History ComicBook / JusticeSocietyOfAmerica

[[folder: Golden Age JSA]]

[[folder: Silver and Bronze Age JSA]]

[[folder: Post-Crisis JSA]]

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: The "Thy Kingdom Come" had [[spoiler: Doctor Mid-Nite regain his eyesight at the cost of being able to diagnosis medical conditions at a glance, ComicBook/{{Starman}} regained his sanity when [[InsanityImmunity he needed to be crazy]], ComicBook/PowerGirl learned the hard way that the ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis had [[YouCantGoHomeAgain caused her to be replaced with a double on Earth 2]], and Damage's face was fixed and he became increasingly vain.]] Luckily because StatusQuoIsGod most of those issues were resolved.

** In the first storyline for ''JSA'', the team goes up against Mordru and begin shifting into different realities. One of them is an anthropomorphic animal world home to the "Justice Critters". Starman in this world is a fox, making him "VideoGame/StarFox".

* YankTheDogsChain: During the "Thy Kingdom Come" arc, Gog seemingly granted Power Girl's wish to be returned to Earth-2. Karen was reunited with Helena Wayne and introduced to a modified Infinity Inc./Justice Society amalgam, the Justice Society Infinity. While her cousin is still dead, Karen gradually comes to accept that she has finally returned home. And then she meets [[spoiler: her Earth-2 doppelganger, learning that when Earth-2 was recreated in ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', it was recreated with a new Power Girl. Karen spends the rest of the arc hunted by the JSI as they try to determine why she "impersonated" Power Girl.]]

[[folder: Post-Rebirth JSA]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Ain't no school like the [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks old school]].]]

The comic book ''ComicBook/AllStarComics'', in 1940, was introduced as a standard anthology title featuring characters from other anthologies. However in the third issue (Winter, 1940), writer Gardner Fox introduced the Justice Society of America, teaming up the characters. '''Thus was born the world's first superhero team'''. As the TropeMaker for SuperTeam, the Justice Society was mostly reserved for lesser-used characters and any character who got his own series would have minimal appearances, so [[ComicBook/TheFlash Flash]] and ComicBook/GreenLantern left when they got solo comics, ComicBook/{{Superman}} and ComicBook/{{Batman}} rarely appeared[[note]]They had their own books, and the publisher believed that including them would cannibalize sales[[/note]], and ComicBook/WonderWoman was the JSA's [[StayInTheKitchen secretary]] and didn't go on missions until late in the Golden Age ''All-Star'' run. The team had a roster that changed from time to time, with characters leaving the team and others replacing them, until finally the lineup stabilized for the last two years of the book's run. The comic was canceled with issue #57 (February-March, 1951) at the end of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks, with ''All-Star Western'' continuing the numbering.

Over a decade later, superheroes were on the rise again and ComicBook/TheFlash (the [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] Flash, a totally different guy than the one in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII) discovered another Earth inhabited by the older [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] characters. Continuity had been invented by this point, so the explanation was, "All those JSA stories took place on [[AlternateUniverse Earth-2]], which has its own version of Superman, and everything from, uh, [[UsefulNotes/TheInterregnum circa-1955]] on is from Earth-1, which has the ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica. Superman versus aliens? That was Earth-1. Superman versus [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]]? Earth-2". Thus, every summer, the JLA and the JSA would [[{{Crossover}} team up]], in some of the few multi-part storylines of UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks. These were often titled "Crisis on Earth-Something", and involved the two teams responding to multidimensional disasters.

The JSA's own series was briefly revived in the [[TheSeventies 1970s]], with ''All-Star Comics'' returning with issue #58 (February 1976). Earth-2 was treated as having existed in real time, and all the characters had aged. New characters ComicBook/{{Huntress}} and ComicBook/PowerGirl were introduced as younger superheroes, related to the early group. The series lasted to #74, and included the origin of the Justice Society (told in a special, not in the series itself). The comic was then canceled in the [[UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks "DC Implosion"]] of 1978, and its six remaining stories were published in ''Adventure Comics''; the last issue was #466 (December 1979).

* IdiotHero: Johnny Thunder, a [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] [[TheFool doofus]] who had a genie that ''had'' to make his statements come true after he said "cei-u"--and he often prefaced his suggestions to others with "say, you...!" HilarityEnsues.

* PutOnABus: During UsefulNotes/{{the Golden Age|of Comic Books}}, members were routinely PutOnABus when their solo series ended, or in the case of the Flash or Green Lantern, PutOnABus because they got a solo series of their own. Characters would often disappear with no farewell scene. Hourman, Starman, and Doctor Fate are all examples of this. Johnny Thunder was put on a bus when he was replaced by Black Canary.

* TheLoad: Johnny Thunder in [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks the silver age]], [[ComicBook/PostCrisis modern]] comics have managed to avert this by making him a hero in his own right.

* DivergentCharacterEvolution: Even though the Justice Society came first and the ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica was just a [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] update of the Justice Society, because the Justice League was more popular, it was decided that the Justice Society needed to find a new core concept to differentiate it from the Justice League. Several different ideas were tried such as being an AlternateUniverse equivalent to the Justice League, being a group of middle-aged superheroes, and being a group of senior citizen superheroes, until finally, they found a concept that worked sales-wise: a multigenerational family of superheroes training the next generation. This concept behind the team was explicitly abandoned by Marc Guggenheim.

** There was an instance where Jakeem Thunder, trapped in the spirit world, wished for help and his genie summoned the ghosts of dead JSA members. Amongst them was the Earth-Two Batman, who was a member of the original JSA. It has been established that the [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] JSA was still formed in the original Earth-Two. Not to mention [[ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis Golden Age Wonder Woman and Kal-L]]...

Once upon a time, comics had no such thing as continuity. Yes, read that sentence again. All those comics on the stands? They didn't intersect with one another. They were being read by [[TheGreatDepression Depression-era]] kids, who weren't going to write to the editor and complain about how the current issue of Franchise/TheFlash was at odds with a story written three years before. '''There were no message boards.'''

The comic book ''ComicBook/AllStarComics'', in 1940, was introduced as a standard anthology title featuring characters from other anthologies. However in the third issue (Winter, 1940), writer Gardner Fox introduced the Justice Society of America, teaming up the characters. '''Thus was born the world's first superhero team'''. As the TropeMaker for SuperTeam, the Justice Society was mostly reserved for lesser-used characters and any character who got his own series would have minimal appearances, so [[Franchise/TheFlash Flash]] and Franchise/GreenLantern left when they got solo comics, Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}} rarely appeared[[note]]They had their own books, and the publisher believed that including them would cannibalize sales[[/note]], and Franchise/WonderWoman was the JSA's [[StayInTheKitchen secretary]] and didn't go on missions until late in the Golden Age ''All-Star'' run. The team had a roster that changed from time to time, with characters leaving the team and others replacing them, until finally the lineup stabilized for the last two years of the book's run. The comic was canceled with issue #57 (February-March, 1951) at the end of UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks, with ''All-Star Western'' continuing the numbering.

Over a decade later, superheroes were on the rise again and Franchise/TheFlash (the [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] Flash, a totally different guy than the one in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII) discovered another Earth inhabited by the older [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks Golden Age]] characters. Continuity had been invented by this point, so the explanation was, "All those JSA stories took place on [[AlternateUniverse Earth-2]], which has its own version of Superman, and everything from, uh, [[UsefulNotes/TheInterregnum circa-1955]] on is from Earth-1, which has the Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica. Superman versus aliens? That was Earth-1. Superman versus [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]]? Earth-2". Thus, every summer, the JLA and the JSA would [[{{Crossover}} team up]], in some of the few multi-part storylines of UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks. These were often titled "Crisis on Earth-Something", and involved the two teams responding to multidimensional disasters.

In the ComicBook/{{New 52}}, many of the major Golden Age characters were rebooted and re-imagined, with most once again operating on Earth-2, as they did pre-Crisis (in ''Comicbook/Earth2''), and some operating on Earth-0, the DCU's current main Earth. However, there was no official team operating under the JSA title until Geoff Johns' ''[[ComicBook/DCRebirth DC Universe: Rebirth]]'' revealed there had once been a Justice Society on Earth-0, a covert team of mystery men who helped win World War II, but they'd been forgotten by history, lost to time, and needed to be brought back. The team appeared in Scott Snyder's ''Justice League'', where Barry Allen and John Stewart encountered them in the past, with the various JSA members young and in their prime; Snyder's story in ''Wonder Woman'' #750 indicated that in this timeline, the Golden Age began when Wonder Woman made her first public appearance by saving President Roosevelt from an assassination attempt (pre-Crisis, it had begun with Superman's first appearance). The team proper -- seemingly the post-Crisis version -- fully returned in Geoff Johns' ''ComicBook/DoomsdayClock'', which acted as the conclusion to the ''Rebirth'' saga.

** The original members of the Justice Society included Franchise/WonderWoman and Comicbook/BlackCanary, but when the group reformed decades later, it included the daughters of both as replacements (Wonder Woman was retroactively stated to be Diana's mother, Hippolyta). Many of the men returned despite having aged (such as Jay Garrick, [[Franchise/TheFlash the original Flash]]). Some, like Alan Scott (Franchise/GreenLantern) and Carter Hall (Comicbook/{{Hawkman}}) had either de-aged or were immortal.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: In the original ''All-Star Comics'' (predating the Justice League by decades), Wonder Woman was originally the only female character. She didn't go out on missions, but was in fact the team's secretary until around 1948, so JLA Wonder Woman actually came out ahead. That was in the 1940s however, and the reason she didn't take part in storylines was because she had her own book. As a rule the JSA active members were limited to popular characters who didn't support their own title, and even Franchise/{{Superman}} and Franchise/{{Batman}} were limited by it. The JSA did, eventually, get a second female character: Black Canary.

* DivergentCharacterEvolution: Even though the Justice Society came first and the Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica was just a [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] update of the Justice Society, because the Justice League was more popular, it was decided that the Justice Society needed to find a new core concept to differentiate it from the Justice League. Several different ideas were tried such as being an AlternateUniverse equivalent to the Justice League, being a group of middle-aged superheroes, and being a group of senior citizen superheroes, until finally, they found a concept that worked sales-wise: a multigenerational family of superheroes training the next generation. This concept behind the team was explicitly abandoned by Marc Guggenheim.

** In one issue, a parallel universe Joker was shown as very old and decrepit, sporting a smiley pin with a splatter of blood - just like the one in ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}''.

* YoungerAndHipper: In the ComicBook/{{New 52}}, where their Earth-2 versions are once again counterparts of the [[Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica Justice League]] and their members are the same age as the League's members.

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Obsidian's first act on going evil and nuts is to go after his foster father for those years of drunken abuse.

The Justice Society is mentioned by [[ComicBook/{{Hourman}} Rex Tyler]] in the first season finale of ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'', and makes a full appearance in the second season. The JSA also plays a prominent role in the live action ''Series/{{Stargirl}}'' series (which takes place on Earth-2).

* PutOnABus: During UsefulNotes/{{the Golden Age|of Comic Books}}, members were routinely PutOnABus when their solo series ended, or in the case of the Flash or Green Lantern, PutOnABus because they got a solo series of their own. Characters would often disappear with no farewell scene. Hourman, Starman, and Doctor Fate are all examples of this.

* ActionGirl: Wonder Woman, when she was allowed to go on missions. Her participation was rare in the early years of the series, but when the editor and writer changed in the late 40s, Wonder Woman became an active member of the team out in the field as well as at headquarters. Black Canary was always an ActionGirl who started as a guest character and then was officially invited to join after proving invaluable to the team on several cases.