Things You Liked and Disliked About Dwayne McDuffie's Justice League of America

[Timothy Hunter]

Pros

-Wrote Vixen better than just about anybody.

-Great art. Even the fill ins looked beautiful.

-McDuffie wrote all of the characters well and true to form.

Cons

-Erased Red Tornado's character development from Brad Meltzer's run

-Introduced the Milestone characters to the universe in an uninteresting way. If you weren't a fan of Milestone beforehand, the crossover wouldn't make you a fan.

-The run never found it's footing because it was caught up in so many crossovers such as The Wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary, Salvation Run, Final Crisis, Batman RIP, and Cry For Justice.

-So many characters were added to the roster that were wasn't time to focus on any of them.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I can't say I was overly fond of the League being amused at Shadow Thief being sodomized by them in order to make sure there was no darkness anywhere near him. The idea made sense, but the glee that the Leaguers seemed to take at the idea that they were going to get to anally rape a supervillain took me right out of that story and kind of soured me on McDuffie's entire run, which was pointlessly stymied by Didio's editorial meddling.

That said, the Injustice League arc was a lot of fun, even if Benes's gratuitous cheesecake was fully unleashed without Meltzer around to discourage him from making every panel about the heroines' asses.

[John Venus]

It's been a minute since I read his run, what I remember the most is his use of Vixen. I love seeing her interact with other heroes especially John Stewart as well as acknowledgement of her history with Bronze Tiger and the appearance of Anansi (which I think was also the first time I ever saw the character outside of the Static Shock character who used it as a code name).

Wonder Woman, Zatanna and Red Tornado fighting Amazo was pretty cool. Even though Zee was included solely because Benes wanted to draw more bewbs, McDuffie made good use of her in that fight.

The main highlight of McDuffie's run is his dialogue and the way he handles character interactions. Whether it's Vixen and John Stewart chatting at a fountain discussing leaders, Luthor, Joker and Cheetah discussing Injustice League members or John Stewart and Black Lightning talking about facial hair, it's always a treat watching how he humanized these characters.

McDuffie's run could have been something truly special. He was the best writer that the DCAU crew ever had and I firmly believe that he could have been one of the best JL writers in history. A lot of us who grew up on JLU and Static Shock were excited to read his run based on just how good his writing was. He really could have brought over a lot of DCAU fans over to the comics. But alas all those editorial interference really derailed his run.

[Hol]

Justice League of America #20. The Flash (Wally West) and Wonder Woman team up issue. Just a fun issue, great writing and beautiful art by EVS. Loved every page of this issue.

I remember enjoying most of the run at the time I read it but honestly, other than #20, it feels pretty forgettable now.

[Nomads1]

Pros

-Wrote Vixen better than just about anybody.

-Great art. Even the fill ins looked beautiful.

-McDuffie wrote all of the characters well and true to form.

Cons

-Erased Red Tornado's character development from Brad Meltzer's run

-Introduced the Milestone characters to the universe in an uninteresting way. If you weren't a fan of Milestone beforehand, the crossover wouldn't make you a fan.

-The run never found it's footing because it was caught up in so many crossovers such as The Wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary, Salvation Run, Final Crisis, Batman RIP, and Cry For Justice.

-So many characters were added to the roster that were wasn't time to focus on any of them.

I liked it as much as it could be liked, but it was hard with so many editorial interfearences. I felt Meltzer's run over-hyped and very dissaponting, so I was looking foward to it. The very first storyline, against the Legion of Doom was already quite good, but I felt it could have been more, if not for the seemingly need to already link it to other "events", such as the Green Arrow - Black Canary wedding, and Salvation Run. After that, it became a recurring fault of the run, going as far as becoming difficult to have a stable line-up (something that's not good for Earth's first line of defense). As for McDuffie's ignoring Meltzer's "development" of Red Tornado, that was already vastly ignoring other writer's develpoment of the character. McDuffie simply turned the clock back once more. I actually felt more frustrated that the superbody that the greatest minds of the DCU got together to give him seemed to go, once again, nowhere, and Reddy was once again easily trashed in the beggining of Robinson's run, with once again someone (in this case, Cyborg) promissing to build him a body that would be a sollution to all his problems.
On the editorial interfearence problems, I feel like someone was actively working to undermine McDuffie's run (and I'm not saying someone was, but that was the feeling I got at the time). For instance, if they'd had let McDuffie in peace, running off with whichever members they left him to run off with, I feel he'd have done a great job (at the time he left, the team was John GL Stewart, Red Tornado, Vixen, Dr. Light, Zatanna and Firestorm, with no reason for guys like Black Canary, Plastic Man, Steel even Wonder Woman not to be around, maybe even more, if Cry for Justice hadn't been greenlit) , but they kept pulling the rug from under him. It could have been a great run, however, as it is, it still leaves some warm fuzzy memories.

Peace

[Thor-Ul]

The Brown Bomber!! LOL.

Now serious, Youcould see how McDuffy was working on the relationships of the characters. That I liked.

What didn't liked me was the editorial interference. And I would liked he explored more the Anansi timeline.

[Primal Slayer]

It's been FOREVER but from what I can remember, the main standouts were Vixen and Canary. The art was also great.

[Holt]

Great cast. Maybe one of my all-time favorite line-ups, but unfortunately the editorial stuff he mentioned at the time kept him from doing anything particularly interesting with most of those characters, especially when he lost a huge chunk of the cast after Final Crisis.

[John Venus]

What makes it even worse is that they wouldn't even let him focus on characters who weren't tangled in big events.

Then they had him go through all the trouble of incorporating all the Milestone characters (including doing all the legal work) into the DCU only to barely use them at all. They even removed a Neil Gaiman quote he used in the comic meant to bring in the Milestone characters to DCU for no real reason and you could tell by McDuffie's tone in the post he used to announce this that he was beyond sick of all the bs.

[SJNeal]

The well documented behind-the-scenes drama sealed this runs fate, and knowing about it has actually soured me on it a bit - though no fault of McDuffie's. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

As far as personal pros/cons, I'd have to agree with most of Timothy Hunter's. While I love the Milestone characters and appreciate what McDuffie was trying to do, I don't think this was the way to try and bring them back. Even discounting all of the editorial interference, the idea itself even seems forced on paper.

[skyvolt2000]

The well documented behind-the-scenes drama sealed this runs fate, and knowing about it has actually soured me on it a bit - though no fault of McDuffie's. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

As far as personal pros/cons, I'd have to agree with most of Timothy Hunter's. While I love the Milestone characters and appreciate what McDuffie was trying to do, I don't think this was the way to try and bring them back. Even discounting all of the editorial interference, the idea itself even seems forced on paper.

They only wanted Static-which would have been fine but no one told Milestone that and way more money and time was wasted.

Gail Simone (and others) wanted to use Rocket in Birds of Prey and got told NO.

McDuffie had the book planned out to issue 50. He started on issue 18 (I think).

SUperman, Batman, Hal, WW & Wally were going to be removed because of issues going on in their book-however everyone was going to be back by issue 50.

Some fans threw a fit when they saw some random Milestone/JLA art and along with issues with 4 black heroes on the team (McDuffie did NOT want one of them on the team-I suspect Black Lightning as that was the only one he did not work on aside from an evil version in Dc Crisis on Earths DVD) called the the book BET JLA.

Interesting enough the book was still among DC's top sellers.

McDuffie was removed from the book and was given another book-he declined. Because the writer on that book did not know he was being replaced in the middle of his run. McDuffie said it was not fair to that writer.

I don't know what book it was but I wonder if it was Supergirl. That book was going to have Static, Wally's kids, Spoiler and Supergirl as a team. We saw part of it but the writer left DC.

[Stanlos]

Pros

-Wrote Vixen better than just about anybody.

-Great art. Even the fill ins looked beautiful.

-McDuffie wrote all of the characters well and true to form.

Cons

-Erased Red Tornado's character development from Brad Meltzer's run

-Introduced the Milestone characters to the universe in an uninteresting way. If you weren't a fan of Milestone beforehand, the crossover wouldn't make you a fan.

-The run never found it's footing because it was caught up in so many crossovers such as The Wedding of Green Arrow and Black Canary, Salvation Run, Final Crisis, Batman RIP, and Cry For Justice.

-So many characters were added to the roster that were wasn't time to focus on any of them.

The crossovers and the fill-in art on the Amazo chapter were the only Cons.

[married guy]

I just remember this run for two things really.
The Wally Diana issue versus Queen Bee and the endless crossovers that would rip through the book every couple of months.

[SJNeal]

McDuffie was removed from the book and was given another book-he declined. Because the writer on that book did not know he was being replaced in the middle of his run. McDuffie said it was not fair to that writer.

I don't know what book it was but I wonder if it was Supergirl. That book was going to have Static, Wally's kids, Spoiler and Supergirl as a team. We saw part of it but the writer left DC.

My timeline could be off, but if that declined book was Supergirl, would that have made the writer Kelly Puckett? Or Sterling Gates...? Either way good on Dwayne for having scruples, although I'd have loved to see him on any Super-title.

[John Venus]

This sums it up: