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.