JSA #12 by Jeff Lemire and Diego Olortegui officially concludes the “Ragnarök” storyline, which is kind of odd, because JSA #11 already felt like the proper conclusion to the story. Apart from wrapping up the Injustice Society’s plot to unleash the Unnamed Ones on the JSA, issue #12 mostly reads like a deleted battle scene from issue #11. This isn’t helped by the fact that the Injustice Society’s part of the story had a very slow build to a rapid conclusion.
Despite working with the interesting idea of the Injustice Society unleashing an alien invasion on Prime Earth, Lemire unfortunately doesn’t really maximize that for the conclusion of “Ragnarök.” Instead, the first half of issue #12 quickly puts all the toys back in the toy box before they’ve been played with, which is underwhelming for what could have been a more epic showdown between the JSA and some powerful aliens. This then leaves the second half of issue #12 to retread the 40-year-old message that most JSA fans already know: the team is an ever-evolving, ever-growing family.
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At best, JSA #12 is a good finale to Khalid Nassour’s journey as Doctor Fate, since he is the newest character on the JSA roster with an actual character arc. The “Ragnarök” ending, however, falls flat for everyone one else because the larger message of the story was already conveyed in issue #11, and in this regard, JSA #12 says nothing new. If anything, the fact that “Ragnarök” ended with a reiteration of the JSA’s oldest message spotlights the main problem with having the team on Prime Earth, and it’s a problem that’s beyond Jeff Lemire’s control.
Because Prime Earth is effectively “The Justice League Earth” (with this group of heroes setting the standard for everyone else), it’s impossible to meaningfully explore generational legacy on a sliding timeline that doesn’t afford any permanent status quo changes. That’s ironically reflected in “Ragnarok’s” conclusion, with Alan Scott (one of the original World War II heroes) having the final word in the present, instead of one of the Boomer or Gen X heroes from Infinity, Inc.
This gets us to the other reason the message of JSA #12 doesn’t quite land the way it intends: some of the original JSA heroes who were active during the 1930s and 1940s (like Alan Scott and Jay Garrick) are still active in 2025. By that same token, using time travel shenanigans like pulling the JSA in and out of the timeline (like the JSA’s original Ragnarök) mitigates any real sense of progress or character growth for most of these older heroes. This effectively gridlocks both the original JSA and legacy heroes like Infinity, Inc. into a permanent status quo that prevents them from truly moving forward.
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As a result, the same stories about the Boomer generation and Gen X needing to prove themselves to the older War Time heroes get retreaded by every writer who takes on the JSA on Prime Earth. In this regard, Jeff Lemire’s “Ragnarok” storyline doesn’t do anything different either. Likewise, because the focus is still on the original JSA and Infinity, Inc. heroes, Gen Z heroes like Khalid Nassour and the new Kid Eternity tend to feel redundant. Without aging the Infinitors and putting them in the position of being the mentors of these younger heroes, you don’t get stories about generational progress that truly reflects the times.
The concept of new generations of heroes reflecting the experiences of their target audience, while the older heroes reflected the values and attitudes of the older generations, was what made the original Bronze Age JSA stories truly groundbreaking. Every generation was truly a product of their time, and they aged in real-time, meaning no one overstayed their welcome. These characters also experienced the realities of aging, the life changes that came with that, and the loss of friends and family through death. This was seen in the Bronze Age stories with older heroes like Bruce Wayne dying, Wesley Dodds experiencing a stroke, Rex Tyler dealing with drug addiction from long-term Miraclo use, and Alan Scott experiencing bankruptcy.
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Lemire tries to recapture some of that idea in “Ragnarök,” with Kid Eternity interacting with the deceased World War II heroes. He also tries to capture this idea with Rick Tyler and Jesse Chambers experiencing a crumbling marriage, and separating by the conclusion of JSA 12. But despite Lemire handling the latter development with depth in JSA #11, due to these characters being absent from Prime Earth for a full decade before being restored in Doomsday Clock, he didn’t truly have the space to meaningfully explore why they grew apart. Additionally, with the original Infinitors being written like Millennials and Gen Zers (when they are actually Boomers and Gen Xers) makes them feel profoundly out of touch with their own generation.
Because the original Infinitors aren’t aged up to match the experiences of their own generation of readers (who are now middle-aged with adult children of their own), the conclusion of “Ragnarök” has all the dressings of a classic JSA story, but none of the significance of those classic stories that induced a sense of wonder. This is once more reflected in Alan Scott’s narration in JSA #12, which ends with him saying, “You have to accept this. Accept the change.” But given that Prime Earth doesn’t facilitate change in any meaningful capacity, it may be more accurate for Alan to say, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”
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