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

[Commissioner Wayne]

I could be like that guy in the meme gesturing wildly with many notes pinned behind him with connecting string, but the more effort I put into it, the more I prefer a simple explanation.

Heh. Pepe Silvia.297A46CE-CD75-45B5-AF77-153629644522.jpg

[bat39]

Power Girl debuting before Superman is as ridiculous as Donna Troy debuting before Wonder Woman. DC keeps making the same mistakes over and over!

Not really. Power Girl, from a brand perspective, isn't as associated with Superman anymore as Donna Troy was associated with Wonder Woman. (In fact, on another thread, I'd argued that Huntress is much more tied to Batman because, even though Helena Bertinelli was a total reboot who was no longer Batman's daughter, she was still part of the Batman mythos).

I can easily imagine Power Girl as being a refugee from another timeline/universe showing up on Earth 0 in 1976. Of course, in such a scenario, I'd prefer that she had amnesia and wasn't sure of her origins until decades later, when she met Superman and then remembered she was from an alternate Krypton (or, remembered her pre-Crisis past with Kal-L, as she eventually did in the lead-up to IC back in 2005/6).

The idea of the JSA being around in the 70's was the most intriguing takeaway for me from this issue, and I look forward to seeing how they handle it.

I don't get what the issue is with PG. I would guess she is still the cousin of Kal L. A Superman from a destroyed universe. Like she was Post Infinite Crisis. Doesn't matter if she debuted before the Earth Zero version.

Agreed.

Agreed. It's weird because just a few months ago Johns made sure to establish Golden Age Green Arrow as the current one who got stranded in the past alongside Roy.
Yet now Aquaman is separated in two distinct characters. There's no criteria.

The difference is that Golden Age Aquaman may as well be a totally different character from the later iterations of Aquaman, apart from his appearance and his broad powers. They don't even share the same name, let alone genetics or backstory. With Green Arrow and Speedy, its still Oliver Queen and Roy Harper, though their origin stories were a bit different.

I actually like that Johns isn't going with a ''one size fits all'' explanation but rather going with different explanations for different characters, depending on their publication histories and their in-universe histories. So Aquaman has a totally different origin and source for his powers in the Golden Age? Make the Golden Age version a different character. Green Arrow and Speedy were part of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, who were famously lost in time once? Have them be from the present-day, and then go back in time to be the Golden Age versions. Power Girl has no real connection to the current version of Superman and already has a backstory of being from another universe? Let her precede Superman in the current timeline. Huntress needs to be the child of Bruce and Selina? Time-travel again, from a possible future.

What's gained by Wonder Woman being a member of the JSA in the 1940s is that creators who want to explore her wartime relationships with Jay, Alan, Carter, and the rest don't have to pretend all those old stories never happened. Having WW's history with the JSA back in continuity doesn't force creators or readers to deal with it. You can ignore it completely and the character remains the same. Same deal with the Golden Age Aquaman. My guess is the vast majority of Aquaman stories will never mention that there was another Aquaman with yellow gloves in the 40s sinking Nazi U-Boats...because that's not relevant to the story being told. However, the option is now there for creators to do so if they choose to.

It's similar to how a lot of creators approached the Post-Crisis Superman retcons. Loeb & Sale simply never mention that Ma & Pa inexplicably allowed their unnaturally strong, fast, and tough son unfairly compete against other teenagers who had absolutely no chance of beating him because those creators knew that bringing that up wouldn't fit the story they were telling. You'll notice that Waid never has Superman bring up the Kents still being alive back in Smallville because he prefers them being dead. He's not contradicting anything by not bringing them up either. He's simply not mentioning it. So, creators who'd like to use the living Kents are free to do so while those who prefer Superman to be without his foster parents don't need to mention them being alive. Personally, I'd prefer Pa Kent to be dead myself, but I've come to realise that it'd be selfish of me to insist that all readers who enjoy reading about Superman and Pa Kent hanging out with each other be deprived of it because of me.

Wonder Woman was a prominent member of the JSA in the 1940s (beyond being their "secretary"), whether or not that's valuable to you is kind of irrelevant as there are other readers and creators who do value that. You don't need to read those stories. It's as simple as that.

Agreed. DC history works best when it tries to be as inclusive as possible. The craziness of keeping it together is part of the fun of comics! We always have the adaptations and one-shot alternate universe/Black Label/Elseworld-type stories to 'streamline' and simplify things.

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.

Yeah, I think Steve being resurrected makes the most sense. Greek mythology is filled with cyclicity. Throw in some bonkers DC comic-book stuff and this kind of thing is par for the course!

My take on Infinity Inc: if we're going with the notion that the pre-Crisis Earth-2 stuff happened on the mainstream Earth in the 20th century (with the exception of the Golden Age Superman, Batman, Robin, and Huntress) while something resembling the pre-Crisis Earth-1 stuff happened on the mainstream Earth on a floating timeline that starts with Superman's debut in Metropolis roughly twenty years ago, then it follows that any pre-Crisis interactions between Earth 1 and Earth 2 that are still in continuity have to be treated as time travel crossovers, from Flash of Two Worlds (now effectively Flash of Two Eras) all the way up to the Crisis on Infinite Earths itself. That means that the Crisis on Infinite Earths actually took place both in 1985 and “fifteen years ago”. And the second to last issue, when all of the surviving heroes of the Multiverse woke up to find themselves on a single Earth, becomes the point that Infinity Inc., and their co-workers, transitioned from 1985 to “fifteen years ago”.

That leaves a seventeen year (and growing) gap between the 20th century end of the First Crisis and Superman's debut in Metropolis, kicking off the modern age of heroes. That gap is likely to mostly be empty, with a handful of notable exceptions such as Superman's teen career as Superboy and the adventures of Cameron Chase's Justice Experience; but unless something gets retconned into this gap, it serves mainly as setup for the modern age of heroes.

This arrangement has the benefit of being sustainable in the long term: it doesn't matter how big the gap between the end of the 20th century age of heroes and the dawn of the modern age of heroes gets; the fact that “everyone” ended up in the “present” at the end of the First Crisis means that you don't need any further explanation for how a relatively young Rick Tyler can be both the current Hourman and the son of the Rex Tyler who was Hourman way back in 1940. It's also something that could be explained with a single page worth of panels: one showing a scene from Flash of Two Worlds with a caption about how Barry had accidentally gone back in time to meet Jay; another showing the first meeting of the JSA and JLA with a caption about how the two eras became linked and that for a time there were periodic crossings between them; and a third showing, say, a scene of Infinity Inc. and the New Titans together on the post-Crisis Earth with a caption saying that that link eventually snapped and that when that happened, many from the 20th century found themselves pulled forward in time to the modern era.

That's actually a pretty good explanation. In general, I like the idea of the JSA now being heroes of the 20th century, while the JLA and their successors are heroes of the 21st.

[Factor]

The more I think about time displaced Helena Wayne, the more I question if it really was a good choice.
Having her be from the main Earth’s future makes her a successor to the Helena Bertinelli Huntress. But why would Batman and Catwoman’s daughter use the codename and look of a relatively minor Gotham hero when she’s literally the daughter of Batman and Catwoman?
Plus I really dislike that she can no longer be the same age as Power Girl and their whole friendship is basically undone.

To me it would be better to have the return of the original Earth-2 Helena, who would have been on a quest to find her missing friend (PG) for years.
That would restore all Pre-Crisis Earth-2 history and would open up that world for further exploration as a world where heroes debuted in the 30s and were actually allowed to affect significant changes in their society.
This way Earth-2 JSA would act as inspiration to the main Earth’s JSA, but they would each be in very different places at the present.

[Dataweaver]

The more I think about time displaced Helena Wayne, the more I question if it really was a good choice.
Having her be from the main Earth’s future makes her a successor to the Helena Bertinelli Huntress. But why would Batman and Catwoman’s daughter use the codename and look of a relatively minor Gotham hero when she’s literally the daughter of Batman and Catwoman?
Plus I really dislike that she can no longer be the same age as Power Girl and their whole friendship is basically undone.

Not necessarily. It's already known that Helena is going to be hopping through time during her hunt for Per Degaton; if she ends up landing in 1979 at some point and hands around there for six years before hopping out again, her original participation in the 20th century JSA can be restored.

Her connection to Bertinelli could be that Bertinelli mentored her. Bruce didn't, and neither did Selina. So she either figured it out herself or was trained by someone else.

To me it would be better to have the return of the original Earth-2 Helena, who would have been on a quest to find her missing friend (PG) for years.
That would restore all Pre-Crisis Earth-2 history and would open up that world for further exploration as a world where heroes debuted in the 30s and were actually allowed to affect significant changes in their society.
This way Earth-2 JSA would act as inspiration to the main Earth’s JSA, but they would each be in very different places at the present.

I'm partial to that, too; but that's not what we're getting.

[Dataweaver]

It occurs to me that if Johns really wanted to, he could even use the “26 years years from now” JSA to reintroduce a version of the Golden Age Robin: not Dick Grayson himself, but his namesake son.

[bat39]

The more I think about time displaced Helena Wayne, the more I question if it really was a good choice.
Having her be from the main Earth’s future makes her a successor to the Helena Bertinelli Huntress. But why would Batman and Catwoman’s daughter use the codename and look of a relatively minor Gotham hero when she’s literally the daughter of Batman and Catwoman?
Plus I really dislike that she can no longer be the same age as Power Girl and their whole friendship is basically undone.

To me it would be better to have the return of the original Earth-2 Helena, who would have been on a quest to find her missing friend (PG) for years.
That would restore all Pre-Crisis Earth-2 history and would open up that world for further exploration as a world where heroes debuted in the 30s and were actually allowed to affect significant changes in their society.
This way Earth-2 JSA would act as inspiration to the main Earth’s JSA, but they would each be in very different places at the present.

Its possible that this Helena somehow regains her memories of being the Pre-Crisis Huntress?

Too early to say, but the vibe I got here is that Degaton is aware of Helena's Pre-Crisis past and is basically 'recreating' her origin story on Earth 0, with a twist.

[DABellWrites]

What's gained by Wonder Woman being a member of the JSA in the 1940s is that creators who want to explore her wartime relationships with Jay, Alan, Carter, and the rest don't have to pretend all those old stories never happened. Having WW's history with the JSA back in continuity doesn't force creators or readers to deal with it. You can ignore it completely and the character remains the same. Same deal with the Golden Age Aquaman. My guess is the vast majority of Aquaman stories will never mention that there was another Aquaman with yellow gloves in the 40s sinking Nazi U-Boats...because that's not relevant to the story being told. However, the option is now there for creators to do so if they choose to.

It's similar to how a lot of creators approached the Post-Crisis Superman retcons. Loeb & Sale simply never mention that Ma & Pa inexplicably allowed their unnaturally strong, fast, and tough son unfairly compete against other teenagers who had absolutely no chance of beating him because those creators knew that bringing that up wouldn't fit the story they were telling. You'll notice that Waid never has Superman bring up the Kents still being alive back in Smallville because he prefers them being dead. He's not contradicting anything by not bringing them up either. He's simply not mentioning it. So, creators who'd like to use the living Kents are free to do so while those who prefer Superman to be without his foster parents don't need to mention them being alive. Personally, I'd prefer Pa Kent to be dead myself, but I've come to realise that it'd be selfish of me to insist that all readers who enjoy reading about Superman and Pa Kent hanging out with each other be deprived of it because of me.

Wonder Woman was a prominent member of the JSA in the 1940s (beyond being their "secretary"), whether or not that's valuable to you is kind of irrelevant as there are other readers and creators who do value that. You don't need to read those stories. It's as simple as that.

Except, it is relevant. DC Comics is a business. They need to make business decisions that'll bring in new readers, something the desperately need. Very few readers care about Diana interacting with the Alan, Jay, or the rest of the JSA. Even less readers care about Aquaman and Green Arrow having their golden age origins. It doesn't matter about "don't read those stories", DC Comics need people to read those stories, they desperately need people to read those stories. However, throwing it all in the mainline of continuity, it doesn't help anything. You're writing to a niche audience. What good will all this do ten years down the line when nobody has touched anything or did anything with it?

[Dataweaver]

The whole of the JSA was considered to be a “niche audience” thing in the 90s. The whole reason Zero Hour killed them off was because it was thought that their time had passed and they weren't worth keeping around anymore.

Then the Jack Knight Starman series happened, and interest in the JSA was revived, leading to a decade worth of stories where the JSA was going strong — strong enough that even after Flashpoint wiped them out again, it was deemed worthwhile to try to relaunch them in the context of the New 52's Earth 2.

What good will all this do ten years down the line? That depends on what they do with it now. If they actually do something with Wonder Woman's reinstatement into the JSA's history, it could do a lot of good.

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

The whole of the JSA was considered to be a “niche audience” thing in the 90s. The whole reason Zero Hour killed them off was because it was thought that their time had passed and they weren't worth keeping around anymore.

Then the Jack Knight Starman series happened, and interest in the JSA was revived, leading to a decade worth of stories where the JSA was going strong — strong enough that even after Flashpoint wiped them out again, it was deemed worthwhile to try to relaunch them in the context of the New 52's Earth 2.

What good will all this do ten years down the line? That depends on what they do with it now. If they actually do something with Wonder Woman's reinstatement into the JSA's history, it could do a lot of good.

No. Mike Carlin hated the idea of "senior citizen superheroes" (his words) being active (he'd come to DC from Marvel, who were very anti-Golden Age characters still being active beyond Cap and Namor when he was there) and mandated the cancellation of their regular book despite it being a beloved by fans book that sold well for DC. (He probably was a major force BTS behind their "canon fodder" use in ZH.)

Jack Knight's Starman book also didn't just happen; it was literally spun out of Zero Hour (ZH was his first appearance). Jay continued to be used in the pages of Flash; Alan as Sentinel continued to be used in both GLC Quarterly and Green Lantern; and Wildcat was semi-incorporated into the Batman corner for a while (those minis he was given co-starring Batman and Catwoman). Interest in the Golden Agers and JSA continued alongside the Starman book, not as a result of it (although the book played a huge role in the JSA's revival).

[Bruce Wayne]

JSA getting a book definitely had help from Starman since Robinson was one of the writers on JSA with Goyer before Robinson dropped out in favor of Johns and of course Tomasi and his crew were on editorial duties for all these books + Hawkman.

[DABellWrites]

The whole of the JSA was considered to be a “niche audience” thing in the 90s. The whole reason Zero Hour killed them off was because it was thought that their time had passed and they weren't worth keeping around anymore.

Then the Jack Knight Starman series happened, and interest in the JSA was revived, leading to a decade worth of stories where the JSA was going strong — strong enough that even after Flashpoint wiped them out again, it was deemed worthwhile to try to relaunch them in the context of the New 52's Earth 2.

What good will all this do ten years down the line? That depends on what they do with it now. If they actually do something with Wonder Woman's reinstatement into the JSA's history, it could do a lot of good.

The industry was much healthier back then where even the JSA could carry a book. So did Constantine and Jonah Hex. It's 2022. The industry is much more different. That's not really my point to begin, it's putting Diana back into the JSA to interact with Alan and Jay, Aquaman and Green Arrow golden age origins. Not many people care about this stuff, if they did DC Comics would've been publishing these stories. Some can claim just ignore it, but if nobody is reading that Aquaman title or that Green Arrow title, why keep publishing them? I don't see what Wonder Woman can do in the JSA that she hasn't done in the JLA.

That's just me, my pessimism. I can be wrong and this idea may turn out to be DC's golden goose for decades to come.

[MajorHoy]

The industry was much healthier back then where even the JSA could carry a book. So did Constantine and Jonah Hex. It's 2022. The industry is much more different. That's not really my point to begin, it's putting Diana back into the JSA to interact with Alan and Jay, Aquaman and Green Arrow golden age origins. Not many people care about this stuff, if they did DC Comics would've been publishing these stories. Some can claim just ignore it, but if nobody is reading that Aquaman title or that Green Arrow title, why keep publishing them? I don't see what Wonder Woman can do in the JSA that she hasn't done in the JLA.

That's just me, my pessimism. I can be wrong and this idea may turn out to be DC's golden goose for decades to come.

It returns a female to the Golden Age Justice Society of America line-up without drastically altering the past. Originally, Black Canary didn't become involved with the JSA until All-Star Comics #38 (December 1947-January 1948), but Diana had been present (even if she wasn't always a major participant) with the group starting with issue #11 (I believe) in 1942. Expanding Diana's role would be less of a drastic change than retroactively introducing a new female member during the earlier period of the JSA.

[Lee]

It also keeps a big name character in the Justice Society, a character the general public already knows and who can sustain their own series.

[SiegePerilous02]

It also keeps a big name character in the Justice Society, a character the general public already knows and who can sustain their own series.

I think that may be part of the issue: it's about what Diana can do for JSA, not really what their IP can do for her.

[Gaius]

Yep, every possible way to shoe horn WW back in to the JSA involves completely messing up her with total comic book utter nonsense for a team that hasn't been important to her longer than most fans have been alive.

Make up a new character for that secretary position y'all are so desperate to fill.