It feels like the true success of DC should almost be measured by the success of its NON justice league characters in a way.
What I mean is this. I've mentioned it occasionally and something that struck me is that all they can do is make the iterations of "Justice - Something"
and they're families and spin offs. They had the Shadowpact for a very long time and eventually they made it "Jl: Dark" and I swear people seemed to act like
it was some new property and "Why didn't they do this sooner".
One of the craziest ripples from the justice league being SUUUCH A focus in Dc, is that the elseworld stories where the JL breaks up and we follow the adventures of a "B-team"
have been some of the more compelling stories. Injsutice is a superman batman story, yes, but its a story in which we actually get a lot of f lets say "Follow up" on LOTS of minor characters.
DCeased is the same way. AND ITS AWESOME.
Futures end was actually pretty good as well honestly if you like Terry McGuiness.
I really tend to agree. What that means though varies. I want to see real bold moves and advance the story lines a bit, but not things like Future State where they trot out a bunch of the same characters in new identities,or what they did with Tim this week. Those things aren't really bold anymore, its become passé.DC could stand to make more bold moves.
I remember once saying: The New Warriors could become something a lot bigger if they did a line wide story line where the Avengers, The FF, and the X-teams vanished or went off into space and didn't return for X amount of years. Someone suggested they thought I was referencing the original "Heroes Reborn" and I wasn't, there's a lot of stories like that I saw a Cartoon where they got lost fighting darkside too. And I think it happened in young justice or something as well. The reality is it does 2 things.
In the JLA isolation book (just one book) it give the Main DC guys some crazy space adventure. Dc can make that as bold as they need. You can hand it to Morrison or someone else for matter it a million different "what's happening with the justice league" and that book can be incredible. Just set it up correctly. Lead up to it with stories of personal lives and things that are really important to those characters.
Then they leave for 8 years. What happens? LOTS of things. Its not just a matter of them disappearing is the fall out of what happens to all their stuff. Its an insane resource rush, of JLA toys when they're not there. There's fortress of solitude stuff. There's Atlantean, and Theymiscrian turmoil. There's villain's and monster's and space for new toys. Just don't take everyone off the board and then drop the audience off in the future.
Its not even like it hasn't been done and successfully, its just not been done with the utter intention to grow all the other characters. Supes got replaced by what, Alpha Centurion, Batman was Azrael (and lots of others), and that was awesome, but the idea that the JL goes to weird otherspaces and citadels at the end of time and always return and nothings changed? Its a huge narrative failure and missed opportunity at times.
----------
There's a lot of other bold things they can do. Leviathan really jumped out at me but... I saw obsidian and thought "Wow, Infiniti Inc..." lots of other books and characters that the dc book line just leaves on the table? Hell remember "Collapser"?. Hell all KINDS of chars never see the light of day again but they'll never be that thing, because every conversation somewhere is "Well why isn't the JL taking care of this. OH its too small. Got it."
Fix it Dc.