| Posted: 16 June 2014 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | 5
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The Kirby New Gods series take place on Earth-1 in the then-current continuity. The contextual evidence is inarguable. Story threads involving Morgan Edge, Galaxy Communications, Intergang, the 100, and others were carried over into the rest of the Superman line, and appeared throughout the Seventies.
There is also the ages of the characters to consider. Superman and Jimmy in the New Gods era stories are clearly the current versions and not the 40 or 50 some-odd year old characters the Earth-2 versions were shown to be at that time. If you want to pretend that the New Gods stories then must have taken place back in the late 40's and early 50's when the Earth-2 Superman and Jimmy were the ages shown, then you have to account for all of the 70's era references somehow meaning something other than what they are clearly intended to mean. Hippies and peaceniks like the Forever People must be reimagined as something else entirely, and not what Kirby intended.
We also saw what was taking place on Earth-2 at this same time in All-Star Comics, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the New Gods. You could, I suppose, play the Bob Haney Super-Sons card and claim that all of this was happening in stories DC just never told you about or mentioned in any of their other titles, but that's hardly kosher.
The crux of your question seems to hinge upon there somehow being an Earth-1 Guardian and Newsboy Legion that pre-dated the public debut of Superman, supposedly Earth-1's very first super-hero. I agree that it's a gray area, but time and time again, DC gave us stories featuring Earth-1 super-beings that pre-date Superman. Casting Guardian and the Newsboys in that same light doesn't cause nearly the train wreck to continuity that your supposition does.
TNT and Dan, the Dyna-Mite were shown to live on Earth-1 and pre-date Superman, as was the Golden Age Air Wave. There is an issue of the JLA that established a number of 1950's era heroes forming a League prior to the one we all know, including Congorilla, the original Robotman, and the Blackhawks, all shown to exist on Earth-1 and having had careers that precede Superman's.
There are costumed heroes from various points in Earth-1's history such as Nurse Betty Lynn, Miss Liberty, from Tomahawk, set during the Revolutionary War. There's the Black Pirate, a heroic privateer, from the 1500's.
In Superman's own title, we saw Microwave Man, a super-criminal from the 1940's. As much as I enjoy the thematic correctness of Superman being the first, there were any number of DC super-folk on Earth-1 who could dispute such a claim if they had a mind to. It doesn't much of a stretch to add the Guardian and Newsboys to that list, especially when post Kirby-DC did so much in the Titans and Superman Family to further tie those characters to Earth-1.
The All-Star Squadron title chucked a great portion of this into the dustbin in a rather cavalier fashion, giving us Earth-2 Air Waves and Aquamen, beings we'd previously been told categorically did not exist. I get that Roy Thomas and a sense of general neatness would have us consign everything "Golden Age" to Earth-2, but it simply wasn't so, even at the time Kirby was doing the New Gods. Even if, in fact, his Earth-1 Guardian was the first crack in that wall, well, so be it. That's one more first we can tally up for Kirby. :-)
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