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...