Jeff Lemire and Gavin Guidry continue to flesh out the Justice Society’s origin in JSA #14, but not without one major setback. On the whole, “JSA: Year One” mostly succeeds, with Lemire and Guidry expertly capturing the spirit of these heroes’ Golden Age stories. From Lemire’s script showing the JSA’s founding members upholding the optimism of the early 20th century, to Guidry’s pencils capturing the nostalgic aesthetics of the 1940s, “JSA: Year One” has a lot going for it.
One thing that Lemire and Guidry continue to excel at is characterization. For instance, it is pure joy to see Jay Garrick’s Flash go from “confident Speedster stopping a crime in progress” to having a fanboy moment when he meets Alan Scott’s Green Lantern for the first time. This is not only handled in a way that feels organic for Jay, but flows seamlessly with the rest of the story. Likewise, Lemire and Guidry excel at juxtaposing Jay’s optimism with Alan’s more withdrawn personality.
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Alan being more reserved is consistent with him trying to keep his identity a secret – not just because Alan is gay in this continuity, but because he has a personal connection to a deceased victim that’s mixed in with Year One’s much bigger storyline. The victim’s death also draws the suspicions of Jim Corrigan, who is strongly implied to already be The Spectre in this story. Exactly how this development will unfold is yet to be seen, but Lemire and Guidry tease an exciting shakeup to come that may bring Kent Nelson’s Doctor Fate to the fold.
Another intriguing development in “JSA: Year One” is the team-up between Hourman and Sandman. Though Lemire and Guidry don’t elaborate on what exactly they’re investigating, or how this ties into JSA #14’s larger plot, they do deepen the mystery of their investigation in both exciting and puzzling ways. On the one hand, Hourman and Sandman’s case seems to be linked to the underground Nazi movement taking place in Gotham. On the other hand, the inclusion of (the future) Ray Palmer in this sequence feels random and out of the blue – especially for fans who are not following other DC books like Justice League: The Atom Project, or Justice League Unlimited.
The latter book in particular did the recent “We Are Yesterday” storyline, which broke DC’s Hypertime. This also means the story is informing the events of DC K.O. Whether or not Ray Palmer’s inclusion in this sequence is meant to tie into the ongoing DC event is yet to be revealed. But luckily for readers, Ray’s random appearance doesn’t distract too much from the overall story. In this case, it mostly works as a standalone tale that seems to be focusing on an untold chapter of the JSA’s origin. Unfortunately, this is where the details of that aforementioned origin starts to get messy.
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One of the more misguided “course corrections” of DC’s Rebirth initiative was the decision to restore the JSA’s post-Crisis history, including the team’s problematic retcons from this era. One of those nonsensical retcons was the decision to make Queen Hippolyta the Golden Age Wonder Woman, originally, as a means of fixing Donna Troy’s post-Crisis origin. Not only did this retcon convolute how George Pérez streamlined Wonder Woman’s core mythology post-Crisis, but it defeated the purpose of Helena Kosmatos replacing Princess Diana as the Golden Age Wonder Woman (and Fury’s mother).
Conceptually, Helena Kosmatos is already the Golden Age stand-in for Wonder Woman, making the need for Queen Hippolyta to take on this role redundant. Beyond preserving the pre-Crisis Earth-2 concept of Wonder Woman being present for the JSA’s 1955 disbanding, there’s no real reason to include her. The other problem that comes with restoring Queen Hippolyta as the “Golden Age Wonder Woman” is spotlighted in JSA #14 in the form of misrepresenting how Wonder Woman is supposed to celebrate femininity.
More often than not, male writers (in general) tend to default to the “warrior princess” trope with Wonder Woman, when she is meant to embody compassion and non-violent solutions to problems caused by men. The latter concept is entirely lost with Lemire’s writing of Hippolyta by leaning into this very “warrior princess” trope. Another troubling trope that is presented in JSA #14 is Lemire writing “Wonder Woman” as condescending, and whose interactions with Al Pratt border on equating feminism with “man hating.” This is not consistent with the idea of the Amazons (including Hippolyta) being born out of the souls of murdered women to promote peace and equality.
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The other reason Queen Hippolyta as the “Golden Age Wonder Woman” doesn’t work as a concept is that it doesn’t make sense for the Queen of the Amazons to want to involve herself in the problems of Man’s World. Even less so after building a literal Paradise Island where women live peacefully and freely, and not after she and the Amazons were violently betrayed by Heracles and Theseus. Unlike her daughter, Queen Hippolyta has the experience of having lived among men and the violent oppression of patriarchy. This experience would undoubtedly inform her decisions regarding Man’s World, which would also take the “wonder” out of “Wonder Woman.”
Although Lemire and Guidry’s JSA: Year One storyline is off to a good start, the only thing that would make it better would be sticking to the actual core characters that formed the JSA in All-Star Comics #3. Unless Diana Trevor arriving on Paradise Island is still canon to entice Queen Hippolyta to return to Man’s World (and without a Donna Troy origin to fix for the umpteenth time), revisiting this idea may end up hurting Wonder Woman’s core mythology more than it would enrich its legacy.
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