The End of the Trail For The Magnificent Seven?
JLA ends this week with issue #125, wrapping up a title which stuck to its mission of reuniting the World's Greatest Super-Heroes. Indeed, the history of the Justice League after Crisis on Infinite Earths describes two titles driven by disparate approaches to DC's "big guns."
In 1986, the first post-Crisis revamp replaced "Justice League Detroit" with an all-star lineup from across the former Multiverse. However, not all of the stars were created equal, and writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis spent the next five years mining comedy from the interplay of stalwarts (Batman, J'Onn J'Onzz, Hawkman) with more regular guys (Blue Beetle, Booster Gold). With a winning mix of adventure and wackiness, Justice League International was soon popular enough to produce the spinoffs Justice League Europe and Justice League Quarterly.
However, somewhere around "Club JLI" the mix got unbalanced, and when Dan Jurgens and Gerard Jones took over the books in 1992, the comedy was toned down in favor of more traditional adventures. This was again signaled by the influx of "big guns," with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, joining mainstay Guy Gardner) featured prominently and unironically. A new series, Justice League Task Force, provided additional opportunities for more straightforward fare (an all-female Peter David arc notwithstanding). Nevertheless, the titles got another line-wide revamp two years later, and in the summer of 1996 all the League books were cancelled to make room for the third makeover in just over four years.
This one stuck, thanks to writer Grant Morrison's mission to reunite the seven original Leaguers, or at least their namesakes. After this was accomplished in the Midsummer's Nightmare miniseries (written by Mark Waid and Fabian Nicezia, drawn by Jeff Johnson and Darick Robertson), Morrison and artist Howard Porter embraced fully the Justice League's widescreen potential. In due course they proclaimed Batman "the most dangerous man on Earth," hinted at a relationship between Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and did wonders for the new Green Lantern's public relations. Because Morrison saw the Justice League as a modern-day pantheon, he filled out its ranks with established characters who each got their own moments in the sun.
The "Morrison JLA" also encouraged DC's other super-teams to revisit their roots. Thus, a JLA/Titans miniseries begat The Titans, JLA: World Without Grown-Ups led to Young Justice, and a Justice Society crossover in the main book foreshadowed the new JSA's blend of originals and namesakes.
In 2000, Mark Waid succeeded Morrison as JLA writer, shaking things up with an extrapolation from Morrison's take on Batman. "Tower of Babel" revealed Batman's contingency plans to neutralize every Leaguer (some rather unpleasantly), and after the League overcame those, it kicked Batman out. Not for long, to be sure; but it showed that Waid had a good grasp of the team's interpersonal relationships and used them to good effect. This was especially true in Waid's third arc, "Divided We Fall," which saw the members split into costumed and civilian identities. Although he was only the book's regular writer for about eighteen months, Waid's tenure was memorable, especially in collaboration with artists Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. (Too bad no one else did a Batman contingency plan gone awry....)
His successor, Joe Kelly, wrote some thirty issues of the regular title, plus the twelve-issue Justice League Elite maxi-series. Most of Kelly's run was taken up with two arcs: the twelve-part "Obsidian Age" and the six-part "Trial By Fire." However, he may be remembered best for two stories: a thinly-veiled examination of the runup to the Iraq war (#83), and an exploration of a possible Batman/Wonder Woman romance (#90). Like Morrison, Kelly added members, including an entire replacement League in "The Obsidian Age;" but like Waid, for the most part he kept the same core of icons.
After Kelly, the book featured a few rotating teams of high-profile creators, but outside of Kurt Busiek and Ron Garney's Crime Syndicate epic "Syndicate Rules," none produced anything remarkable. After that, JLA was sucked into DC's mega-crossover orbits, with divergent results: "Crisis of Conscience" wasn't too bad; but the current "World Without A Justice League" seems like just marking time. Rotating teams will apparently have a home in JLA Classified, which I suppose will have to tide fans over until Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes launch Justice League of America this summer.
But whither the big guns then? Aquaman will be new, as will the Flash and maybe even Wonder Woman. Superman, Batman, and J'Onn J'Onzz should still be available, but which Green Lantern will join? Maybe DC cancelled JLA in part because it focused consistently on those seven characters, and the new book wouldn't. Such a shift in focus may suggest that DC hasn't learned from the past two decades of JLA comics. Those icons have served DC well both in animated form on Cartoon Network's "Justice League" series, and as DC's representatives throughout the JLA/Avengers miniseries.
Regardless, the new Justice League of America membership may yet recall the Giffen/DeMatteis League, by highlighting DC's diverse character types more than it name-checks the original lineup. That's not the safest approach (although it's far from the riskiest), but considering everything the Leaguers -- especially the former JLIers -- have endured in the past couple of years, such an angle would be both ironic and appropriate.
In 1986, the first post-Crisis revamp replaced "Justice League Detroit" with an all-star lineup from across the former Multiverse. However, not all of the stars were created equal, and writers Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis spent the next five years mining comedy from the interplay of stalwarts (Batman, J'Onn J'Onzz, Hawkman) with more regular guys (Blue Beetle, Booster Gold). With a winning mix of adventure and wackiness, Justice League International was soon popular enough to produce the spinoffs Justice League Europe and Justice League Quarterly.
However, somewhere around "Club JLI" the mix got unbalanced, and when Dan Jurgens and Gerard Jones took over the books in 1992, the comedy was toned down in favor of more traditional adventures. This was again signaled by the influx of "big guns," with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan, joining mainstay Guy Gardner) featured prominently and unironically. A new series, Justice League Task Force, provided additional opportunities for more straightforward fare (an all-female Peter David arc notwithstanding). Nevertheless, the titles got another line-wide revamp two years later, and in the summer of 1996 all the League books were cancelled to make room for the third makeover in just over four years.
This one stuck, thanks to writer Grant Morrison's mission to reunite the seven original Leaguers, or at least their namesakes. After this was accomplished in the Midsummer's Nightmare miniseries (written by Mark Waid and Fabian Nicezia, drawn by Jeff Johnson and Darick Robertson), Morrison and artist Howard Porter embraced fully the Justice League's widescreen potential. In due course they proclaimed Batman "the most dangerous man on Earth," hinted at a relationship between Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and did wonders for the new Green Lantern's public relations. Because Morrison saw the Justice League as a modern-day pantheon, he filled out its ranks with established characters who each got their own moments in the sun.
The "Morrison JLA" also encouraged DC's other super-teams to revisit their roots. Thus, a JLA/Titans miniseries begat The Titans, JLA: World Without Grown-Ups led to Young Justice, and a Justice Society crossover in the main book foreshadowed the new JSA's blend of originals and namesakes.
In 2000, Mark Waid succeeded Morrison as JLA writer, shaking things up with an extrapolation from Morrison's take on Batman. "Tower of Babel" revealed Batman's contingency plans to neutralize every Leaguer (some rather unpleasantly), and after the League overcame those, it kicked Batman out. Not for long, to be sure; but it showed that Waid had a good grasp of the team's interpersonal relationships and used them to good effect. This was especially true in Waid's third arc, "Divided We Fall," which saw the members split into costumed and civilian identities. Although he was only the book's regular writer for about eighteen months, Waid's tenure was memorable, especially in collaboration with artists Bryan Hitch and Paul Neary. (Too bad no one else did a Batman contingency plan gone awry....)
His successor, Joe Kelly, wrote some thirty issues of the regular title, plus the twelve-issue Justice League Elite maxi-series. Most of Kelly's run was taken up with two arcs: the twelve-part "Obsidian Age" and the six-part "Trial By Fire." However, he may be remembered best for two stories: a thinly-veiled examination of the runup to the Iraq war (#83), and an exploration of a possible Batman/Wonder Woman romance (#90). Like Morrison, Kelly added members, including an entire replacement League in "The Obsidian Age;" but like Waid, for the most part he kept the same core of icons.
After Kelly, the book featured a few rotating teams of high-profile creators, but outside of Kurt Busiek and Ron Garney's Crime Syndicate epic "Syndicate Rules," none produced anything remarkable. After that, JLA was sucked into DC's mega-crossover orbits, with divergent results: "Crisis of Conscience" wasn't too bad; but the current "World Without A Justice League" seems like just marking time. Rotating teams will apparently have a home in JLA Classified, which I suppose will have to tide fans over until Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes launch Justice League of America this summer.
But whither the big guns then? Aquaman will be new, as will the Flash and maybe even Wonder Woman. Superman, Batman, and J'Onn J'Onzz should still be available, but which Green Lantern will join? Maybe DC cancelled JLA in part because it focused consistently on those seven characters, and the new book wouldn't. Such a shift in focus may suggest that DC hasn't learned from the past two decades of JLA comics. Those icons have served DC well both in animated form on Cartoon Network's "Justice League" series, and as DC's representatives throughout the JLA/Avengers miniseries.
Regardless, the new Justice League of America membership may yet recall the Giffen/DeMatteis League, by highlighting DC's diverse character types more than it name-checks the original lineup. That's not the safest approach (although it's far from the riskiest), but considering everything the Leaguers -- especially the former JLIers -- have endured in the past couple of years, such an angle would be both ironic and appropriate.
posted by Tom Bondurant @ 10:00 PM
2 Comments:
The name Brad Meltzer tells us pretty much exactly who we can expect to see in his JLA--the 1970s version of the team. He as much as admitted it in the 2006 Wizard Preview (the one issue of that magazine I've ever bought, by the way.) I would not expect to see J'onn, who wasn't in the 70s League and whom Meltzer doesn't care for (which makes me wonder if the character might not make it out of Infinite Crisis alive). I assume that Meltzer's league will consist of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Red Tornado, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna, etc. along with one or two "new" members to fill the Firestorm slot. Other 70s JLA stalwarts, such as the Atom, Aquaman, and Elongated Man depend on what happens to them in 52 and the One Year later restarts. I wouldn't be suprised to see the return of the satellite.
By the way, I like Kurt Busiek and all, but in no way would I call "Syndicate Rules" remarkable. It read like the 8-issue filler story that it was.
You know, I'm not sure I want to get this JLA title Meltzer will be writing: anyone who writes a story that now seems almost similar in its approach to the way Steven Spielberg's Munich was written, is not someone whose work I want to read. It's not that I think it'll sink to the low level misogyny of Identity Crisis, but if that's how such a man is going to act, and be so utterly dishonest in how he describes anything, then I'm sorry to say, but I am not interested.
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