Briefly on whether post-Crisis Plastic Man was meant to be a Golden Age or Modern Age hero

Okay, I know I've talked a bit about this subject before, but I wanted to devote a whole post to it in light of recent reading. That, and there are few things I enjoy writing about more than Plastic Man and DC continuity.

So, in a recent-ish post I discussed 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America Special #1, written by Roy and Dann Thomas and drawn by David Ross and Mike Gustovich. I was particularly intrigued by one line from the splash page above, in which the Golden Age Hawkman Carter Hall discusses what the DC Universe shared setting is like after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, when several previously distinct worlds like Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-S and others have all been combined into a single, new, composite Earth.

As to why I was intrigued, well, it didn't really fit into that particular post, so I thought I would just discuss it in another, shorter post. 

That splash page seems to show a great swathe of the superheroes that apparently occupied the DCU around the time of publication, including the likes of The Outsiders, The (New) Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, Blue Devil, Jack Kirby's Sandman and so on. (I recognize everybody on the page except for that all-yellow woman in the lower right corner and the Black guy whose head is overlapping those of Martian Manhunter and Firestorm...unless that's meant to be Green Lantern John Stewart...? That's my best guess, anyway, as it's not like 1980s DC had that maybe Black superheroes. It's hard to know for sure absent any of his costume though, as he doesn't wear a mask.)

The page is part of a long speech that Hawkman is giving to the rest of the Justice Society of America, just as they are about to decide to disband. Here he talks about the heroes of the world, and I'm going to bold the intriguing bit: 

This other Earth has other heroes--younger ones--many of whom bear the same powers, even the same names that we do. 

True, its people remember, even honor the Justice Society...yet it is the more youthful Justice League which has captured their hearts and minds.  

And the Justice Leaguers themselves are but a small fraction of this world's champions now. 

Some of these heroes are our contemporaries...but the vast majority are far younger. 

And their race is for the most part yet to run. 

When Hawkman refers to "our contemporaries", who is he referring to...?

It's hard to tell from the context, as in this comic, Hawkman and his fellow Society members all seem to understand the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths and some of the changes it had on continuity as well as if they had read the series themselves (As was pointed out to me in a comment following my post on the special, that's on account of the characters having been present at a particular scene set at the beginning of time).

So, it's quite possible he's referring here to the likes of Superman, Batman and Robin and Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel, all of whom, like he and his fellow members of the Justice Society, also debuted in the Golden Age of comics, even if these specific versions of the characters are meant to be distinct from the ones that hailed from Earth-Two and Earth-S.

If he's not referring to them, though, who does that leave among the heroes on this page? 

The only ones who might fit the bill would be Uncle Sam, who first appeared in 1940's National Comics #1, and Plastic Man, who debuted in 1941's Police Comics #1. Both of those titles were published by the defunct Quality Comics, whose various characters and trademarks DC had gotten a hold of back when DC was still known National Comics. 

While Plastic Man had appeared off-and-on in various DC Comics prior to COIE, I've never been entirely clear which "Earth" he belonged to, as there would seem to be multiple Plastic Mans on multiple parallel Earths (The one from All-Star Squadron being from Earth-Two, the one from The Brave and the Bold, DC Comics Presents and Justice League of America #144 being from Earth-One, the one from the 1966 revival apparently hailing from and Earth-12, and Plastic Men apparently also lived on Earth-Quality and Earth-X, right?). 

I haven't followed Uncle Sam as closely, obviously, and DC hasn't made as extensive use of that character over the decades, but I know there's a version of him from Earth-X, and there would also be an Earth-Quality version. 

Anyway, however many Plastic Men or Uncle Sams there were, the events of COIE would seem to collapse them all into a single version, either by synthesizing them or erasing duplicate ones, right? 

Now, in the post-Crisis revised timeline of the history of the new DC Universe, when did these characters debut...?

I'm going to ignore Uncle Sam here, as it's been so damn long since I read 1987's Secret Origins #19, which I had found in a back-issue bin some 25 years ago, and I certainly don't want to go searching for it among all my long boxes (Although, if I recall correctly, the story started during the American Revolution, and thus Uncle Sam predates Hawkman and the Justice Society, even if he was also superheroing in the 1940s when they were; I guess it depends on how one understands the word "contemporary" in this context...)

But as for Plastic Man...? 

Well, there seems to have been some initial confusion following COIE as to whether Plastic Man was a Golden Age hero who debuted in the 1940s, or a contemporary hero who debuted in the 1980s. 

In 1986's History of the DC Universe, the first official accounting of the then-new continuity/history, writer Marv Wolfman never mentions Plastic Man by name, but artist George Perez does draw him with the other heroes of the 1940s: 

That certainly seems to suggest that he was a Golden Age character, right? 

In September of 1988, Roy Thomas, Stephen DeStefano and Paul Fricke retold Plastic Man's origin in the pages of Secret Origins #30. Heavily inspired by Plastic Man creator Jack Cole's original origin from Police Comics and informed by Cole's later, more humorous take on the character's adventures (and guest-starring Cole creation Burp the Twerp), there's no date given as to when the story is meant to be taking place.

That said, in terms of costuming and technology, it is definitely the 1940s, and its few pop culture references—Fibber McGee, Edward G. Robinson—don't appear to place it in the 1980s. Still, how definitive is this story supposed to be? Well, on the letters page, Roy Thomas writes that this origin story was plotted before the next Plastic Man comic, which we will get to in the next paragraph, which would offer a new origin set in the present day. Thomas' comedic script also telegraphs that these things are all quite fluid, with Plas' narration stating, "Anyway, here's the way it happened... Or at least the way I remember it. Take your pick."

Then two months later came the first issue of 1988 miniseries Plastic Man by Phil Foglio, Hilary Barta and company. In this book Plastic Man seems to make his post-Crisis debut, as Eel O'Brien and his gang's heist at a chemical plant goes awry and he gets his powers and his costume, he meets escaped mental patient Woozy Winks and together the pair decide to embark on a new career for Eel as a superhero. 

By the end of the 1980s, then, it would seem that DC had decided that Plastic Man was a Golden Age hero. Or maybe a modern day hero. Depending on whether you read Secret Origins #30 or Plastic Man. 

After 1994's Zero Hour, the events of which saw all of existence de-created and then re-created in a new Big Bang, altering certain elements of world history/DC continuity, the publisher seems to have settled on an answer. 

The last issue of the series, Zero Hour #0, contained a timeline, and, according to that, Plast debuted "8 Years Ago", around the same time Dick Grayson became Robin (In this timeline, "The New Heroic Age" began "10 Years Ago", with the debut of Superman, Batman and the Justice League of America; according to the timeline, Elongated Man debuted a year before Plas, which comports with when Plastic Man first appeared in a DC comic, even if, in the real world, Plastic Man predated Elongated Man by a whole generation).

The now 30-year-old Zero Hour was a few continuity rejiggerings ago, of course, but as to when Plastic Man debuted, well, that doesn't seem to have changed. Last year's New History of the DC Universe, written by Mark Waid, has Plastic Man debuting around the same time as Zatanna and Animal Man, that is, the 1960s our time, and shortly after Superman, Batman and the Justice League DC time again (And, once again, Elongated Man debuts previous to Plas).

So, despite some confusion in the first decade or so after Crisis, and for at least 30 years now, Plastic Man has definitely been meant to belong to the current, New Heroic Age, rather than the original, Golden Age of superheroes.

Which do I, as a Plastic Man fan, prefer...? 

Well, I mentioned this very briefly on Bluesky, in response to something posted by the Neil who has been a great source of Plastic Man discussion online, but I'm of two minds on the matter. 

As one of the greatest comic book superheroes ever created, I think Plastic Man deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of DC's greats, like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and the first generation of Justice Leaguers. In that regard, it makes sense that he be a character who is part of DC's eternal "now", their so-called "New Heroic Age", where he is peers with Superman, Batman and company.

That said, because his best comics remain those that Cole and/or his later ghosts created in the 1940s and early 1950s, there's a temptation to argue that all those stories should "count", and the easiest way to do that would be to have those comics all be officially in continuity, but then, that would mean Plastic Man would have to be a Golden Ager.

Now, I think the fact that he debuted in the 1940s doesn't preclude him still being around and young and vital today, without so much as going gray at his temples. After all, does plastic Age? Joe Kelley's "Obsidian Age" arc in JLA had Plastic Man survive for thousands of years in pieces strewn about the ocean floor, after which time he was reformed back into himself with little trouble (Even if he kind of went a little insane for a while there; of course, since Foglio's Plastic Man mini, the character has usually been portrayed as at least a little bit insane, so who could tell, really...?).

And as for Woozy, well, perhaps the same magic spell that gave him the protection of nature whenever he was in danger—a "super power" that would come and go in the character's early years, and is now mostly forgotten—also made him functionally immortal, so that, like his pal Plas, he could still look and act the same in 2026 as he did in the 1940s. 

I think either approach works. But I do really like the way Grant Morrison handled the character during Morrison's JLA run. When exactly Plastic Man got his powers never comes up in those stories, and there's never any point in which the length of Plastic Man's career comes up. Why would it, really? It was never important to any of the stories Morrison told during that time.

Still, Morrison did seem to hint that Plas could have been around for a very long time indeed, though.

For example, in the four-part "Crisis Times Five Arc," which teamed the JLA with Captain Marvel and a new, emergent version of the Justice Society (one that would soon evolve into the JSA of their own title), Morrison has Golden Age hero Wildcat say that he knew Plastic Man, at least in his Eel O'Brien identity, back in the day:

Plas' weird "joke" here isn't particularly funny, which is par for the course with Plas' JLA era appearances, but the fact that Wildcat and "O'Brien" have history is notable. 

Were they both kids at the same time? Was O'Brien a kid when Wildcat was an adult? Unclear, of course. (In the very next panel, Wildcat grabs Plas by the throat and says, "You were full of it then and you're full of it now...So let's just try to be professional." Plas' response? A "WAARK" followed by "Everyone's a critic" in a much smaller font).

Later, in Morrison's climactic "World War III" arc, Plastic Man is instrumental in formulating a plan to foil the Queen Bee, and, in introducing it, Plas mentions his association with another Golden Age hero, The Red Bee:

Red Bee, by the way, was another Quality Comics hero. 

The lesson, I think, is that it's more important to tell awesome comics than to get hung up on continuity, of course, but Morrison used continuity quite well throughout JLA, and, in these two examples anyway, wrote Plastic Man in such a way that he could either be a long-lived Golden Age hero or a modern day hero who just happened to have had off-panel associations with some Golden Agers. Whatever, I guess, the reader decided to read into those lines of dialogue. 

So, did the Justice Society travel back to 1945 and then stave off Ragnarok or nah...?

As we just saw the other day, 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society Special #1 temporarily wrote the Justice Society out of the DC Universe through a complicated chain of events stemming from Crisis on Infinite Earths, with the heroes travelling back in time to 1945 and then entering a rift in the sky to join an eternal battle to save the world. Adolf Hitler had used the Spear of Destiny to bring about Ragnarok, and the only way to keep the villains of Norse mythology from destroying the world was for the heroes to merge with the Asgardian gods and fight fire giant Surtur and company until the end of time. 

So that happened, right...?

Sure. At the time. But this being DC Comics, nothing is safe from a retcon.

In 1991's Sandman #26, the fifth chapter of the "Season of Mists" arc, writer Neil Gaiman* refers to the events of Last Days, shading them in such a way that honors that story but alters it in a way that freed up the Norse gods to appear in other stories, like his own.

The plot of "Season of Mists" is that Lucifer has decided to abandon Hell, and given dominion of it to Dream, the titular Sandman of this particular DC series of that name. As Dream tries to figure out what to do with it, various gods and other entities meet with him in his realm, each making their case for why they should get possession of Hell.

One such god is Odin. He tells Dream that the only thing that frightens him is Ragnarok, and that "These days, too much of my time is spent hatching schemes to circumvent the darkness of me and mine."

Here are the panels that refer to Last Days, although, with no asterisks or editorial boxes, a Sandman reader might not even know that that Gaiman and company's story was referring back to a then five-year old superhero comic: 

The art in those panels, by the way, is penciled by Kelley Jones and inked by George Pratt (And while I don't always mention the colorists or letterers, I will also note that here the art is colored by Daniel Vozzo and that Todd Klein is responsible for the letters, which play a bigger-than-usual part in the storytelling of Sandman).

If you don't want to squint to read Odin's words in those panels, I'll transcribe them here:

Some years ago, it occurred to me that it is easier to fight something one knows something about.

I created a world--a notional dimension--and in it, I fashioned a tiny Ragnarok.

In my world, the last battle is fought, day in, day out, forever. I have learned much from it.

One thing that surprised me, though, was when my little world gained further warriors--ones I had not created. 

I do not know how they got there, nor why they fight, these little mortal heroes.

Odin brings this up because one of those little mortal heroes is, of course, The Sandman Wesley Dodds, pictured along with a quite janky looking little Hawkman in the orb in Odin's hand. Odin says has that Dodds has some of Dream's essence, a fraction of his soul within him, and he will trade Dodds for Hell.

So, according to Sandman, the Ragnarok in which the Justice Society fights is not the true Ragnarok, but a little artificial version of it that Odin had created in an alternate dimension (or, perhaps, a pocket universe...?) in order to study the last battle. 

It is this version of Ragnarok that Hitler summoned, and the Justice Society entered, with neither the Fuhrer nor the heroes realizing the difference...and their actions were apparently beneath Odin's notice, at least until he checked in on his experiment. 

There are probably some theological issues raised here, given that the Justice Society took its actions in Last Days on the word of The Spectre, an aspect of God...the God with a capital "G", as opposed to a lower-case "g" god, like Odin. Wouldn't The Spectre know better than to be taken in by a pseudo-apocalypse generated by a lesser god...?

I don't know. I'm not sure if The Spectre was, in 1986 or 1991, yet thought to be an aspect of God, as opposed to simply being a powerful spirit working at the behest of God (or, in the parlance of earlier Spectre stories, The Voice).

The following year, 1992, DC published the four-issue miniseries Armageddon: Inferno, written by John Ostrander and drawn by a half-dozen different all-star artists. The plot involved an extradimensional entity trying to conquer the DC Universe by sending his servants to different time periods in order to build bodies for him to inhabit, and the then new character Waverider assembling teams of heroes from different time periods to stop them.

In the third issue, The Spectre tells Waverider he knows where they can get another batch of heroes, provided Waverider uses his powers over time to temporarily stop the Ragnarok cycle the Justice Society was then stuck in. 

During this issue, Ostrander has The Spectre retell the story of how the Justice Society ended up in Ragnarok (the page atop this post, pencilled by Luke McConnell is from that passage of the book), and this version differs quite sharply from what we read in Last Days. Here, Ostrander removes the time travel element and decouples the events of Last Days from Crisis on Infinite Earths entirely. 

In the Armageddon: Inferno version, during World War II Hitler had tried to use the spear "to link the fall of Germany with Ragnarok" but "he hadn't the sorcerous power or training to accomplish his intentions." Still, apparently after shooting himself, Hitler's blood flowed over the tip of the spear, and "his hate was great enough to imprint his desire on the spear, waiting for a sufficient influx of magic power to complete the spell."

That magic power wouldn't come until decades later, around the time of Last Days. Ostrander has a scene in which Kobra uses the spear to wound The Spectre, and then The Spectre stumbles into the cemetery where "The Justice Society had gathered to mourn some of its fallen comrades." (There's no mention of Earth-2's Robin or Huntress here.) 

And from there the Justice Society enters into Ragnarok to begin their never-ending battle; the confusing bits in the original story involving The Spectre's powers traveling through time and space to 1945 during the events of COIE and Doctor Fate taking the Justice Society back in time having been removed.

A few years later, Ostrander would also refer to the events of Last Days in 1994's The Spectre #20, the second chapter of the "Spear of Destiny" arc (While Tom Mandrake was the Spectre's regular artists, this particular issue was drawn by guest artist John Ridgway). In this chapter, entitled "Strange Friends", Professor Nicodemus Hazzard is interviewing the surviving members of the Justice Society, now all old men, about their history with the Spear of Destiny.

When he gets to Wesley Dodds, the former Sandman talks to him about his dreams. 

"I have...such strange dreams," Dodds says:

I dream of people...friends...who are no more...who never could have existed as I dream of them.

I dream of events, not as they occurred, but as they might have been. One dream occurs over and over again...

That dream involves what appears to be either the Justice Society and/or All-Star Squadron (Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick are pictured in one panel) rushing at Hitler, who holds the Spear of Destiny. One by one they are killed off, and The Spectre reaches towards Hitler, only to be felled by the spear, after which point "the sky cracks and fire rains down...it's the end of the world."

These events don't quite line up with those in Last Days, if that's what they are meant to be referring to (it's possible this scene is meant to reference something from All-Star Squadron though, given Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick's presence; also, The Sandman, Doctor Fate, The Atom and Hawkgirl are all wearing different costumes than what they wore in Last Days).

The point that Dodds seems to be making, however, is that his dreams allow him to see things that are no longer canonical/in continuity. 

A third page of his flashbacks definitely does refer to Last Days, though, and artist Ridgway even reproduces a panel from that comic (although his panel featuring Ragnarok is quite different in terms of designs). 

"We're now in a graveyard," Dodds says:

It's sometime after the war. Most of us are still alive. We gathered to honor those who had died.

Then The Spectre is there, stumbling towards us, and he's dying. 

And we wind up in some sort of limbo, fighting to stave off Ragnarok, fighting the same battle over and over again.

Except, of course, that last part really did happen. 

Of course, these stories referencing Last Days all date from the '90s. I would not be surprised to learn that stories later in that decade or the early 2000s, from the pages of JSA or Justice Society of America or any of their spin-offs, also referred back to Last Days of the Justice Society, but that's just too many comics for me to reread for so minor a matter. (If you remember any, though, do let me know). 

At any rate, it is now 2026, and we're on the other side of Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint, Convergence and some big events I didn't read, like Geoff Johns' dumb-looking Superman vs. Watchmen series and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

Where does the Justice Society fighting in Ragnarok stand now...? Well, the history of the JSoA was something I was particularly interested to see in the pages of the 2025 Mark Waid-written New History of the DC Universe, the purpose of which was to delineate what is currently in continuity and, well, I was disappointed. 

The Justice Society isn't really mentioned at all between the page featuring Infinity, Inc. (which immediately precedes Crisis on Infinite Earths in Waid's narrative) and the team's reformation as the JSA in what would have been the late '90s, our time. 

Did Last Days still happen in any way, shape or form? Did the Justice Society fight in Ragnarok? It's unclear from New History. There's a cryptic mention of the original JSoA's members having "subsequently undertook missions in secret, culminating in an adventure in another realm that extended their lifespans greatly," but that comes in a paragraph about their "disbanding under government pressure" (That is, during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings). 

That scene is set in the 1950s, though, and where they were between then and first Flash Jay Garrick and then the others reemerging around the time of the early days of the Justice League for regular team-ups is never touched upon. At any rate, that would seem far too early for the events of Last Days to have occurred, wouldn't it?

The timeline that followed Waid's story in New History, written by Dave Wielgosz based on he and Waid's research, similarly doesn't address the issue. In that, the Justice Society isn't mentioned at all between the founding of Infinity, Inc. and the events of Zero Hour. 

So, did Last Days of the Justice Society still happen? Did the Justice Society spend time fighting in Ragnarok (or a Ragnarok)...? I don't know, and it doesn't seem as if DC has an answer at this particular point. 

*Whose name always needs an asterisk now, I guess, as it feels wrong to mention him without also mentioning the credible allegations of horrible sexual misconduct that multiple women have made against him. 

Bookshelf #26

This week's bookshelf is...well, perhaps I should start by clarifying that this particular shelf isn't part of a set of bookshelves or anything. It's actually the interior of an old, cheap, wooden entertainment center that used to be in my parents' room in the '90s or so. The shelf pictured above is where the television used to sit...and the make of television set they had wasn't actually compatible with this entertainment center, which is why the back wall of it was cut—perhaps "hacked" is a more accurate word—out, so the back of the TV would fit in the space, and the cords and wires and what not could escape and drape down towards the electrical outlets. That's what the weird white shape beyond the books here is; a hole that looks like it was made with a hatchet in the wooden, and the white of the wall behind it. 

As with any and all furniture in my current home, I turned this entertainment center into a makeshift bookshelf, by cramming it full of books. There's a set of doors that one can close to hide the books, the badly bowing shelf not made to bear all their weight and the unsightly hole in the back from view. But I opened it to take this picture.

Anyway, the books. This is, as you can probably tell at a glance, another Fantagraphics shelf, and I am going to guess that the vast majority of these books are from the first decade of the 21st century. (We already saw another Fantagraphics shelf, containing more recent books from the publisher, in a previous post in this series.)

There's quite a variety, the main unifying factor here being that almost all of these books are really rather great. 

There's a big, huge format collection of E.C. Segar's Popeye and a couple of not-quite-as-large collections of George Herriman's Krazy Kat, both of which were comic strips I used to read about as a teenager and a college student and wish that there were whole collections of to peruse. Now I wish I would have been more diligent in keeping up with the collections Fanta eventually released. 

There's work from a who's who of cartoonists, including Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, Gilbert Hernandez, Jason, Bernard Krigstein, Scott Morse, Boody Rogers, Joe Sacco, Seth, Art Spigelman, Barry Windsor-Smith and Basil Wolverton.

There are a couple of books by Johnny Ryan, who I personally think is one of the two funniest cartoonists I've ever read (The other being Sam Henderson). One of my fondest memories is sharing some dumb, vulgar cartoons of Ryan's with my old housemates in Columbus and watching them laugh until they were crying at them.

And then there's work from some of my all-time favorite comics art makers, Dan DeCarlo (The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo) and Richard Sala (Peculia, Maniac Killer Strikes Again, Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires).

And scrutinizing the spines, I see there's also Small Favors Book One by Colleen Hoover, which, along with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls from last week's shelf, is among the relatively little pornography I actually own (Although I suppose the word "erotica" is classier sounding, huh?)

As ever, my organization seems haphazard, as there are a few books here that aren't from Fanta, like PictureBox's 1-800-Mice by Matthew Thurber, Drawn and Quarterly's The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists by Seth and The Death-Ray by Daniel Clowes and IDW/Yoe Book's Dan DeCarlo's Jetta. 

Oh, and laying across the top is Dark Horse Book's A Home for Scared People, a collection of Chris Onstad's incomparable web-comics Achewood (I see there's a "3" on the spine; I hope that means I have the first two collections around here somewhere).

Finally, there are two books supporting A Home for Scared People and M. Tillieux's Ten Thousand Years in Hell whose spines aren't facing out. What might those be? Well, I checked. The first is Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest Book Two (Not sure why I didn't shelve that right next to Joe Daly's Dungeon Quest Book One, which would seem to be the ideal spot for it on this shelf). The other is Monte Beauchamp's not-actually-a-comic Krampus: The Devil of Christmas which, like Beauchamp's earlier Devil In Design, was what I consider a pivotal work in introducing America to the European holiday monster. Like, I don't think Krampus would be as popular as he is today without Beauchamp's art books featuring him.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 3

Ready for more of Marvel's 1982-1994 G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero? I hope so, as that's what today's post is about. When we left off last time, things weren't looking good for Snake-Eyes. He was in the midst of beating up Cobra's Doctor Venom in front of a small bunker on a rive island in the small, fictional South American country of Sierra Gordo when the Baroness dropped a bomb on the island. Was the mercenary Kwinn able to rush the pair into the door of the bunker in time? Who cares, says Stalker, floating nearby with Breaker and Gung-Ho in the panel above; the whole island seems to have been vaporized! And that's where we pick up today. 

Remember, I'm currently reading the series via Image Comics' gigantic 1,200+ page, three-inch-thick G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Compendium One, though I'm pulling the covers from the Grand Comics Database, which is why they all still say "Marvel Comics Group" across the top and Spidey's head appears in a little box in the lower left corner so often. Oh, and as always, all each of the issues below are written by the great Larry Hama, unless otherwise noted. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #13 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•When The Baroness and the Cobra courier with the scar on his face fly over the wreckage of the river boat, Stalker and company dive under the water so that she won't be able to see them. That seems like quite enough excitement for a while, and now the Joes can--

Oh shit! 

•Stalker continues to fight the crocodile with his knife while announcing its phylum, sub-phylum, class, order and family. When it pulls him underwater, we and the other Joes can't see what happens for a few panels, but eventually Stalker surfaces and the croc does not.

•While Stalker recovers from his fight with the crocodile and Breaker watches over him, Gung-Ho heads into town and, is it me, or does Vosburg have him meeting with the Sierra Gordo equivalents of Laurel and Hardy...? 

•Back at Cobra's headquarters, Cobra Commander refers to the scar-faced courier as "Scar-Face", and at that point it seems to become his name, as he is henceforth referred to as Scar-Face.

•I like this bit. Cobra Commander and The Baroness are talking about Scar-Face, like, right next to him, and he can clearly hear them, as he's looking right at them. Also, note the panel right below it; at this point, Destro's name and face have yet to be revealed, and he's still only appearing in this manner, so that readers only know that there's a mysterious Cobra agent wearing metal gauntlets. 

•A new Joe gets introduced this issue: Torpedo, a SEAL whose action figure came dressed in scuba gear, with detachable swim fins and a harpoon gun. While the Joe team mounts a dangerous and complicated rescue mission to extract Stalker and the others, Torpedo and Doc investigate the river where the island Snake-Eyes and company were on when it was bombed. At the bottom of the river, he finds that the bunker itself is still intact. Reasoning someone may have survived, he taps on the door but is called back to the surface almost immediately...and thus isn't there when someone on the other side of the door taps back. Could Snake-Eyes have survived? (I mean, yes, obviously Snake-Eyes survived).

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #14 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•Oh. So, after three issues of playing coy with what Destro's face looks like (his head is encased in a steel mask, as you all know, as this "mystery" is 43 years old), Marvel went ahead and just revealed it on the cover of an issue. The cover, drawn by Herb Trimpe and Steve Mitchell, isn't even a particularly good image of the character, and his collar and mask look fairly off model here. 

Anyway, this issue will reveal Destro's face within, as well as his name, although even that reveal is somewhat spoiled, as the title of this story is "Destro Attacks."

•The action in this issue is split between Snake-Eyes and company in Sierra Gordo and the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra conflict back in the states. Here we learn that Snake-Eyes, Kwinn and Doctor Venom all made it into the bunker and sealed the door before the bomb destroyed the island out from under it, sinking it to the river floor. As the water rises to their necks, they all agree that they all have a score to settle with Cobra now and make an uneasy truce to help get out of the river alive.

Kwinn, the strongest, prays to the spirit of the otter to help him swim and the spirit of the bear to help him, as he plunges underwater and manually opens the door, despite the massive water pressure making doing so quite difficult. As soon is the door is open, Venom clobbers him with a wrench to the back of the head. 

For a very average-looking middle-aged dude, Venom seems pretty confident in his fighting prowess, immediately challenging Snake-Eyes (see above). Ultimately, they are both captured by Cobra soldiers disguised as local mercenaries.

Here Venom reveals to readers his own treachery; he gave Baroness the asked-for bioweapon, but not the secret catalyst.

•Oh, and Vosburg must have tired of drawing a mask-less Snake-Eyes in such ways so as to conceal his face, as this issue opens with him back in his mask. He must carry spares

•Back in the states, there's an intriguing bit where the fact that The Baroness and Destro knew one another in the past is expanded upon slightly, and we finally see Destro's face, first as a reflection in The Baroness' glasses. I have to admit the "say my name" stuff was quite dramatic. I am 100% sure if this comic were published today, the panel in which she says "Destro" would have been a full-page splash:

•There's lots of treachery in this issue. Though not strictly a superhero comic, Hama certainly engages in something that seems common to super-team comics I've read. Specifically, that the heroes often triumph because of teamwork, and the fact that they like, respect and trust one another. Meanwhile, the villains often fail because their egos and duplicity mean they are inevitably betraying one another, oftentimes before they've even achieved their goals.

This is a little complicated, but Cobra Commander asked The Baroness to plant a microdot for the Joes to find in Sierra Gordo, which would have indicated that Cobra HQ is actually under the Chaplin's Assistant School at Fort Wadsworth (Which we know is actually the Joes' HQ, though Cobra doesn't; that's some coincidence!). But Destro had Scar-Face secretly switch the microdots, giving the Joe's the location of an actual base in Springfield, Vermont, all part of his plan to get Cobra Commander caught or captured, so that he can take over the Cobra organization as its new commander. (As for the Commander, he and The Baroness have gone there to inject a Cobra volunteer with Venom's toxin, which is supposed to be harmless to him, but make him a walking biological weapon to use against the Joes...but he dies instantly, at which point they realize Venom had betrayed them).

Meanwhile, Destro's plot goes awry when he realizes that the Commander has taken The Baroness with him, and thus he has to hustle to get there in time to fight off the Joes and save The Baroness...and The Commander.

•By the way, the Commander's supersonic rocket transport lands at the Arbco Furniture Company in Vermont. "Arbco" is, of course, an anagram of "Cobra"; that's some Joker-going-by-"Joe Kerr" level of subterfuge.

•The issue ends with a big fight, albeit one in which no one seems to get killed, or even hurt. The Joes roll into town in their new APC (or Amphibious Personnel Carrier), a 1983 toy, and are immediately ambushed by Destro's forces. Hawk calls in a strike from another new toy, the Skystriker, which came packaged with its pilot Ace, who makes his first appearance here.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #15 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Back in Sierra Gordo, Kwinn makes a very dramatic appearance, using his giant machine-gun to gun down all the Cobra agents-posing-as-mercenaries to rescue his kinda sorta allies Snake-Eyes and Doctor Venom, the latter of whom they will need to fly them out of the country. 

•Snake-Eyes immediately starts choking Venom and trying to drown him in the river, but Kwinn makes him stop.

•There's a lot of action, as the trio have to steal a plane from hostile forces, take off while under attack and then get involved in an aerial battle. At one point, Venom manages to signal Cobra via morse code from the plane's controls, telling them he will forgive the attempt on his life in exchange for a lawyer waiting for him in Miami, and again attempts to kill Snake-Eyes and Kwinn by dumping them out of the plane...and again taking a wrench to Kwinn's head. Kwinn is about to throw him out of the plane, but this time Snake-Eyes stops him from killing Venom.

So, when they crash-land on a beach in Miami, Venom is allowed to go free, while Snake-Eyes and Kwinn are put in a jail cell. It seems odd that Snake-Eyes wouldn't be able to prove he was a member of the military via some kind of I.D. or "talk" his way out using sign language...maybe the local law enforcement doesn't know anyone who speaks sign language? Maybe Snake-Eyes doesn't speak sign-language? And I guess if they did give him one phone call, he wouldn't be able to talk over the phone anyway, huh...? Anyway, kinda weird.

•Vosburg seems to have forgotten to draw Kwinn's weasel skull necklace in this issue. 

•I like this scene featuring Destro and The Baroness. That's so many dots! I don't know if I would trust an answer preceded by that long of a pause, Destro!

•This issue also introduces a new member of Cobra, the colorfully named mercenary (and poet!) Major Bludd. It seems Cobra Commander has hired him to help deal with Destro's treachery, which he apparently suspects. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #16 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•The first four pages of this issue feature a training exercise in which Hawk puts some Joes and their vehicles through their paces, but the older guys are all shown up by two newcomers: Cover Girl, the team's second female member and the driver of the armored missile vehicle The Wolverine (her action figure came packaged with it), and Trip Wire, a mine sweeper and explosives expert whose one defining characteristic seems to be that he's very clumsy.

•Scarlett is not exactly welcoming to the new girl, as you can see in the dialogue above.

•Oh, and while it doesn't come up in this issue, according to Tripwire's file card, his real name is Tormod S. Skoog. I am 49-years-old, and I have never met nor heard of anyone named "Tormod." You know, I bet you could write a pretty decent baby name book based on the civilian names of Hama's G.I. Joe characters...

•Cobra Commander hosts a dinner party for his inner circle, and he's drawn holding a glass of wine. How does he drink wine with his face mask on? Scar-Face is also wearing a mask, but I guess he could slip it down to drink. Can Destro eat or drink with his mask on? 

I like the bottom tier of panels on this page, which shows just how divided Cobra is, as each character has their own agendas and suspicions. Hama ends the sequence with the Commander lifting his glass: "Cobra comrades! I propose a toast! To victory through...unity!"

•This party is actually occurring in the back of a semi-truck, one of several headed towards Washington, D.C. All are marked "Arbco". You would think Cobra would abandon that cutesy name after G.I. already encountered Cobra based labeled "Arbco Furniture Company", but maybe they just didn't have time to repaint all their trucks...?

•Hawk and General Flagg both got wind of different Cobra plots targeting D.C. Hawk believes they are going to attack the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and their plan is to poison the ink that U.S. currency is printed with, killing untold Americans. (This was probably a more effective plan in 1983 than it would be in 2026, as we move closer and closer to being a cashless society). Flagg has learned that Cobra plans to attack the Capitol building, and "the brass" is devoting all military resources to defending it. It will be up to the Joes to deal with the weird-ass poison money plot.

•The Capitol attack was a feint, it turns out, but luckily the Joes were on hand to ambush Dr. Venom and his agents at the bureau. Torpedo is among the Joes lying in wait there, and for some reason he's wearing his scuba suit, armed with a speargun rather than something that might shoot bullets, and even wearing his flippers, which must be a mobility hazard, right? 

There's a panel later where Vosburg draws him as if he's meant to be tip-toeing, and it looks awfully silly given the flippers.  

•Cobra Commander initiates Phase Two: Everyone fight!

HISS tanks roll out of the back of the trucks. Cover Girl's Wolverine emerges from the false shell of a garbage truck it was being hidden in. Joes on the rooftops open fire. Wild Bill and Airborne arrive in a Dragonfly helicopter ("How's this for the calvary to the rescue?" Wild Bill asks, while the Native American Airborne replies, "That don't play on my reservation.")

•The betrayals among Cobra's forces are actually almost hard to keep track of here. 

Dr. Venom hits Scar-Face in the back of the head with pistol, leaving him to die when a bomb he set goes off in the treasury building (Remember, Scar-Face was with The Baroness when she dropped a bomb on Venom in Sierra Gordo, and Venom is holding a grudge).

Major Bludd, riding in the gun turret of one HISS tank, swivels his guns to take aim at Destro at one point. Seeing this, The Baroness, piloting the tank Bludd is in, swerves it, crashing it into a nearby truck and knocking their tank on its side. She calls to the fleeing Bludd for help, telling him that she is trapped there, her leg is broken and that the leaking fuel is in danger of exploding. He flees, leaving her to seemingly die when the tank explodes. 

Seeing this, Destro is plunged into despair, and seems to be in a world of his own grief, ignoring everything around him, like Dr. Venom boarding the HISS tank Destro is manning and Cobra Commander is driving. Or even Hawk boarding it and punching Cobra Commander around a bit. 

•Dr. Venom is not a very romantic man. "All this over the Baroness?" he says to Cobra Commander. "Doesn't he realize that love is simply overestimating the difference between any one given woman and another?"

•He eventually snaps out of it long enough to engage Hawk in fisticuffs. I think this is the first time that Destro refers to his head as "polished berylium steel". It won't be the last time. (My spellcheck says the word "berylium" should have two L's in it, but Destro's dialogue only has one). In the end, Cobra Commander, clearly still suffering from having Hawk rattle his skull around inside his battle helmet, pumps three bullets into Hawk's back, knocking him off of their tank.

• Oh, and I didn't notice this until revisiting this issue to write about it but check out Baroness' glasses going flying out of her exploding tank in the bottom panel. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #17 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Are you guys worried about Hawk? Well, good news. He was wearing an armored vest, and while Doc tells us that most such vests wouldn't stop "a 9mm hardball round", his particular vest was the "SWAT model with extra ballistic layers." Guys, I don't know anything about guns, but Hama seems to.

•Meanwhile, Dr. Venom is driving the HISS tank with Cobra Commander and Destro away from D.C. on the highway. For some reason, it's not being followed by an entire parade of law enforcement vehicles the way I would assume a rogue tank on the highway might be. 

Destro is still in his own world (the Commander calls it some kind of trance), but he helps snap Destro out of it by giving him something to focus his grief on. He throws Major Bludd under the bus, telling Destro that Bludd had killed The Baroness because he was in love with her too. 

Two things to note on this page. Check out the broken pair of glasses, a symbol of the dead (?) Baroness. And look closely at that cobra. What's with the little human eyes peering out of the black shadow of its open mouth? Weird.

Their tank is eventually picked up by a Cobra helicopter, and while Ace engages them in his Skystriker, his plane is damaged and he has to retreat. As for the other Cobra players, Major Bludd attempts to hijack a bus, but is captured by the Joes (see the cove), and Scar-Face ditches his Cobra helmet and mask and retreats to his secret retreat at Coney Island.

•Back in Florida, Snake-Eyes and Kwinn escape prison, and then win a pink Cadillac (and a cowboy hat) from some gamblers in a dice game. Kwinn knows that Scar-Face knows where Cobra's base is and where they might find Doctor Venom, and he knows where Scar-Face's "hidey-hole" is, and that's where they are headed, too. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #18 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Snake-Eyes finally makes contact with the Joe team, via a postcard he sent Hawk, with a secret "P.S." to Scarlett to prove that the message is really from him. Again, note how nice Snake-Eyes' handwriting is! Thanks to his tip, the Joes head for Coney Island, arriving around the same time as Destro and Snake-Eyes and Kwinn do. Apparently, Scar-Face's hideout is the security shed of a roller coaster there.

•The Joes arrive via pair of vehicles. Most of them are in the APC, while Rock 'N Roll arrive in via The MANTA (Marine Assault Nautical Transport (Air driven)), a sailboard like vehicle that was available via mail order rather than wherever toys were sold. 

•Destro steals an ice cream truck to make his getaway. He eventually gets his hands on Scar-Face, and together they hijack a plane to Libya, where they meet up with other Cobra forces...including Dr. Venom, who injects Scar-Face with the real bioweapon that Cobra Commander had previously injected a soldier in Vermont with. The plan? The injection turns Scar-Face into "a biological time bomb." If they allow the Joes to capture him and take him back to their base, then the plague he's carrying will "eradicate every living soul in G.I. Joe headquarters."

Unfortunately for the Joes, they unknowingly play along and end up infiltrating a Cobra motorcade in Libya and scooping up Scar-Face.

•As for Snake-Eyes and Kwinn (whose got his weasel skull necklace back on here), well Kwinn gave him the choice to either rejoin his comrades back at Coney Island, or to stay with him to pursue vengeance against Venom. Snake-Eyes stayed with Kwinn.

•Next? Hama, Vosburg and D'Agostino empty the whole damn toybox, for a climax to what I guess we'd now call this story arc, involving all the characters, all the vehicles and even the G.I. Joe Headquarters Command Center playset. It's pretty much the entire G.I. Joe toy line circa 1983, all in one issue! That, and we'll finally get to #21, probably the most famous issue of the whole series. 

On the rather confusing (to me) Last Days of the Justice Society of America

My interest in the Spear of Destiny in the DC Universe recently brought me to 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America Special #1, a 64-page story by writer Roy Thomas, co-plotter Dann Thomas, pencil artist David Ross and inker Mike Gustovich. 

I think it's one of the more confusing DC comics I've ever read.

That's not because it's poorly written or poorly drawn...God knows I've read much worse comics from the publisher, comics that due either to the script, or the nature of the art, or some disconnect between the writing and the art were difficult or impossible to parse with any real confidence.

Rather, my confusion stems from the fact that Thomas' story contradicts what I thought I knew about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and how it affected the DC Universe shared setting. (Mostly; there's also a plot point that amounts to little more than "Because magic...!", but we'll get to that in a bit). 

Now, if Roy Thomas and I seem to have a difference of opinion on how COIE impacted the DC Universe/history/continuity, I have to assume that's a me problem, and not a Thomas one. 

I mean, he was the guy who was writing for DC Comics at the time, and this script he wrote for them presumably made it through a series of editors who knew what was what. 

Meanwhile, I read COIE once, over 25 years ago, from a trade I borrowed from the library, and never felt compelled to revisit it (Certainly DC has given me plenty of chances to do so, as they seem to be constantly reprinting it in various formats. Honestly, I found it a bit of a slog, and read it with the interest and enthusiasm of a student reading a homework assignment; I suppose I should reread it now, though, given that in the last quarter century, I've read so many more comics that I'll now know many of the players and elements far better, and recognize all the cameos).

Okay, so here's my understanding of the climax of COIE, in which multiple Earths are all collapsed into a new, single Earth. This combination essentially synthesized the various Earths, their populations (well, at least their superhero populations) and their histories into a new one, the specifics of which would be laid out in 1986's History of the DC Universe and DC books going forward (like John Byrne's Superman work, George Perez's Wonder Woman and so on). Only a handful of characters from alternate Earths who were spared (Earth-2 Superman, Superboy-Prime, etc) would remember the old Multiverse, along with Psycho-Pirate, who seems to have been driven mad in the process.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

That's...not what is reflected here. All of the characters featured in this comic seem to be aware of their time on Earth-2, that there are characters who existed on both Earth-2 and Earth-1 (like Superman and Robin, for example), and the specifics of the events of the crisis, which they refer to as the crisis throughout. At various points, Hawkman and Starman even refer to it as "The Crisis on Infinite Earths". (Also, post-Crisis, should Power Girl be in this story at all?)

So that caused some friction for my brain when I was reading, but so too did making sense of the time travel elements of the plot...although that too seems to stem from my not remembering the events of COIE very clearly. 

After a prologue featuring Albert Speer visiting Adolf Hitler in his bunker near the end of the war in 1945, and a very wordy page in which the panels read rather cinematically, the readers' point-of-view moving through a cemetery on the grounds of Hall manor as if a movie camera were doing so, we find the JSoA of the time standing before a large coffin.

The roll call: Hawkman, Starman, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Flash, Wildcat, Hourman, Doctor Fate, The Sandman, The Atom, Johnny Thunder, The Star-Spangled Kid and Power Girl, along with apparently unofficial members, Hawkgirl and Sandy the Golden boy. 

Chairman Hawkman is holding forth, talking about the "two fallen comrades" in the coffin before them. As he does so, he recounts other Society members who have previously died (Earth-Two Batman, Mister Terrific) or been lost in other ways (Earth-Two's Superman and Wonder Woman). Who's in the coffin? Earth-Two's Robin Dick Grayson and Huntress Helena Wayne, both of whom died during the events of the crisis. Hawkman says they will be burying them next to Helena's parents, Earth-Two's Batman and Catwoman.

So, you can see where I might be confused here, right? 

Not only was I surprised that the Justice Society all seemed to remember the events of Earth-Two (like Batman's death), but they also remembered characters plucked out of continuity when time and space were rewritten (like their Superman, Kal-L), but somehow Robin and Huntress still have bodies? And Batman and Catwoman's remains survive, still buried in their graves with their headstones, on the then-new, combined Earth? Didn't all of these characters—Earth-Two's Batman, Catwoman, Robin and Huntress—get erased from existence, so that they never were, except, perhaps, as memories held by a handful of characters...?

The team isn't just mourning the deaths of Robin and Huntress, though, but that of the Society as a whole. Hawkman says that they've decided to disband and go into retirement, as "when Earth-One, Earth-Two, and so many other Earths became one, we in turn became, in a very real sense...redundant."

In a splash page that depicts the heroes of the new DC Universe, he goes on to explain that there are other, younger heroes, "many of whom bear the same powers, even the same names we do."

I'm reading Last Days in the 2017 Last Days of The Justice Society of America trade collection, which collects it with a dozen stories that Thomas wrote for the pages of the 1986-1990 Secret Origins (one of which I've recently written about). It also includes a text piece of Thomas' from the back of the original Last Days special, headlined "An Epilegomena to 'The Last Days of the Justice Society'" (My spellcheck doesn't recognize that word, by the way). In this Thomas explains a bit why DC published the story, and it seems the publisher agreed with what Hawkman said about the redundancy of the JSoA at the time. 

It's weird to think that DC might have thought that, say, two Hawkman, Flash, Green Lanterns or Atoms would be just too many. I mean, today we have, what, three or more Flashes? Eight Earth-born Green Lanterns? Hell, just looking at the Batman franchise, don't we still have two Batmen, two Robins, three Batgirls and more sidekicks and Bat-lieutenants than I can keep track of...?

Anyway!

Hawkman, the Society's chairman, is just about to announce that the team is now officially disbanded when The Spectre arrives in a shredded cape and gloves and then collapses in their midst. 

The Spectre reaches up and touches Fate's mask, causing the mystic to reel back while screaming in pain, and then The Spectre seems to explode in a very cool image, Thomas' narration telling us that "the ectoplasmic shell men have called The Spectre can return to whence it came."

The next 15 pages or so will consist of Fate explaining to the others what The Spectre implanted in his mind, an alternate version of the events of April 1945 than those which any of them remember. 

They are attending President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral, when the Earth begins to shake and the sky itself rends open, Wildcat observing that "another world's tryin' to rush in!" New president Harry S. Truman arrives and tells them it's a world wide phenomenon, at which point The Spectre speaks up: The source is Berlin, and "the destiny of all the Earth hangs uneven in the balance-- --and the weight of so much as a feather may tip the scales toward survival-- or the end of all the universe!"

Hey, Hawkman has a feather! He's got a whole lot of feathers! Maybe he can help?

And so Hawkman, and the rest of the Society (here including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, which would seem to indicate that this is 1945 on Earth-Two, and not in the new timeline in which there is and was no Earth-Two) streak to Berlin, although the most powerful of them can only go so far. 

"If we go traipsing inside Nazi-held territory, we'll fall victim to the spell cast by Hitler's Spear of Destiny, won't we?" Johnny says, to which Green Lantern responds, "Just those of use who are especially susceptible to magic."

That's how the spear was working on the JSA circa 1986 then, at least according to Thomas: Any hero "especially susceptible to magic" who entered "Nazi-held territory" would fall under Hitler's spell and end up fighting for him. 

(Thomas' text piece at the back addresses this a bit, saying he came up with it as an explanation for why the superheroes didn't change the results of the war too much, a regular problem with superhero comics that was only magnified when it pertained to "stories set in the well-mapped past." He also says he was planning to work out an explanation for why the spear's magic only affected those most vulnerable to magic—that is, conveniently, the most powerful heroes—but didn't get around to it before Crisis made the point somewhat moot).

And so Superman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, The Spectre, Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder stay behind while the ten remaining heroes moved deeper into enemy territory, many of them dying as they fought their way to Hitler's bunker (Starman, The Flash, Mister Terrific, Hourman and Doctor Mid-Nite all catch bullets in this sequence; Sandman takes a shot to the head, and then stations himself at a machine gun to provide cover fire for his allies before he himself bleeds out.)

In the bunker, they find a cackling Hilter with the spear held aloft. Fireballs pour from the sky, and then a wave of destruction pours forth, enveloping the world in fire. Hitler managed to take the whole world down with him in 1945.

So, um, why didn't the JSoA remember it happening that way? How were they still standing around on a very much not destroyed world in the 1980s? Well, here's the part I didn't really get. Apparently, during the Crisis—Thomas' text point lays out exactly which point—The Spectre's energies were flung throughout all of time and space, and the spear "drank" them up, super-charging it, and allowing Hitler to summon Ragnarok, the apocalypse of Norse mythology, ending the world. 

Still, if Hitler destroys the world in 1945, why is it still around in 1986? Well, it seems that though The Spectre's energy traveled through time, which I guess is a circle and not a line, the rip in the sky through which Ragnarok pours through happens at all times simultaneously, as no sooner has Doctor Fate explained all of this then a rip opens in the sky above them.

Now, I assumed where Thomas was going with this is that the JSoA of 1986 would end up travelling back to 1945, just before the events we just witnessed in Doctor Fate's story, enter the rip in space time and enter the Ragnarok cycle, where they would engage in an eternal battle, forever staving off the end of the world. When I started reading comics in the '90s, that's what the JSoA's status quo was, after all, and I read 1992's John Ostrander-written Armageddon: Inferno, in which the Justice Society returned from Ragnarok to the present-day DCU. 

That would make some sense of the time paradox, right? The Justice Society wouldn't remember the alternate history that Fate told them because they had prevented it from happening, just as the Earth wouldn't have actually ended in 1945, as a result of the present heroes' actions in the past. 

Well, that's not what Thomas does.

Instead, I guess we just leave it at The Spectre's powers behave how Thomas wants them to in order to tell a "last" Justice Society story that involves them fighting Hitler and the power of the spear, one that has them all ascend bodily to a sort of warrior's heaven of eternal battle, which is really not a bad "ending" for a team of superheroes, right?

Anyway, Doctor Fate takes the Society back in time to 1945, although he says they can't aid their past selves physically there, as, "No one living can see us...and we, in turn, cannot truly touch anyone or anything in this era."

Rather, once Hitler opens the rift in the sky, Fate takes them all within it, where they see the various characters of Norse mythology assembling for a final battle, one destined to end the world. The Society members are all quite conversant in Norse mythology, it seems here, and Ross' designs all lean toward the realistic, most of the gods wearing period armor, or looking like characters from opera stages, rather than something more colorful, like Jack Kirby's version of Norse mythology from Marvel's comics, or the Valkyries that Joe Staton drew in 1977's DC Special #29. 

Fate combines his magic with Green Lantern's willpower, and has the various members of the Society merge with various Asgardian gods, empowering the heroes to interact with the bad guys like Loki, Fenrir, Surtur and so on.

Over the course of some 20 pages, the heroes fight the mythological forces, dying one-by-one throughout. (That's two action sequences in which the heroes get killed in one book; I can only imagine what Geoff Johns would have done if given the opportunity to write the death scenes of so many heroes!)

Before long, of course, the heroes who died in the battle are resurrected, as are the opponents they vanquished, and the battle starts over. It can't actually be decisively won but must be fought over and over for all eternity...or for about half-dozen years, I guess, before the Justice Society is spelled by the bad guys from Armageddon: Inferno and are able to join the post-Crisis DCU. 

Not all of the Society members get stuck fighting Ragnarok forever/six years, though. Doctor Fate returns Power Girl and the Star-Spangled Kid to the present, saying that they are still so young and have too much life to live. Or maybe it's because they don't have Earth-One doppelgangers in the way that most of the others do?  (Of course, Power Girl was kinda sorta Earth-Two's answer to Earth-One's Supergirl, right? And after this appearance she would begin a long, troubled cycle of new and contradictory origins, one that I'm not entirely sure has ever been resolved definitively, but then, I don't think I've read a Power Girl story since shortly after the New 52).

Then The Spectre shows up to throw Doctor Fate out of Ragnarok too, returning him to the Earth of 1986. Like Power Girl and the Kid, there's not Doctor Fate double, either. 

So, I guess that's what became of the Justice Society after Crisis, right? 

At least until the Justice Society in Ragnarok story gets retconned, but that's a subject for another post...