JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Golden Age Batman
By Aaron Severson
A Little Background:
The Origin of the Multiverse
In the forties comic books were dominated by colorful costumed superheroes, all of them tracing their roots back to Superman and Batman. There were dozens of different heroes, some popular, some appearing only once or twice before vanishing for good. By the early fifties that horde was nearly extinct. At DC Comics, the only survivors who retained their own books in 1952 were Superman (and his younger self, Superboy), Batman, and Wonder Woman, along with a handful of others (Aquaman, Green Arrow, Robotman, the Vigilante) who survived as back-up features. Publishers turned to westerns, crime comics, war comics, and science fiction, looking for something to fill the void.
In 1956 DC editor Julius Schwartz decided to try out a new character in the fourth issue of the ongoing try-out series Showcase Comics: a new version of the Flash, one of DC’s more popular heroes of the forties. The new Flash, like the original, had the power to move at super-speeds, but he was otherwise an entirely new character, with a different costume, different identity, and a different origin as police scientist Barry Allen. His adventures were a success, and before long he graduated to his own book, reviving the old Flash Comics series. Realizing that revamped superheroes retooled for the tastes of modern readers could be hits, Schwartz commissioned a similar revival of another forties stalwart, Green Lantern, who debuted in Showcase #22 in 1959. He, too, graduated to his own series, followed by a new version of the old Justice Society of America team-up series, the Justice League of America, which debuted in Brave and the Bold #28. In 1961 Flash writer Gardner Fox created a clever story for Flash #123, entitled “The Flash of Two Worlds.” Fox and Schwartz knew that a few readers remembered that there had been an earlier Flash who disappeared in early 1951 — in fact, in the origin of the new Flash they showed a young Barry Allen reading about the original hero in comic books. Using the “parallel world” concept popular in science fiction, they concocted an adventure in which the modern Flash accidentally traveled into a parallel dimension, where he meets the original Flash, Jay Garrick, a little older but still vigorous and active. The two Flashes discovered that their worlds existed in the same space, but vibrated at different frequencies so that they never quite intersected; by changing his own “internal vibrations,” the Flash could travel between them at will. They dubbed Barry’s world “Earth-One” and Jay’s world “Earth-Two.” They postulated that Gardner Fox, a comic book writer on Barry Allen’s Earth, wrote the Flash comics Barry read as a child based on psychic visions of Jay Garrick’s Earth seen in dreams.
This tale proved popular enough to make meetings between Barry Allen and his “Earth-Two” counterpart a regular occurrence. By 1963 some readers were clamoring for the return of other Golden Age heroes. The Justice Society of America, the first comic book superhero team, appeared in Flash #137, reviving forties heroes the Atom, Dr. Mid-Nite, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and Johnny Thunder, all unseen since 1951. Two months later, in Justice League of America #21, the Justice Society met the Justice League, a team-up that would become a popular annual event.
In the mid-sixties it occurred to Gardner Fox that if DC’s forties heroes existed on Earth-Two, Superman and Batman — who had been published continually since the late thirties — would also have Earth-Two counterparts. (The Golden Age Wonder Woman, in fact, had appeared in Flash #137, but Wonder Woman’s internal continuity was such a mess, with Wonder Woman regularly sharing stories with herself as a baby and a teenager, that it didn’t make much difference if the Wonder Woman who was in the JSA was the same as the one in the Justice League.) Fox wrote an “Imaginary Story” in Detective Comics #347 (April 1966) in which the older, grayer Earth-Two Batman came to Earth-One after the “modern” Batman was killed in action. The following year (in Justice League of America #55), Earth-Two’s grown-up Robin, now wearing a baroque, ugly costume with a grey bodysuit and high-collared yellow cape, joined the Justice Society, telling his comrades that the Earth-Two Batman was now in semi-retirement. The Earth-Two Superman popped up for the first time in Justice League of America #73 (August 1969), and the Earth-Two Batman finally made a real appearance in Justice League of America #82 a year later.
These Earth-Two doppelgangers presented an interesting storytelling opportunity. The other Earth-Two heroes (the Flash, Green Lantern, et al) were not the same as their Earth-One counterparts. They had similar costumed identities and sometimes similar powers, but they were different people. The Earth-Two Batman and Superman, on the other hand, were still Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, but older and, significantly, no longer the stars of the ongoing Superman and Batman series. Therefore they could be allowed to grow, change, and develop in ways that their Earth-One counterparts could not, outside of the Imaginary Stories of the 1960s. Relieved of the pressures of carrying several monthly comic books and a host of licensing commitments, they could age, marry, have children — or even die.
In 1977, writer Paul Levitz and artist Joe Staton conceived the idea of an Earth-Two version of Batgirl. The Justice Society’s adventures in the revived All-Star Comics had already introduced Power Girl, a livelier (and bustier) Earth-Two counterpart of Supergirl, to great success, so Batgirl was the next logical step. However, unlike Power Girl, who was Superman’s cousin just like Supergirl, the new heroine would not be a duplicate of Earth-One’s Batgirl, but Batman’s daughter.
In a storyline that began to unfold in All-Star Comics #66, they established how an older Bruce Wayne had married his former enemy, Selina Kyle (the Catwoman), and settled down, having a daughter named Helena. Selina was killed, prompting Bruce to retire for good as Batman (becoming police commissioner of Gotham City) and her daughter to avenge her death as the Huntress, borrowing elements from both Batman and Catwoman’s costumed identities. Eventually Batman himself perished and his daughter took his place as the guardian of Gotham City.
The early 1980s saw the Huntress earn her own ongoing series in the back of Wonder Woman, while several poignant tales in Brave and the Bold fleshed out more about the life and tragic death of the Golden Age Batman, the only Batman to live and die in real time.
In 1985, DC chose to bring an end to the multiverse that encompassed Earth-One, Earth-Two, and numerous others, collapsing them into a single, revamped world in the cosmic calamity known as the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Huntress, Earth-Two’s older Robin, and all memory of their existence were wiped out, never to be seen or mentioned again. But the legacy of the original Batman lives on.
Note: A complete discussion of the origin of the multiverse and of its destruction in the Crisis on Infinite Earths is beyond the scope of this chronology. However, an excellent discussion of all the aspects of the Crisis can be found in Jonathan Woodward’s The Annotated Crisis.
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