Page 3 of 12 FirstFirst 1234567 ... LastLast
Results 31 to 45 of 174
  1. #31
    Fantastic Member Dr. Ellingham's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Location
    Port Wenn
    Posts
    414

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by caj View Post
    I think most DC readers would agree that the Satellite line-up was one of the best Justice League's we've ever had.
    Of course.

    Quote Originally Posted by caj View Post
    It seems strange that no writer has ever tackled putting those heroes (or the current representation of those heroes) together for a mini-series or storyline.
    Yeah, I've wondered the same thing. Also, regarding the race question:

    1. The satellite League did invite Black Lightning to join, in a story, though I think editorial nixed him joining. (Which is why Meltzer included him in his version)

    2. John Stewart was a reserve Leaguer in the 1970s, and filled in for Hal Jordan at least once.

    The offshoot discussion about the core DC characters being "too white" is interesting. And of course it's true - they are all white. Certainly, reflecting our modern world is important, and whites now "only" make up 75% of the US, down from 85% in 1975.

    But does that mean 75% of the JLA should be white? Or that we can't ever show a group of 5-7 characters of the same race together onscreen? At least if they're white, anyway?

    Or - has the social media platform given too much power to the "snowflake generation", who get uncomfortable - and expect others to acquiesce to their various "sensitive" preferences?

    There are no easy answers. But I do think history is what it is. So can we celebrate the JLA's past? Of course. But should the new stuff be presented as reflective of our world today? Yes. These are not mutually exclusive ideas.

  2. #32
    Retired
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    18,747

    Default

    I didn't think that a thread about the Satellite Justice League would blow up into a discussion of civil rights. And I think if I get too deep into discussing why the comics looked the way they did in the 1960s and 1970s, I will get too far away from talking about the subject I want to talk about, which is the Satellite Era.

    And it seems unfair to argue that a revival of this era can't be done, because of the way the comics were coloured back then. There's loads of comics today that use material from the past, but recast and revitalize the characters so they are more reflective of the real world. Although, for all that, the modern comics are very bound up in American perceptions and aren't really that inclusive.

    As a Canadian, I was only observing the neighbours over the fence in the 1960s and 1970s. I think that the 1960s were much more about civil rights in regards to African-Americans--and others, like women, native people, gay people, other people of colour and people from other linguistic groups couldn't get attention. A lot of leading Black figures were sidelined by politics that portrayed the Black Power movement as some kind of violent uprising--which made it harder to portray the African-American experience in an acceptable manner for mainstream America. By the 1970s, women's rights were much more in focus--and rather than dealing too much with difficult race politics (although there was some), the Justice League mainly dealt with gender politics and giving female characters a bigger profile in the League. You had Black Canary, Wonder Woman, Hawkwoman and Zatanna--plus guest stars like Batgirl, Supergirl, Mera and Phantom Lady.

    It seems to me, if there's a revival series on the Satellite Justice League in the 2020s, it will just do what every comic book does these days: reimagine the characters to be more inclusive.

    Granted that in my 1960s Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, the Caucasoid race group includes people of colour--South Asians, Hispanics, Arabs, Jews. But let's say what we're really talking about is too many WASPs in the group (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). I think I can decrease that number.

    We have to allow that in the 1960s and 1970s, there were a lot of factors that made characters appear white. Besides all the political and commercial reasons, there was a limit to what the colourists could do. And they were stuck between giving characters an offensive hue or colouring them pink. So most characters were pink. If a character was coloured to be Asian, Native or Arab, they often got a bad colour job. It angered me when I saw Arabs given a purple hue--they didn't look anything like Arab people in the real world. Blue eyes were the most common, because they only need one colour plate. Green needs two, brown and purple need three--comics always defaulted to one colour (blue, magenta, yellow or black) whenever possible.

    Now we don't have to worry about economy of colour and we can colour the characters to appear more inclusive. My personal diversity recast (not official, just my own opinion) of the Satellite Justice League goes like this:

    • Superman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman (plus Martian Manhunter, although he wasn't active during the Satellite Years) are all aliens. They don't have to appear like WASPs and there are colouring choices and other details that could be changed so they don't look like WASPs.
    • Hal Jordan is Jewish; Zatanna is half Jewish, half Persian; Wonder Woman is Mediterranean or Mideastern; Ronnie Raymond is Hispanic/Martin Stein is Jewish; John Stewart is African-American; Aquaman is Atantean; Oliver Queen is Canadian with indigenous roots (possibly Metis); Dinah Lance is Creole from Louisiana; Ray Palmer, I have to think more about him.
    • That leaves Barry Allen, Bruce Wayne and Ralph Dibny as the true WASPs in the group. Ralph and Barry just seem so obviously the white guys in the room. And there were several stories in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that established the Wayne family as having relatives in Great Britain--so Bruce has to be partly a WASP, although he could have Native American or Hispanic roots on his mother's side.

  3. #33
    Extraordinary Member Güicho's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    6,402

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post

    • Superman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman (plus Martian Manhunter, although he wasn't active during the Satellite Years) are all aliens. They don't have to appear like WASPs and there are colouring choices and other details that could be changed so they don't look like WASPs.
    • Hal Jordan is Jewish; Zatanna is half Jewish, half Persian; Wonder Woman is Mediterranean or Mideastern; Ronnie Raymond is Hispanic/Martin Stein is Jewish; John Stewart is African-American; Aquaman is Atantean; Oliver Queen is Canadian with indigenous roots (possibly Metis); Dinah Lance is Creole from Louisiana; Ray Palmer, I have to think more about him.
    • That leaves Barry Allen, Bruce Wayne and Ralph Dibny as the true WASPs in the group. Ralph and Barry just seem so obviously the white guys in the room. And there were several stories in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that established the Wayne family as having relatives in Great Britain--so Bruce has to be partly a WASP, although he could have Native American or Hispanic roots on his mother's side.
    Except the Hawks who were actually Egyptian first, I would rather they actually ad new characters rather than just race bend old ones.

    Like I said, Satellite era was a growing and rotating roster, it was just cut off, if you want to "continue" it, in that spirit, keep adding and rotating in the new characters as they chronologically came, don't just race-bend the old ones.


    Quote Originally Posted by Güicho View Post

    Or if they do want to celebrate it, make sure you update them some, if possible with characters actually around or chronology appearing following that era.
    One of the easiest is GL rotating with John Stewart, make that era's Hawks Egyptian by default, add Black Lightning (intro-ed 1977), Vixen (intro-ed 1981) Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi 1985) El Diablo (Sandoval 1989) and others... but most important tell good stories with them.
    Satellite era was always a growing and rotating roster so if you want just continue it as if it kept going chronologically.
    Last edited by Güicho; 11-07-2019 at 12:47 PM.

  4. #34
    Retired
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    18,747

    Default

    The Hawks from Earth-Two were Egyptian. The Hawks on Earth-One were from Thanagar. I don't like confusing the two. There's a lot of stories that could be generated by contrasting the two Carters. Carter on Earth-Two was blond, but Carter on Earth-One was raven-haired with those dark, brooding Joe Kubert eyes--to me, if not for the pink colour, he would be a diversity character.

  5. #35
    Ultimate Member Lee Stone's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Louisiana
    Posts
    12,302

    Default

    Well... it did work in a modern context...



    It was Justice League Unlimited.
    A large cast of members that rotated in and out as needed for the stories. Just like how the Satellite League had 16 members and each story would pull together about a third of them at any given time.
    "There's magic in the sound of analog audio." - CNET.

  6. #36
    Boisterously Confused
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    9,452

    Default

    The fixation on diversity has missed a point of why The Satellite League is a creature (that I much love) of its time. Yes, its (non) diversity is problematic. But so to is the notion that The Satellite League was a Big Powerful Institution on the side of The Man.

    I think it no coincidence that the JLA began a decline right about the time that the utterly anti-institutional revised X-Men began an ascent. Yes, Claremont, Cochrum, and Byrne were writing stories better attuned to the tastes of the comic audience of the time. Still, some of the way people thought about Insiders versus Outsiders was changing.

    The JLA was virtually a meta-societal entity imposing order all over the globe with accountability to absolutely no one but themselves, yet were characterized as being perfectly accepted, and even adored by the institutions of wealth and power. Even in the middle of the JLA's satellite run, big and powerful agencies of authority were beginning to move from the "hero" column into the "villain" column in a lot of popular media. IMO, over at Marvel, the Avengers side-stepped a lot of this. It seems to me that their creators understood early on what was making Hulk and Spider-Man work, and frequently showed the Avengers as walking a fine line with The Man, most notably with the creation of Henry Gyrich as a personification of Authority, and their official gadfly.

    The JL toon, and its JLU successor, explicitly recognized this, most notably in the culminating plot of JLU S1. However, in doing so, the JLU gave away some of the Satellite League's mystique. Don't get me wrong: love me some Timm-Verse, and adore the Timm JL as its own thing. But it's not The Satellite League.

    It's hard to recapture The Satellite JLA faithfully without casting them as allies of The Privileged. Alan Davis got awfully close with The Nail. Still, it's tough to pull off. More to the point, that's probably not who the comics buying public wants to be their heroes any more, and it's certainly not who today's comic writers want to try to make heroes out of.

  7. #37
    Ultimate Member j9ac9k's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    12,009

    Default

    I imagine that's why the satellite League was followed by the Detroit League. Melding those two lineups with their modern versions could be pretty cool.

  8. #38
    Retired
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Posts
    18,747

    Default

    This reminds me of MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, where after a long conversation about THE LITTLE PRINCE, Andre turns it around by saying that he always thought THE LITTLE PRINCE was fascistic.

    Yup every story for little kids when read by adults becomes a fascist statement. Because little kids are powerless and they want to be powerful, so they look to symbols of power to give them something to aspire to. Reminds me of Larry Tate's confession on BEWITCHED (which I've never forgotten) that as a little kid he wanted to rule the world, doesn't every little kid want that?

    There's something very nasty in this, where adults take the genuine, innocent dreams of childhood and then crap all over them to make out that these fantasies are evil--and by association children are evil. No they're not--but adults are for mistranslating child fantasies as Nazi propaganda.

  9. #39
    Incredible Member Ulysses's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2016
    Posts
    544

    Default

    Or maybe just maybe there’s an ever so slight outside chance that not everything in the world is about power?
    “To the future or to the past. To a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone - to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: from the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink - greetings!" - Winston Smith

  10. #40
    DC/Collected Editions Mod The Darknight Detective's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    18,974

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Lee Stone View Post
    Well... it did work in a modern context...



    It was Justice League Unlimited.
    A large cast of members that rotated in and out as needed for the stories. Just like how the Satellite League had 16 members and each story would pull together about a third of them at any given time.
    Yep. It worked perfectly and there's no reason it couldn't translate successfully to the comics now.
    A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!

    Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010

    Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362

    THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?

  11. #41
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2018
    Posts
    5,446

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    Now we don't have to worry about economy of colour and we can colour the characters to appear more inclusive. My personal diversity recast (not official, just my own opinion) of the Satellite Justice League goes like this:

    • Superman, Hawkman, Hawkwoman (plus Martian Manhunter, although he wasn't active during the Satellite Years) are all aliens. They don't have to appear like WASPs and there are colouring choices and other details that could be changed so they don't look like WASPs.
    • Hal Jordan is Jewish; Zatanna is half Jewish, half Persian; Wonder Woman is Mediterranean or Mideastern; Ronnie Raymond is Hispanic/Martin Stein is Jewish; John Stewart is African-American; Aquaman is Atantean; Oliver Queen is Canadian with indigenous roots (possibly Metis); Dinah Lance is Creole from Louisiana; Ray Palmer, I have to think more about him.
    • That leaves Barry Allen, Bruce Wayne and Ralph Dibny as the true WASPs in the group. Ralph and Barry just seem so obviously the white guys in the room. And there were several stories in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that established the Wayne family as having relatives in Great Britain--so Bruce has to be partly a WASP, although he could have Native American or Hispanic roots on his mother's side.
    This was interesting. And I know you said this was your personal diversity recast, but I'm almost positive that Ray Palmer was actually Jewish. I can't remember what issue, but I'm pretty sure he discussed this in a later issue of the Satellite JLA. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

  12. #42
    Astonishing Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    3,770

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Raijin View Post
    I don't think readers of today would be interested in an All-White, All-Plain Justice League. Especially in a time where people are more vocal about this type of thing. Let's progress instead of going backwards.
    They could do it, and just add more diverse members. I liked the satellite era, because it was always a different group of members every issue -- a bit like Justice League Unlimited.

    For diversity, include Kendra Hawkgirl, John Stewart, Black Lightning (who was almost a member), Vixen and bring back Dr. Light II. I was never fond of Cyborg with the JL team -- he's a Titan.

  13. #43
    Mighty Member Uncanny Mutie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    Dallas, TX
    Posts
    1,389

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by kcekada View Post
    They could do it, and just add more diverse members. I liked the satellite era, because it was always a different group of members every issue -- a bit like Justice League Unlimited.

    For diversity, include Kendra Hawkgirl, John Stewart, Black Lightning (who was almost a member), Vixen and bring back Dr. Light II. I was never fond of Cyborg with the JL team -- he's a Titan.
    That pretty much sums it up for me and I was about to say the same thing. Thanks for saving me some typing.

  14. #44
    DC/Collected Editions Mod The Darknight Detective's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    18,974

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by caj View Post
    This was interesting. And I know you said this was your personal diversity recast, but I'm almost positive that Ray Palmer was actually Jewish. I can't remember what issue, but I'm pretty sure he discussed this in a later issue of the Satellite JLA. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
    I remember that story. It was actually a friend of Jean Loring's who was Jewish, not Ray.
    A bat! That's it! It's an omen.. I'll shall become a bat!

    Pre-CBR Reboot Join Date: 10-17-2010

    Pre-CBR Reboot Posts: 4,362

    THE CBR COMMUNITY STANDARDS & RULES ~ So... what's your excuse now?

  15. #45
    Extraordinary Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2018
    Posts
    5,446

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by The Darknight Detective View Post
    I remember that story. It was actually a friend of Jean Loring's who was Jewish, not Ray.
    Oh, I stand corrected. Thanks TDD.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •