Modern Origins: What's a plausible reason for the formation of Justice League?

[K. Jones]

Aw I'd written a big thing but I guess it didn't come through. Definitely use Snapper Carr as our audience character, have him be a young adult coming to terms with burgeoning superpowers and needing help.

DESPERO is my impetus; he's got it all as far as I'm concerned; space despot + interdimensional aspect. And a power-set that can counter easy victories by Martian or Superman or Wonder Woman. But while I think he's the guy, I don't think he's someone you can present alone - he's got to be part of an ensemble of villains. Or rather; a conspiracy of villains. The story begins as it does in the original JLA run with Flash encountering escaping slaves. This brings in the Flash/Superman team-up as the provider of the slaves to Despero's evil empire - which itself is just allegorical for Real World criminal enterprises - to handle KANJAR RO, the space slave-trader. At this point most of the JLA have never "teamed up" but many of them have teamed up in Brave & Bold style pair-ups. So many of them haven't met other ones, but many have, so some can vouch for others, some can't, in the ways you'd tend to expect - Flash and GL know each other. Flash and Superman have raced. Superman has met Green Lantern. Superman has met Batman. Superman has met Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman and Superman have "encountered" Aquaman. So on. Superman in particular has a stake in stopping Kanjar Ro and freeing people from slavery because he's Superman. And HYATHIS comes in at this point as XO of the Hyathis Corporation bringing the cosmic "corporate allegory" in.

The next piece of the puzzle are "space weapons" - the space arms black market that is bolstering Despero's power, and that's where Green Lantern comes in while dealing with XOTAR, the WEAPONS MASTER. And that's where Green Lantern teams up with Wonder Woman. And perhaps SATURNA is the one taking the weapons. Cameo drops for Rann and Thanagar can come through this space weapon pipeline.

There's a tangent for "just how Snapper Carr gets in contact with everybody". And that's through Robin, Dick Grayson, in a story tackling Doctor Ivo working on an "early version of Amazo" that isn't fully JLA powered yet.

So at this point we have DESPERO at the top, and his organization pulls in the ensemble of, KANJAR RO, HYATHIS, WEAPONS MASTER and SATURNA, providing impetus for Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern to pull together. Batman and Martian Manhunter are teamed up as "detectives" working out an X-Files style mystery - this is where the APPELAXIAN stuff comes into play. Weird metamorphic elemental seeds of some variety with some "Invasion"/"Body Snatcher"/"Body Horror" thrown in - and their metamorphic powers are a good counter to Martian Manhunter's easy access to shape-shifting and phasing. Despero perhaps used Appelaxian crystals specifically to counter the Martian and Batman, the guy with no powers, will be the one who has to cleverly free J'onn from being taken off the board for the final blow.

At this point the story has SIX villains - Despero and his five story-linked "agents", more or less. Ivo & Amazo in a small role.

Aquaman is your wild card. Something to do with the interdimensional portals and Despero's modes of invasion or stealing people. To take Atlantis off the board, TRINO and his kind, the kind of humanoid sea-monster mer-man thing from Showcase 30, which were underwater interdimensional raiders, were already enslaving Atlantis and Aquaman was doing the whole freedom fighter thing down there. He comes in clutch with timely aid from a purple-eyed underwater street orphan kid; Garth, and repels the interdimensional invaders and is able to arrive for the final fight, which I imagine takes place in Rhode Island.

Anyway, with a mind-tyrant, slave traders, arms dealers, an evil space corporation, some ecological elemental body horror beasts and such, you've got Allegory out the wazoo, which also gives all of our Justice Leaguers a reason to get involved by way of their Civilian Identities, too.

Story ends with set-up for the next one; clues and things that tease MERLIN and FELIX FAUST and the DEMONS THREE coming in the next one, all preceding the STARRO, which is a big mystical/dimensional (Doctor Strange-esque) Lovecraftian thing with Atlantis (and Camelot) at the center of it, where ancient and cruel magicians are up to no good, their powers stop heavy hitters like Superman dead in his tracks, STARRO takes the role of eldritch Cthulhu, and the team needs the addition of Zatanna, and probably the timely help from the Nth Metal that Hawkman brings to a fight, to deal with it. You can probably squeeze Jason Blood into the mix, too.

[Ascended]

I really like this angle as it's character-driven.

Thanks, but shouldn't all fiction be character driven? At least most of the time?

K. Jones, that is one badass layout. That's a lot of worldbuilding, and I think you actually kind of captured a unique vibe for the League. I feel like the modern League usually just reflects the flavor of whatever big name is on the page, but you've got a consistent tone and theme that makes it feel more like its own thing, a franchise unto itself. Nice.

For myself, I always thought Starro was the best unifying threat for the League. It's a serious enough threat to justify the creation and maintenance of an organized League, but it's not an endgame, Darkseid level threat. Plenty of room for the sequels to go bigger.

Don't have a plot so much as an outline but I imagine a successful invasion; the heroes barely know each other, much as Jones suggests. Some are already aware of/investigating Starro, some are totally ignorant of the coming threat. When the starfish comes, each tries to handle it their own way, and fail. Much of the world falls to Starro. Creepiest invasion ever; the world doesn't stop; the only real damage done to anything is where the heroes themselves fought. People still work, and eat, and sleep, it's not a dystopia with smoking ruins....they're just all Starro, working and eating and sleeping in service of the hivemind. The heroes have to lead the survivors, keep them safe and hidden, find out how to break Starro's hivemind without killing everyone, and then go to space to beat up an alien starfish the size of a continent.

Some supporting cast and a few heroes get taken along the way, so you got your hero v hero battles and your personal stakes, your betrayals and secrets being revealed. Just imagine the conversation between young Robin and a heavily chained Starro-faced Batman, with Starro now knowing everything Bruce knows? You got heroes showing that STEM prevents alien invasions and winning because of science and not violence. You got various kinds of threats and emotional sabotage and the mental fallout is going to hit the heroes in their various emotional weaknesses. You've got your horror vibes, your zombie proxies, your high-concept sci-fi, your ancient fantasy history (because of course Atlantis knows about Starro, and Themyscria probably does too, and there's ways to tie it to Krypton and Mars as well). You've got your mystery, your big superhero slug fests, and a threat that can't just be punched away.

And you can push the envelope and reveal certain things in ways that can be somewhat undone with "nobody remembers what happened when they had a starfish on their face." Have a Starro'd Lois learn that Clark is Superman and tell him how disappointed she'd be that he didn't trust her with that. She doesn't remember it afterwards but Clark has something to think about.

Knowing that the whole thing could have been avoided, maybe easily, by working together from the start, the League is formed.

[Lukmendes]

Thanks, but shouldn't all fiction be character driven? At least most of the time?

It depends on what's the focus, we have Junji Ito's horror manga, and it's definitely not character driven, to the point that one of the few times he bothered to develop the character some more in Uzumaki, it really showed the issues he has with writing characters, as they're bland and repetitive, and if the focus was supposed to be on 'em, it would've sucked, but, the focus is not on 'em, it's on whatever phobia Junji Ito decides to use.

Super heroes can use a similar idea, with stories that aren't about the characters, but the adventures they get into, or whoever's face they're punching, doesn't have to be just that, the same way it doesn't have to be just drama, balancing out between one and the other can help in making stories not be too repetitive, specially in a team setting.

[krazijoe]

I like the Starro idea, but I also like where all their individual arch-enemies get together to try to take them out individually to rule and thus forcing the heroes to come together to save the world.

[Ascended]

It depends on what's the focus, we have Junji Ito's horror manga, and it's definitely not character driven

Well I did say "most" of the time.

I like the Starro idea, but I also like where all their individual arch-enemies get together to try to take them out individually to rule and thus forcing the heroes to come together to save the world.

I like a good Injustice League or Secret Society of Super-Villains, and them organizing before the heroes is an interesting wrinkle, but I dunno if I like what it says about the League. It implies the bad guys are more capable of setting aside their differences and working together towards shared goals. I feel like it makes the League more defenders of the status quo than heroic activists, yknow? But I would be willing to have my mind changed if a story presented it right.

[9th.]

Giant alien invasion is fine; Starro, Darkseid, Dexstar whatever works at the time.

[marhawkman]

Giant alien invasion is fine; Starro, Darkseid, Dexstar whatever works at the time.

Dex-Starr? you mean Atrocitus's cat?

[Lukmendes]

Giant alien invasion is fine; Starro, Darkseid, Dexstar whatever works at the time.

The league starting because of a cat sounds great .

[9th.]

Dex-Starr? you mean Atrocitus's cat?

Yes, the one and only

[Alan2099]

I like a good Injustice League or Secret Society of Super-Villains, and them organizing before the heroes is an interesting wrinkle, but I dunno if I like what it says about the League. It implies the bad guys are more capable of setting aside their differences and working together towards shared goals. I feel like it makes the League more defenders of the status quo than heroic activists, yknow? But I would be willing to have my mind changed if a story presented it right.

Fair enough.

So let's say the villains aren't working together by choice. Some other villain, somebody with mind control powers, has taken over (or is influencing) the bad guys. So the Injustice Society (or whatever name we're using) are actually just pawns being used by some baddie for his own master scheme (and when they shake off the effects, they aren't too happy about it either.)

[Ascended]

Fair enough.

So let's say the villains aren't working together by choice. Some other villain, somebody with mind control powers, has taken over (or is influencing) the bad guys. So the Injustice Society (or whatever name we're using) are actually just pawns being used by some baddie for his own master scheme (and when they shake off the effects, they aren't too happy about it either.)

Okay, that's a fun twist for a League origin. I could get behind that.

Been rolling the idea around the last couple days, trying to think of how this idea could be executed in a way that'd appeal to me and I think I found the answer in the 1/6 insurrection.

I don't wanna get political here, but such a parallel would work for me; the villains wouldn't share a lot of the same goals or agree on many details; Lex is the ultimate capitalist pig while Ra's is a eco terrorist, yknow? But all of them, being manipulated by a single vision like Despero or somebody, and working together to break society and build one in their own image (but really the image of the puppet master)....that fixes my concerns about the villains looking more forward-thinking and organized than the heroes. It provides the kind of big stakes a League origin demands, but a more sinister, subtle threat than a giant alien invasion. It's more visceral and real but still has that crazy, high concept superhero vibe.

Anyone remember the Freedom Fighters mini from the 00's? It could have that kind of feel to it, that heightened sense of political theater and drama, and that'd make for a very different, but still viable, League origin.

At least for me. YMMV of course.

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

Well I did say "most" of the time.



I like a good Injustice League or Secret Society of Super-Villains, and them organizing before the heroes is an interesting wrinkle, but I dunno if I like what it says about the League. It implies the bad guys are more capable of setting aside their differences and working together towards shared goals. I feel like it makes the League more defenders of the status quo than heroic activists, yknow? But I would be willing to have my mind changed if a story presented it right.

Where have you been? "Defenders of the status quo" is what the League has virtually ALWAYS been. They've NEVER been "heroic activists" (at least not for long).

[Ascended]

I'll admit it's half head canon but the basic premise of the costumed superhero is a forward-thinking, socially active role. The very act of wearing a mask and going outside the law to find justice indicates that the hero recognizes the flaws within established institutions. By its nature, the superhero is not a defender of the status quo.

Granted, a lot of factors have muddied those waters; the corporate interests, the nature of serialized narratives that can't actually change the setting, a lot of definitive stories being written in more conservative times that have influenced the IP's ever since......heroes don't achieve what they set out to, and that makes them look like they're just keeping the boat from rocking. But even within the limits the genre is bent around, it can be read as the actions of hero and villain canceling each other out; all the effort the hero makes to improve the world are countered by the villain and vice versa, resulting in the world remaining largely unchanged.

I'm a big fan of the Golden Age, where the heroes were much more clearly written as outlaw vigilantes akin to Zorro or Robin Hood, and that Age influences my perspective on the genre a lot. But even though heroes (typically) aren't allowed to be as obviously anti-establishment as they originally were, at the core it remains the same. If these people believed in the system, they wouldn't be hiding their identities and wearing costumes, they'd be cops and politicians.

[bat39]

I think all the origins we've gotten so far more or less provide plausible and solid reasons for the League to exist. If we're talking something that could plausibly work in live-action, I think what Snyder gave us broadly makes sense - there's an alien invasion coming, and Batman proactively works to recruit the other heroes he can discover in order to be ready. But the traditional idea that a bunch of heroes happen to band together in the face of an alien thread works perfectly fine too. In fact, I sincerely hope the inevitable Justice League reboot will adapt Morrison's White Martian story (or the JLU origin).

I also prefer to think of the Justice League, at least in the early days, as more of a club or association than an 'organization' per se, which was how it was traditionally depicted as anyway. As in, they have a headquarters and they have regular monthly meetings, but they have an understanding that they'll band together to deal with major threats, and/or generally be a support group and a source of community for each other during 'peace' time. So there's no 'chain of command' as such, or some kind of professional obligation - it's more like a fraternity to begin with.

I'll admit it's half head canon but the basic premise of the costumed superhero is a forward-thinking, socially active role. The very act of wearing a mask and going outside the law to find justice indicates that the hero recognizes the flaws within established institutions. By its nature, the superhero is not a defender of the status quo.

Granted, a lot of factors have muddied those waters; the corporate interests, the nature of serialized narratives that can't actually change the setting, a lot of definitive stories being written in more conservative times that have influenced the IP's ever since......heroes don't achieve what they set out to, and that makes them look like they're just keeping the boat from rocking. But even within the limits the genre is bent around, it can be read as the actions of hero and villain canceling each other out; all the effort the hero makes to improve the world are countered by the villain and vice versa, resulting in the world remaining largely unchanged.

I'm a big fan of the Golden Age, where the heroes were much more clearly written as outlaw vigilantes akin to Zorro or Robin Hood, and that Age influences my perspective on the genre a lot. But even though heroes (typically) aren't allowed to be as obviously anti-establishment as they originally were, at the core it remains the same. If these people believed in the system, they wouldn't be hiding their identities and wearing costumes, they'd be cops and politicians.

I don't think the superhero concept is inherently some kind of left-leaning 'progressive' concept. That's a lot of revisionist thinking that periodically crops up, and has recently cropped up again amidst the 'woke' era we're currently in.

These guys aren't vigilantes because they don't believe in the system, or at any rate, the goals of the system. They're vigilantes because they believe that the system is ineffective (or not fully effective) and that it needs a little 'outside' help. Batman, even when he's at his most vigilante, isn't fundamentally opposed to the objectives or the existence of the GCPD. He simply believes that they are either too corrupt, too incompetant, or simply overwhelmed, to deal with crime in Gotham, particularly from super-villains. The moment he finds a 'good cop' in Jim Gordon, someone who embodies the ideals that the GCPD should abide by, Batman wastes no time in forming an alliance which, at it's best, basically makes him a deputized officer of the GCPD.

Yes, because they are 'outside' the system, they can't be corrupted and aren't bound by its red tape and inefficiencies, not to mention vested interests. They can be more openly compassionate and humane to the public and, on occassion, even criminals than any formal law enforcement authority can usually be. But that doesn't mean that they are some kind of radicals who want to tear down the existing social order, or even significantly change it. They are defenders of the status quo who basically fight to keep the city, or the world, together so that ordinary people and their leaders have a shot at effecting real change.