Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Let's Plot the JLA/JSA/Timely Comics Crossover!

So imagine that DC had bought Timely Comics in the late 50s.

No Marvel Age of Comics, but we get a cool 70s revival of the Timely characters on another Earth in an annual JLA/JSA crossover!

How would that go?

Ooh, this is gonna be fun! Thank you, EDE!

Okay, right off the top of my head -- major roles for Golden Age Vision, The Destroyer, and the very cool-looking Thunderer!

Namor kicks Aquaman's butt.

More to come...

I figured you'd enjoy this one, Ann!

I imagine the Red Tornado/Human Torch interactions would be fun!

Captain America and Green Arrow discover their politics are more alike than they'd initially thought.

Wonder Women of Earths 1 and 2 teamed up with Miss America!

Flash outraces Whizzer.

Awesome idea, EDE!

Sandman/Vision team-up!

So, possible rosters:

JLA: Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Red Tornado, Black Canary, Green Arrow, Aquaman

JSA: Wonder Woman, Robin, Green Lantern, Sandman, Starman, Mr. Terrific, Atom

Timely: Captain America, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Human Torch, Miss America, Whizzer, Destroyer, Thunderer, Vision

Crisis In Time

Four intrepid astronauts rocket from Earth-T on a pioneering flight, only to encounter something out there. An aeons old force that has been waiting for contact. Their actions result in the release of The Future Man (All-Winners Squad #21). But his escape has been anticipated. Not by any heroes. But by rivals who know they are destined to battle him across time.

As they wage war to leave one conqueror of time across the multiverse, The Future Man, Per Degaton and the Lord of Time use pawns from the timelines of their own universes. Only the added power of The Whizzer to the Cosmic Treadmill, allows the heroes a final assault on the fortress beyond time.

Justice League of America: Green Arrow, Black Canary, Flash, Red Tornado, Hawkman, Hawkwoman
Justice Society of America: Batman, Robin. Flash, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Atom
All-Winners Squad: Captain America, Whizzer, Sub Mariner, Human Torch, Miss America, Toro & Bucky

Thoth, how did you find out about Future Man? You must know of a really good resource!

I confess I don't know anything about Golden Age Marvel villains, except the most obvious one, the Red Skull. I also have a passing familiarity with the heroes and villains which Roy Thomas retroactively placed in WW2, via The Invaders series from the 70s. But I don't think any of them would fit the purpose of this thread.

The All-Winners Squad existed in 1946 with a membership of Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Bucky, Toro, Whizzer and Miss America. Thomas created the Invaders as a pre-cursor to that team during WWII. Invaders would not work due to it being a Marvel creation, but All-Winners would be the team that would be used in such a crossover as it also consisted of Timely's major heroes.

And Thoth's plot is brilliant. I wish we would have gotten that story.

Comixology have had a few Marvel Masterworks sales. Vol 1s were available for £0.50, while later ones were £1.49. I got quite a few. Some I targeted, such as All Winners vol 4, that contains the two All-Winners Squad stories.

At the end of one story, Future Man and his ally Madame Death are hurled through the past, after Captain America sabotages their time engine. My story starts, with them having gone back aeons, before crawling back second by second in temporal stasis within their craft. Time has frozen, but the solar system has moved on it’s journey. They need someone to make contact.





Thanks Nighty. Nice of you to say.



The All Winners Squad gives the JLA & JSA an already established super team for the crossover. No retcons, or grab bag of heroes required.

The JLA/JSA rosters could be tweaked, as they are similar to the Earth-S crossover ones used at the time. None of us could resist a Tornado/ Torch encounter. A lot was to get the JSA of the golden age to meet the Timely characters. Robin is there to meet the Earth-T sidekicks, Wonder Woman to meet Miss America,
Batman with Captain America etc. The Atom there as his Atomic punch will be part of the finale. I’d consider an Earth-2 Hawk due to the reincarnations of that character, fitting the story.

You could play the above plot as a straightforward annual Crisis crossover.

But EDE’s post said “No Marvel Age of Comics.” So, my “Four intrepid astronauts” are a certain Richards, Grimm and Storm siblings. No need to show them getting powers, just sowing seeds.

Who is the biochemist, with the determined financier who gives vital information on the The Plague Swarm from Year Z (to give a Morrison title to things that are in the original crossover books)? Why, it’s a certain Mr Pym and a Miss Van Dyne.

Mr Blake, fleeing from bio-armoured Wicing warriors, finds an artefact in a cave system.

After the heroes win, companies are quick to salvage technologies from across the timestream. None more so than Mr Stark.

Little bits of throwaway fun.




Taking it a step further, we add EDE’s “we get a cool 70s revival.”

Just the period a certain someone was at DC…

As the 4 astronauts rocket from Earth-T, Jimmy Olsen watches their Eath-1 counterparts (Morgan, Davis, Haley and Robbins) launch into space to investigate an anomaly at the same co-ordinates.

As the Future Man is released, not only are Per Degaton and The Lord of Time warned of their foe from another universe. On a utopian world, an angry, out of place warrior is summoned to meet his society’s leader at a wall of prophecy.

One of the Plague Swarm could be a certain, reluctant Forager. Again, nothing that overt. Just seeds.

None more so than the finale. The “fortress beyond time” might be the final escape of the villains. But it’s not something they created. It’s a rocky, barren looking world, lit only by massive fire pits throwing death into space around it. The reason for the young warrior’s summons is revealed. Darkseid now knows of the multiverse.

And off into Kirby’s New Gods we go…



After JLA/JSA crossovers, a lot of the characters dip back under the radar. They would return in Crisis. Beyond that, they would be part of DC’s Legends.

Which means one of them will be selected for the All New Justice League.

Captain America’s Golden Age outlook versus Guy Gardner? If the Timely heroes are plucked out of time for the above crossover, could post crisis DC have a story about hero found frozen in ice?

Would the “America” in the heroes names be a problem for a team going international? Or could Miss America also be added in #7?

How do the DC heroes feel about the aggressive nature of Namor, even as the Sub-Mariner is locked in a post-crisis civil war with their old colleague, Aquaman?

Martian Manhunter, fresh from burying his colleagues due to Ivo’s androids, could now have an android (J'Onn never spend much time on the team with Reddy) and a flame based one on the team.

Barry Allen gave his life to save the multiverse. Wally West’s powers continue to kill him, while Jay Garrick had retired and is now helping prevent Ragnarok (Thor appearance). Will The Whizzer takes on the mantle of The Flash, and join the League?

Commander Steel was originally created by Gerry Conway as an homage to Captain America.

Why create the homage when you can write actual Captain America stories?

And of course an elderly Steve Rogers creates the compound that JLDetroit uses as its headquarters, as well as putting his grandson on the team.

There's a whole backstory about how he transferred to Earth-1 some time in the intervening years, which we may or may not get before Crisis.

Okay...um...I think Thoth's story is very good, but it's a million miles from what I had in mind.

EDE, is it okay if I do a whole separate thing?

Gods, this post was so hard to write. I don't want to minimize Thoth's story and all the work he put into it, and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

The more ideas the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

People can throw stuff out, and if other people want to pick up on it... cool.

I had a half-formed idea where it's basically a rehash of the Earth-X story, but with communists in the place of Nazis. Probably not something DC would have actually published at the time, though.

Okay. Good. I'm relieved. Thanks.

Yeah, the Planet Soviet idea wouldn't have flown in the 70s, with the real-world attempts at thawing the Cold War.

Applying the same idea to the 80s, OTOH...the mind boggles. LOL

Ah, that makes sense. Just thinking back to Commander Steel’s original series and how he is transformed into a superhuman.

Why create the homage when you can write actual Captain America stories?


It also explains why Steel’s original costume in the Justice League Detroit is similar to Fighting American’s (created by Simon & Kirby in response to, Timely successor Atlas’, version of Captain America)



This would be around the time Conway & Thomas were looking at those old costumes. Move the skull to be a face and you change Black Terror into Mr Bones (with a nod to Blazing Skull along the way)

It also adds another layer to Conway deliberately looking to emulate the Avengers of Cap, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye. A group built after the big guns have departed, at odds with themselves and as a team.

As an aside, with Aquaman leading the Detroit team, you have another character very similar to a Timely one. Sadly, Bill Finger’s issue with a breakdancing hero never reached the printers.



In the JLA crossovers and All-Star Squadron you use to get splash pages of heroes nipping across between parallel worlds. Thomas determinedly moved a load form Earth-2 to Earth-1 even as the Crisis arrived to render such things meaningless to the new DC (if not some fans and writers)

In the case of Commander Steel , it was the arrival of Harbinger on Earth-2 and the Crisis that resulted in his transfer between worlds.



For the JLA/Timely crossover, I hadn’t settled on whether to make them Timely heroes in the ‘70s. Or, due to the time travelling villains, have been scooped from the 1940s.

The astronauts, echoing the FF, were definitely in the ‘70s. My first thought when typing away was that it would be a grim, downtrodden world where the horrors of WWII had been replaced by the paranoia and fears of the cold war. There would be secrets behind the launch because 1) the encounter with Future Man may not have been chance and 2) such a journey was a technological advance on the world they were in.

That actually fits in with Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American, and other ‘50s anti-communist stories where the reds had replaced the nazis.

It also fits in very nicely with your use of the older Steve Rogers backing the Justice League. He was considered to be a very conservative figure, leading to his attacking the League in the end.

Conway’s Commander Steel series couldn’t survive the DC implosion. But it, like Vixen, was clearly on his mind when he got to rework the JLA. So, it makes perfect sense that we might well have ended up with Captain America’s grandson in the JLA.

As you mentioned the Earth-X heroes, they did have a run in with a version of the All-Winners comic main stars, grouped as The Crusaders. in Freedom Fighters (1977): The Americommando (Captain America); Barracuda (Namor) and Fireball (Human Torch).



Meanwhile a Crusaders group would appear in Roy Thomas’ Invaders, as analogues of the Freedom Fighters. (One of li’l thoths early back issues was an Invaders issue with the Crusaders in it. li’l thoth was a bit meh about it, as I recall. )



As you say EDE, why have the homage, when you can use the originals? So, scope for another crossover between Earth-X and Earth-T. Well, the Freedom Fighters had moved over to Earht-1 for their series (see how easy it was ). So, there’s an easy story seed of them trying to get back. But meeting the Earth-T heroes instead.

You know... I've never read either The Invaders or The Freedom Fighters series, but they both seem like books I should check out.

I love the idea of the Freedom Fighters/All-Winner's Squad teaming up on a regular basis, as a kind of alternative to the JLA/JSA teamups.

My 2p on Invaders:

The writing is consistently solid, because even though Roy Thomas eventually delegates it to another writer, that writer is the talented and versatile Don Glut, who went on to write many episodes of Transformers.

The artwork, unfortunately, ranges from functional to awful.

I was going to say that you're not missing much. But I might be doing the Invaders a disservice. I think I'd want to take another look at the art again. It might be one of those that I have more of an appreciation of now. I remember a brief moment with thinking a back issue of All-Star Squadron might not be that engaging, based on my thoughts of The Invaders issue I had. Presumably the Ordway art won me over.

The next time I'm at my folks, I might see if I can put my hands on it.