This was originally an introduction to the classic All-Star Comic #58, but it grew to the point that it seemed better as a post of its very own!
On the 24th May 1940 the first issue of All Star Comics (All-Star came later), it was an anthology comic in which stories of Hawkman (Carter Hall), Sandman (Wesley Dobbs), The Flash (Jay Garrick), The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) and Hourman (Rex Tyler), alongside Red, White & Blue and Ultra-Man (no not that one, but a standard Future Cop story).
Issue second added the Green Lantern (Alan Scott) and Johnny Thunder, though the third though still not abandoning the anthology format added a new twist making them part of the first team the Justice Society of America! Oh and the Atom (Al Pratt) making the classic JSA lineup, and also technically the first female superhero in the form of Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel) though it’s hardly the shining hour for anyone…
Through the issues, and the addition of Batman and Superman (issue seven), Dr. Mid-Nite (Charles McNider) and Starman (Ted Night) (issue eight) and Wonder Woman (origin story in issue eight joins the team in issue eleven), the comic became more a team book than just linked vignettes. The comic lasted until issue fifty-seven (published 13th December 1950) as one of the last superhero comics of the era.
But only six years later, the Silver Age started with a new Flash (Barry Alan), in Showcase number four (5th July 1956). Whilst this new Silver Age bought in almost all new versions of old characters, except Batman who is never rebooted (and Superman and Wonder Woman to be fair), they made sure to pay homage to what was soon dubbed Earth-2. Our Flash, Barry, was inspired by the exploits of his hero Jay Garrick who’s exploits he read about in his own comic book series. It seems, unless there was a very quiet Crisis we missed, we’d been following Earth-2 since 1938 and now we’d switch to seeing what was just happening on Earth-1. Why yes the heroes from this new Earth (rather than New Earth, which was much later) choose which one got to be which.
However, as we’ll see throughout all of the Crisises DC never seems to sit down and plan out which hero is where and how they’ll interact with each other. Greater mind than me have grappled with when we switched from Earth-2 Superman (or Batman, or Wonder Woman) and his Earth-1 equivalent. This will eventually lead to the next big event in the DC Universe, but that’s a good twenty years in its future.
Showcase wasn’t the birth of this, we’d have to wait for the now famous Flash of Two Worlds, The Flash #123 September 1961 (they kept the legacy numbering of Jay’s old series, starting on #105), when this version of the Multiverse came into focus. There had been parallel world stories told well before this but this not only cemented the structure of the multiverse but placed the Goldern Age characters on Earth-2, reviving the characters that formed the Justice Society of America.
What cemented this was the annual two-issue crossovers of the newly created Justice League and the Justice Society, starting in issues 121-122 of the Justice League of America, August 1963. These issues, often called Crisis of something or other, a titles that will obviously become more important much later on.
Through the sixties and seventies, the JSA continued to be popular appearing with some frequency throughout the decades, enough that eventually they decided to bring back a Justice Society in their own comic.
But they did decide that alongside the original JSA characters, they’d need some new characters, so along with bringing back two older characters in new forms they also created a completely new character. The very characters that we’re here to read about…
For more on this era of Earth-2 and its crossovers with Earth-1, I recommend the excellent Earth-2 Podcast.