Is dc confused about their justice league titles?

[mortymantis]

It seems since the new 52 they have struggled with the concept of the justice league

Let me lay outs thoughts and you guys give feed back

1the new 52 jl started strong and had a five year gap. Then with forever evil it becomes the batman/lex luthor show. From there the book had a nice story with amazo virus and seems to be on the right track with darkseid war. No complaints there. But it seemed like it took forever for this book to find itself. Has it?

2. Justice league dark got canned. Why? People seemed to like it but it didn't take off and didn't make the sells

3. The justice league of America new 52 was an odd book to begin with. They advertised characters that never did anything like Simon baz hawkman and others? When forever evil happened it just turned into the Martian manhunter show.

4. Justice league United got a good start. Especially with animal man and green arrow. But now it's going from space to horror? And a lot of the solid characters are gone?

5. The new justice league of America which is really the same justice league but totally out of continuity. Decent story but the no continuity is confusing. Why not make a different roster with characters like elongated man or other well known historic jla roles?


My thoughts. Discuss.

[Lee Stone]

I think DC was trying to do the Avengers thing by having multiple titles under the brand, but coming into the New52 with only seven members they really had to stretch it.
Right now they have all their eggs in one basket by having the Big 7 all in Johns book.
They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by using the same team in Hitch's JLA.

For the other titles to work as "Justice League" books, though, they're going to have to split them up. Like put Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel in United and if they launch another put Flash and whoever Green Lantern is this month in it.

Btw... Justice League Dark was one of the launch titles I actually liked. I loved Milligan's Shade the Changing Man.
But being a Justice League team was a turn-off for me. It screamed inevitable crossovers and JL members popping in.
I think I would have been more interested if it was the same characters and same creative team but a different name. Like Shadowpact or Sentinels of Magic.

And although I haven't been reading the League books, it appears that JLD suffered from constant writer changes and never quite found its voice.
Something that Justice League United looks to be going through now.

[AlexanderLuthor]

It seems since the new 52 they have struggled with the concept of the justice league

Let me lay outs thoughts and you guys give feed back

1the new 52 jl started strong and had a five year gap. Then with forever evil it becomes the batman/lex luthor show. From there the book had a nice story with amazo virus and seems to be on the right track with darkseid war. No complaints there. But it seemed like it took forever for this book to find itself. Has it?

2. Justice league dark got canned. Why? People seemed to like it but it didn't take off and didn't make the sells

3. The justice league of America new 52 was an odd book to begin with. They advertised characters that never did anything like Simon baz hawkman and others? When forever evil happened it just turned into the Martian manhunter show.

4. Justice league United got a good start. Especially with animal man and green arrow. But now it's going from space to horror? And a lot of the solid characters are gone?

5. The new justice league of America which is really the same justice league but totally out of continuity. Decent story but the no continuity is confusing. Why not make a different roster with characters like elongated man or other well known historic jla roles?


My thoughts. Discuss.

Crossovers killed Justice League Dark, which I actually think is a solid idea. It's coming back as the Dark Universe and dropping the JL. JLI was killed by crossovers. JLA was killed by crossovers....notice a pattern. Those books only existed to further some other story

[mortymantis]

I think DC was trying to do the Avengers thing by having multiple titles under the brand, but coming into the New52 with only seven members they really had to stretch it.
Right now they have all their eggs in one basket by having the Big 7 all in Johns book.
They're trying to have their cake and eat it, too, by using the same team in Hitch's JLA.

For the other titles to work as "Justice League" books, though, they're going to have to split them up. Like put Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel in United and if they launch another put Flash and whoever Green Lantern is this month in it.

Btw... Justice League Dark was one of the launch titles I actually liked. I loved Milligan's Shade the Changing Man.
But being a Justice League team was a turn-off for me. It screamed inevitable crossovers and JL members popping in.
I think I would have been more interested if it was the same characters and same creative team but a different name. Like Shadowpact or Sentinels of Magic.

And although I haven't been reading the League books, it appears that JLD suffered from constant writer changes and never quite found its voice.
Something that Justice League United looks to be going through now.

I like the idea of breaking up the main players into the sub teams. Wasnt justice league Detroit like that?

[Panfoot]

As someone who doesn't normally read team books, having the main Justice League book and the JLA book both having the exact same lineup(while also being out of continuity/before the current stuff going by the costumes?) just seems confusing.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

The reason JLA exists slightly out-of-step with continuity is because Bryan "Ultimates/Authority" Hitch said he wanted to do a Justice League book with as close to the classic lineup as he could be allowed, and DC, being in the business of wanting to make books that will in turn make them money, quite reasonably said sir yes sir. They can come up with ad hoc continuity explanations after the fact if they have to, which is where a pretty huge chunk of comics continuity has always come from anyway.

[mortymantis]

Crossovers killed Justice League Dark, which I actually think is a solid idea. It's coming back as the Dark Universe and dropping the JL. JLI was killed by crossovers. JLA was killed by crossovers....notice a pattern. Those books only existed to further some other story

I forgot about jli

They didn't get that one right at all. Nothing like the humorous original

[Nite-Wing]

DC rebooted and they wanted One main JL team, then they had JL international
The main JL title has mostly struggled til about the time Forever Evil started. Ever since then Johns has got his stuff together and managed to produce a good team book.
Every other JL title hasn't been that good. JL dark was a nice book but somewhere down the line it became less about utilizing the magic universe in DC and more about pushing crossovers.
Now its gone and we have JL united and that book did the often repeated team coming together opening arc which pretty much killed interest on the title

DC is trying but ultimately I think they need a new writer on the main JL title. Johns has been on the book for 4 years now and its still failed to really utilize every member of the team.

[SmokeMonster]

I don't see what's so confusing. If Batman and Superman can have numerous titles, all taking place at different times, why can't the Justice League..? I don't see how this book is an example of new 'lax continuity' either. It's always been like this. We had Eternal and Endgame going on at the same time, just like Unchained and Doomed, etc.

And they do have different lineups (not that I think that's even necessary). JLA is just the core seven. JL has Shazam, Power Ring, Lex Luthor, Captain Cold, and I imagine after Darkseid War, we'll get an arc with Jim Gordon's Batman, de-powered Superman, etc.

Also, JLUnited looks like it's going to be the League that features other DC characters. At least that's what I got from the last page of the preview.

[Lee Stone]

I like the idea of breaking up the main players into the sub teams. Wasnt justice league Detroit like that?

Sort of... but the only A-lister was Aquaman. J'onn had been out of the picture for a long time, so he wasn't as strong of a pull.

Then they replaced Aquaman with Batman near the end.

JLDetroit was a nice idea but the very definition of the team (to always be available) ruled out virtually every member that had their own series.

If they were a bit more lax on that and swapped out Elongated Man, Zatanna or J'onn for Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman it might've lasted longer.
As it was, it was more like Aquaman and the Outsiders.

[RobinFan4880]

The new JLA is simply taking place in the past, not a big deal. Eternal was the past and Endgame the future for Batman. No one rioted.

Realistically, the Justice League is also set in the past, what with Hal not being a space outlaw and all. Well, either the past or the future, as compared to the current run in Green Lantern. Either way, they are not syncing up any time soon.

The problem with the other Justice League titles was that they didn't have enough a-listers and got bogged down in crossovers.

People may not like the Justice League name being attached to JL Dark but that name really helped bolster the title sales wise. With out the JL name, it would have failed much faster than it did.

[Superdoom]

Continuity across DC's line is sloppy. Having the books connect but tell their own stories would make them stronger like the Superman comics in the 1990s. Those were four totally unique books that came together to tell a weekly story and they were a lot better than the stuff coming out today because everybody got together to come up with cool ideas for the entire year and the editors helped them to make sure their stories were connecting with each other instead of dictating the stories because they really want to be writers.

[Robotman]

I like the fact that there is now loose continuity. Not everyone has the cash to purchase an entire line of books if they want to follow one story. Hitch's JLA by itself is $5.99! Plus the current market is much more reliant on tpb sales. So having stories taking place at different times won't make much of a difference when people read the individual collections.

[Badou]

It all goes back to DC rebooting everything with the New 52 and forcing this 5 year timeline limit. It made everything very confusing. DC wanted the main JL team to be a fairly small team of DC's "biggest heroes". Noting wrong with that. The problem is that no one really knew what exactly survived the reboot and how exactly to use certain characters and teams, like Booster and the JLI. Batman had most of his stories stick but Superman was basically completely rebooted. In those 5 years the JL team just had the same members, but the problem is that DC has this huge backlog of characters they wanted to use in the reboot that sort of need a larger and more established JL team in order to work. It's sort of difficult to have all these subset JL teams, like a JLI, that house all these lower tier characters when the main JL team is still pretty fresh and finding its footing.

It does seem Johns has finally figured out how to write the JL book. So hopefully we can start to see more JL teams/books that fit and make sense in relation to the main JL title now that the main title has hit its stride. I think people have a much clear idea about what made it through the reboot and what didn't compared to a few years ago.

[mortymantis]

I don't think you can use the argument that the new jla book takes place in the 5 year gap bc of cyborgs suit

But I was hoping that it would


And...

What about the justice league of America new 52 that flopped? I think everyone forgot about that