Should the Justice Society exist in the main DCU?

[Buried Alien]

And when they created Clutter Earth, even some of the major superheroes could take advantage of the concept of legacy. For example, The Flash.

Legacy could still work if the JSA hails from Earth-Two. I like Barry Allen as the original Flash of *his* Earth rather than the middle Flash between Jay Garrick and Wally West.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[The Darknight Detective]

And when they created Clutter Earth, even some of the major superheroes could take advantage of the concept of legacy. For example, The Flash.

That could have happened without it, though. Barry could have been killed off pre-COIE and have had Wally take his place still.

[The Darknight Detective]

Legacy could still work if the JSA hails from Earth-Two. I like Barry Allen as the original Flash of *his* Earth rather than the middle Flash between Jay Garrick and Wally West.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Exactly. Why couldn't Barry and Jay be the first from their own Earths?

[Myskin]

Legacy could still work if the JSA hails from Earth-Two. I like Barry Allen as the original Flash of *his* Earth rather than the middle Flash between Jay Garrick and Wally West.

You are perfectly entitled to your personal preferences, but again: IMHO you are overestimating the importance of Barry Allen being the second Flash in time order. Before Flashpoint, there was no single doubt that - for example - Wally West had become the Flash who had explored the concept of speed more than every single Flash before him. I understand why Wally West was basically removed from the New52, but there is zero doubt that one of the reasons the fans of classic Wally are so aggressively vocal about his comeback is that the character was perfectly functional and interesting as he was. The fact that he was a legacy character didn't prevent him from being the main character in lots of exceptionally well-done stories, and there is a whole generations of readers who think of him as the only Flash. The fact that he did have older mentors and he was the THIRD Flash doesn't diminish his importance, and I think that the same would happen if they did something similar with Barry Allen.

[Myskin]

That could have happened without it, though. Barry could have been killed off pre-COIE and have had Wally take his place still.

But he wouldn't have had other mentors, like Jay Garrick and Max Mercury.

[Buried Alien]

But he wouldn't have had other mentors, like Jay Garrick and Max Mercury.

For a Flash, Earth-Two is just a hop and a skip way...maybe literally.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Myskin]

For a Flash, Earth-Two is just a hop and a skip way...maybe literally.

Why should they make him unnecessarily hop to another dimension if he could simply take a visit to the other side of the town whenever he wants to visit Jay? Wouldn't that diminish the importance of having two separate earth?

[The Darknight Detective]

But he wouldn't have had other mentors, like Jay Garrick and Max Mercury.

Let them mentor their own speedsters on their own Earths instead as the JSA did pre-COIE. Heck, they could do some mentoring inter-universe without having them all on the same planet.

[Myskin]

Let them mentor their own speedsters on their own Earths instead as the JSA did pre-COIE. Heck, they could do some mentoring inter-universe without having them all on the same planet.

And why shouldn't they mentor the major characters on the major earth?
You know what I find it funny? All in all, IMHO it all depends on an ill-conceived conception: the idea that having a mentor, someone who came BEFORE us and whose teachings we can take as an example, somehow diminishes our importance as individual.
That's absurd. All of us take example from someone who came before us. This is 100% true in the real life and in a lot of cases it is 100% true even as far as comic books are concerned (Barry Allen WAS, in fact, the second Flash ever created). There are a tons of characters which were created on the post-Crisis Universe and whose importance relied on them being legacy heroes. And yes, this includes Wally West, but even Jack Knight, Stargirl, and so on.
The majority of them found their own path as characters, the concept of legacy enriched their background and didn't diminish their importance.

[Lightning Rider]

I like them on the main Earth. I don't like the JLA being called a strike force, but I do think the JSA being more of a family resonates. The grandfathers/mothers and great uncles/aunts who mentor a lot of the young heroes.

I also think that they can be given a special status without supplanting or overshadowing the JLA. I always saw them as the pioneers, the first to expose people to the idea of metahumans and super powered people, but not the globally trusted and expansive ushering in of the age of superheroes that was the Justice League. Maybe I'm projecting my own fictitious understanding of it, I know the internal history of the JSA saw them equally as important in their day (especially given they had their own versions of the trinity), but since then, the stories I read always gave me the feeling that these figures were known, but not recognizable by everyone and not given the same importance. It was World War 2 after all. There wasn't a TV in every home quite yet. Then they retired, allowing for the likes of Superman to show up and completely change the world.

That being said I wouldn't hate them being on their own Earth, or having stories of both versions.

[Lightning Rider]

Exactly. Why couldn't Barry and Jay be the first from their own Earths?

Yeah I do kind of like that too actually. That's why "Flash of Two Worlds" has any impact. I find it weird people on "clutter Earth" remember Jay as someone existing on that same Earth before Barry. I might have liked it better if the people of "New" Central City remembered different histories from each other and the Flashes remembered their own.

[The Darknight Detective]

And why shouldn't they mentor the major characters on the major earth?

Why should they? How about having the Earth-1 characters mentor the Golden Age characters instead? There's no real right or wrong answer here. I will say, though, that the Bronze Age had the best of all worlds (pun intended ), IMO. It had legacies without artificially creating characters not made as such into legacy characters themselves. The superheroes of the other Earths weren't lesser characters in the stories compared to the Earth-1 heroes, either.

[Myskin]

There's no real right or wrong answer here.

Well, I can surely agree on this point.

[Jon Clark]

"Constantly"?
If I remember it well, the non-aging situation of the JSA was justified when they said that the JSA lived in some kind of Norse limbo for decades. This idea, which had the same purpose of having Captain America in an ice block for decades, was used just once and that was all. They didn't constantly come up with new ideas. 3-4 of the original members were still alive, the majority was dead and that was all. And quite frankly, I don't remember anyone making a big fuss about, I don't know, Jade and Obsidian who should be older than they really were. I mean, that's not a bigger issue than having Tim Drake never getting older.

Using your Captain America example- look at Peggy Carter. She was Cap's girlfriend (or one of them) before he went into the ice in 1945. Originally he was thawed in the 1960's and it fit that she could still have an active role in stories. Her younger sister could believably be Cap's current girlfriend. But as time moved on and Cap's de-icing became the 1970's then the 1980's and by now is probably well into the 21st century it becomes harder to maintain that part of the story. Soon it will make no sense that Peggy is even alive when Cap defrosts and Sharon is getting further removed from even knowing Peggy personally.

Now Peggy in Captain America is easily removed and sidelined, but if we want the JSA to have legacies of the Infinity Inc type the problem is a bit more complicated. Either you need the JSAers to have legacies "frozen" with them or "defrost" the JSA earlier to allow time for them to have direct influence. If you want a Jade or Jesse Quick who are currently active and with closer ties to the JSA than Barry/Wally or Hal they can't be kids born in the 1940's who lived through the intervening years.

And the same for any other supporting cast you want to include. Is Joan Garrick brought forward with Jay? Are some more memorable villains *Mist, Thinker, etc) included or do we introduce them as new foes with no history to draw from? Because again the as long as the original adventures are in the 1940's then each year we go forward the harder it is to have the JSA encounter anyone from those days. And the more people you decide joined the JSA in jumping the intervening years the more convoluted the idea becomes.

Tim Drake was always born somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago- whether that date is in the 1990's, the 2000's or soon the 2010's. On the other hand the JSA will always be born at the latest in the early 1930's (for a teen hero active in 1950) and to a new reader that will always require an explanation for anyone they knew before the "jump forward" who is till active. It can be that everyone the JSA knows they either came with the JSA or only met the JSA after the team emerged in the present but that requires planning out just who is included in the "jump forward" and not trying to shoehorn in new characters from the 1940's everytime the creative team decides that Character "X" works better if they were from the 1940's.

[Jon Clark]

You know what I find it funny? All in all, IMHO it all depends on an ill-conceived conception: the idea that having a mentor, someone who came BEFORE us and whose teachings we can take as an example, somehow diminishes our importance as individual.
That's absurd. All of us take example from someone who came before us. This is 100% true in the real life and in a lot of cases it is 100% true even as far as comic books are concerned (Barry Allen WAS, in fact, the second Flash ever created). There are a tons of characters which were created on the post-Crisis Universe and whose importance relied on them being legacy heroes. And yes, this includes Wally West, but even Jack Knight, Stargirl, and so on.
The majority of them found their own path as characters, the concept of legacy enriched their background and didn't diminish their importance.

The problem isn't that having a mentor diminishes the character. It's that having the mentor and legacy side-by-side is hard to maintain without one of them being diminished. Either you have Batman as the better hero and Nightwing presented as "Batman-lite" or Jay Garrick as the guy who inspired the more impressive Barry/Wally. Most writers lack the ability to give us a balance where both sides of the legacy come across as having some advantage. (Or at least lack the ability to do this on a monthly basis in the limited number of pages comics give us).