Geoff Johns Criticism

[Katatonia]

So check it out, I thought about Geoff Johns and how many people actually criticize this dude. At FCBD people smashed on him non-stop. It's sickening. Honestly, I love all of his works. People cite that his Flash and Green Lantern runs are among the best he's ever done. But while they are, his Justice League is incredible. Geoff Johns is a writer who's insanely mainstream, but he's a great writer. His Batman Year One was incredible. I'm liking his work on his take on Watchmen and such. There's a lot of writers out there, but Geoff Johns is more of a cinematic storyteller. His can only work on certain things for that reason. Although, he's versatile in almost everything he does. The fact remains that he's one of the greatest writers of the modern era.

And, I would say he's way better than Bendis. I'm sure if Geoff Johns had did a creator owned series it would be a million times better than Bendis. Bendis's best work was only Daredevil and New Avengers. His New Avengers was super dark, which in turn was the case with his Daredevil. He's a master of writing dark series. His Ultimate Spider-Man was also great. But as far as creator owned stuff. I dislike his stuff a lot. Johns never did anything creator owned from what I remember. But his work on whatever he's worked on has made those series better, and his works are timeless. You can tell when he wrote Flash it was very personal. It felt more real, than a comicbook. His GL was also a lot more personal as well.

He's great, because to him, it's not a story. It's a feeling, a feeling of giving the fans what they want as well as putting his all into everything he does. He took Aquaman a character who was basically a joke, and made him so much more, who would've been able to achieve that if he didn't do it? He made Sinestro, a joke character who was somewhat serious, into an intergalactic terrorist. Then eventually turned him into a neutral hero. Which Cullen Bunn took and did a fantastic job on that Sinestro series which I can't recommend enough to people. It's some amazing work on such a rogue character. Geoff Johns lays the ground work and people work from there.

Honestly, if he never went to DC and did what he did. DC probably wouldn't have survived as well as it has today. Not only that he's in charge of everything that gets produced and is an overseer. His position is incredibly strong in the company. But he pumps nothing out but pure quality. Now he's going to be focusing on the Cinematic Universe which is a good thing. Without Geoff Johns, honestly, DC would've crumbled into nothing. They needed someone who had the vision and talent to take them to new heights. At the time his Flash came out it was destroying Marvel then once his GL came out it was the hottest selling comic of all time more than anything. Bendis couldn't compete with him on New Avengers.

But what I like about Geoff Johns so much, is that he's a student of the old-school, while making it new and tweaking characters the right way. People say his works are somewhat decent. That's further from the truth, his Teen Titans was the best since Marv Wolfman and George Perez's run. And that's a fact. The past GL series were okay at best. They were cheesy and corny at best. After he took it he made it serious and more extreme. He worked around Neckron someone Moore created in his one-shot and made him even more serious. He made a rainbow spectrum of colors in the GL mythos. That entire move was genius, it expanded the universe even more. I hate Starwars with a passion, but it's like expanding that in a better way.

The only other DC guy who's on his level of artistic talent is Scott Snyder. Snyder is very close to Johns, his Batman work was like the same work Johns did in Flash and GL. But Snyder had a one up cause he had Greg Capullo, man when that series dropped that was unreal. No one saw that coming. You get the guy who did Spawn for 10 years doing the character Spawn was mostly created around. Not only that, Capullo's art was more refined and more polished. Even if the story lacked, which it didn't, the artwork alone would've carried it. It was like David M and Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man run. I consider it the best run for many reasons. Although the writing wasn't the best, the artwork saved it completely.

In Geoff Johns case, he works with artists who can capture everything he does. Ivan Reis is one of his main dudes he works with for many reasons. Gary Frank as well, Geoff Johns is a very flexible writer. Ethan Van Sciver even said the artists have a lot of leeway and freedom when working with Johns. That's because he allows them to have free artistic reign within the confines of the script. He's not picky or any of that, Gary Frank has a lot of leeway on Doomsday Clock. Scott Snyder's the same way with his scripts, hence why him and Capullo are the perfect team together. Johns should be praised more than he gets cause he ushered in the new era of DC and made that label explode. And they're still better than Marvel today, that's a fact.

[JackDaw]

There are several things I like about Geoff J. First and foremost he sells a lot of comics, I agree with you that DC were very reliant on his ability to move books for a fair number of years. And invarariably he comes across as a decent and courteous person...something that is difficult to do when so many utterances are scrutinised, and many people seem happy to interpret anything negatively.

I’ve read a few hundred of his comics, and at his best (in his first JSA) I think he was a solid entertaining writer. But, I wouldn’t class him in the ranks of the very top super hero writers.

That’s just my personal view of course. But when I decided to read fewer comics, he wasn’t near to being on list of writers whose work I continue to follow.

Do you believe his current work is as good as his work of say 10 years ago? I ask because when I glance at his recent output in libraries and bookshops, there seems to be page after page with very low panel counts, and very little dialogue. The overwhelming subjective impression is that the story content is very, very thin.

[Orion]

Big fan of Flash, Green Lantern (even though I prefer Kyle), Infinite Crisis, 52, and Justice Society of America (the post-JSA re-launch).

Enjoyed Teen Titans, JSA, and Superman (the One Year Later stuff to New Krypton).

Never read Hawkman or any of his non-GL New 52 stuff.

[Katatonia]

His JSA was fantastic. Regarding his dialogue, he's more of a cinematic person these days. And I get how he makes a nice story by doing that. See, people like Todd McFarlane does the same technique. You allow the artwork to tell the story with a little text. Sometimes too much text can be a bad thing, especially with amazing visuals. His Doomsday Clock is pretty heavy on the dialogue, but it's nice. But I can't hate on this guys talents or even speak ill of him. I like everything he does, and I'm not a mark for him or even a fanboy. I just really appreciate the work he does. As far as a person goes, he's super nice and an all around great dude. Check it out. He's Lebanese, my father's an Iranian. I find it mad cool that Middle Eastern's can create some really awesome things in the comic world. In these days, people claim everyone from the East is some odd terrorist, and yet, one of the main dudes in DC is a Middle Eastern. That alone makes me proud of what I am.

I will say this though, his work on JSA was just as great as his work on Justice League. His Justice League was phenomenal, plus his version of "Atlantis Attacks" was very well done. Unlike some writers, Johns is different. He's an old-school fan and reads old-school stories. So the fact he can take old works, but build on them and expand them into what the equivalent would be today is just amazing. Scott Lobdell and his work on Red Hood and the Outlaws, is mediocre at best. Besides amazing artwork, the actual story sucks. Johns ran Justice League, Green Lantern, Shazam, Aquaman, Forever Evil, Trinity War, etc on the New 52 and all of it was great. In fact, within Justice League, it expands into an even bigger story. But even if he did a few crossovers, he was the main guy writing his own work into the next series crossing over. So I dig that a lot, cause it's all self-contained by the same writer. Zero Year by Snyder was great, the crossovers were awful. Death in the Family was also great. Crossovers were all garbage.

I always said he's a hands on person, cause everything he does, his hands are in it entirely. Green Lantern Vol. 03 was great. The whole 181 issue series. It was super enjoyable. I prefer Kyle Rayner as well. But Hal Jordan's the main dude. Ron Marz was a genius then and still is now. But Johns work on Green Lantern in this new era is the best work on a multi character series to that degree. Green Lantern's cast is HUGE. It's never ending. For someone to write that, then make a rainbow spectrum, introduce new heralds and new factions, then work on old characters like Black Hand and make him an undead terrorist of sorts. The amount of time and dedication he had for that was unreal. That's some of the greatest work I ever seen done by a single writer, along with the artists who worked along side him. I honestly believe that although, I loved previous runs of GL and more currently Robert Vendetti's take cause he's also a super nice writer. Geoff Johns will always have the greatest character run in GL until the end of time.

Here's a great point in what I mean by broken.

Going back to Ron Marz, this also brings up a very good point. Ron Marz is a different kinda writer. People either love him or hate him due to his works on GL. I think he writes more with artwork taking the stage over writing. Sometimes he can be super text-heavy, while other times he's laid back. But he always tells a nice story. One series I loved a lot was Artifacts, I consider that one of the best Indy comics. He wrote great scripts Sejic provided some beautiful artwork. You know Sejic loved that series, he was all over it. The prelude in the first 13 issues was genius using different artists, at that time Top Cow had some great talents. Even if Top Cow tries to make a comeback it's not like back then. I still consider them a broken and fragmented company. You can defend them all you want, but they're suffering a lot of hardships without most of the people they used to have. Sejic, Hawkins and a few others are keeping it going.

I remember they had that talent search with Ron Marzs' script from Artifacts. Although it was cool to see people make their own versions and eventually break in. They handed Artifacts to the people who won that talent search, and that was quite possibly one of the worst moves they could've done. Sells on that series plummeted, it was complete and utter shit being produced it was a joke. Like "ROM" was a poorman's version of Sejic. It's almost as if he was trying to be him. The only person who became widely known from all of that trash was Nelson Blake II. And what sucked even more is that Ron Marz loved that series. And like he had to end it cause it had gotten cancelled due to poor sales. Marz was like what his name said, the Architect of the Top Cow Universe, without him, it's like that imprint's dying out. He finishes Witchblade, Magdalena, etc. His Magdalena was amazing. Actually, all of it was. Besides the new series which is complete garbage. Blake's visuals worked great with Ron Marz.

That alone was like Top Cow's golden era. What's even more awful is that they don't even produce Hardcover collections of any of this stuff. The only hardcover I actually own is the Artifacts Deluxe HC Signed. And Aphrodite IX: The Complete Series HC. Along with Sejic's HC's. I used to own both Witchblade and Darkness HC Compendiums of the first volumes brand new. But I sold one to a really good friend of mine on his birthday, who had literally bought that big ass Darkness Statue. So he put the book right beside it. I offered to give it to him for free. But he insisted he pay for it since it's a pretty rare book. And traded the Witchblade at a comic shop for all for B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs HC's brand new, which was a steal along with Hellspawn Complete HC brand new. So that was a deal I wasn't going to pass up. However, the Witchblade book I traded was banged up pretty badly. It was in cellophane but was in bad shape. It was poorly printed.

The Darkness, although I wanted to keep that book. That book had a weird problem with it as well. One I never seen before, which shocked me. The inside pages were like folded within themselves and poked up. Although I kept it sealed. The fact that I knew this book could've possibly been damaged urked me a lot and I sold it. It was really weird. Like the books as well were both printed in China of all places. The binding looked like they were going to fall apart even through the cellophane. They need to rerelease both series in Complete Collection forms. With a certain amount of volumes for each series. Including all of it chronologically. If I was Marc Silvestri, I would do it like that. In the case of compendiums and Omnibuses for this company. They just don't work. They're poorly printed. They could do these collections like the current Image books being published in Absolute length. And while they're at it they could also do Cyber Force since the "Compendium" never came out.

[RamblingMan]

His Green Lantern/JSA are great which is all I have read. Haven't read any of his recent stuff to know how he has evolved in his writing.

[Katatonia]

He's evolved pretty well. I'd say he's a very cinematic writer, more than a comic writer. His stories all play out like a great movie. Or, in his case, nicely done animated films. I'm telling you, read his Justice League from start to end. And you'll see why he's still one of the best guys. And honestly, it's not just hype. He's just a damn good writer. My only complaint is I wished his New 52 run on Justice League was concluded with him as the writer. He only went up to Issue #50, then left. Issues #51, and #52 are written by Dan Abnett feel so out of place. But I understood why he did it like that. If he continued writing past Issue #50, he'd have to write the Rebirth Issues, so it makes sense as to why he dropped it after Issue #50. But he could've made it all self-contained if he wanted to. But regardless of that, the Darkseid War was a great ending to the build up at the start. And I still find myself re-reading this series all the time, cause it's so much fun.