I was visiting my great aunt and found a box with old JSA fics that she wrote back in the 70s and published in zines. Now I'm helping her upload them to ao3 of course. We talked about superhero RPF and I told her I'm not really into it because stories based on real, living people weird me out (although Batman/Bruce Wayne is my guilty pressure). She says that her stories were more based on the comics and the radio serials rather than the actual real people behind the masks, who she wasn't interested in.
Anyway, this made me wonder: has any superhero or mystery man/woman ever said anything about the media based on them? I imagine most prefer to avoid it, but there must be some who don't and who have opinions about how they're depicted.
I mean there have been endless small comments and anecdotes about superheroes talking about the other media made about/in relation to their exploits. Especially in the modern day where, for the reason that it simply looks bad if they don't, modern media companies will approach superheroes they plan to make media of to consult on said media. It keeps them honest, lets them write off some money for charity and makes the cycle continue to turn.
While of course there's nothing STOPPING a media company from making something about a hero without consulting them first, superheroes are public figures and anything they publically do is a matter of historical record. There is the secondary consequences of the public backlash that would inevitably result AND the fact that future heroes and those who hold our heroes in high regards would probably hesitate to work with said company in the future.
That being said, of course none of this was true of the 1940s
(All Star Comics #3, a comic released only weeks after the Justice Society's real life assembly)
The idea of publishing comics based on the exploits of real life mystery men was pretty openly a gimmick when it first began. Comic books as a medium weren't new to the idea of publishing the exploits of celebrities, explorers and the like to their readers, often embellished or with anecdotes fully invented just to have something to put on the shelf. The Justice Society was no different, save for the fact that the publication of nonfiction mystery men would inspire the publication of fully fictional mystery men that would give birth to the modern superhero genre.
Modern "nonfiction" comics should be taken with a pretty open dump of salt of course, and Golden Age ones doubly so. These comics didn't know who these people were and were only able to reassemble the capers from publically available news reports. The most commonly cited difference is one that I've brought up before: The portrayal of Wesley Dodds.
Scan through your Aunt's work, or even through some of the original comics. You will find the Sandman portrayed as a square jawed, tough talking, iron fisted all American. In short, the era's typical vision of an action hero. We know now that Wesley Dodds wasn't like that all, being described as clerkish more than anything else even by his closest friends. He had a large, prominent nose, coke bottle glasses and a weak chin. His personality was quiet and introspective even among friends and among strangers (police officers or the like) he barely talked at all.
This can go double for basically any other member of the Society. Jay Garrick's famous midwestern sense of humor (puns, an infection he has spread to the rest of the Flash family), Starman's bad habit of using 6 words of Latin when one word of English would have done him better, the constant bickering of Hourman and Doctor Midnite. Some of that comes through because it was publically commented upon but it's all softened for the medium of adventure fiction.
If anything, I'd accept a followup from you about how your Great Aunt's "headcanons" differ from what we know about the Justice Society as we know them
(She has to know Alan Scott is a gay man, right?...or was it already that kind of fan fiction...)
