Should the comic book origin of the JSA be revised to include Wonder Woman?

[SiegePerilous02]

Back in the 90s, when John Byrne retconned Hypollyta into the JSA in place of Diana, I really liked the idea — so much so that I got angry when they killed her off in Our Worlds At War. I had been looking forward to Polly “rejoining” the JSA and becoming an active participant in that title, and it was taken from me.

The Wonder Woman 80 Page Giant story implicitly assumes that the Wonder Woman who showed up in 1939 was Diana, though I don't think that's explicitly confirmed; and while I'm fine with her being Diana, I would also be fine if it, and the entire Golden Age, was retconned to feature Hypollyta as the first Wonder Woman instead of Diana. Honestly, either works for me. What doesn't work for me is “there was no Golden Age Wonder Woman”.

Erasing characters from the Golden Age has complications (witness the impact that removing Batman and Superman had on Huntress and Power Girl, issues which we're still grappling with to this day); so it's the sort of thing I'd prefer to avoid if reasonably possible. Making Diana immortal, or replacing the Golden Age Wonder Woman with Polly, is one of the cleaner solutions I've seen, cleaner than just about anything I've seen suggested for Superman or Batman; and just because there isn't a clean way to insert them into the Golden Age, that's not a reason to exclude Wonder Woman from the Golden Age as well.

(The cleanest way I've come up with for a Golden Age “Superman” or “Batman” would be to make use of the fact that each of them has a “lost in time” chapter in their recent lives: The Search For Bruce Wayne for Batman, and Superman: Lois and Clark for Superman. I could see leveraging both of those stories to insert Clark and Bruce into the 1970s JSA, though without actually using the Superman or Batman identities — which isn't much of a change for Bruce, as he spent his last years in the 1970s as Commissioner Wayne of Gotham City after Gordon's death. The only other solution I can think of is to introduce Golden Age stand-ins such as going back to the Young All-Stars and retroactively having Iron Munro and Flying Fox stand in for the Superman and Batman of the 1940s, or retconning the Golden Age Superman-equivalent to actually having been Mr. Majestic. But that has complications of its own, as the substitution of Miss America for Wonder Woman as a founder of the JLA demonstrated.)


That has problems, too: namely, if the JSA is strictly from Earth 2, you don't get the “JSA is the elder statesmen of the DCU” effect; they “merely” become an alternate universe version of the JLA. And while they made that work in the Silver Age, there are very few modern writers that I'd trust with the job. James Robinson had the proper credentials to pull it off; and at first the N52 Earth 2 was awesome. But then editorial came in, drive Robinson off the book, and reduced the JSA to being cheap knockoffs of the Justice League. Frankly, I wouldn't mind it if DC were to contract Robinson to get another shot at Earth 2, starting where Earth 2 Society left off and (re)building the world from there into something more in line with what he had originally intended to do. But Robinson has moved on, and I suspect that he would be more inclined to work within the framework of The New Golden Age anyway. So it's unlikely to ever happen.

Wonder Woman has the same complications being put back in the Golden Age as Superman. Superman is immortal/slow aging, so he can easily be present in the Golden Age without aging a day in the modern era. He can act ooc and leave for a few decades and come back later in the modern age. Or they can have another Superman predate him in the mantle. Let's have Jor-El travel to Earth and be Superman before going back to Kryoton in time for Clarks birth.

They don't do any of that because it would break the IP, just as it does for Diana. They don't want another Superman before Clark, or they don't want to have to choose which era to put the likes of Lois and Jimmy. In-story Golden Age status is not important to Superman, and it's not important to Wonder Woman. Not to the degree that the headaches that would result from putting her back in the era would be worth it. Having her be around for WW2 necessitates her leaving for a period between then and the modern age, and/or results in her cast and villains being gutted. And Hippolyta leaving the island to be Wonder Woman before Diana breaks the story.

Wonder Woman in the Golden Age is not that important. The typical proposed solutions are bad.

[wonder39]

Wonder Woman has the same complications being put back in the Golden Age as Superman. Superman is immortal/slow aging, so he can easily be present in the Golden Age without aging a day in the modern era. He can act ooc and leave for a few decades and come back later in the modern age. Or they can have another Superman predate him in the mantle. Let's have Jor-El travel to Earth and be Superman before going back to Kryoton in time for Clarks birth.

They don't do any of that because it would break the IP, just as it does for Diana. They don't want another Superman before Clark, or they don't want to have to choose which era to put the likes of Lois and Jimmy. In-story Golden Age status is not important to Superman, and it's not important to Wonder Woman. Not to the degree that the headaches that would result from putting her back in the era would be worth it. Having her be around for WW2 necessitates her leaving for a period between then and the modern age, and/or results in her cast and villains being gutted. And Hippolyta leaving the island to be Wonder Woman before Diana breaks the story.

Wonder Woman in the Golden Age is not that important. The typical proposed solutions are bad.

This.
The only time she should be with the JSA is on the proper Earth 2. DC needs to try to stop shoehorning all these continuities into one Earth/ timeline

[HsssH]

I think that Golden Age is actually important for Superman due to him being the first superhero. WW is not first female superhero.

[Jon Clark]

This.
The only time she should be with the JSA is on the proper Earth 2. DC needs to try to stop shoehorning all these continuities into one Earth/ timeline

I still think after Zero Hour killed off the majority of the JSA they should just put the whole original team back on Earth 2 and just have the Infinitors and such brought over in Crisis, No post-Crisis Jay, Alan, Ted "wildcat" Grant, ... they along with Diana didn't make it off earth-2 in Crisis (or they are eternally trapped fighting Valhalla). Just leave the original stories stand as published with no retcons and move forward from there.

[Dataweaver]

Bear in mind that Zero Hour was in 1994, literally right in the middle of the period between 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths and 2005's Infinite Crisis. At the time that DC was considering bringing back the JSA in 1999, there was no such thing as a Multiverse. Putting them back on Earth 2 wasn't an option.

And while there are aspects of putting them back on Earth 2 that I like, there are complications to that, too. Take Jack Knight's saga in the late 90s: that would never have worked had the JSA not been part of the same world as the JLA.

[Dataweaver]

This.
The only time she should be with the JSA is on the proper Earth 2. DC needs to try to stop shoehorning all these continuities into one Earth/ timeline

And to be clear, this argument is less about “should she be part of the original JSA” and more about “should she be in the Golden Age at all?”

The premise of this thread is “given that she's being portrayed as having debuted shortly before the JSA was founded, should she be a JSA founder?”

[SiegePerilous02]

I think that Golden Age is actually important for Superman due to him being the first superhero. WW is not first female superhero.

Yeah Superman being the first superhero is important, but I think that works better with there being no Golden Age and just having the age of superheroes starting with him in the modern era. Since DC won't go back to the multiverse approach for several reasons, his status as the first is a casualty.

And to be clear, this argument is less about “should she be part of the original JSA” and more about “should she be in the Golden Age at all?”

The premise of this thread is “given that she's being portrayed as having debuted shortly before the JSA was founded, should she be a JSA founder?”

Is she being portrayed as debuting before the JSA? It hasn't come up in her own book since that one-off story by Scott Snyder. Wasn't that a holdover from him possibly taking over the book that didn't end up happening? Johns is doing his thing in the Justice Society book, but who even knows how long any of that will stick around once he's done

[M@Bowers2014]

Yeah Superman being the first superhero is important, but I think that works better with there being no Golden Age and just having the age of superheroes starting with him in the modern era. Since DC won't go back to the multiverse approach for several reasons, his status as the first is a casualty.



Is she being portrayed as debuting before the JSA? It hasn't come up in her own book since that one-off story by Scott Snyder. Wasn't that a holdover from him possibly taking over the book that didn't end up happening? Johns is doing his thing in the Justice Society book, but who even knows how long any of that will stick around once he's done

Well we don't know yet. Nothing has been published that contradicts that story that showed Diana being WW in the Golden Age. I'm guessing it will be addressed one way or another in Wonder Woman #800.

[Will Evans]

Hippolyta as Golden age Wonder WomanF90F3F25-07ED-4266-92E6-93236EB40FD6.jpg

[MajorHoy]

Is she being portrayed as debuting before the JSA? It hasn't come up in her own book since that one-off story by Scott Snyder. Wasn't that a holdover from him possibly taking over the book that didn't end up happening? Johns is doing his thing in the Justice Society book, but who even knows how long any of that will stick around once he's done

By the way, I previously posted this Wonder Woman with the Golden Age JSA panel in another thread:

Well, I'm guessing it may have been a set-up for the 5G changes before those plans were scrapped.
But a Wonder Woman has more recently been shown in a panel recounting the past that was in Justice Society of America #1:

Could just be an Easter egg that really has no significance in the long run, but it would seem to indicate that Wonder Woman back in the Golden Age may still be a part of current DC.

[Sandy Hausler]

My view -- Wonder Woman is one of the greatest super heroes of all time. Not being a charter member of the JSA doesn't change that. And being one wouldn't elevate her in the least (especially since everyone would know that it's a retcon).

[CaptCleghorn]

My view -- Wonder Woman is one of the greatest super heroes of all time. Not being a charter member of the JSA doesn't change that. And being one wouldn't elevate her in the least (especially since everyone would know that it's a retcon).

While her being restored to the JSA is a retcon, it's a reversal of previous retcons meant to restore a state closer to the original continuity. As for Diana's importance, if she had Superman status back in the Golden Age, her disappearance and leaving public life as shown in Adventure 466 becomes a more important statement heralding the cessation of superhero activity on DC's main Earth.