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Spoilers DC's Legends of Tomorrow - Season 2

There's a great moment in Tim Powers' THE ANUBIS GATES when a time-traveler who is stranded in 1802 is strolling through London when he suddenly hears someone humming "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney and instantly realizes that there's another time-traveler in the vicinity.

Spoiler: there's also a bit in the book about a poem that turns out to have no origin: the traveler learns the poem in the future, then discovers in the past that he was the actual author of the poem, which he rewrites from memory. So where did the poem actually come from if it was written by time-traveler who read the poem in the future?
 
Tell it to Nick Fury and Frank Rock. ;)

Both sergeants, working-class enlisted men. Hourman was presented more like an officer -- the leader of the team and thus the superior to the guy called "Commander Steel," not to mention the guy talking to FDR on the '40s Batphone.

Oh, speaking of '40s paraphernalia, in the scene aboard the Waverider where Steel and Sara are debating with Stein about how to get Ray and Amaya back, you can see the helmet of Ma Hunkel (the original, comedic Red Tornado in the '40s comics, and an honorary JSA member) atop a cabinet in the background, next to what looks kind of like a Clone Trooper helmet from Star Wars (but might be a DC reference I'm missing).
 
Both sergeants, working-class enlisted men. Hourman was presented more like an officer -- the leader of the team and thus the superior to the guy called "Commander Steel," not to mention the guy talking to FDR on the '40s Batphone.
Are they military? The JSA in comics was a group of private citizens. As was the larger All-Star Squadron. They had the ear of the President (and visa versa) and the latter was formed at his request but they weren't military or even governmental organizations.
 
^They did do a stint as the Justice Battalion during the war.

But they still weren't a military organization, it was just a more war appropriate renaming of the JSA from what I remember. They changed the name back to JSA quickly, too (I read a comic, I think it was an issue of All Star Squadron, where Hawkman basically says the Justice Battalion name just confused people and didn't really have a point so they went back to Justice Society).
 
Are they military? The JSA in comics was a group of private citizens.

I'm talking about how they're portrayed on the show. How the comics portrayed them is irrelevant, because obviously the show has changed a great deal about them. The episode presented them as essentially military, in manner and bearing if not in a formal sense. Nate specifically described his grandfather as a soldier.

Besides, the point is that Hourman had the bearing of a respectable authority figure, and you couldn't be that in the '40s if you wore stubble all the time. You could get away with it if you were out in the field for days at a time, or if you were a working-class grunt, and both of those apply to the likes of Sgt. Rock. But at the time, stubble would've been considered a lack of decent grooming, not a valid alternative grooming choice.
 
I'm talking about how they're portrayed on the show. How the comics portrayed them is irrelevant, because obviously the show has changed a great deal about them. The episode presented them as essentially military, in manner and bearing if not in a formal sense. Nate specifically described his grandfather as a soldier.
I don't recall anything in the show about the JSA being military. Steel in the comics is also military, a Marine IIRC, but still part of the civilian ASQ. Wonder Woman was also in the military as Diana Prince, but served in the civilian JSA.

Besides, the point is that Hourman had the bearing of a respectable authority figure, and you couldn't be that in the '40s if you wore stubble all the time. You could get away with it if you were out in the field for days at a time, or if you were a working-class grunt, and both of those apply to the likes of Sgt. Rock. But at the time, stubble would've been considered a lack of decent grooming, not a valid alternative grooming choice.
I guess White Christmas got it wrong too.
White%20Christmas%20General%20Waverly%20Dean%20Jagger_zpskchjrxuf.jpg


This real life Major is totally not getting any respect. That Polish lieutenant is thinking "Who is this low class barbarian?"

Polish_officer_1AD_Normandy_P011192_zpsjw1fyfr4.jpg
 
I don't recall anything in the show about the JSA being military. Steel in the comics is also military, a Marine IIRC, but still part of the civilian ASQ. Wonder Woman was also in the military as Diana Prince, but served in the civilian JSA.


I guess White Christmas got it wrong too.
White%20Christmas%20General%20Waverly%20Dean%20Jagger_zpskchjrxuf.jpg


This real life Major is totally not getting any respect. That Polish lieutenant is thinking "Who is this low class barbarian?"

Polish_officer_1AD_Normandy_P011192_zpsjw1fyfr4.jpg

I think both of your examples fit into Christopher's "out in the field" qualifier.
 
I think both of your examples fit into Christopher's "out in the field" qualifier.
He seemed to imply that it was only okay for grunts and not officers.
That said. Hourman and friends are probably out in the field a lot.
 
I don't understand why I need to explain this. How young are you guys? It's only in the past couple of decades that being stubbly by choice has been seen as a respectable grooming option for a man. And Hourman wasn't in the field. He was the one who stayed behind at HQ while his team went into the field.
 
I don't understand why I need to explain this. How young are you guys? It's only in the past couple of decades that being stubbly by choice has been seen as a respectable grooming option for a man. And Hourman wasn't in the field. He was the one who stayed behind at HQ while his team went into the field.
I'm older than you, probably by a decade and more. I get your point. Its something I've noticed myself. Along with the way people don't dress up to go to the bank, church or the doctor anymore. But some stubble on Hourman is hardly the great anachronism, as even in the Forties a man might have reasons not to shave for a day or two.
 
But some stubble on Hourman is hardly the great anachronism, as even in the Forties a man might have reasons not to shave for a day or two.

Except it seems to have been his consistent look. He had the same stubble throughout the episode and in whatever now-erased future where he took the Waverider to 2016 to warn the Legends. It's evidently just a case of the actor just not bothering to change his usual look for the role. Which doesn't make sense to me, because it would only take a few days to grow it back after the episode. I could get it if it were something like not wanting to shave his whole head, but it's only something like 3-4 days' growth of beard.

And what bugs me isn't just this single instance, but the way it seems to be a common practice these days in time-travel shows. I mentioned how egregious 12 Monkeys is about it, far worse than this. And I think Wyatt on Timeless has the same stubble issue going on.

True, there is kind of a tradition of actors having modern hairstyles in period shows. Happy Days and M*A*S*H were known for having their actors wear '70s hairstyles despite being set in the '50s (or '60s for later Happy Days). It was understandable that the actors wouldn't want to spend years looking anachronistic in everyday life. But again, shaving a few days' worth of stubble for a guest spot doesn't seem like much of an imposition. Keeping it must be simply a matter of vanity, wanting the actors to look good by modern standards.
 
Vixen and Stargirl's hair doesn't really look very 40s military either. And unfortunately, I think if it was realistic to 40s military we wouldn't probably see Doctor Mid-Nite and Vixen integrated with white troops at all.

I mean this is what blacks serving in the 40s looked like:
https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/ww2-pictures#army

The stubble doesn't bother me because it doesn't seem like they are really trying to give us true period veracity. I think it works under the umbrella of "close enough".
 
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