Well, the JSA is back in continuity, but it's obviously not precisely the same JSA as before. (See illustration below)
Since that is the case, I think DC should make a few tweaks to the characters' back-stories, mostly moving them away from having so many Golden Age connections. Having a few characters with World War Two Era backgrounds is one thing, but we're reaching the point where even the grandchildren of the JSAers should be middle-aged.
1)Atom-Smasher (Albert Rothstein) Make him a "descendant" or other vague "relative" of Cyclotron. Also, retcon away his time as "Nuklon".
2)Cyclone (Maxine Hunkel) Same as with Al. She's too young to be Ma Hunkel's grand-daughter.
3)Damage (Grant Emerson) Stress that he's not the literal son of Al and Mary Pratt, but like a quasi-clone.
4)Doctor Fate (Hector Hall) It is still Hector, isn't it? Anyway, he's a wizard, so far all we know, he's immortal.
5)Doctor Mid-Nite (Beth Chapel) I guess she got over being dead. Is the Pieter Cross Doctor Mid-Nite still in continuity? Some answers there would be nice. Mention was made of Doctor Mid-Nite having an All-Star Clinic. Is that here?
6)The Flash (Jay Garrick) I can accept him still being vigorous. Who knows how the Speed Force affects you?
7)The Green Lantern (Alan Scott) I guess he also got over being dead. Still, he's got a magic ring, maybe he can use it to live forever.
8)Hawkman (Carter Hall) OK, he just reincarnates, so maybe he can be around forever.
9)Hourman (Rick Tyler) Again, change him to a "descendant" of Rex Tyler who re-discovered the Miraclo formula.
10)Jade (Jennie-Lynn Hayden) Also appears to have resurrected. Infused with Starheart energy. Might be interesting for her to be a lot older than she appears to be.
11)Jakeem Thunder (Jakeem Williams) No changes necessary.
12)Johnny Thunderbolt (Johnny Thunder) No changes necessary.
13)Liberty Belle (Jesse Chambers) same as Hourman. make her a :"descendant" who re-discovered her ancestor's formula.
14)Mister Terrific (Michael Holt) No changes necessary, although what happened to the other "Terrifics"?
15)Obsidian (Todd Rice) Same as Jade, above.
16)Power Girl (Karen "Kara Zor-L" Starr) No changes necessary. Although her "Earth-Two" may still be out there. somewhere.
17)Sand (Sandy Hawkins) Change his name to "The Sandman". "Sand" is a goofy name.
18)Stargirl (Courtney Whitmore) No changes necessary.
19)S.T.R.I.P.E. (Pat Dugan) If the story where the Seven Soldiers of Victory got lost in time is still in continuity, then no changes necessary for him. One World War Two Era character who has an excuse to still be around.
20)Wildcat (Ted Grant) I never was wild about the business of him having nine lives, but it does give him a reason to still be around.
21)Wildcat (Yolanda Montez) Another one who got over being dead. Is the Tommy Bronson Wildcat still in continuity, or is he gone now?
My library time is running out, so I'll update this tomorrow with a few more ideas about what I would do with the team.
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My library time is running out, so I'll update this tomorrow with a few more ideas about what I would do with the team.
Of course, now I'm completely dry. I'll have to think it over a bit.
Coincidentally, I was just reading a TPB of the latest iteration of MLJ/Archie's Mighty Crusaders, and was wondering why they were wasting so much time trying to make all the previous iterations make some kind of loose sense. It ate up a lot of real estate, and added nothing to our understanding of the current characters, or moved the current plot along. The feverish effort to make MLJ's spotty history form a narrative was just an anchor on the story.
Yes, I'm an old comics nerd who should WANT them to do that, but really, World War II was a long, long time ago. And the MLJ superheroes were never household names. Just start over. I was actually getting impatient as the writer struggled to explain how the '60s MLJ characters became the '60s Mighty Crusaders who became the '80s Red Circle Crusaders, who became the Impact! line Crusaders and on and on. Hey, let's just make the current team the only one, whose name was inspired by comic books. Works for me.
(Although some of the current crop are worth keeping. That would be the current female Shield, Black Hood, Hangman and Fox, who have all been revamped in interesting, plausible and satisfying ways. The current Comet, (Fire)Fly Girl, Web and Jaguar kinda suck, so there's no reason to keep their history intact going back to the '40s. Just start over, with the new versions being the only ones, but serving to keep the trademarks alive.)
Continuity problems? Just say that most of what we know came from comic book stories. There was no Comet in the 1940s, buddy, that was just a comic book! But today's Comet might take inspiration from that, or it could just be a coincidence. But saying "what we think we know came from comics, not from what really happened" is a get-out-of-continuity-jail card.
And just think: You could keep the '40s stories as blueprints, but have some old codger who has a plausible reason to still be alive, like maybe Bob Phantom, start a host of stories by saying "and now, kids, here's what really happened ..." Then re-write the first Shield story, or whoever, in a way that makes sense to a modern audience. And then all the others! Man, you could do a jillion miniseries updating old '40 stories. It would be fun for the reader -- and heck, it would be fun for the writer. I'd love to do that myself.
I'd kinda like to apply that to the Justice Society -- although I do think, in the JSA's case, that we can't jettison World War II completely. Not only is it pretty important to the team's premise and history, but there have been lots of other characters and stories that fill in the gap between then and now.
But why treat 1940s stories as canon? The generation that lived through WWII is almost gone, and they don't read comics anyway. Treat WWII not as it was in the Silver Age -- within living memory -- but as the ancient history it has become. Almost every story from that era is passing into myth by now anyway.
In that sense, we could apply some of Bob's fixes not only to current continuity, but going back to the beginning.
For example, why do Dinah Drake, Al Pratt, Wesley Dodds, Ted Grant, Charles McNider and the other punchers/detectives in the group need to wear Spandex? Especially since that sort of thing had no protection whatsoever in the '40s, and made you stick out like a sore thumb. (As well as looking ridiculous.) Superman didn't need padding or environmental protection, but human beings do.
I kinda like the idea we saw in some Elseworlds story or other where only The Batman had what would pass for a costume, and the cape and cowl mainly served to disguise the various devices he needed, like climbing gear and combat toys, and to scare the crap out of people. The other contemporary characters wore what would readily at hand in those days, and practical -- aviation helmets, goggles and jackets; football kneepads; jodhpurs and combat boots. More Doc Savage -- or Captain Midnight -- than Superman.
Superman gets a costume, because he's the first, and because his skin is the best defense he could ever have anyway. Ditto Batman, for the reasons cited above. The Flash and Green Lantern had legit super-powers where they could copy Superman and plausibly survive, and probably would. Spectre and Dr. Fate get a pass for being mystical types who wear what is normal for the roles they play. Hawkman, too, can't exactly pass in public as anything other than a dramatic adventurer, with the huge wings.
But all those punchers/detectives listed above can't afford to stand out, need protection in combat and look plain silly in public in the 1940s. It's like the old joke: "What do you call a streaker who stops running?" "Naked." Same with superheroes. Once the adventure is over and they're just standing around, people would probably laugh at them. The super-types can just run/fly off, but Sandman has to stand there and look silly -- and will get arrested if the cops show.
I'm thinking, too, of the Crimson Avenger mini that Roy Thomas wrote in the 1980s, and that I re-read recently. Thomas must have had the same thoughts I just outlined, only the '80s, and had Lee Travis operate plausibly. No serious costume -- just a mask, hat and cloak when he had time to put them on, and just streetfighting when he didn't, and driving off when the cops came. It was just basically film noir, with the addition of the Bogart character occasionally hiding his face. I didn't care for that mini when it came out, but now I realize how Thomas was actively dealing with the implausibility of the Crimson Avenger as a superhero (in both his cloak and costume periods), and put him in a different genre that was more believable. I hated it then, but now I want to see more of that. Thomas was ahead of his time!
That's a long way around of saying that I would prefer that the DCU recognized the comic book adventures of the JSA as just that, and the real truth ... well, it could be anything we wanted it to be. And I would make it plausible to the era.
Getting back directly to your comments, Bob, I also consider Wildcat's nine lives as a silly thing (and he lost two or three of them the first time they were introduced, which makes you wonder why he has any left after a seven-decade career). I'd prefer that instead of how it was explained that he had nine lives -- and I don't really remember how he did, only that it was revealed in Geoff Johns' JSA run -- that it wasn't "nine lives" at all, but instead he got some sort of mystical longevity/reincarnation gift from Rama Kushna in Nanda Parbat, or something else that existed in the era. And he just calls it nine lives as part of his cat motif.
There's also a big problem with Hourman. They didn't know about steroids or juicing or addiction or any of that stuff when they created Rex Tyler. In the 1940s, you could buy cocaine over the counter, and drugs were a pretty unalloyed good. We know better now, and DC itself tried to re-write Tyler's drug use (and his son's) in Infinity Inc.
Again: Just say that it was all comic book stories. Say that Hourman didn't take a pill, or have powers for exactly an hour. That's just what a comic book writer made up, see? Find another way to give him super-strength in the '40s, and don't bother with a costume.
Heck, I'm about to talk myself into saying there was no Rex Tyler, which could be said to be a comic book invention as well. How about a government operative -- or more than one? A parade of crimebusters while the "Hourman Project" tried to perfect a Super-Soldier formula. The adventures were just field tests.
That would make sense for the era. And the reason we think we know all this stuff about Hourman is that Detective Comics Inc. caught wind of a "Hourman Project" and just made it all up for comic book stories. Then, decades later, one of the descendants of one of the test subjects discovers he has super-powers (with a time limit) because his great-grandfather's DNA was altered. Maybe other members of his family showed powers over the years too, but it wasn't always benign. Maybe some of them just hid the powers. Maybe that's where Solomon Grundy came from. Or maybe Solomon Grundy was the reason "Hourman Project" was abandoned.
But lord yes there needs to be super-powers. There's no reason half the JSA plausibly lived past page two of their first story, so give them an edge of some kind. So sure, Wildcat had some sort of super-vitality. Let Atom keep his "atomic punch." Connect Wesley Dodds to Neil Gaiman's Sandman all you like.
Don't slavishly follow All-Star Comics, but retcon these characters as serious players with serious abilities that would make them useful in a world war. Because Dr. Mid-Nite wasn't doing a damn thing that the police or Army couldn't do as well.
And, as The Baron suggests, let 'em have died at the end of a natural lifespan generations ago, unless they have reason not to. My vote would probably be about the same as Bob's: Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Spectre, Dr. Fate, Wildcat and maybe Hawkman could have survived to the present for various reasons. (Although I do like them showing SOME age, like Jay Garrick's gray temples. Let's remind people how long they've been around!)
The others? Bob's right. They should have been replaced not by children or grand-children -- current legacies would have to be great-grandchildren. Why bother with a blood connection at all at this point? Like Courtney Whitmore replacing Sylvester Pemberton, the name and/or powers don't have to stay in the family.
And one other thing: If Infinity Inc. becomes completely apocryphal, I won't shed any tears.
As for Wildcat, I think it was established that always has "nine lives", no matter how often he "dies", so you'd have to kill him nine times in a row real fast to do away with him.
I agree that the original JSAers need a connection to WWII -- but it'd be great to still have some of them around. The Ragnarok solution -- they were shunted off to fight Ragnarok during the time of the Crisis -- is one way of getting them there, as a group, rather than resorting to a separate solution for each of them. The time spent in that battle can vary and stretch as time goes on, but it itself can be a timeless place, so no time will have passed for the JSAers. They were already older heroes then, say, and at last they emerged maybe 8-10 years ago, a little while after our current age of heroes has begun, and have aged normally since.
Wow, that's a really motif-specific super-power!
I first discovered the JSA in JLA 21-22 and read their adventures in the Silver Age. I am currently reading newly acquired back issues of Infinity Inc, which I like just fine (YMMV). I never read much or any of their 1940s adventures. I have the impression that their connection to WWII is tenuous of non-existent, unlike the Marvel heroes. They weren’t fighting the German or Japanese empires. Why can’t they just be a group of earlier heroes without tying them to the 1940s?
It varies. The first JSA stories had them fighting fifth columnists and such, then they drifted away from mentioning the war, but then they later started doing "Why we fight" type stories.
Richard Willis said: