DC Comics started the ball rolling on superheroes in the Golden Age. They introduced the three greatest heroes of them all – Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman – and numerous other heroes and villains that would form a legacy of excellence. However, the superhero wouldn’t stay as popular as it did in the ’40s, and most of their heroes would fade away in the ’50s, leaving only the Trinity left standing. However, in 1956, Showcase #4 would introduce the new Flash Barry Allen, kicking off the Silver Age. DC would create new versions of their Golden Age heroes, before bringing many of the old versions back. Since then, legacy has become a huge part of DC Comics.
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The Silver Age characters ended up getting more popular than their Golden Age counterparts, but this is unfair to the original heroes. Those Golden Age versions were awesome, many of them better than their Silver Age counterparts and the versions that popped up later. These seven Golden Age DC characters are much better than their Silver Age versions, showing that the classics never go out of style.
7) Earth-Two Superman
Superman is an icon, the character that started the superhero. The Golden Age Superman was an amazing hero, a powerful man of the people who did everything he could to fight for the poor and downtrodden. This would continue into the Silver Age in a way, but things would change. However, Silver Age Superman was kind of bland, an all-powerful hero whose adventures were more about wild things happening to him than anything that had to do with the character. Golden Age Superman was the hero of the Depression and was meant to bring hope. He didn’t kiss up to authority, he held it to task. He’d eventually be reintroduced as the Superman of Earth-Two, raising Power Girl, helping the Justice Society, and saving the Multiverse, perfectly slotting into his role as the elder statesmen of the superhero community, while DC got further and further away from the Silver Age version of the character in the years since.
6) Lois Lane
Lois Lane is the greatest reporter in DC Comics, and that started back in the Golden Age. Lois was the star of The Daily Planet, the firebrand that Clark Kent fell in love right away. She was feisty, intelligent, and everything you could want from a superhero love interest. Compare that to the Silver Age. Her entire character was condensed down to being obsessed with marrying Superman, becoming a caricature of her Golden Age self. Lois in the modern day is much more like her Golden Age version than her Silver Age self, showing how superior that conception of the character was.
5) Shazam/The Captain
Shazam, or as he’s called nowadays the Captain, was the original Captain Marvel. The character was created to compete with Superman and he did more than compete, outselling the Man of Steel many times. The hero’s adventures were wild and imaginative, with an entire universe of heroes and villains built around him. DC sued Fawcett Publications, gaining ownership of the character, and he’s never been as popular again. The Golden Age version of the character was so much fun, and he’s never been matched by later versions of the hero.
4) The Sandman
The Sandman gets lumped in with the superheroes, but he’s much more like a pulp hero, the detectives who fought crime like Mike Hammer. Wesley Dodds was troubled by prophetic dreams and ended up becoming a hero, using sleeping gas instead of the weapons of death the crooks used. He helped found the Justice Society, and had his own unique adventures on his own, hunting down criminals. His return in the Silver Age would see him stuck in multiversal crossovers that didn’t fit him as a character at all. It would take years for him to get adventures that did his Golden Age self justice, with the ’90s giving readers the excellent Sandman Mystery Theatre.
3) The Spectre
The Spectre was tailor-made for the Golden Age. Jim Gorrigan was killed by crooks and became the Spirit of Vengeance, using godlike reality-altering powers (although they weren’t called that back then) to torment anyone who did evil. Back in the Golden Age, violence in comics was more prevalent, so the Spectre was able to do some wild things to the bad guys he went after. His return in the Silver Age, in the JLA/JSA crossovers, would see him sanitized for years, taking away the violence that made the character work so well. Much like the Sandman, series in later ages would bring him closer to his Golden Age versions, and the character worked so much better.
2) Alan Scott
Alan Scott is a DC icon, even all these years later. The first Green Lantern was an amazing character, one of the Justice Society’s greatest powerhouses, and he would begin the mythos that would lead to the birth of Hal Jordan. Jordan is an amazing character, but Alan Scott has proven to be better. Jordan became more popular in the long run, but Scott has been one of the most respected heroes of his generation since almost the beginning. Modern Alan Scott is a way more interesting character than modern Hal, and has proven that by being almost continually published since the ’60s, something that Jordan can’t say thanks to “Emerald Twilight”.
1) Jay Garrick
Jay Garrick is the most beloved Golden Age character who isn’t Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, and is by far better than Barry Allen. Allen spent decades as the most white bread superhero ever. It got to the point that The Flash got cancelled, and he spent over 20 years dead. Meanwhile, Jay made the Flash into a popular mantle, was a key member of the Justice Society, and would become the first Golden Age hero to appear in the Silver Age (who wasn’t Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman). In the modern day, he’s still a fan-favorite, with many DC fans thinking that he’s the greatest Flash of them all.
What’s your favorite Golden Age DC hero? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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