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

[bat39]

I mean, Johns can do his own thing, but it's not something I see other writers acknowledging or developing at this point.

They still have to make sense of Power Girl debuting before Superman, I think.

Seeing as how the “Wonder Woman in the Golden Age” thing was put into play well before Johns started his New Golden Age stuff, I see that as one of the more likely aspects of this for other writers to use.

This is DC. You can bet that some writer will make use of ''Wonder Woman in the Golden Age'' in a miniseries, one-shot, or hell, even in the main title at some point...even if Johns' doesn't do a lot with it in his book.

Wonder Woman is the one member of the Trinity who has historically retained her ties to WW2 and the Golden Age. Of all the Trinity, she's the one character whose book reverted to the Golden Age/E2 version during the 70's for a short period of time. She's the one Trinity character who frequently gets stories set in WW2 (Legends of Wonder Woman for instance - haven't read it yet but heard great stuff about it). No Superman show has given us a 1938 Superman (though I wish they would!) but Wonder Woman got a season set in WW2. And her big cinematic debut swapped WW2 for WW1 but the inspiration for it to be a wartime period-piece was very much the Golden Age.

I dunno why that is, but it's very much a part of the character's real-world history in the comics and other media. And I say it's a strength, or rather, it can be if done right.

There are a lot of questions about how WW's mythos works with this new timeline. I say, bring it on. Let's have WW2-era Wonder Woman nostalgia, inspired by Marston! Let's have an epic miniseries about Wonder Woman through the decades! Let's have some crazy story filled with timey-wimey and weirdo mystical stuff to potentially explain two Steve Trevors! This is comics...it's supposed to be FUN!

As far as Power Girl goes, to me it's pretty straightforward - a Symbioship shows up in 1976, as a temporal/multiversal anomaly and crash-lands. The JSA find a young woman in it who vaguely remembers her name is Kara but knows little else, and then discovers she has superpowers. They take in this amnesiac, give her a home, and she builds a new life for herself as Karen Starr and Power Girl, serving as one of the powerhouses of the team. Decades later, she meets the newly-debuted Superman, it triggers some repressed memories, she thinks she might be Superman's cousin from Krypton, but a test proves her wrong. Years after that, she discovers her true origins and remembers her life from a previous timeline and her Superman.

See, not so hard is it?

[SiegePerilous02]

Johns was DC's top writer at the time. Idea that he had no influence on what goes in DC universe is really weird one.

Didio was often blamed for micromanagment, but now it looks like he wasn't managing Johns hard enough and it is again his fault that Johns wrote bad WW and introduced bunch of stupid **** to her mythology.

Yeah, of all the big writers at the time, Johns was the biggest and had the most clout. Rucka noted in one of the 52 trades that he was adamantly against the idea of writing Diana "struggling to be more human, so she needs a secret ID" notion, but was outvoted by the other writers, Johns among them. The other two, Morrison and Waid, don't have a great history with her either, but this "she's not human enough" stuff was Geoff's big hang up at the time.

This is DC. You can bet that some writer will make use of ''Wonder Woman in the Golden Age'' in a miniseries, one-shot, or hell, even in the main title at some point...even if Johns' doesn't do a lot with it in his book.

Wonder Woman is the one member of the Trinity who has historically retained her ties to WW2 and the Golden Age. Of all the Trinity, she's the one character whose book reverted to the Golden Age/E2 version during the 70's for a short period of time. She's the one Trinity character who frequently gets stories set in WW2 (Legends of Wonder Woman for instance - haven't read it yet but heard great stuff about it). No Superman show has given us a 1938 Superman (though I wish they would!) but Wonder Woman got a season set in WW2. And her big cinematic debut swapped WW2 for WW1 but the inspiration for it to be a wartime period-piece was very much the Golden Age.

I dunno why that is, but it's very much a part of the character's real-world history in the comics and other media. And I say it's a strength, or rather, it can be if done right.

There are a lot of questions about how WW's mythos works with this new timeline. I say, bring it on. Let's have WW2-era Wonder Woman nostalgia, inspired by Marston! Let's have an epic miniseries about Wonder Woman through the decades! Let's have some crazy story filled with timey-wimey and weirdo mystical stuff to potentially explain two Steve Trevors! This is comics...it's supposed to be FUN!?

If the two Steve Trevor's thing is supposed to be fun, can they try to explain two Lois Lanes? Because even though he wasn't teaming up with the JSA that much, Superman is a WW2 era character. He, Batman and Robin went all in on the WW2 propaganda (Superman even has one of the most infamous examples of that), and Superman did have media released during that period. Just because Lynda Carter was set in the 1940s, it doesn't mean Wonder Woman has any more intrinsic ties to WW2 than the other two members of the Trinity, certainly far less so than the JSA. Superman may historically have bigger ties to it considering some of the material that was published, along with other contemporary stuff like "Clan of the Fiery Cross."

We can see this because the Bronze Age shifting to Earth-2 didn't change the fact that Wonder Woman was not a high seller. Her biggest run after Marston was Perez, and he set her origin in the modern day, there were no ties to WW2 and we didn't feel its absence (her timeline not meshing with the Justice League caused much bigger issues). Her New 52 and Rebirth reboots followed suit. The DCAU, 2009 DTV and Bloodlines all set her origin in the modern day. The multiple Steve Trevors/his various deaths and resurrections were not popular in the old comics and that's why Perez overhauled him to not be a love interest. And the overall reception of how he was used in WW84 has received criticism. This seems to be more about chasing shallow Lynda Carter nostalgia and movie synergy that comes too late (the movie came out in 2017) rather than something that's well thought out or something the character needs.

[bat39]

Yeah, of all the big writers at the time, Johns was the biggest and had the most clout. Rucka noted in one of the 52 trades that he was adamantly against the idea of writing Diana "struggling to be more human, so she needs a secret ID" notion, but was outvoted by the other writers, Johns among them. The other two, Morrison and Waid, don't have a great history with her either, but this "she's not human enough" stuff was Geoff's big hang up at the time.



If the two Steve Trevor's thing is supposed to be fun, can they try to explain two Lois Lanes? Because even though he wasn't teaming up with the JSA that much, Superman is a WW2 era character. He, Batman and Robin went all in on the WW2 propaganda (Superman even has one of the most infamous examples of that), and Superman did have media released during that period. Just because Lynda Carter was set in the 1940s, it doesn't mean Wonder Woman has any more intrinsic ties to WW2 than the other two members of the Trinity, certainly far less so than the JSA. Superman may historically have bigger ties to it considering some of the material that was published, along with other contemporary stuff like "Clan of the Fiery Cross."

We can see this because the Bronze Age shifting to Earth-2 didn't change the fact that Wonder Woman was not a high seller. Her biggest run after Marston was Perez, and he set her origin in the modern day, there were no ties to WW2 and we didn't feel its absence (her timeline not meshing with the Justice League caused much bigger issues). Her New 52 and Rebirth reboots followed suit. The DCAU, 2009 DTV and Bloodlines all set her origin in the modern day. The multiple Steve Trevors/his various deaths and resurrections were not popular in the old comics and that's why Perez overhauled him to not be a love interest. And the overall reception of how he was used in WW84 has received criticism. This seems to be more about chasing shallow Lynda Carter nostalgia and movie synergy that comes too late (the movie came out in 2017) rather than something that's well thought out or something the character needs.

You're trying to make it an equation - ''If X, then Y''. The history of superhero comics (and media) has seldom been that.

For whatever reason, Superman's ties to WW2 have never been maintained the way Wonder Woman's have. The sliding timescale has been rigorously applied to him (indeed, built around him if you go by Doomsday Clock's Metaverse explanation). Superman's mythos and supporting cast have been (relatively) more stable than Wonder Woman's. Not saying if it's right or wrong...just saying that's how it happened.

You may feel that Diana has had a raw deal compared to Bruce and Clark. But most DC characters have, to be honest, and many argue that Clark has had a raw deal compared to Bruce. At least Wonder Woman made it out of the Golden Age. Spare a thought for Alan and Jay, who've been supplanted as GL and Flash respectively in the popular imagination by Hal (and the rest of the GLC) Barry (and his successors Wally and Bart).

I'm not saying Steve Trevor's deaths and resurrections were examples of stellar writing. But the history of comics is littered with examples of silly or even plain stupid ideas that have been recontexualised for the better. Morrison did wonders with 50's Batman material! A rather strange retcon involving Black Canary being her own daughter via a memory implant evolved into a true mother-daughter legacy. Venditti has recently taken the convoluted mess that is Hawkman's history and woven it into a fairly cohesive whole.

Anything can be redeemed...

[HsssH]

Superman's mythos and supporting cast have been (relatively) more stable than Wonder Woman's. Not saying if it's right or wrong...just saying that's how it happened.

I'm not sure why having more stable mythos and supporting cast is not "right".

[MajorHoy]

. . . Wonder Woman is the one member of the Trinity who has historically retained her ties to WW2 and the Golden Age. Of all the Trinity, she's the one character whose book reverted to the Golden Age/E2 version during the 70's for a short period of time. She's the one Trinity character who frequently gets stories set in WW2 (Legends of Wonder Woman for instance - haven't read it yet but heard great stuff about it). No Superman show has given us a 1938 Superman (though I wish they would!) but Wonder Woman got a season set in WW2 . . .

The Wonder Woman comic book stories changing from "present day" to WW2 era in the 1970s comic books was because the first season of her TV show (which aired on the ABC network) took place during WWII. In the comic books, they had a story where Earth-1's Wonder Woman was pulled to Earth-2 during the 1940s and briefly teamed-up with Earth-2 Wonder Woman before the comic book switched its focus to Earth-2 Wonder Woman stories in the 1940s. (The comic book stories even gave Earth-2's Steve Trevor brown hair since the guy playing Steve on the Wonder Woman TV show wasn't blonde haired like the guy in the Golden Age comic book stories.)
After season one, the TV show moved from WWII-era to the present day when the television show was carried by the CBS network, and the reason for that was due to cost savings. Eventually, the comic books shifted the focus from Earth-2's Wonder Woman in the 1940s back to Earth-1's Wonder Woman in the "present day".

. . . We can see this because the Bronze Age shifting to Earth-2 didn't change the fact that Wonder Woman was not a high seller. Her biggest run after Marston was Perez, and he set her origin in the modern day, there were no ties to WW2 and we didn't feel its absence (her timeline not meshing with the Justice League caused much bigger issues) . . .

And I believe at the time I read somewhere that it wasn't Pérez' decision to have Wonder Woman's origin take place in the (then) present / after the formation of the Justice League of America but was something dictated from the editorial side.
(The decision by higher ups to not have either Wonder Woman or Hawkman's Hawkworld origins take place prior to "current time" were two of the biggest stupid decisions of their time.)

[bat39]

The Wonder Woman comic book stories changing from "present day" to WW2 era in the 1970s comic books was because the first season of her TV show (which aired on the ABC network) took place during WWII. In the comic books, they had a story where Earth-1's Wonder Woman was pulled to Earth-2 during the 1940s and briefly teamed-up with Earth-2 Wonder Woman before the comic book switched its focus to Earth-2 Wonder Woman stories in the 1940s. (The comic book stories even gave Earth-2's Steve Trevor brown hair since the guy playing Steve on the Wonder Woman TV show wasn't blonde haired like the guy in the Golden Age comic book stories.)
After season one, the TV show moved from WWII-era to the present day when the television show was carried by the CBS network, and the reason for that was due to cost savings. Eventually, the comic books shifted the focus from Earth-2's Wonder Woman in the 1940s back to Earth-1's Wonder Woman in the "present day".

And I believe at the time I read somewhere that it wasn't Pérez' decision to have Wonder Woman's origin take place in the (then) present / after the formation of the Justice League of America but was something dictated from the editorial side.
(The decision by higher ups to not have either Wonder Woman or Hawkman's Hawkworld origins take place prior to "current time" were two of the biggest stupid decisions of their time.)

The higher-ups also told Byrne he couldn't incorporate Superman's Pre-COIE history the way he wanted to, and that MOS had to end with Superman as a veteran hero ''synched up'' with the present-day DCU.

This led to a weird situation where Superman spent 3 years just flying around stopping petty crimes and rescuing people, with just a couple of run-ins with Luthor and one encounter with Bizarro, while in the same span of time, Dick Grayson went from a Boy Wonder to Nightwing, leader of the New Teen Titans, and the Justice League had become Justice League International.

[MajorHoy]

The higher-ups also told Byrne he couldn't incorporate Superman's Pre-COIE history the way he wanted to, and that MOS had to end with Superman as a veteran hero ''synched up'' with the present-day DCU.

This led to a weird situation where Superman spent 3 years just flying around stopping petty crimes and rescuing people, with just a couple of run-ins with Luthor and one encounter with Bizarro, while in the same span of time, Dick Grayson went from a Boy Wonder to Nightwing, leader of the New Teen Titans, and the Justice League had become Justice League International.

But at least Superman was a presence in the DC universe at the time the Justice League of America was originally formed, even if neither he nor Batman were founding members for the post-CoIE revised origin.

[Will Evans]

The higher-ups also told Byrne he couldn't incorporate Superman's Pre-COIE history the way he wanted to, and that MOS had to end with Superman as a veteran hero ''synched up'' with the present-day DCU.

This led to a weird situation where Superman spent 3 years just flying around stopping petty crimes and rescuing people, with just a couple of run-ins with Luthor and one encounter with Bizarro, while in the same span of time, Dick Grayson went from a Boy Wonder to Nightwing, leader of the New Teen Titans, and the Justice League had become Justice League International.

Don’t forget, Barry had his complete career as the Flash.

Weren’t some of the Kirby Bronze age stuff kept post-crisis that was said to happen in Superman’s early career:
Thaddeus Kilgrave, meeting the New Gods, Present day Ultra Humanite, the Hairies, Mongul, Bruno Mannheim and Intergang, Maaldor, Blackrock, etc

[Bruce Wayne]

Well that's his name listed as the writer for IC, whose lousy characterization of her in that series is consistent with where he writes her elsewhere. There can be blame spread around to both DiDio and Johns.

Again who decided that Infinite Crisis had to be thing all the way back in 2004? Who decided that the basic plot that the CoiE survivor were to be the villains for example? Complain about the bad writing all you want, but the plot beats were determined beforehand by others.

I'm inclined to think the latter since the entire Rebirth shake-up was more his baby. If he didn't tell Robinson to write Jason and Grail as plot points

https://www.dc.com/blog/2018/07/13/leaving-themyscir
a-james-robinson-says-goodbye-to-wonder-woman

It feels like one of the things you made an effort to do was to tie Wonder Woman more strongly in with the greater DC Universe. Your first storylines picked up threads—like Jason—that Geoff had started during his Justice League run and now this latest was spun out of Dark Nights: Metal. Was that always the plan?

Jams Robinson: Dan DiDio specifically asked me to do something with Jason as it had been a major plot-point that hadn’t been addressed or resolved in over a year. I was up for the challenge. Metal and the Dark Gods, on the other hand, was something Scott Snyder asked me to get involved in.

Of course it's nasty Johns fault because reasons...

Johns was DC's top writer at the time.

Johns was only the top writer in the Blackest Night and post-Blackest Night era and that ended with New 52 before a brief revival with Rebirth.
1) He was one of many top writers in the pre-Infinite Crisis and Infinite Crisis era including Greg Rucka (who had one of the Superman books and the Wonder Woman ongoing and had written OMAC Project) and Jeph Loeb (who had the best selling Superman Batman book, had done Batman 608–619 and was planned as the orginal writer for All-Star Batman before the health issues with his son not to mention Loeb was favored by Paul Levitz to the point he was considered as a possible successor ) and Judd Winnick (who had written Graduation Day, had the Outsiders ongoing and written Under the Hood). Not to mention during the OYL/52 era where you had the addition of Grant Morrison.
2) In the Countdown era, he was on the outs and you clearly see him trying to kiss up to Bendis and jump over to Marvel. It's only with Green Lantern doing well with the Sinestro Corps War Storyline and the rest of Countdown and Final Crisis underperforming that his star was on the ascent with the buildup to Blackest Night.

Again Johns didn't dictate the position for the Wonder Woman book in that era.
Rucka had plans for the book after Infinite Crisis and had disagrements with the head honcho. Who got Jodi Pocult the job writing Wonder Woman? Who was the prime mover for Countdown to Final Crisis? Again who had the clout with the writers/editors to push the angle of WW being detached from humanity? Who undermined Simone's run on Wonder Woman. And who decided to push these elements like Jason in the Robinson?

But again it seems pretty consistent that your Dan-did-nothing-wrong-with-Wonder-Woman is pretty untenable.

[Psy-lock]

Of course it's nasty Johns fault because reasons...

It's his fault for creating Jason in the first place. The fact that Didio was the one who forced Johns' crap idea on Robinson doesn't make him innocent. They're partners in crime

[SiegePerilous02]

For whatever reason, Superman's ties to WW2 have never been maintained the way Wonder Woman's have. The sliding timescale has been rigorously applied to him (indeed, built around him if you go by Doomsday Clock's Metaverse explanation). Superman's mythos and supporting cast have been (relatively) more stable than Wonder Woman's. Not saying if it's right or wrong...just saying that's how it happened.

It happened because of decisions like this that make her continuity a mess. So the solution to fixing it is to....do more of it?

You may feel that Diana has had a raw deal compared to Bruce and Clark. But most DC characters have, to be honest, and many argue that Clark has had a raw deal compared to Bruce. At least Wonder Woman made it out of the Golden Age. Spare a thought for Alan and Jay, who've been supplanted as GL and Flash respectively in the popular imagination by Hal (and the rest of the GLC) Barry (and his successors Wally and Bart).

I don't really care about the other characters in the context of talking about the WW IP. I'm not going to spare a thought to Alan and Jay because I frankly don't care about them all that much in general. Yeah Wonder Woman is luckier than them, and most characters get a raw deal compared to Superman and (especially) Batman.

But...what does that have to do with anything? The justifications in this thread for putting Wonder Woman back in the JSA is because it will give the JSA a boost by having an A-lister on the team. So that's more about what she can do for them than vice versa. And to highlight her war time relationships with the likes of Alan and Jay. Which historically are not that important to her in the grand scheme of things. No fan of any specific character is obligated to care about the plights of other unrelated characters.

I'm not saying Steve Trevor's deaths and resurrections were examples of stellar writing. But the history of comics is littered with examples of silly or even plain stupid ideas that have been recontexualised for the better. Morrison did wonders with 50's Batman material! A rather strange retcon involving Black Canary being her own daughter via a memory implant evolved into a true mother-daughter legacy. Venditti has recently taken the convoluted mess that is Hawkman's history and woven it into a fairly cohesive whole.

Anything can be redeemed...

Morrison didn't set those stories within the 1950s though. Batman is the least changed of all the major players across the various reboots, his broad timeline always remains the same, so inserting that stuff back in was comparatively easy. Even then, Morrison had to smudge some things. And it's something only Morrison can really pull off.

It's not like Steve is a forgotten character from yesteryear like Kathy Kane, Bat-Mite and the Club of Heroes. He is very much around and has been for a while. Adding multiple versions of his won't redeem anything. It's nostalgia for an idea that nobody really liked the first time, it's fixing what isn't broken.

But again it seems pretty consistent that your Dan-did-nothing-wrong-with-Wonder-Woman is pretty untenable.

Are you confusing HsssH with me or something? They don't have that attitude at all.

You invented this belief in your head that we think DiDio did nothing wrong. That's not true. That quote from Robinson pretty much proves that Johns invented the bombshell that Diana had a brother, and then did nothing with it, so DiDio stepped in to have it wrapped up and told Robinson to do it. Maybe if Johns hadn't come up with the crappy idea and then got bored with it leaving it unresolved, DiDio wouldn't have done that?

The two of them can be two peas in a pod as far as WW is concerned.

[bat39]

It happened because of decisions like this that make her continuity a mess. So the solution to fixing it is to....do more of it?



I don't really care about the other characters in the context of talking about the WW IP. I'm not going to spare a thought to Alan and Jay because I frankly don't care about them all that much in general. Yeah Wonder Woman is luckier than them, and most characters get a raw deal compared to Superman and (especially) Batman.

But...what does that have to do with anything? The justifications in this thread for putting Wonder Woman back in the JSA is because it will give the JSA a boost by having an A-lister on the team. So that's more about what she can do for them than vice versa. And to highlight her war time relationships with the likes of Alan and Jay. Which historically are not that important to her in the grand scheme of things. No fan of any specific character is obligated to care about the plights of other unrelated characters.



Morrison didn't set those stories within the 1950s though. Batman is the least changed of all the major players across the various reboots, his broad timeline always remains the same, so inserting that stuff back in was comparatively easy. Even then, Morrison had to smudge some things. And it's something only Morrison can really pull off.

It's not like Steve is a forgotten character from yesteryear like Kathy Kane, Bat-Mite and the Club of Heroes. He is very much around and has been for a while. Adding multiple versions of his won't redeem anything. It's nostalgia for an idea that nobody really liked the first time, it's fixing what isn't broken.

You're a Wonder Woman fan first and foremost and I respect that. But not everyone shares that same passion for WW...evidently not even creators at DC. Though its worth keeping in mind that just because a creator may take a decision with the character that you (or other fans) might not agree with, doesn't mean that said creator is necessarily indifferent to or hates that character. You hate the idea of Wonder Woman being tied to WW2, but that doesn't mean that a creator who likes the idea, or fans who like that idea, necessarily hate the character.

On the subject of Morrison and Batman, my point was not about the time-period per se but a general observation about how some of the silliest and stupidest ideas in comics can be given a new context and a new lease on life years, or even decades, later.

[SiegePerilous02]

You're a Wonder Woman fan first and foremost and I respect that. But not everyone shares that same passion for WW...evidently not even creators at DC. Though its worth keeping in mind that just because a creator may take a decision with the character that you (or other fans) might not agree with, doesn't mean that said creator is necessarily indifferent to or hates that character. You hate the idea of Wonder Woman being tied to WW2, but that doesn't mean that a creator who likes the idea, or fans who like that idea, necessarily hate the character.

On the subject of Morrison and Batman, my point was not about the time-period per se but a general observation about how some of the silliest and stupidest ideas in comics can be given a new context and a new lease on life years, or even decades, later.

It's ok that not every fan or creator is passionate about the character, and I don't think Johns is doing this out of hatred or even full blown indifference. Or that fans who may like the idea hate the character either. But if a creator or fanbase doesn't have the same passion for a character...is it too much to ask that they not make a big creative decision on the character or their world that may not be well thought out? That leaves WW creators and the fans with the fallout, for the good of the greater DCU or whatever, and it seems like we get stuck with that crap more often than others. Like in the DCEU where they wanted Superman's debut to be a big deal, but Wonder Woman had to be an older superhero whose existence couldn't upstage his arrival. So we got stuck with the "walked away from humanity" crap that Patty and Gal had to find workarounds for, to mixed results.

I still don't think it's an adequate comparison though. Morrison brought back some silly ideas that weren't disruptive to Batman. Bringing back Kathy Kane and Bat-Mite doesn't mess up Bruce's timeline or impact his character. Diana falling in love with either Steve's identical nephew or pining after his memory for decades before his resurrection is cringe inducing, and not the best look to give to the biggest female superhero in the world. It's an inherently dicey idea that hasn't yielded anything good yet, unlike other old ideas which are just silly but harmless.

And speaking of Morrison...they went full Marston in their Earth One series. They brought back a bunch of silly ideas and used Golden Age exclusive characters, and they didn't need to set it during WW2, it was set during modern times. So that is more proof that she doesn't have intrinsic ties to WW2.

[InfamousBG]

So I am just catching up on a few of the JSA threads around here (and I have wayyyyyyys to go and read) but I would like to say if you look around right now it is a very fun time to be a JSA fan. Multiple threads. More discussions, new readers. Film and tv (sad about Stargirl I know). Multiple comics coming out.

I dont know about you guys but I like what I see so far and that has been hard to say as a JSA fan for a very long time now.

The future looks bright. I hope it stays that way.

[MajorHoy]

So I am just catching up on a few of the JSA threads around here (and I have wayyyyyyys to go and read) but I would like to say if you look around right now it is a very fun time to be a JSA fan. Multiple threads. More discussions, new readers. Film and tv (sad about Stargirl I know). Multiple comics coming out.

I dont know about you guys but I like what I see so far and that has been hard to say as a JSA fan for a very long time now.

The future looks bright. I hope it stays that way.

There may be a lot of JSA-related material coming up, but I think I'll hold off on "the future looks bright" until I get a better feel for what Geoff Johns is doing to them story-wise.
And also if / how / when we get a better definition regarding their past history and what still is or isn't in play.