As we all know, when Barry Allen first popped over to Earth-Two in Flash #123 he discovered the 1940s Golden Age Flash he’d grown up reading about was a real person.
Thanks to Earth-One comics writer Gardner Fox psychically tuning in Earth-Two, Barry was completely familiar with the history of the Earth-Two Flash. Flash #137 showed All-Star Comics‘ stories of the Justice Society, including Wonder Woman, were equally accurate about Earth-Two history.
Unlike Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Amazing Amazon is pretty much identical to her Earth-One counterpart. It would be logical to assume the same is true for Superman and Batman. So, then, what happened in the 1950s on Earth-One when Superboy, Batman and Wonder Woman appeared?
Why didn’t everyone immediately point out they were just like those old comic book characters? Why did anyone ever doubt that Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince were all secret identities of these new heroes (and the same for Hawkman and Green Arrow)? Heck, didn’t anyone point out to Lois how odd it was that a Clark Kent and Lois Lane were working at a newspaper together, just like in the comics (or the kind of jokes Clark Kent in Secret Identity has to deal with)? Or that another Bruce Wayne had adopted a Dick Grayson?
My axiom in writing these posts is that comics in comic-book universes should look as much like our own as possible. Clearly, though, something’s going to have to give. The simplest explanation is that as I said in the last post, some Earth-One writers didn’t vibe on Earth-Two as well as Gardner Fox did. They didn’t get all the details, particularly the mundane secret-identity stuff. After all, the nature of having a secret identity is that it’s much less vivid than the deeds the heroes perform in costume. That may have made all the difference.
If Earth-One’s Jerry Siegel didn’t pick up Superman’s secret identity, he could either write him as a character without an identity, or make one up (Siegel, of course, thought he was making everything up). So perhaps after “imagining” Earth-Two’s Superman in action, it hit Jerry it would be better to give him a secret identity like the Shadow or the Phantom Detective. Yeah, that would be swell, but what’s his real name, then? Hmm … Arn Munro? John Smith? Kent Clark?
The Superman/Clark Kent dichotomy is such a big part of Big Blue’s appeal I think option B is more likely. Ditto Batman. Wonder Woman, though, might do fine if she wasn’t shown on her day job. Green Arrow definitely could do without an alter ego — prior to growing a beard and a radical attitude, few secret identities were as bland as Oliver Queen.
That still leaves the question of why nobody brought up the heroes’ resemblance to the comic book characters. I think that answer is simple: they did, it’s just that none of the stories in our own comics mentioned it. Barry Allen, after all, must have thought of Alan Scott when he first met Earth-One’s Green Lantern, yet we’ve never heard him have that conversation:
Barry: “So, you’re a big fan of Green Lantern, huh?”
Hal: “Uh, no, I am Green Lantern. Do I seem like an egomaniac?”
Barry: “No, I meant the comic-book character! You know, Alan Scott, power battery, Doiby Dickles?”
Hal: “Who? Wait, I think I remember seeing him on some covers. Never bought superhero comics though — I read Air Fighters, that was it. I’d have killed for a plane like Airboy’s Birdy — you’re right, it’s funny coincidence about our names.”
For another example, look at Marvel’s Earth-616. The Golden Age Human Torch was both a real superhero and a comics character on that Earth yet we never see reporters or fans asking Johnny Storm whether he was inspired by his predecessor.
This doesn’t solve all the problems. If Earth-One comics didn’t have the Golden Age Luthor, Penguin, Joker, etc., then they’re not like ours at all. Were Bill Finger and Jerry Siegel that bad at vibing? But if they did, it must have been really bizarre to see the same villains pop up fighting the same heroes in real life.
Best I can do, I’m afraid. I’ll cover the Earth-One comics industry in the next installment.
#SFWApro Covers by Carmine Infantino (top), Stuart Immonen and Jack Kirby (bottom)
