamental change in the mindset of people at DC or working on their adaptations.

Most just seem to think being on the team as a founder is "good enough".

[Guy_McNichts]

There really is no good way to keep Diana as World War II/JSA character AND a modern day hero. If it must be done, do a Earth-Prime/Earth-2 deal. Trying to have it both ways does nothing but hurt the character.

Her origin is simple, direct, and powerful. She was raised on Themyscira. Steve Trevor crashed onto the island, heralding it was time for a Champion. She wins the Contest, goes to the Man's World, becomes Wonder Woman.

Any solution to threading this needle demands extraneous lore dumps, reducing her and her supporting cast to interchangeable ciphers, and worst of all, cheapens and dilutes everything about her.

Steve crashed onto the island during World War II, but the one running around now is his descendant who happens to look the same, act the same, has the same relationship with Diana, and even has the same name. Did he also crash onto Themyscira? Did Diana find him and ponder, "Oh. Another one. Guess we're doing this again." Two Steves, zero substance.
Or he died and was resurrected. Or he was put in stasis. Or he went to Themyscira and it turns out time moves differently there.

When people say continuity keeps new fans from getting into comics, this is the bullshit they're talking about.

Then there's Diana herself. She fought in World War II and then gave up and went home for a couple of decades until she decided to come back. I think it's great that DC seems determined to make being a quitter who took her ball and went home an integral part of Diana's history.
Or she went to another dimension. Or she died and came back again. Or blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

And, of course, there's the added bonus of Diana being de-powered. Because whenever Wonder Woman is in World War II with the JSA, she can only operated at a fraction of her strength. Because otherwise why would she need a team and why didn't she win WWII by herself?
Oh, but let's dump more lore and contrivances to make sense of this. I guess the gods took away her powers on the first go, but gave them back when she returned in modern day. Or maybe she needed to earn them? Or maybe after WWII she went into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and became the legendary Super Amazon, and that's where she's been all this time.

And I have to ask, what benefit does this serve? What is gained by adding all this needless complication to Wonder Woman?

The Justice Society gets their secretary back. F**k-a-doodle-doo. Totally worth shackling Diana to this train and dragging her through the dirt because it makes a pretty picture.

You might as well just remove the character from the DCU entirely

Wonder Woman would be better off if she existed in her own universe unrelated to the DCU. The cons of a shared universe vastly outweigh the pros, and I would gladly bin the few positives she gets out of it.

And for the record, Superman and Shazam would also be better off on their own, but that's another topic.

[Guy_McNichts]

If it must be done, do a Earth-Prime/Earth-2 deal. Trying to have it both ways does nothing but hurt the character.

Just to add to this, even though it's slightly off-topic, this applies to all the other heroes in DC.

Like, for example, trying to maintain Batman's mystique as a "dark loner" even though he's accumulated an army of sidekicks, is a founding member of the Justice League, more trusted by the people of Gotham than the police, and is essentially the McDonalds of the superhero community.

Have an Earth where Batman is a loner with only one or two sidekicks. And have an Earth where he's the beleaguered dad of a half-dozen Robins, three Batgirls, a Huntress, a Signal, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Have an Earth where Wonder Woman has been around since World War II, joined the JSA, and was a superhero through the decades, outliving her friends and allies and treat all that with the gravity it deserves. And have a Wonder Woman who operates in modern day without making a mess out of everything.

There are dozens of other examples.

[Gaius]

There really is no good way to keep Diana as World War II/JSA character AND a modern day hero. If it must be done, do a Earth-Prime/Earth-2 deal. Trying to have it both ways does nothing but hurt the character.

Her origin is simple, direct, and powerful. She was raised on Themyscira. Steve Trevor crashed onto the island, heralding it was time for a Champion. She wins the Contest, goes to the Man's World, becomes Wonder Woman.

Any solution to threading this needle demands extraneous lore dumps, reducing her and her supporting cast to interchangeable ciphers, and worst of all, cheapens and dilutes everything about her.

Steve crashed onto the island during World War II, but the one running around now is his descendant who happens to look the same, act the same, has the same relationship with Diana, and even has the same name. Did he also crash onto Themyscira? Did Diana find him and ponder, "Oh. Another one. Guess we're doing this again." Two Steves, zero substance.
Or he died and was resurrected. Or he was put in stasis. Or he went to Themyscira and it turns out time moves differently there.

When people say continuity keeps new fans from getting into comics, this is the bullshit they're talking about.

Then there's Diana herself. She fought in World War II and then gave up and went home for a couple of decades until she decided to come back. I think it's great that DC seems determined to make being a quitter who took her ball and went home an integral part of Diana's history.
Or she went to another dimension. Or she died and came back again. Or blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

And, of course, there's the added bonus of Diana being de-powered. Because whenever Wonder Woman is in World War II with the JSA, she can only operated at a fraction of her strength. Because otherwise why would she need a team and why didn't she win WWII by herself?
Oh, but let's dump more lore and contrivances to make sense of this. I guess the gods took away her powers on the first go, but gave them back when she returned in modern day. Or maybe she needed to earn them? Or maybe after WWII she went into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and became the legendary Super Amazon, and that's where she's been all this time.

And I have to ask, what benefit does this serve? What is gained by adding all this needless complication to Wonder Woman?

The Justice Society gets their secretary back. F**k-a-doodle-doo. Totally worth shackling Diana to this train and dragging her through the dirt because it makes a pretty picture.


Wonder Woman would be better off if she existed in her own universe unrelated to the DCU. The cons of a shared universe vastly outweigh the pros, and I would gladly bin the few positives she gets out of it.

And for the record, Superman and Shazam would also be better off on their own, but that's another topic.

No, we need to kneecap an entire character so we can get her back to a team not even her creator wanted her on.

[Frontier]

Losing her JL "founding member" status is only really a problem if one cares about the JL or if the JL had any significant history of treating the character right. Maybe I would if the writers of JL or it's adaptations like the DCAU, Injustice, or the DCEU had a better tract record of doing the character right. But they don't.

And like what Psy-Lock brought up. Donna always was more of a Titan character than a WW supporting character

Same applies to Diana being a "newbie" among modern age superheroes. I don't really take in account the events of other books when reading WW, so her being fresher than characters from other books I'm not reading matters nothing to me.

But does she need to be a rookie in comparison to other Superheroes?

Honestly my biggest issue is just writing out Year One which I think is one of her best modern origin stories.

Her being a "founding member status" only really matters if she's actually treated well on the team. But given you can make a list of Worst WW depictions and include mostly entries from JL stuff, it doesn't really. It more says "we really need a woman so it isn't just a club of white dudes" than it is about actually treating the character with some importance.

Essentially what Psy-Lock and Guy_McNights said. A character who has their own independent history, supporting cast, and lore should not take backseat to preserving some lineup of the JSA from the 40s or so DC can still make cool splash pages in JL books in between Superman and Batman wagging their finger at Diana for being "too violent".

I won't argue that Diana needs to be treated better on the JL. She does.

Yet at the same time I don't think she's always depicted that badly on the team even if the worse points (usually from Geoff Johns' tenure, I'll admit) tend to stand out because people bring them up a lot. Like was she used so badly under Morisson? The Satellite era? Joe Kelly or Mark Waid's runs? Even Scott Snyder or Brad Meltzer? I don't recall there being any Batman and Superman wagging their fingers at her in those runs.

I mean I supposed it gets down to about how much you care about JL/JSA in general. I doubt I particualry would even if she was treated better but the consistent track record has pretty much convinced me this is an unworthy venture until there's a fundamental change in the mindset of people at DC or working on their adaptations.

Most just seem to think being on the team as a founder is "good enough".

I think if you're going to cite the JL as your premier Superhero team with the big names, it makes no sense that you're premier and biggest female Superhero isn't on it.

But she also shouldn't be depicted as worse compared to her male peers.

There really is no good way to keep Diana as World War II/JSA character AND a modern day hero. If it must be done, do a Earth-Prime/Earth-2 deal. Trying to have it both ways does nothing but hurt the character.

Her origin is simple, direct, and powerful. She was raised on Themyscira. Steve Trevor crashed onto the island, heralding it was time for a Champion. She wins the Contest, goes to the Man's World, becomes Wonder Woman.

Any solution to threading this needle demands extraneous lore dumps, reducing her and her supporting cast to interchangeable ciphers, and worst of all, cheapens and dilutes everything about her.

Steve crashed onto the island during World War II, but the one running around now is his descendant who happens to look the same, act the same, has the same relationship with Diana, and even has the same name. Did he also crash onto Themyscira? Did Diana find him and ponder, "Oh. Another one. Guess we're doing this again." Two Steves, zero substance.
Or he died and was resurrected. Or he was put in stasis. Or he went to Themyscira and it turns out time moves differently there.

When people say continuity keeps new fans from getting into comics, this is the bullshit they're talking about.

Then there's Diana herself. She fought in World War II and then gave up and went home for a couple of decades until she decided to come back. I think it's great that DC seems determined to make being a quitter who took her ball and went home an integral part of Diana's history.
Or she went to another dimension. Or she died and came back again. Or blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.

And, of course, there's the added bonus of Diana being de-powered. Because whenever Wonder Woman is in World War II with the JSA, she can only operated at a fraction of her strength. Because otherwise why would she need a team and why didn't she win WWII by herself?
Oh, but let's dump more lore and contrivances to make sense of this. I guess the gods took away her powers on the first go, but gave them back when she returned in modern day. Or maybe she needed to earn them? Or maybe after WWII she went into the Hyperbolic Time Chamber and became the legendary Super Amazon, and that's where she's been all this time.

And I have to ask, what benefit does this serve? What is gained by adding all this needless complication to Wonder Woman?

The Justice Society gets their secretary back. F**k-a-doodle-doo. Totally worth shackling Diana to this train and dragging her through the dirt because it makes a pretty picture.

I assume if they were to write Diana on the JSA again they'd depict her similar to her portrayal in the JSA: WWII movie.

[SiegePerilous02]

Removing her JL founding status wouldn't protect her from anything in that IP. Because if the bad stories are set in the modern day when she's on the team, what difference does it make what her founding status is? Messing up continuity didn't help at all, it just creates a pointless complication with no gain (making her a rookie,bDonna becoming a hot mess) and then shitty writing happens anyway.

Most of the worst trends started to happen in post-Crisis when Diana wasn't a founding member anymore, meanwhile the Satellite era didn't generally have many problems. All the crappy pre Crisis stuff we had for Diana happened more in her own book than the JL.

[Gaius]

But does she need to be a rookie in comparison to other Superheroes?

Honestly my biggest issue is just writing out Year One which I think is one of her best modern origin stories.

Aside from Donna Troy, how did it negatively effect WW herself? Oh no, she got one of the best runs in her entire history and 10 years later under writers like Jimenez, Simone, and Rucka it didn't matter at all.

Yeah, truly we lost out by ditching 40 years of pre-Crisis comics where DC didn't care about her but at least she wasn't a rookie.

I won't argue that Diana needs to be treated better on the JL. She does.

Yet at the same time I don't think she's always depicted that badly on the team even if the worse points (usually from Geoff Johns' tenure, I'll admit) tend to stand out because people bring them up a lot. Like was she used so badly under Morisson? The Satellite era? Joe Kelly or Mark Waid's runs? Even Scott Snyder or Brad Meltzer? I don't recall there being any Batman and Superman wagging their fingers at her in those runs.

I think if you're going to cite the JL as your premier Superhero team with the big names, it makes no sense that you're premier and biggest female Superhero isn't on it.

But she also shouldn't be depicted as worse compared to her male peers.

Depends, how many truly great stuff on either JL or JSA is there to counteract the truly bad stuff like JL or the stuff when we branch out to DCAU, DCEU, and the Injustice franchise?

[Frontier]

Aside from Donna Troy, how did it negatively effect WW herself? Oh no, she got one of the best runs in her entire history and 10 years later under writers like Jimenez, Simone, and Rucka it didn't matter at all.

Yeah, truly we lost out by ditching 40 years of pre-Crisis comics where DC didn't care about her but at least she wasn't a rookie.

Why shouldn't she be active around the same time Batman and Superman were? Some of those later runs basically acted like she was as experienced compared to Perez's run especially by the time they were trying to re-establish her Rogues Gallery in full force again.

Depends, how many truly great stuff on either JL or JSA is there to counteract the truly bad stuff like JL or the stuff when we branch out to DCAU, DCEU, and the Injustice franchise?

I think Joe Kelly had a solid story with her in his run if I remember right, Snyders' JL led to the JLD stuff, there's more to Diana on the League than just the DCAU etc.

[SiegePerilous02]

Aside from Donna Troy, how did it negatively effect WW herself? Oh no, she got one of the best runs in her entire history and 10 years later under writers like Jimenez, Simone, and Rucka it didn't matter at all.

Yeah, truly we lost out by ditching 40 years of pre-Crisis comics where DC didn't care about her but at least she wasn't a rookie.

Depends, how many truly great stuff on either JL or JSA is there to counteract the truly bad stuff like JL or the stuff when we branch out to DCAU, DCEU, and the Injustice franchise?

Would the Perez run and all that was good about it have been substantially impacted if it was set earlier in the timeline?

Because setting it later screwed up Donna and didn't protect Diana from poor writing decisions later. What is the net gain here? Yes creators who care about her, but again their runs would have been little different if Diana had her original timeline of being active. They also effectively wrote her that way anyway

[Guy_McNichts]

I assume if they were to write Diana on the JSA again they'd depict her similar to her portrayal in the JSA: WWII movie.

Mediocre, in other words.