I don't recall the JSA end the war story.. 

How would making their prime an eternal "20 years ago" anchor 

Remember the JSA were from Earth 2, they aren't redundant there and the only appeared on Earth 1 once a year as guest stars. 

My problem with having the Quality Comics characters originate on Earth-2 was that it was pointless. Earth-2 had tons of WWII-era superheroes already. Why do that story in the first place? Didn't Thomas have enough toys to play with already?

I didn't -- and don't -- care that it contradicted continuity from that 1970s JLA story. Most of the time, as JB aptly pointed out, Thomas was slavishly devoted to continuity. He bent over backwards to ensure that no ASQ story contradicted any DC story published in the 1940s. Particularly his beloved ALL-STAR COMICS.

Why? It's not like the vast majority of comics readers in the 1980s had ever read those '40s stories. And the overwhelming majority of those stories weren't exactly Great Works Of Art to begin with. So who cares if they don't match up perfectly? What exactly is gained by working so hard on something so irrelevant?

As for keeping the JSA in the '40s or putting them in a sliding timeline: I think the JSA are very much tied to their era. Take them away from the '40s and they become only an older version of the JLA with nothing else to distinguish them. 

So -- to be nice to Thomas for once -- the Ian Karkull retarded-aging-energy thing didn't bother me. Of course, DC could've done the simple thing and just stopped doing present-day stories with the JSA. (No more JLA-JSA team-ups -- which, after CRISIS, we stopped getting anyway!)

But of course DC and Thomas were committed to JSA appearances in INFINITY, INC., which I think was supposed to occur in "real time." Given how boring INFINITY, INC. was, this was a poor choice.

Re: the multiverse in superhero stories. It doesn't bug me as long as the universes are very different from each other. The best ASQ story? The JSA versus the Marvel Family. Types of characters that are very different belong in very different "worlds."

There have been some fine stories written with those characters living in the DCU, (I think Justice League Unlimited did about as good a job as possible) but I think they would have flourished better if they were allowed to stay in their own little universes. However....I'm not sure if the fans would accept this given the pathological need for inter-connectivity nowadays...

You make a good point about Elseworlds. They could have simply managed and structured the existing cosmology in a separate line and called it Earth-2, Earth-X, etc. I think it's incredible cynical to feel that even casual fans couldn't quickly learn to grasp the idea that Captain Marvel lives on Earth-X, and so on. I got this stuff as a child. 

Eric, I like the idea of E-2 being locked in the 1970's, if only because you'd now get two, count 'em two, archaic eras with every purchase of a JSA comic! :-) The cars! The fashions! The sepia-toned flashbacks moving to the garish tie-dyes and floral prints! It would be like the Wizard of Oz every issue! 

One element of this discussion I'm find interesting is that there are a number of solutions being offered to problems that were solved, repeatedly in the books themselves. The main one being: "The JSA are too damn old." Except, with the Ian Karkull thing in place, they no longer had any "true ages." They were just Older. They were immediately removed from the ever-widening gap of time between Now and WW II and set in the same "eternal present" as everyone else. 

You'd still have the problem that Wally somehow went from ten years old with the Titans to a dad in his early thirties with ten-year-old kids of his own, thereby implying that everyone else has been aged the same number of years, but that's not a problem specific to the JSA anymore. Those who wish to then say, "Okay, Jay was Ian Karkulled to fifty-something when he met Wally. He's got to be 80 now, right?" have to acknowledge that Batman was in costume 10 years before he took on Robin (from the Red Hood origin of the Joker) and also knew Wally when he was ten. If he got started fighting crime when he was 20, he's 50 now, right? Ah, the Implications Game... Still, we'd be dealing with a Jay Garrick eternally in his 50's of thereabout rather than one who's twenty plus however-long-it's-been-since-WW II.

Yes, in a couple of decades, creators could have started doing stories about the team being effectively immortal, but that's hardly the same problem as "you guys should have been dead 15 years ago." Granted, it also has the problem that they could easily run across a villain tomorrow with "Magic Ian Karkull Radiation Removal" powers. That story would have to be written with someone with an axe to grind at the characters' expense however, and how likely is that in a line of work as professional and above-board as the comics industry, I ask you? :-)

Then the Crisis came along and the "problem adults" of the JSA were shipped off to Roy Thomas' "Forever Stuck in the Ring of the Nibelung" Hell (right there next to Roy himself) and hopefully forgotten about forever, right? Except no, about 6 years later, someone realized that with the Ring dimension being magic and all, we could pull them out and they'd be young again, or at least the same age as everyone else. In order to keep that Elder Statesmen vibe going, their next regular title allowed for them to have aged a number of years since being back in our world, but then they were eternally whatever those ages were, again the same as everyone else. If Batman's always 30, Jay would always be 55 or so. ("Drive 55 and stay alive!") 

Again, really, problem solved. Except no, it wasn't, because no writer of any consequence these days can abide writing something they themselves haven't "reimagined" according to their own design. So, yeah, the JSA were once again "20-plus-however-long-its-been-since-WW II" with the magic being used to fudge a bit here and there, and now they're damn near decrepit. They've got Ahlzheimer's. They've got heart disease. They're dying left and right. They didn't have to be written this way. Two "Get Out of the Retirement Home Free" cards were written for them, but no...

That's what the team became About. They were just the DCU geriatrics ward at that point, unable to be perceived on any other level. They're not individual characters. They're not interesting in any other way except that they're OLD. "Let's explore that!" the writers titter. "Let's deconstruct what it's like to be OLD in the DCU!" Forget that there are decades to explore between 50 and decrepit. Old people are just old. 

Of course, this is all moot as DC has once again "solved" the problem we're discussing here, this time via complete reboot. The Nu52 JSA isn't the oldest team in the DCU. It's almost the youngest. There is a multiverse apparently, but it is not widely explored. Their concept of "Earth-2" is essentially a pallid New Gods knock-off book built around the idea that Darkseid's lesser-known minions have conquered the world and a new, younger, more hip and with-it (okay, now I'm stuck in the 70's) JSA is formed to protect the scraps of what's left. Which is a middling-level concept for a book, but it is not the JSA. What is there in that book to draw a fan of the Golden Age? Or a fan of Earth-2? Or a fan of the whole tedious "Dying Elder Statesmen of a corrupt and ugly DCU" book we got more recently? Are we supposed to get all tingly over the names of these unrecognizable characters' civilian i.d.'s? "Ooooh, this shiftless loser guy has the same NAME as Jay Garrick! That is SO cool!" I don't see it myself...

With the set-up as it's currently given, I think they probably could, if they so desired, simply go to the next Earth over and simply declare that it has all the WW II era JSA members living on it, complete with all the Pre-Crisis history and such. Any of the suggestions folks have been making in this thread could be implemented. 

I hope they don't, however. The people currently in power and the people they employ would be largely incapable of doing such a book well, Paul Levitz himself being a possible exception, of course... I was enjoying his bizarre Not Really Power Girl and the Huntress book for awhile... Unfortunately, the melange of New Gods, Earth-2, but not really Earth-2, and ugly modern comic aesthetics just didn't hold my interest. Seriously, with comics these days, I can spend four bucks on something else and come away a whole lot happier. Skip a comic, you've got lunch the next day.

The first appearance of Earth 2 established that the worlds were in sync time wise.