Justice Society of America #5 spoilers/discussion

[JLH]

I love having the JSA back in their own title and it was great seeing even a glimpse of a LOSH other than the Bendis version but this was really anticlimactic.

[clonegeek]

I love having the JSA back in their own title and it was great seeing even a glimpse of a LOSH other than the Bendis version but this was really anticlimactic.

I really don't think Johns can handle an ongoing at this point

[CaptCleghorn]

This series has done a bad job of re-establishing the JSA.

I mean, if you care about Helena Wayne appearing in more stories, that's one thing, but otherwise...

You are correct. The story wasn't a revival of the JSA post Flashpoint; it was an origin for a post-crisis Helena Wayne Huntress featuring the JSA.

[sifighter]

This series has done a bad job of re-establishing the JSA.

I mean, if you care about Helena Wayne appearing in more stories, that's one thing, but otherwise...

I mean the points not really to re-establish the JSA, these are the same characters Johns has written for years that came back in Doomsday Clock. It's Alan, Jay, Powergirl, Jakeem, Stargirl, Yolanda, Beth, and Khalid. Literally characters who have been around for years with the newest one being Khalid who had his own series and was in the Justice league dark.

[Frontier]

I mean the points not really to re-establish the JSA, these are the same characters Johns has written for years that came back in Doomsday Clock. It's Alan, Jay, Powergirl, Jakeem, Stargirl, Yolanda, Beth, and Khalid. Literally characters who have been around for years with the newest one being Khalid who had his own series and was in the Justice league dark.

Yeah, but it's a new ongoing series with them in the title when they haven't had a series in years, I don't think you can take it for granted that people are jumping straight from Johns' original run.

In all these years we've still barely gotten a lot of JSA content, or enough, and this didn't quite fix that.

[HsssH]

Can you jump straight from last JSA run by Johns into this? That was like 5 reboots ago.

[Digifiend]

I mean the points not really to re-establish the JSA, these are the same characters Johns has written for years that came back in Doomsday Clock. It's Alan, Jay, Powergirl, Jakeem, Stargirl, Yolanda, Beth, and Khalid. Literally characters who have been around for years with the newest one being Khalid who had his own series and was in the Justice league dark.

Them coming back then is no longer canon. Beth and Yolanda returned in Lazarus Planet. Liberty Belle was also among the group shown in Doomsday Clock but she came back in her other identity Jesse Quick in Williamson's final Flash arc, Finish Line. Stargirl and Mister Terrific were there too, but they were never gone in the first place (Courtney was on the JLA in New 52, Michael had his own book). The team as whole, instead, probably returned in Flash Forward, Wally's mini just before Death Metal, published around the same time as Doomsday Clock's finale. Wally was shown restoring the JSA and the Legion to the timeline (the Legion of course being Bendis's then-upcoming version).

[TheCasualReader]

I mean the points not really to re-establish the JSA, these are the same characters Johns has written for years that came back in Doomsday Clock. It's Alan, Jay, Powergirl, Jakeem, Stargirl, Yolanda, Beth, and Khalid. Literally characters who have been around for years with the newest one being Khalid who had his own series and was in the Justice league dark.

Except they're not the same characters. Khalid is clearly not the same character as the Khalid from Justice League Dark. They don't have the same personality or experience and JSA Khalid clearly doesn't know Bobo despite the fact that next to Kent, Bobo was the person Khalid was closest to on the team.

New Golden Age
"Except you mentioned a bar? I'm not really into bars, sir." Khalid's been to Bobo's bar multiple times. It was basically the second headquarters of the Justice League Dark.

"They don't allow smoking, do they, uhm, Mr. Chimp?" Bobo was literally the person who comforted Khalid about Kent's death. Again, Bobo was the person Khalid was closest to on the team.

Justice League Dark
https://64.media.tumblr.com/40150e0d...97d310e3db.pnj

You absolutely need to re-establish characters (for new and old fans) and in general, you absolutely need character moments because that's why people liked these characters in the first place.

JSA was a long time ago and I know enough of DC continuity to know the characters haven't stayed the same. Black Adam isn't the same character as JSA Black Adam since his origin has been changed to him murdering his own nephew for the power of Shazam. Is he still close to Atom Smasher? Does Isis and Osiris still exist as part of his life? I don't know because it's been years so the character isn't the same one - he's a different version of the Black Adam character.

[Factor]

So far all that Johns has accomplished is to bring a new version of Helena Wayne to the main continuity and create several other continuity inconsistencies that he probably won’t even bother to fix, like PG debuting before Superman, Batman Year 1 being more recent than Damian’s birth, Zero Hour happening 7 years ago etc.
Ironically he made tons of bad and/or inconsistent decisions but they all could have been avoided as they played almost no part in the actual story he tried to tell.

[MajorHoy]

I mean the points not really to re-establish the JSA, these are the same characters Johns has written for years that came back in Doomsday Clock. It's Alan, Jay, Powergirl, Jakeem, Stargirl, Yolanda, Beth, and Khalid. Literally characters who have been around for years with the newest one being Khalid who had his own series and was in the Justice league dark.

I'm sorry, but what do you mean about Geoff Johns having written about Yolanda and Beth "for years"?
Can you name twelve issues where Johns wrote about those two?

[Triniking1234]

I too got fooled again and thought JSA would be an exception for him (as Stargirl was) but he's like Lucy with that damn football and I'm like Charlie Brown, like DC expecting a different result to be disappointed in the same ways over and over again.

Hey, man. He put Flashpoint Beyond out on time so he could spoil Dark Crisis for us.

[Frontier]

I'm sorry, but what do you mean about Geoff Johns having written about Yolanda and Beth "for years"?
Can you name twelve issues where Johns wrote about those two?

Exactly. If anything this series should've been about re-establishing Yolanda and Beth now that they're alive again.

[bat39]

Can you jump straight from last JSA run by Johns into this? That was like 5 reboots ago.

Yeah.

I mean, the JSA were gone for a fairly long time (by comics standards). Their return was supposed to be one of the major factors that heralded the end of the New 52 and the restoration of DC's 'classic' history and legacy. As it is there's barely any clarity on how they came back and how they fit into a continuity that's frankly, despite some restoration of Post-COIE history, very different from the one we last saw them in. You'd expect that all of these issues would have been addressed.

When/how did the JSA reform? Or were they retroactively never 'gone' the last few years in-universe? What exactly restored them to continuity anyway? And how does the JSA's history intersect with the sliding timescale of post-Golden Age heroes?

Maybe we'll still get some of these answers, but you'd think that in the first 5 issues of their grand return after over a decade of being in comic-book Limbo, we'd at least touch on some of these...

[M@Bowers2014]

Yeah.

I mean, the JSA were gone for a fairly long time (by comics standards). Their return was supposed to be one of the major factors that heralded the end of the New 52 and the restoration of DC's 'classic' history and legacy. As it is there's barely any clarity on how they came back and how they fit into a continuity that's frankly, despite some restoration of Post-COIE history, very different from the one we last saw them in. You'd expect that all of these issues would have been addressed.

When/how did the JSA reform? Or were they retroactively never 'gone' the last few years in-universe? What exactly restored them to continuity anyway? And how does the JSA's history intersect with the sliding timescale of post-Golden Age heroes?

Maybe we'll still get some of these answers, but you'd think that in the first 5 issues of their grand return after over a decade of being in comic-book Limbo, we'd at least touch on some of these...

I think that they were retroactively never gone after Rebirth. Similar to the original Teen Titans and the original Wally West/Kid Flash. Of course more recently DC gave us the "Everything happened" retcon so I guess it really doesn't matter. I'm just glad they're back and hope that the schedule can get on track sometime soon so it will be more enjoyable.

[Frontier]

Yeah.

I mean, the JSA were gone for a fairly long time (by comics standards). Their return was supposed to be one of the major factors that heralded the end of the New 52 and the restoration of DC's 'classic' history and legacy. As it is there's barely any clarity on how they came back and how they fit into a continuity that's frankly, despite some restoration of Post-COIE history, very different from the one we last saw them in. You'd expect that all of these issues would have been addressed.

When/how did the JSA reform? Or were they retroactively never 'gone' the last few years in-universe? What exactly restored them to continuity anyway? And how does the JSA's history intersect with the sliding timescale of post-Golden Age heroes?

Maybe we'll still get some of these answers, but you'd think that in the first 5 issues of their grand return after over a decade of being in comic-book Limbo, we'd at least touch on some of these...

And instead of that we get another attempt at bringing Helena Wayne back to the main universe.