Yeah, sometimes I just think that people drifting to Supermanica over the internet aren't going to pick up on this, but I don't have any better ideas of how to do it...
My main point about someone like the Spectre is that they don't really have origins since their original books are non-canon...so it seems odd to say first appeared in More Fun Comics (1940) and then, that he is a Bronze Age character only...I understand the problem, I don't know why its bugging me today...
I think I'm more mad at DC editorial policy in the 70s, its seems arbitrary to include Luthor with red hair as Earth-2, but bald Luthor with sharp fangs is apparently Earth-1...I don't think that many readers from the 1940s were still around to object to their comics being said to have all occurred on Earth-2...I remembered I asked my mother in the late 1960s (she was a big Jay Garrick Flash fan), and she didn't mind...
Your mom read the original Jay Garrick stuff? Cool.... what'd she make of the "new" Flash (Barry Allen)?
Before giving up on writing for Wikipedia, I usually handled the character's versions and histories by splitting their entries into "Golden Age" and "Silver Age" sections; for the Golden Age section, I listed all the info from the real Golden Age comics, then added the appropriate Earth-Two related info (with the Silver Age Lois info treated as all being Earth-One). An example of what I wrote for the Golden Age/Earth-2 Lois (treated as one and the same by me for Wikipedia's purposes, with differences between the Golden Age/Earth-2 elements as mentioned above noted noted), copied-and-pasted (and mostly intact from what I wrote, aside from the annoying deletion of Susie Tompkins from the info box's "relatives" section) from the Wikipedia Lois Lane article:
>>The comics have seen several incarnations of Lois Lane over the decades.
[edit]
Golden Age
The Golden Age Lois Lane and Superman, from the cover of Superman (volume 1) #27 (March-April 1944). Pencils by Wayne Boring.
Enlarge
The Golden Age Lois Lane and Superman, from the cover of Superman (volume 1) #27 (March-April 1944). Pencils by Wayne Boring.
In the earliest Golden Age comics, Lois was featured as an aggressive, career-minded reporter for the Daily Star (the paper's name was changed to The Daily Planet in the early 1940s), who, after Clark Kent joined the paper and Superman debuted around the same time, found herself attracted to Superman, but displeased with her new journalistic competition in the form of Kent. Starting in the late 1940s or early 1950s comics, Lois began to suspect that Clark Kent was Superman, and started to make various attempts at uncovering his secret identity, all of which backfired (usually thanks to Superman's efforts).
In the Golden Age comics, Lois also had a niece named Susie Tompkins, whose main trait was getting into trouble by telling exaggerated tall tales and fibs to adults. Susie's last appearance was in 1955; subsequent comics presented Lois' only sibling, Lucy, as single and childless.
After DC instituted its multiverse system in the early 1960s for organizing its continuity, it was deemed that the Lois of the Golden Age comics (i.e., comics published from 1938 through the early 1950s) lived on the parallel world of "Earth-Two" versus the then-mainstream (Silver Age) universe of "Earth-One." In 1978's Action Comics #484, it was revealed that sometime in the 1950s, the Earth-Two Lois became infatuated with Clark Kent after the latter lost his memory of his superheroic identity (thanks to a spell cast by the old Justice Society of America enemy the Wizard), with the result of Clark acting more aggressive and extroverted. Clark and Lois began to date each other, and were soon married; however, during the honeymoon, Lois discovered that Clark was indeed Superman, and after recruiting the aid of the Wizard, restored Clark's memory. A series of stories in the 1970s and 1980s titled "Mr. and Mrs. Superman" presented the further adventures of the now-married Lois and Clark (in several of which Susie Tompkins made a return as a recurring character).
During the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, the Earth-Two Lois Lane was seen for the last time, as she, the Earth-Two Superman, and the Earth-Prime Superboy are taken by Earth-Three's Alexander Luthor, Jr. into a paradise-like dimension at the end of the story (after all the parallel Earths, including Earth-Two, had been eliminated in favor of just one Earth), after which this version of Lois was (seemingly) permanently discarded from DC's continuity.<<
Admit it was surprising for me, when adding a few things to Supermanica, to see it's written assuming that "Earth-1" encompasses everything from 1938 to 1986, vs. the usual comic fan assumption everywhere else I've ever seen that Earth-1 = the Silver Age/Bronze Age period of c. mid-to-late 50's to 1986 (plus some earlier stories, such as Superboy material and a few Superman stories)...