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

[Psy-lock]

Being a part of the JLA isn't a super important part of any of the Big 7's characters, as all of their IPs can function independently. But it's a shared universe and there is a LOT of published material that gets reprints with all of them in the JLA, and it's interconnected to stuff like Teen Titans. Donna is called Wonder Girl as part of the marketing to link her to Diana, and Wonder Woman and the Amazons showed up in NTT as part of her origin during the height of that book's popularity and when continuity was getting more dense.

It never made any sense to alter Diana's timeline to exclude her from the JLA, so that there was a Wonder Girl running around with a lasso and bracelets years before Wonder Woman. And her being a rookie hero compared to Donna, Dick and Wally just feels completely wrong.

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.

[Gaius]

Could not disagree more.

Diana lost her status as a founding member of the JLA.
Diana lost her connection to Donna Troy, one of her biggest supporting players.
Diana became a newbie hero in a modern age where heroes had long since been established.
Those things are huge.

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.

I think losing her history with JLA was bad since it played havoc with Donna's timeline. And most of the worst stuff to happen to her while on that team happened in the modern age, not Silver/Bronze. There wasn't any gain to that, and at least one huge headache.

Just put Perez's run earlier in the timeline and we wouldn't have any problems. But for the GA stuff, there is no need for it at all besides trying to figure out what the hell to do with Fury. Which they solved with Helena Kosmatos I guess, though that's certainly a downgrade marketability wise from being the daughter of WW.

I generally agree about Diana with the JSA, but I do prefer she be a founding member of the Justice League.

Yeah, whether they treat her that way or not, having your premier female hero help found your premier hero team makes the most sense.

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".

[dswynne]

COIE caused the removal of the Trinity, GA, and Aquaman from the Golden Age. Because Batman (and Robin) and Superman had little interaction with the JSA and other heroes in those days, they were easy enough to ignore in terms of DC's Golden Age history. Aquaman was barely mentioned as an Earth Two character and I think Roy Thomas did it just to include him as a published hero of that time for completeness. WW and GA needed to be removed from their respective teams and each character had multiple attempts to do that.

The idea of WW's return to the JSA, IMO, has its origins in the first Gal Gadot movie where Diana first appears in WW1. Full disclosure, I am a JSA fan and read Wonder Woman based on the writer. My handling of this would be to put WW in the JSA, probably as a founding member and go through to the HUAC committee meeting where the JSA disappears. Diana goes back home and reappears for her modern day adventures. keeping her modern day activities and contacts active. If you don't like this idea, don't buy my WWII JSA book then.

Unlike WW, Green Arrow (and Speedy) can't fit into the forties as the mortals they are and still be active today without time travel. If I were writing this, I'd have time travel event occur later in Ollie and Roy's lives. But Ollie's older and Roy's an adult! some will say. So what. The 7SV had 14 adventures not including their battle which sent them across time. Roy being in his mid 20's can easily be inconsequential to those stories.

Aquaman is the only one left. As some here have said, a GA Aquaman doesn't seem to have a need. If an underwater hero is needed then, Neptune Perkins.

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.

[Agent Z]

An opportunity to appear in more stuff essentially.

I'm not sure she needs the JSA for that.

[Mantis-Ray]

I'm not sure she needs the JSA for that.

Remembering other bits, I think I recall it compared to how Superman has the Legion of Superheroes and Batman has the Outsiders, so its a supergroup for Diana.

Though she has recently joined the Justice League Dark so she already has that.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

The problem becomes that if we want to preserve the Golden Age history to be as close to how it actually happened as possible, that begs the question of what that means for her supporting cast. Because Steve and Etta are more important to her than her ties to Jay and Alan, and they aren't immortal. Do we preserve the Golden Age stories but pretend Steve and Etta weren't in them? Or does Steve die and get resurrected later, or does she fall in love with a grandson/great- grandson who is a dead ringer for her first boyfriend? What happens to Lyta in the interim, and how to we explain the OOC behavior of Diana leaving Man's World for a few decades before returning to join the JLA?

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.

[Psy-lock]

Remembering other bits, I think I recall it compared to how Superman has the Legion of Superheroes and Batman has the Outsiders, so its a supergroup for Diana.

Though she has recently joined the Justice League Dark so she already has that.

There's a big difference here. The Legion and Outsiders were introduced through Superman and Batman, while Wonder Woman wasn't a founding member of the JSA and was only their secretary when she joined. She also doesn't have any obvious thematic ties to the JSA the way Bats and Supes have with their teams.

[Robanker]

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.







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".

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.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

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.

Yeah, I don't think removing Wonder Woman from parts of the DCU that haven't served her well is a great idea given that even her own solo book hasn't done a particularly great job at that.

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

[Superboy-Prime]

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

[Dagothoth]

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

They are definitely decoupling clark and power girl

[Bored at 3:00AM]

They are definitely decoupling clark and power girl

I wouldn't be too sure about that. The mental gymnastics that are being done over the 1976 flashback are a bit premature.

[Agent Z]

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.

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.

[Agent Z]

Yeah, I don't think removing Wonder Woman from parts of the DCU that haven't served her well is a great idea given that even her own solo book hasn't done a particularly great job at that.

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

[Dagothoth]

Could be a time travel issue


Apparently Helena Wayne is swearing an oath of vengeance to hunt down this nazi(whose famous for time traveling no less)


I wonder…