Crossing the Line

 Geoff Johns has crossed the line.

Actually he crossed a line in Justice Society of America #11. Right here:

It reputed that it was Stan Lee who said, "Every comic book is someone's first."  

And who am I to argue with the creator of Stripperella?

It's a simple principle. You have to write comics with that in mind.  Otherwise, they become soap-opera fortresses guarded by impenetrable lore, 70 years thick.

Now, I love the world-building aspects of comics.  I like that DC is "a universe" not just a bunch of separate lines of comics.  But you shouldn't have to know all of it to understand any of it, because then every year, each issue, you necessarily shrink the pool of people to whom your stories--your PRODUCT--is meaningfully accessible. 

And when you author a page that is based on knowledge of Solaris The Tyrant Sun, a character whose significant appearance was in the DC One Million crossover, which was 26 years ago, you have clearly lost that concept.

He/it also appeared in All-Star Superman, but that's, you know, just an Imaginary Story. It's not REAL.

At the point, you clearly care more about your own ability to yoke the power of more original writers, like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, to your own wagon.  About your using your own encyclopedic knowledge of DC lore as a gatekeeping tool. About connecting your moments and concepts to pre-existing cool moments and concepts in the hope it makes yours cooler.  

And are SO eager to do this, that you ignore the fact that Solaris doesn't EXIST until the 25th Century.

This line -- forgetting, or simply not caring that every comic book should be able to be someone's first --  is bad enough.  But in the very next issue, Justice Society of America #12, Johns crossed the next line, a line of no-return.

Because this comic is nothing AT ALL but Stargirl's graduation speech.

Because OF COURSE Courtney Whitmore is valedictorian, cuz she shits marble.

It's nothing but a sappy graduation speech with 47 double-splash pages of thousand-character fight scenes (all with Courtney as a centerpiece, of course, because Courtney is the center of the DCuniverse).  I kept waiting for The Story to start; there wasn't one.  Just a series of splash pages with dotted with treacly pap from Courtney.  

I want my money back.

I should not have to pay for story-less comics that Geoff Johns is clearly writing not for readers but simply for himself so he can pretend his sister is still alive as the Mary Sue center of the DCU.  That's a line no writer should cross and I'm not joining him on the other side of it.

JEAN, JEAN, THE CRAZY MACHINE

 THIS JUST IN:

Now, THAT is something to talk about!

The last time that anyone heard from Jean Loring, she had been stripped of the power of Eclipso (this was after her failed attempt to seduce the Spectre, but it's really best if we just don't go there right now) and fell to her death in the Atlantic Ocean, where she was eaten by a shark.

Poor, innocent shark; doesn't stand a chance.

And by "last time" I mean "last time we saw her alive".  Naturally we saw her LATER after she was dead in one (or two?) of those "Every Dead Character Comes Back as The Evil Dead" crossover events (probably Blackest Night).  

Jean was one of the few characters substantially DOWNGRADED by becoming a Black Lantern.  I remind you that in her heyday she terrified not merely entire civilizations but ENTIRE PLANETS.

I was very disappointed at the time; it was the first and only confirmation that Jean actually WAS dead. I was expecting (hoping?) that she would just pop up alive someday declaring that she had landed ON the shark, which was thereupon knocked unconscious, and then ate the shark.  

Like that guy in Watchmen nobody remembers,
except Jean would have no remorse at what she had become.

That pretty much put a stake through the character's heart.

Or would have. IF SHE WERE NOT JEAN LORING.

Courtesy of Geoff Johns, who bends DC reality to his will like a steroidal Fifth Dimensional Imp, she has just popped in the pages of Justice Society as if nothing had ever happened.  And by "nothing" I mean her murder of Sue Dibney, in a wholly unpleasant story that every reader would like to pretend never happened.  But Geoff Johns knows that Jean Loring as a deluded, homicidal lunatic is just too darned compelling a character to leave in back issue dustbins. So back she is, no explanation required.  She is back simply because the DCU is more fun WITH her than without her.

The name "Cold Coast" is absolutely perfect.  As is that IMPOSSIBLE view of the moon, chosen to evoke Eclipso, and the fact that all asylums in DC simply have to look Like That.

Say what you will; nobody can encapsulate a character as efficiently as Geoff Johns, who does it here without even SHOWING Jean.

She's being interviewed by neo-Dr. Mid-nite (Beth Chapel), who you'll remember was one of the most notable victims of the earlier Eclipso in the grand, extremely over-the-top Eclipso crossover of 1992.  Like Jean, Beth is back from the dead because, well, that's just how Geoff Johns wants it.

You'd think Dr. Mid-Nite would use a voice recorder, rather than a note pad as if she's the Silver Age Lois Lane, Gal Reporter.

But Jean Loring is still focused only on Ray "The Atom" Palmer.

This panel, you may note, is an homage to her "oh GOD Jean is STILL INSANE" panel in the prestige story-that-will-not-be-named.

You remember Ray Palmer, of course...

The man whose marriage proposal she turned down AT LEAST 56 TIMES BEFORE WE EVEN MET HER. The man she cheated on after they were married and then divorced. Which is not at all consistent with her obsession, but such is crazy.  Who knows why on earth she's so fixated on him.

Oh.
Right.

Dr. Mid-Nite, Junior, stupidly asks her who she's talking to, even though she literally just said his name, and if you are going to interview JEAN LORING, you darned well know who "Ray" is.  

Skipped those electives in Psychiatry, huh, Dr. M?

Jean has a worldview.  And she's committed.

And if there is anyone who deserves to be committed, it's Jean Loring. Dr. Mid-Nite doesn't even HAVE lapels.

So, although Jean is still the wacky deluded gal we've all come to hate and fear, she is ALSO still the Uber-competent person she always was. As a brilliant attorney, she has always had a way with words.

A randomly chosen example.

Not your average prolix barrister, she had a penchant for pithy, piercing remarks.

Pictured: pithy and piercing.

So I SHOULD have been on the look out for her to mark her return to comics with some virtuosic display of dialog. But I was so overwhelmed by her return, that I completely failed to notice this (until loyal and longtime commenter CobraMisfit pointed it out to me):

I still love you, Ray.

That's why I'm waiting for you.

I'm waiting right here.

Yep. Perhaps the most flawless and beautiful COMIC BOOK HAIKU I have ever featured here on Haikuesday.  And Jean made it seem so normal, so natural, I never even noticed.

Your turn, now! What beautiful haiku can YOU compose to celebrate (?!) the return of Jean Loring to comics?

Things That Made Me Happy in My Comics This Week: Justice Society of America #6

I read Justice Society #6 this week.  

Apparently in #5, which I read but have already forgotten, the Villain Who Couldn't Be Stopped and Who Kicked All Our Asses Simultaneously was stopped by the Heroes Trying Harder All Together.  But that's how EVERY Geoff John's plot (certainly those with the JSA) ends.  It also ends the other way every (possible) Geoff Johns' story ends:

with Courtney being right.

Because Stargirl shits g-d marble, as we all know. Because it took Stargirl to come up with the radical idea of the JSA taking time-displaced Golden Age side-kicks under their wing. I'm sure that wouldn't have occurred to Mister Terrific, one of the DCU's three smartest humans, without her help.  He was probably on the verge of sending them to Granny Goodness.

But that sort of thing aside, I enjoyed the issue (as follows).

The Stranding of The World's Phinest.

Power Girl's in the mix, too, for different reasons, but I forget whether Johns did that, and, regardless, it didn't happen in the pages of this Justice Society story.

When Geoff Johns wants A Baby, he is (unlike many writers) PERFECTLY capable of throwing out The Bathwater.  And in this case the Baby is Helena Wayne (NOT Bertinelli).  Johns does not shy away from the crux of a character, no matter how stupid or inconvenient it may be, he makes that crux his battle standard.

Geoff Johns knows darned well that the FUNCTION of the Huntress character is to be the daughter of Batman and Catwoman; if she is not THAT, she serves no purpose.  So that's what the Huntress is.  From a future she has now wiped out by her (heroic) actions in the present, and to which, therefore, she cannot return. Fin. 

Sensible Batman.

Johns' Bruce Wayne is sensible, calm, and supportive.  Because of course he is. Batman is a Golden Age hero, after all, although we forget to think of him that way.

He's going to help this Helena lady, who is not his child at all (even though her father WAS Bruce Wayne), because it's the right thing to do.  In a way that doesn't smother her and keeps her out of his hair, but, jeez, one unsolicited offspring whose creation he wasn't involved in is MORE than enough.  Amusingly, Johns' even has Helena mention the current Batman storyline where he's running around like a basketcase fighting his own family, in stark contrast to His Normal Self we see here.  Johns loves to troll that sort of thing.

Flash back.

GJ has just dumped a passel of Golden Age sidekicks into the present. Obviously lots of their stories will have to do with the difficulties of adjusting or making themselves part of current families and dynasties blah blah. 

But Flash hasn't got time for that nonsense.  Judy Garrick returns and when his dad remembers her, everyone else does, because it's Jay Garrick and that's just how it is.

Fin.

Steel's Ancestry.

You're his great-uncle, numbskull. It's not exactly a "post-War" concept.

This one is interesting to me.  It's unique because it's kind of backwards.  The sidekick isn't getting iconic oomph from a connection to a Golden Age hero; he's GIVING Golden Age oomph to a Modern Hero.  John Henry "Steel" Irons has zero connection to the Golden Age.  His roots go EXACTLY to the Death of Superman story, which Golden Age fan GJ knows is a weak point for any character.  So he's inserting this fellow (he hardly looks as if calling him a "kid" is appropriate) into Steel's PAST as a way of connecting Steel to the Golden Age.  Might as well; no one else has ever been able to figure out what to do with Steel, a literary conundrum that has stumped even the likes of Shaquille O'Neal.

Justifiable Rudeness

There is little I hate more in comics than the Gratuitously Unpleasant Character. Like, well, any character being written by Roy Thomas.  And the last place such a character should be is in the JSA or its derivatives.

One of the many Things Roy Thomas Didn't Understand, since none of his characters can get through two sentences without being ****s.

So obviously "Salem", the stupidly named and snide protégé of the Golden Age Dr. Fate, Kent Nelson, has been my least favorite of the rediscovered sidekicks. At least until GJ explained WHY she is like that.

She's rude in order to keep people at a distance so THEY DON'T DIE BY HER CURSE.  That's some Greek Tragedy stuff, right there.

Simple. Elegant. Rooted in the character's origin.  You don't have to always like WHAT Geoff Johns is doing to appreciate the sheer EFFICIENCY with which he does it.

He COULD have tried to streamline Dr. Fate's history. But he didn't. Because it's messy and that's just now a core part of the character.  

The Red Bee's Legacy

"As insane as it sounds" is Geoff Johns' credo.

Michael.  

M I C H A E L.

GJ knows that Michael, THE ABSURDITY of Michael, is at the crux of the Red Bee. Johns doesn't shy away from that as a stupid embarrassment, he embraces it with the fervor of a post-War lover returning to his beloved.

So Michael, who apparently is not only hyperintelligent BUT AGELESS, is there to greet his sidekick in our time.  Because all you need for the Red Bee is Superior City, a hero in a ridiculous costume (which this girl CERTAINLY qualifies as), and... Michael.

I like to imagine that Michael occasionally does lunch with Detective Chimp and Rex the Wonder Dog.  Very quiet lunches. Until Robbie the Robot Dog shows up.

Say what you like about Geoff Johns...

 

but the man's got BALLS.

Welcome to the Gilded Age

Yesterday, I was asked by a commenter, in response to my post on Geoff Johns reintroduction of Wing, the Crimson Avenger's sidekick (originally, valet/chauffeur)::

I wonder if anyone has an answer to this question: does anyone even want all these sidekicks? One or two of them might be entertaining, I guess, but is there anyone who was saying "you know what we need more of: Golden Age sidekicks"? What is Johns's game?

Of COURSE I have an answer to that question! It ain't called "The Absorbascon" for nothing.  

I would have thought "Johns's Game" would be obvious based on everything else I've written about it.

Or, for that matter, everything HE's written.

But sneaking what is obvious in retrospect past you is one of the hallmarks of Geoff Johns' work.  

Pseudonymously, Geoff Johns writes fan-fic about Benoit Blanc and his precocious tagalong niece, Héloïse Grise.

I have covered this in pieces in other posts, but it bears repeating, I suppose.

The last 20 years has been a Manichaeistic battle for the soul of the DCU between Didio's Dark Forces (writers of the grim & gritty and feet of clay) and Johns' Bright Brigade (champions of heroic idealism).  Didio lost; Johns is now trying to make sure that loss actually, several years later, starts to result in a DCU of a different tenor, hence the Dawn of the DCU (an image of new light, you'll note).  

Didio hated "legacy characters", and famously wanted to kill off Dick "Nightwing" Grayson, who is the ORIGINAL kid sidekick, the personification of legacy characters.  It's no coincidence that Dick Grayson now is the centerpiece of the Dawn of the DCU. It's no coincidence that the Justice League is on sabbatical so that the Titans et al. can see some more time in the light.

Okay. Maybe I should have chosen a different metaphor in that particular case.

It's perfect timing, too, as the James Gunnification of DCU Entertainment promises to align DC's intellectual properties (what you and I call "characters") in a more consistent and coherent (if not unified) way across properties. Johns is offering just the kind of broad plan and vision that Gunn is looking sell on the hustings.

Johns's Game has several dimensions to it, but they all bear his trademark expansive approach.  

One is spatial: the multiverse has been reintroduced. Not ambiguously, as it was in the wishy-washy Hypertime concept. Nor in a limited and un-useful way, as in Morrison's Multiversity art project.  No. It's the Big Ol' DC Multiverse, Bigger and Ol'er than Ever, with numbered earths for everybody, and all of it introduced by (who else?) Barry Allen, the character who introduced the ideal of the multiverse into the DCU to begin with (the one so synonymous with the concept of the multiverse that DC killed him off WITH it in "Crisis on Infinite Earths").  

NEVER forget that the last person Barry Allen sees before he dies is Batman, his face covered in custard. Remember the Creped Crusader, people.

One dimension is temporal; DC's iconic heroes must be shown to be mentoring potential future heroes as part of their legacy in the future. They must also be shown to be inheritors of traditions of costumed heroism and that very concept of apprenticeship from past generations of heroes.  

[Batman #135, btw]
Tom King killed off Alfred Pennyworth.
Geoff Johns would have HIRED him for a two-year run on "Batman Family".

This is why Johns is reconnecting the current DCU to the Golden Age.  Characters are being inserted in the Golden Age to help anchor the present to the past.  Present Ollie Queen turns out to have been the Golden Age Oliver Queen after all.  There actually WAS a Golden Age Aquaman and won't HIS connection to modern Aquaman be interesting to learn about.  The Golden Age JSA exist on an earth of their own (Earth-2, natch), but a version of them also exist in the past of Earth-0.  There are forgotten kid sidekicks who will be rescued from limbo by Stargirl, a legacy of a Golden Age hero, and Red Arrow, the kid sidekick of a current iconic hero (who is ALSO a Golden Age hero).  It couldn't be any tighter or clearer.  The concept of the "kid sidekick" is being reintroduced to reassert the importance of legacy and the need to pass along the traditions of heroism.

"They might want to hit the deck; it's going to be oomphy."

Geoff Johns is no Roy Thomas.  He's not trying to connect to the Golden Age to save the past; he trying to connect to the Golden Age to save the future. In fact, that's exactly the plot of his new run on Justice Society of America, isn't it?

Starman's face is only partially shown, lest his glory eclipse his contemporaries

One dimensional is financial.  This isn't mere nostalgia. It's good business sense.  The direct market era saw the aging of the comic book buying population and, in the long run, if you lose KIDS as part of the audience for comics you will run out of adult audience.  

Didio had his own answer to this problem and it was characteristically reductive: kill off the old characters and replace them with ones that had been created under HIS aegis, for a New Glorious Era; the "5G Plan" that was the final straw that got him fired.

He was disappeared, really. I think the Shadow Demons got him, which, of course, would be comic book irony since, like him, they represent the forces of darkness in the DCU.

Johns' plan is characteristically expansive. One of the reasons to connect with the Golden Age is because the Golden Age knew how to do something that most people have forgotten--how to write superhero comics for kids without pandering.  He's reintroducing the concept of "kid sidekicks" -- let's call them "heroic apprenticeships" to update the idea -- for the same reason the Golden Age introduced them: to give kid readers an in-story character to identify with (rather than the hero, who is a character to aspire to). 

I wonder whatever became of that kid.  Probably got killed off by some cynical writer of a later, darker era.

Do you think it's coincidence that David, the Boy Thunder, from Mark Waid's "previously untold story of Superman's kid sidekick" has just been revealed in World's Finest to be... Magog, the personification of the loss of heroic idealism in Mark Waid's Kingdom Come, the falling domino who leads to its dystopia? It is not a coincidence; Mark Waid is part of Johns's Bright Brigade.  This is part of showing of the breakdown of the heroic apprenticeship system, of the failure to establish legacy leads to disaster in the future.  

Just as failing to instill a love of heroic ideals --and the salable intellectual properties DC owns that represent them! -- will be disastrous for today's children (and tomorrow's comic books sales).  And the answer isn't simply to pump out a bunch of coloring books and Underoos or conflict-free goo-goo Justice League Babies books.  It's to make regular, mainstream superhero comics with a broader audience, including younger readers, in mind.

I know some (all?) of you don't understand my postings of Sims games with DCU characters. But it's not without reasons. 

"You see, son, archery takes focus, strength, and patience."
"You GOT this, Ollie!"
"Ugh. Archery sucks."

The makers of the Sims games, over the years, could have given in to pressure from their existing audience to become increasingly inward-looking in their product.  Instead, at every juncture where they might have had the game become deeper but less accessible, they have chosen instead to try to make it broader and more inclusive, sometimes to the disappointment of some present players.  But as a result, the base of players has only expanded and diversified with time, and, by opening the game up to easy modding, the player-base is free to deepen the game in ways that it wants to without corporate interference.

Clearly, that's easier to do in a game where the players tell the stories  than in comics where the corporation has to. But the analogy is clear.  Left to its own devices, fandom (of ANY kind) will crawl up its own *** and become withdrawn and increasingly inaccessible.  The actual guardians of the objects of fandom --who are not the fans, no matter what we think-- have to make sure that they aren't pulled in along with them.  

Johns's game isn't fan-pandering nostalgia.  It's not squeaky-clean Silver Age fluff.  He's trying to initiate a new Golden Age when comics were unafraid to be "childish" in their idealism,  unapologetic about the need for young and old to face the evils of the world, when they were accessible to a broader population and not just comic shop denizens.  

John's is starting the Gilded Age of Comics.

The Thirteen

Let's talk about this, shall we?

It's a scene from the end of Beyond Flashpoint (#6) which naturally you are not reading.  You're not reading it because anything titled "Beyond" is the theoretical and non-canonical future version of Something and anything Flashpoint is not only an Elseworlds but an Elseworlds that's been dunzo for over ten years. The only thing less relevant would be, I guess, Bizarro Dark Anti-Matter Beyond Flashpoint, but I probably shouldn't give DC any ideas.

However, Geoff Johns wrote it and it's part of his fan-wan--er, I mean, love-letter to Alan Moore's Watchmen, which admittedly was pretty cool when I read it over 35 years ago, but, oh my god, can we please all move on now? I feel like I'm in a Gravitas Ventures movie where I've escaped the heavily-inked horrors of the Jack Kirby Kultists who ruined my childhood only to fall into the clutches of Alan Moore Maniacs who've trapped me as an adult in a nine-square grid.

You know, Moore actually uses a nine-panel grid in a cinematic way to equalize time,
not in a graphological way to separate units of meaning as comic books do.

Real comics used a wide variety of lay-outs and frequent panel extrusions.
What most people don't realize is that Moore's Watchmen work doesn't look like comics at all;
it reads like watching a movie.

Anyway, since the Riddler secretly took over DC (about the time it published 52), all important line-wide change is presented as a grand puzzle with pieces of information strewn about in as many publications as possible. The assumption (or hope) behind this tactic is that we'll all read everything, but the real result is that no one understands anything, like the Parable of The Blind Men and The Elephant.  

It's like one of those world-destroying macguffin devices that can be destroyed for some reason, and instead get broken up into many pieces and buried as widely apart as possible so that no one can ever reassemble them again.

Well, this panel, buried in the back of this publication no one in their right mind is reading, is one of those pieces, listing thirteen characters who are being baldly retconned into Golden Age comics history.

What unprecedented nerve.

Retconning the Golden Age is... not something that should be done lightly.

Although, as we discussed during Black History Month sixteen years ago, there are certainly aspects of the Golden Age that merit revision.

Let's explore about who these retro-insertions might be.

Betsy Ross

This one is easy.

It's her.

That's from the cover of the forthcoming Stargirl and the Lost Children, the story where Stargirl (because of course it's Stargirl) finds of a bunch of lost sidekicks in a pocket dimension (or some such).  And that person is obviously "Betsy Ross".  It's not clear to me what hero she'd be associated with; my best guess would be a Golden Age version of Wonder Woman (which we'll surely be getting somehow).

Molly Pitcher

Another easy one:

It's the girl holding the pitcher.

She's holding onto that thing like it's the source of her powers not just her name.  So my guess is going to be she's a sidekick for Liberty Belle, because that would be perfectly ridiculous. Now, her costume, is clearly meant to coordinate with Betsy Ross's and they have similar patriotic names.  Does that imply they are sidekicks of the same hero or not? Or is it parallelism across dynasties? To further complicate matters: the costume design and color scheme is strongly reminiscent of Merry, Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks, who's from a different dynasty entirely (she's the sister of the Star-Spangled Kid, which makes her a Starman character).  Very curious.

Ladybug

I'm guessing that's her.

Based on the name, the ONLY thing that makes sense is a sidekick to the Golden Age Blue Beetle.

Salem the Witch Girl

I get no points for guessing this one.

Must be related to Joe Meach

I think it's really weird to retrofit an analog of Jack Kirby's vague and goofy Klarion the Witchboy into the Golden Age, especially as a sidekick for the very Egyptian Dr. Fate.  But DC is a patchwork quilt.

Cherry Bomb

Points for the dead-on name:

And the logo. Which doesn't evoke breasts at all.

I wouldn't expect the Human Bomb to have a sidekick (but then again, I wouldn't expect Tim Sale to do her make-up, either).  I assume that the Human Bomb and Cherry Bomb (my gosh, that's adorable) become stand-ins for the actual Golden Age duo of TNT and Dan The Dyna-Mite (who were even more absurd).

John Henry, Jr.

Another easy pick:

It's hammer time.

I don't want him to be Amazing-Man's sidekick, but you just know he is.

The Golden Age Red Lantern

No visuals available that I know of. I wonder whether his costume will be as garish as Alan/s?  It makes perfect sense that Geoff Johns would strive to extend his Spectrum Lantern concept backwards in time to the Golden Age.  I may not like, but he'll probably pull it off.  I assuming the Golden Age Red Lantern will be to Alan as Rival is to Jay.

Judy Garrick

This required a screen cap:

From a DC promo video, which shows that Geoff Johns has not only re-acquired power, he has also re-acquired HAIR.

That's clearly Judy Garrick, who will (also clearly) be a Golden age Kid Flash.

The Harlequin's Son

No visuals that I know of. The Harlequin was a Golden Age Green Lantern foe who was secretly his secretary. Hijinx ensued.  

She's was really just trying to get his interest, which for some reason she couldn't do as a civilian.

While Alan had children (with another villain), Harlequin did not. But now she will have. This will be interesting. Will he be a villain? Who was his father? Will he wear fabulous cat-eye glasses and that skirt?!  Here's hoping!

The Golden Age Aquaman

This.

It will be all be worth it for this.

Like all things Geoff Johns, I would never have expected this in a thousand years and therefore it is exactly what I should have expected.  The potential impact of this is as earthshaking as Poseidon himself. I feel like retiring to a desert island for a year simply to contemplate the possibilities, knowing that I still would not have thought of whatever Johns will actually do, which, once he's done it, will be obvious in retrospect.

If a Golden Age Aquaman is inserted back into history, will he still be around now? It would be nice for there to be an elder Aquaman to act an Elder Statesman for the Aquaman Dynasty. One who always lives on land, stays at the lighthouse, teaches marine biology, works with the Sea Devils, that sort of thing. Maybe Golden Aquaman will actually be current Aquaman's FATHER.  

Quiz Kid

Curious.  "Kid" certainly implies sidekick.  There are leftover sidekicks I haven't mentioned. 

Secret 

who will be Spectre's sidekick, JUST as I used to play her in Heroclix

Airwave

Please make him Hal's new sidekick. Puh-LEASE.

Hourman's Sidekick

Um... Rent Boy?

Jack Kirby's odious Newsboy Legion, which I refuse to discuss.

Everything Kirby made was stupid

And a Mr. Terrific Sidekick

"Play Fair" is witty

"Quiz Kid" isn't a sensible or even possible name for any of them, with the possible exception of Master Terrific, there.  But the Terrific "power" is having lots of talents, not all the answers.  "Quiz Kid" sounds like an updated name for Genius Jones. Could this kid be Genius Jones?

The Golden Age Legionnaire

It's hard to imagine that anyone (let alone Geoff Johns) would create a character called "Legionnaire" without expecting people to think of the Legion of Super-Heroes (LSH). But the LSH (which is currently not being published) traditionally connects only to SupermanIt makes no sense that this character (whatever it is) could connect to the LSH in the 31st (30th?) Century.  That doesn't mean, however, the Geoff Johns won't make it make sense.  

Will Boxing Boy, a.k.a. the Golden Age Karate Kid, be able to save the League of Nations from Corporal Punishment?

The question is: it is a Golden Age character named Legionnaire or a Legionnaire in the Golden Age? Neither makes any sense.  If it's a Golden Age character name Legionnaire described as "The Golden Age Legionnaire" rather than just "The Legionnaire" that implies that there's a non-Golden Age character named Legionnaire, which there isn't, and I can't imagine there will be.  If it's a Legionnaire (from the LSH) in the Golden Age, well, there's only one Legionnaire who's actually from the Golden Age and not the 30th (31st?) Century.

He looks kind of like those kids in the Russian high-school wrestler weigh-in videos.

Yeah, I know you think Superboy is from the Silver Age; you're just wrong. Superboy was the Sensational Character Find of 1945.  The Legion of Superheroes were creations of the Silver Age having been introduced in 1958, so every time they visited Superboy, it was the Silver Age, which why you think Superboy is only a Silver Age character.

The Golden Age Mr. Miracle

No clue. Also, no care. Extending Jack Kirby's influence isn't the future of the DCU. Nor its past.