If it's not evident by my signature pic, I'm a fan of the Justice Society of America from DC Comics. I've always been fascinated by the fact that DC is still publishing characters they first put into print almost 70 years ago. Sure, Superman and Batman have been going that long, but technically they aren't the same Superman and Batman that were first introduced and published in the late 30s. Characters like Jay Garrick (the Flash) and Alan Scott (the Green Lantern) are the same, and are the originals, who are still alive and active all these years later. Unlike most comics characters, they've been tied to WW2 and allowed to age, rather than being stuck in "the present" like the majority of comic book super heroes.

I got into the Justice Society with the mini-series back in the early 90s, followed by the way too short-lived series drawn by Mike Parobeck. I was pretty disgusted by what they did to the team in Zero Hour. Shortly after that I dropped comics collecting for a number of years. Having recently gotten back into the habit, I've been catching up on the current series via trade paperback. I've read "The Next Age", the three "Thy Kingdom Come" volumes, and just picked up "The Bad Seed" this past week.

I started picking up the monthly book with issue 36. It's a "legacy book", where the few remaining Golden Age heroes train the children and grandchildren of the society's founders. So the team has a good range of ages and character types. I kept meaning to start a thread here and see if anyone else is a fan and is reading, and to discuss current issues when they are out.

 

JSA is great. You should really get the Goyer and Johns trades when it previously just titled JSA. The second volume seems poorly written when compared to the first series. It doesn't focus so much on training aspect, but the action is very high paced and great all around characterization.

 

That's my plan. I wanted to finish the collected volumes from the current run first, since that's the series I started on, but I plan on picking up the JSA series as well. Both my local comic shops have the entire run of trades, so hopefully I'll start collecting them in the next few weeks.

Most people seem to have the same opinion you expressed, that the JSA book was better than the current Justice Society book. If that's the case, I'm looking forward to reading them, because I've really enjoyed the current series.

 

So am I.Big time.

Actully...no they are not.

The original versions of those characters hailed from Earth 2, and they all died durring the first Crisis.

The current JSA originated on a New "Combined" Earth with eliments from all the different Earths.

There are also very suttle differences in their histories.

 

Not quite. GL, Flash, and the others didn't die in Crisis. The only JSA members who died were Robin and Huntress. The rest survived and - like the survivors of all five remaining Earths - had their histories folded into the new world that had been created.

Personally, I love the JSA. JSA Classified #1 was the first DC comic I'd read in years and what got me into DC as a fan. I immediately got hold of and read the complete run of JSA up to that point. Overall, I'll admit that I'm a bigger fan of the Justice League than the Justice Society, but they're still my #1 and #2 favorite DC properties.

 

Two things I see in this thread's future.

1. A lot of love for the JSA.
2. One of those classic Sto argument based entirely on the material being vague and not definitive enough.

 

Actually, yes they are. They travelled back to the beginning of time when the changes were made to history and so avoided being erased or revised. Their histories have been rewritten to fit the new, single Earth created, but they're still the originals.

 

Thats not accurate either.

Your right, they didnt exactly show them die,[so I did miss speak] but remember the end of "COIE" went like this.

After the battle in which thevillains fail, Krona experiment and the battle between the Spectre and the Anti-Monitor creates an energy overload that shatters space and time. A single universe is born.All the heroes return to the present-day and a new Earth composed of elements from the different Earth from the multiverse.

With no one except the people present at the battle remembering the original reality.

Thats when Anti-Monitor attacks one last time, transporting Earth to the Anti-Matter universe.But a counter-attack from Kal-L (the Earth-Two Superman), Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three, and Superboy of Earth-Prime, with some unexpected last-second help from the New Gods' adversary, Darkseid. As the Anti-Monitor crashes into a star and dies, Alex sends himself, Earth-Two Superman, Earth-Two Lois Lane, and Earth-Prime Superboy into a paradise reality.

The aftermath of the crisis shows us the universe being reborn....with no one at all remembering what came before [except for the Psycho Pirate].This was a new Universe...with a New Earth.In effect killing all history and the versions of those characters that came before.

Much love

We'll see.

I will say this....the ending of COIE was a bit vague.They could have gone either way at that point with the heroes either remembering or not remembering what came before.

But the continuing stories showed us that all previous history was pretty much wiped out.The characters were not exactly the same anymore.Some were completly different.

That act, in effect, killed off the original versions of those characters.

No they arent exactly.

The simple act of their histories being re-written is evident of that.

True, they were outside of time when the universe was recreated......but after the last battle the universe corrected itself.

 

So you could make the argument that the characters "themselves" are the original characters, but their respective histories have been altered?

Multiverses have always been confusing, lol.

 

You could make that argument....but I would argue that the characters are the sum total of their respective histories.

Meaning if their histories have been altered they are no longer the original versions of those characters.

 

Yeah, they have been.  

Regardless of whether or not the characters' histories were tweaked during Crisis, I'm pretty sure they're meant to be the same guys we saw in All-Star comics back in 1940, while the modern Superman and Batman are seperate individuals. We just saw the Golden Age Superman killed off in Infinite Crisis, for example.

 

I would say they are very close representations.

 

If that's true, no one in the DC Universe is the same character they were, because retcons have surely been applied to every character at one point or another.  

 

And I think thats about as correct as you can get.

 

The thing is that not all characters had their histories wiped out or rewritten. Superman did, for example, with the John Byrne reboot starting with "The Man of Steel" mini-series. I think Wonder Woman was rebooted from scratch as well. Batman was not. His history was tweaked, and the origin tinkered with when "Year One" came out, but the reader was left to assume that much of what we'd seen since his debut did actually happen. Green Lantern's history remained much as it was, to the point that both he and Green Arrow were considered to be in their mid to late 40s at one point (hence Hal's gray hair, with the recent retcon attributing that to Parallax). The point of all this is that not everyone's history was discarded and reset.

What the characters forgot was the multiverse. To pull this discussion back to the Justice Society, what they now remember is not operating on Earth-2 while the Justice League operated on Earth-1. What they remember is operating on the same Earth in the 1940s while the Justice League came into existence in modern times. All those adventures from Earth-2 still happened, in some form, they just happened on the shared Earth. The characters didn't die, but their past was altered. Whereas the modern day Superman never had any of those pre-Crisis adventures.

I tend to look at it this way: any character who was rebooted following Crisis is essentially not the same character that was introduced in the Golden Age or Silver Age. Anyone who was not rebooted, regardless of retcons, is the same character, unless otherwise stated. DC's habit of constantly tweaking the origins and past of their characters doesn't help here, but broadly speaking I feel like I'm on safe ground.

 

Maybe not all had grand re-writes.

But almost all were changed in some pretty big ways.

Correct on both

Actully thats incorrect.

Batmans history was changed to a large degree with Year 1.All of what was told in "The Untold Legend of the Batman" was thrown out the door.The fact that Bruce Wayne was the first Robin was changed.

Hal Jordans origin was changed with "Emerald Dawn".

Green Arrow supposedly died in COIE.Althou many believe it was Earth 2's GA, since he was wearing red boots and gloves.But he looked to young.

But DC never did a resurrection or a reboot story for him.....they just moved him to their adult format books with "The Longbow Hunters".

With out trying to sound rude...your arguing symantics.

Theres no functionary difference between a reboot and a retcon.

In both cases your changing the past of the characters...and in doing so your altering the character.

 

I don't see that you're being rude at all, so no problems here. But I don't really agree with you. There's a difference between altering a character's origin and completely restarting from scratch to overwrite what happened before. Again, Superman's probably my best example. He never had all the pre-Crisis adventures. His story started over with the Man of Steel and went from there. Hal Jordan still had all those adventures in the 60s and 70s, even if Emerald Dawn rewrote his origin. Do you see the distinction I'm making? A reboot starts the character from scratch and re-tells their story from the ground up, while a retcon just changes parts of the story without invalidating the entirety of their history.

Yes, both alter the character, but there's a pretty big difference in the degree of changes between the two approaches.

And who knew the discussion would take this direction?  

By the way, I like your Kor signature picture. It was nice to see the character return in DS9 and get three good episodes. Particularly the last one. I love his speech to Martok in the Klingon mess hall about getting old. Sad and almost poetic.

 

I see the distinction your making....but its a fallacy to think you can change some things about a persons past and not alter the person in question.
And thats what a retcon does...it alters the character.Not to mention that by "rebooting" such a central character like Superman, Batman, Wonderwoman, you are in effect, rebooting the entire universe.

Think about it, some of those adventures of Hals you mentioned was with the Pre-Crisis Superman.That means that those adventures have been altered or wiped.

The degrees of alteration are irrelevant in this kind of a conversation.Change 1 things about the character or change them all......the character is changed and is no longer the original version.

And in regards to the JSA, Alan Scott had one of the more significant changes to his history.

At least it was fun.

Yeah, he's one of my fave Klingons.

 

I heart comic book discussions.

 

Oh for christ's sake.

Everyone who was present at the dawn of time did not have their memories or perceptions altered (at least not originally) and were not physically changed in any way. What they did was return to an Earth that only remembered the retconned, patchwork history that came about as a result of their actions. It's like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. When he returned to 1985, he was living a life that essentially wasn't his.