Golden Age Legacies: How DC Honored Its Past While Marvel Buried Theirs
A #JSApril Special Presentation
By David Gallaher
This year marks my 50th birthday and also 50 years since Marvel’s publication of The Invaders, their WWII superhero team series. Fifty years is long enough to reflect on how these characters have endured — or in Marvel’s case, how they’ve been neglected, mocked, and left to rot in obscurity.
The Golden Age of comics was a battlefield. It was a time when heroes were born out of necessity — figures of hope in a world on fire. DC and Marvel (then Timely) both fielded their own pantheons of costumed champions, but their approaches to preserving and revitalizing those icons couldn’t be more different. One company built an enduring foundation. The other buried its past.
There’s a raw, untamed energy to pulp and Golden Age heroes that modern comics often polish away. These characters weren’t corporate icons yet — they were scrappy, rough-edged, and driven by pure storytelling instinct. You had men in domino masks fighting crime in the shadows, mystery men in fedoras stepping out of the fog, two-fisted adventurers who didn’t wait for the world to save itself. It was storytelling with teeth — every punch thrown in those pages felt like it came from the gut, not a focus group.
1. The Flash (Jay Garrick) vs. The Whizzer (Bob Frank)
DC’s Treatment: Jay Garrick, the original Flash, was never discarded. When the Silver Age ushered in a new generation of heroes, Jay became the bridge between past and present. He was a respected elder statesman, a mentor, a legend. His legacy was woven into the very fabric of DC’s universe. The Flash Family is proof of how to honor the past while forging the future.
I love Jay Garrick. He’s the bedrock of DC’s legacy heroes — one of the first characters to make the Golden Age feel like something alive, something that could grow. But yeah, let’s be real — DC lifted a lot from Flash Gordon, from Hawkman’s entire thing to Robin’s costume cues to, well, Flash himself. That said, Jay transcended all that. The winged helmet, the Mercury inspiration, the sheer joy of speed — he became his own legend, the kind of character who makes the multiverse feel earned rather than just a gimmick.
Marvel’s Treatment: The Whizzer? A punchline. A relic wheeled out for cheap laughs. Never given the respect he deserved, despite the fact that he predated Quicksilver. Roy Thomas turned him into a joke rather than a legacy. The name came from a motorbike, not a bathroom joke, but you wouldn’t know it from the way Marvel treated him. He should have been a pillar. Instead, he’s an afterthought.
Winner: DC. The Flash is a cornerstone of superhero history. The Whizzer is a footnote.
2. Miss America (Madeline Joyce) vs. Shazam (Mary Marvel)
DC’s Treatment: Mary Marvel was built to last. Created by Otto Binder — the same writer who co-created Miss America — Mary was given the respect, power, and presence to remain relevant for decades. When DC acquired the Shazam mythos, Mary was elevated alongside her brother. She remained a powerhouse, a major player, and a respected figure.
Marvel’s Treatment: Miss America? Stripped of her flight, her strength, her significance. The very same Otto Binder created her, but Marvel let her fade into irrelevance. She could have been Marvel’s Wonder Woman, their Mary Marvel, their shining female icon of the Golden Age. Instead, she was diminished, downplayed, and discarded.
Winner: DC. One company uplifted its heroines. The other erased them.
3. Captain America (Steve Rogers) vs. Wonder Woman (Diana Prince)
DC’s Treatment: Wonder Woman never needed a revival. She never needed to be dug out of obscurity. She was there, front and center, always. She remained a top-tier character, evolving with the times but never fading away. DC didn’t just preserve its icons — it championed them.
Marvel’s Treatment: Captain America is the lone survivor of Marvel’s Golden Age. Revived by Kirby and Lee, he became a pillar of the Marvel Universe. But where was the rest of the All-Winners Squad? Where were the heroes who fought beside him? Marvel had the chance to elevate them, to make them matter. Instead, they let them rot.
Winner: Tie. Cap survived, but his legacy didn’t.
4. Hawkman (Carter Hall) vs. Red Raven
DC’s Treatment: Hawkman was another character who transitioned well into the Silver Age, though his mythology became convoluted. Carter Hall, the JSA’s Hawkman, was consistently depicted as an elder statesman of heroics, even as newer versions (Katar Hol) emerged.
Marvel’s Treatment: Red Raven was abandoned almost immediately after his introduction. While Hawkman became an integral figure in DC’s Golden Age and Silver Age, Red Raven became a barely-remembered oddity. He’s only been revived a few times, and never in a way that made him feel like a major figure in Marvel’s history.
Winner: DC. Hawkman has remained a key hero for decades; Red Raven is a trivia answer.
5. Sun Girl (Mary Mitchell) vs. Black Canary (Dinah Lance)
Marvel’s Treatment: Sun Girl is perhaps one of the most unfairly discarded of Marvel’s Golden Age heroines. In the modern era, her background was changed and most of her adventures retconned away. Originally, she was a former WAC, an acrobat, a judo and jiu-jitsu expert, and wielded a “sunbeam ray” against criminals. She carried an “emergency pouch” full of crime-fighting gadgets, including a “portable electronic tracer.” Yet, Roy Thomas dismissed her as just the Human Torch’s secretary, erasing her legacy.
DC’s Treatment: Compare this to Black Canary, another Golden Age heroine who started off as a street-level crimefighter but was allowed to evolve into something greater. Dinah Lance became a legacy hero, a mainstay of the Justice League, and a symbol of resilience, justice, and strength. She maintained her edge while expanding her role, becoming one of DC’s most enduring and adaptable heroines.
Winner: DC.While Sun Girl was erased, Black Canary thrived, transitioning from a noir vigilante to a top-tier hero with a rich legacy.
Final Thoughts
I certainly have complicated feelings about the JSA. They’re the foundation of every superhero team that followed, but they’ve always been hard to get consistently right — especially as the decades pile up and the concept of “aging heroes” gets messier. Some writers lean too hard into nostalgia, others try to modernize them so aggressively that they lose what made them special. But when the JSA works, when they’re done right? There’s nothing like them. They embody joy, exploration, integrity — the kind of larger-than-life, optimistic heroism that feels increasingly rare. We need more of that. More heroes fighting tyranny and oppression not just as warriors, but as symbols.
Marvel, to their credit, has had a few recent gems — like The Marvels Project and Captain America: Patriot — but those have been the exceptions, not the rule.
And don’t get me wrong, I love The Invaders. I have every issue of their series, dog-eared from years of reading and rereading. Marvel’s characters shouldn’t be rendered as punchlines and off-color toilet jokes. I’m deeply disappointed in Roy Thomas and his short-sightedness. He had the opportunity to give these characters the dignity they deserved, and he chose instead to turn them into caricatures.
DC honored its past. Marvel mocked it.
And that is why the JSA still stands, while The Invaders and their ilk are nothing more than a whisper in history, waiting for someone to give them the respect they should have had all along.