The Difference between Justice League, JSA and Titans

[DABellWrites]

JLA is DC's premier team, they set and established the precedent for superhero teams for decades to come that other writers have improved upon.

JSA is DC's old guard, as you can see in the comments, they don't do much beyond legacy and being the old guard. It's not wrong, that's the team's niche. Been that way since the 1970s.

Teen Titans is Junior Justice League.

[lgcruz]

There are more dc teams than that, like birds of pray, suicide squad, legion of superheroes, outsiders, infinity inc, young justice, etc, It´s hard to keep all thjose teams from overlapping each other to some extent, but if I had to define the JLA, the JSA and the TT with a few sentences considering not just what they were supposed to be when they were invented, but what they represent today I would describe them as such.

JLA: A team/gathering of estabilished heroes who rose to the top by themselves and normally work on their own, and only gather for special occasions or to face enemies that couldn't be dealt with by any one the individuals present on their own. Thus featuring people who only exist in jl stories or facing enemies who could be perfectly dealt with solo just weakens the brand.

JSA: A team of estabilished heroes who usually work together and only occasionally have their own independent plotlines, a community of superheroes that look after their own in a way that feels like they grew up together in a small town. Consistent worldbuilding and writing that is respectful of very different values is the key that can make them a sucess.

Teen Titans: A team of heroes that are not individually established, but that by working together grow up into becoming their own heroes, with their own identity and purpose. Thus by association the Titans are estabilished heroes that can easily band together for the occasion as they have history together. Solid characterization and stories that stand on their own is key to their sucess, having them be secondary to the justice league (a team of people trying to live up to the justice league is Young Justice's niche) or being affected by unrelated stories has been a consistent disaster for them.

[John Venus]

I don't have time to post as much as I used to but this topic is such a mind virus I had to drop in my 2 cents.

JSA: The old guard. One half of the team are magic based or influenced heroes (Alan Scott, Spectre, Dr Fate, the Hawks) and the other half is more street level (Hourman, Sandman, Wildcat, Black Canary, Dr Mid nite) and then you have a handful of more sci fi heroes (Mr Terrific, Jay Garrick, Power Girl, Star Girl, Starman). Magic being more like the flashy Indiana Jones plus Lovecraftian style as best emboided by villains like Johnny Sorrow and Solomon Grundy. You can't beat them, you can only drive them back for a period of time. Then you have more street level villains like Icicle, Tigress and Gambler. The JSA wouldn't look out of place fighting a mobster in between regular bouts with cosmic level beings. They also represent the history of the DCU and family and all the convolusions and secrets that come with one. They are a school and a family. Most of them also come from more ordinary roots with middle-upper class jobs; their members are scientists, florists, boxers, rail road engineers, doctors and other ordinary jobs (with Michael Holt being the main exception) when they are not being superheroes.

JLA: the current guard, the first response team and strike force of the DCU. Most of their members are aliens (Superman, Martian Manhunter, the Hawks) or get their powers from alien (Green Lantern) or sci fi based sources (Flash, Red Tornado, Firestorm, Ray Palmer). Most of their enemies are aliens (White Martians, Despero, Starro) or evil scientists (TO Morrow, even Lex Luthor and Prometheus count as gadgeteers). Their relationship to each other tend to be more along the lines of co workers with the occasional romance flaring up between members.

(It is strikes to me that the League being so sci fi heavy may be another reason why WW has a hard time finding the spot light there)

Teen Titans: I'll divide this into Dick Grayson generation and the Tim Drake generation.

The NTT generation covers all sectors: the streets (Dick, Roy, Wally), magic (Raven), sci fi (Cyborg, Beast Boy, Starfire) and mythology (Donna). They are the definition of found family as they all come from vastly different backgrounds and they come with bad guys back engineered to their backstories (Trigon, Gordanians, the Titans of Myth) and you can pretty much tell any story with them. Also, unlike other teams, the women are the heavy hitters especially since some of the biggest scale story arcs (Trigon's invasion, the trip to Tamaran, the war between the Titans of Myth and the Greek Gods) are centered on them.

The Young Justice (Tim's generation) are more grounded, more sitcom based team. Not as heavy on the drama until Johns run.

[Factor]

I don’t really agree that the League is focused on sci-fi to that extent. Sure, a lot of the members have sci-fi origins, but it’s interesting that you mentioned Red Tornado, Firestorm and Atom without taking into account Zatanna, Aquaman, Vixen etc.
Plus the Hawks are as much sci-fi as mystical, with the whole reincarnation angle.
I prefer when the League is more 50-50 in terms of magic/sci-fi.

[Jim Kelly]

I think the reason why there were so many magic-based characters in the late 1930s/early 1940s was because they didn't want to tug on Superman's cape--so they stayed away from the science fiction origins. Although that still didn't stop Captain Marvel from getting sued.

The mystery men were already around before Superman, so doing more characters like the Shadow, Green Hornet, Doc Savage and the Phantom was fair game. Mr. Terrific fits in that category--he wasn't science based, he was just good at everything.

Science based characters like Hourman, the Flash and Dr. Mid-Nite were limited in their powers--so again they didn't challenge Superman's supremacy. Starman maybe was getting a bit too close to Superman's gig--Ted Knight should have been more careful about stealing from the Man of Tomorrow.

When Julius Schwartz revived super-heroes in the 1950s, he was following his bliss. He grew up as a science fiction fan, joined Mort Weisinger's science fiction fan club, co-published a sci-fi fanzine with Mort, became a literary agent for science fiction writers, held the first science fiction convention in New York during the time of the World's Fair--all before getting into comics.

Even Julie's early term as a comics story editor led him to ask for more science fiction based plots on all the Justice Society characters and hire the writers he knew to write them. In the 1950s, he was the editor of the two science fiction anthologies--STRANGE ADVENTURES and MYSTERY IN SPACE--and many ideas that were later applied to the revived super-heroes came out of stories that had appeared in those titles.

[Lee Stone]

Justice League - emergency service jobbers that are always on duty, comprised mainly of DC's more iconic IPs for merchandising reasons.

Justice Society - a group of heroes that work based on dedication and sense of duty, includes many veteran heroes.

Titans - a group that started as a teen social club that grew into a fellowship dealing with more personal threats.

Outsiders - a group of heroes that do things 'their way', comprised of members that feel they 'don't fit in' the other groups.

Teen Titans/Young Justice - the next generation Titans, a modern teen social club, will eventually become their own 'Titans-like' team when they become more experienced.

From a meta standpoint, the main differences between the JL and the others is that it sells best when it's filled with A-listers that have their own titles and are big IPs. This means that the JL title tends to focus on epic battles with little or no character development, as the characters are each under the control of their individual title writers.
Titans and JSA both can get more personal with the stories, dealing more with relationships and character growth because they don't appear in other books.

In the end, though, teams are more about who the members are.
You can have two different teams with the same 'mission statement' because readers may prefer one set of characters over the other.
Avengers/West Coast Avengers and Justice League America/Justice League Europe were essentially the same but the members of each team defined the 'feel' of the books.

Not to mention, when you have teams that have limits to how many members they can reasonably accommodate, there's going to be heroes that want to be in a team but have no team to join. So they create another team.
This can also be a meta thing, where characters A, B and C may sell okay by themselves, but not enough to keep a solo book going. But putting them all together in a team, you might get enough readers from all three of them to keep the title selling.

The JSA, which was the first superteam in comics, was created as advertising for each member's solo features. That was their whole purpose of existing. When a member's solo feature got cancelled and a new hero started, they would get replaced in JSA by them.

[Jim Kelly]

When the Titans were the big fan favourite in the early 1980s, they essentially replaced the Justice League of America. Before that, the J.L.A. was the central group, where the franchises intersected. But then it was the Titans. And the Justice League seemed to let the Titans carry that flag--with most of the big super-heroes leaving the League and letting the Detroit gang take over.

In the aftermath of Crisis, editors struggled to keep any of the iconic members in the Justice League. Which is why Giffen and DeMatteis defaulted to their comical take. Sometimes they got to use big names like Batman--but these guys were always on loan. The writers were better off using secondary characters, because they had carte blanche to do with them as they pleased.

In their original incarnation, as a Junior Justice League, the expectation was that the Titans were the Justice League of tomorrow and would replace the senior characters in a possible future. The Titans being so popular kind of prevented that from happening--but some writers have tried to put the original Titans into a new League (i.e. James Robinson run).