(Reprinting the second of my posts about the comic-book industry as it exists in comics).
As you can see above, Earth-Two’s Golden Age of comics probably looked a lot like ours, as I argued in the first part of this series. The Silver Age? Not so much. However I’ve less solid evidence to work with, so this post is more speculative than the first.
Presumably, just like our world, WW II GIs looking for a quick read gobbled up comics by the score. That made for great sales in the 1940s, whether it was DC’s true-life superheroes, other companies’ fictional heroes or war, crime and humor books. Like our world, once the war was over and GIs returned home, sales began to slump. particularly superhero comics.
It wouldn’t help that at least some of the stories were created by writers and artists picking up psychic flashes of heroes on other worlds. Fawcett Comics on Earth-Two, for instance, published stories about the Marvel Family and other Earth-S superheroes. Presumably like Earth-One’s Gardner Fox, Otto Binder, CC Beck and other Fawcett stafferes were unwittingly able to tune in what was happening on another Earth. When the Marvel Family became trapped in suspendium, as revealed in Shazam! #1—
— that would have killed Fawcett’s biggest seller. The adventures of the Quality Comics heroes on Earth-X wouldn’t have been marketable after VJ day — who’s going to read stories where WW II is ongoing?
DC’s based-on-truth books might have done better — until Senator O’Fallon came along. His 1951 investigation into the JSA as possible communist agents drove them into sudden retirement. Back then, anyone even suspected of Red sympathies became a pariah; I doubt DC would brave the blacklist any more than TV or movies did. As on our world, the company turned All-Star Comics into All-Star Western. The JSA members lost their original books except for the trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. As detailed in America vs. The Justice Society they were too well connected and well-regarded for O’Fallon’s insinuations to touch them.
Earth-Two had plenty of other second stringers who weren’t part of the JSA: Earth-Two’s Aquaman, Liberty Belle, the Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Gimmick Girl, Johnny Quick. At least some of them kept operating into the 1950s (a lot depends on which stories are Earth-Two and which are Earth-One, as Mike’s Amazing World discusses in detail). Of course the Seven Soldiers were erased from everyone’s memory when destroying Nebula Man blasted them across time. Their comics may have vanished too or they may have been regarded as fictional characters until the JSA and JLA brought them back a couple of decades later.
None of these guys were headliners. DC had to diversify. Romance comics. Science fiction. Sugar and Spike. Funny animals. They may even have tried coming up with fictional heroes like other publishers. John Broome’s idea for a “phantom stranger” who shows up out of nowhere. Or Broome’s superhuman mutant, Captain Comet. Or Joe Samachson’s idea for a Martian detective to fill space in Detective Comics. In all these cases they’d be tuning in to events on Earth-One, but they had no way to know that.
It’s possible something similar happened with the Trinity. They were popular enough that even after they began shifting into semi-retirement, DC would have kept those books going with new, made-up stories. The heroes might have rolled their eyes at some of this stuff (“The Zebra Batman? Seriously?”) but why not? Possibly the writers flashed on the Earth-One versions of the Trinity as they appeared in the late 1950s; possibly not, and they simply made things up.
It’s when the Silver Age gets going on our world that Earth-Two’s comics really diverge from the ones we know. If any of DC-Two’s 
writers tuned in the adventures of Green Lantern, Flash, Atom, etc., Julius Schwartz-Two might have scratched his head and said no (“Everyone knows Green Lantern wasn’t a cop fighting crime in outer space!”). If that’s the case, the Silver Age doesn’t start until 1963, when the JSA begins meeting again. At that point DC figures the blacklist is done, revives the old books and Marvel hops on the superhero train with Fantastic Four #1.
Alternatively Schwartz likes the new Flash, Green Lantern and so on but decides they need a little tinkering. Instead of “Flash,” Barry Allen calls himself Quicksilver. Instead of a ring, Hal Jordan draws his power from a tattoo or a brand — a Starbrand! Katar Hol could be, um, Starhawk. That would leave the Silver Age free to proceed much as it did on our world, despite the name changes.
One can only imagine what Broome, Fox and others thought when the reboot characters they’d imagined actually started appearing. Did they guess the truth? Did they ask the JSA for explanations? Apparently the JSA never did say much. The congressional committee in America vs. the Justice Society knows nothing about why the JLA periodically appears on Earth-Two. Perhaps the Society figured it would be too complicated and unbelievable to explain.
Once the Silver Age was launched, the Bronze Age and the 1980s would follow. The JSA and its members could have had their own books again, especially after Power Girl, Star-Spangled Kid, adult Robin and later Huntress started giving readers some younger real-life heroes to read about. That would have lasted Crisis put an end to Earth-Two’s comic industry along with that entire universe.
Next up: when comic-book writers are psychics.
Art top to bottom by Everett E. Hibbard, C.C. Beck, Nick Cardy, Carmine Infantino and Jerry Ordway
