NEAR MYTHS: JSA THE GOLDEN AGE (1993-94)

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GOLDEN AGE, written by James Robinson and penciled by Paul Smith, is an Elseworlds take on some of the many latter-day interpretations of the Justice Society heroes, crossbred with an assortment of characters who had nothing to do with the Society or, sometimes, even with DC Comics (such as Captain Triumph from Quality Comics, whose company's heroes were belatedly acquired by the Superman people). 

I reread GOLDEN for the first time in many years, in part because I was so pleased with the second season of STARGIRL, on which teleseries Robinson serves as producer and occasional writer. STARGIRL is much like GOLDEN in being a virtual love letter to the Justice Society, directed to all other such fans. Yet STARGIRL has a crucial advantage in that it's all about legacy characters who inherit the mantles of the WWII crusaders. In contrast, GOLDEN is set in the America of the postwar 1940s, which in the real world would herald the cancellation of all but a smattering of DC's costumed heroes. Since the Golden Age characters were not revived, but were instead temporarily replaced by the legacy figures of the Silver Age, Robinson was obliged to follow the established game-plan followed by such earlier writers as Roy Thomas and Paul Levitz, who set up the notion that in the DC-cosmos the various luminaries simply retired for about ten years until they got back into action-- occasionally in the Silver Age, and then with greater frequency in the Bronze.

In addition, GOLDEN could not help but take considerable influence from the fan-culture of the eighties and nineties, when comics-makers began playing to the adult readers with "grim and gritty" versions of established heroes, as per the usual suspects of WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Robinson's version of the Justice Society is not as boldly transgressive as either of these, as the peoject includes little in the way of sexuality and was only slightly more violent than the average issue of NEW TEEN TITANS. The most interesting thing about GOLDEN is that for all of the characters involved, they become divorced from the trauma-free lives they led as costumed crusaders, where the most emotional conflict came down to not being able to marry their lovers due to fighting crime. In the opening scenes of GOLDEN, Robinson is explicit about the way the conclusion of the war signals "the end of innocence."

I don't find Robinson's concept of innocence very persuasive: for the most part, it comes down to all the main characters having really bad days in one way or another.  Many of the plot-points were established by earlier writers: Hourman is now addicted to the drug that makes him super-strong, while Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle, two heroes who became romantic in an 1980s continuity, divorce. The death of innocence is also signaled on the social level: the atom bomb has changed the nature of national conflict, and competition from Russia makes average Americans eager to condemn anyone suspected of ties to Communism. (It's possibly a mark of Robinson's extreme liberalism that he brings up both of these topics but never remembers that Russia became a major competitor in part through the act of stealing the American plans for The Bomb.) It's not precisely that Robinson ever sings any sad songs for the USSR, but it is interesting that the main villain turns out to be the embodiment of allegedly-Right-leaning fascism: a recrudescent Nazi.

GOLDEN's basic plot-pattern probably owes something to WATCHMEN, insofar as various heroes pursue separate life-courses, all of which, in one way or another, end up dovetailing. The obscure DC character "Mister America" is the uniting factor: whereas many other heroes were unable to go to war for complicated reasons, this super-athlete was able to fight the Nazis behind enemy lines. Under his regular name "Tex Thompson," the former mystery-man returns to the U.S., rises to great political power, and begins a new project to create an invincible superhero as a bulwark against the threat of Russia. Since anti-Communism led to bad things like the Red Scare, no one will be surprised that Thompson turns out to be a traitor in patriot's clothing-- as well as a recrudescent super-villain.

The main plot is never much more than an excuse for the various scenes of regret and recriminations, which, to be sure, are kept to a minimum in comparison to the predominant Marvel soap-opera emotive style. The most persuasive plot-thread involves Liberty Belle's re-marriage to another hero, Tarantula, who just happens to resemble her former hubby Johnny Quick. Others are badly underdeveloped. The Golden Age Robotman becomes a stone killer for no explicit reason, and the aforementioned Captain Triumph only appears in his civilian identity, rejecting (with questionable judgment) his superhero nature and losing his life in combat with the evildoers. A subplot involves an amnesiac hero, Manhunter, who eventually fills in a lot of the blank spaces for the heroes (and the readers) about what really happened to Thompson overseas and the nature of his pet superman. Paul Smith, never one of the best delineators of superhero action, is out of his depth with the numerous battle-scenes, but he does a better than average job keeping the faces and their emotional reactions distinct from one another.

GOLDEN is at best diverting, but I certainly wouldn't rank it as one of the better homages to the Golden Age of American superheroes-. Indeed, some of Robinson's issues of STARMAN come much closer to that mark. To wrap up, I'll note that, despite the many characters in the four-issue tale, GOLDEN is yet another example, like CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, where the dramatic personae divide into a "very significant" superordinate ensemble and a "not so important" subordinate ensemble. 

SUPERORDINATE-- Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Manhunter, Green Lantern, the Atom, Hourman, Starman

SUBORDINATE-- Tarantula, Bob Daley aka "Fatman," Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt, Captain Triumph, Miss America (another Quality character BTW), and the Tigress. Three characters with heroic pasts-- Tex Thompson, Dan the Dyna-Mite and Robotman-- are essentially retconned into villainous presences. There are also a huge number of cameos in the final section, including the 1950s stalwart Captain Comet and a large sampling of more Quality protagonists, such as Plastic Man, Doll Man, the Jester, Phantom Lady and the Red Bee.