JSA 2020 Appreciation

[ComixMaven]

I've begun to wonder if the Second DC Implosion means we will not be getting a JSA book after all. Or at least not for several more years.

[The no face guy]

I would like a JSA book again, big time, but like all things, only if it has a really good writer behind it, whose as passionate about the team as Geoff Johns was.

[ComixMaven]

I would like a JSA book again, big time, but like all things, only if it has a really good writer behind it, whose as passionate about the team as Geoff Johns was.

And doesn't randomly rewrite the characters and their history to show how Kewl and With-It and Woke they are.

[The no face guy]

Not sure...what that is in reference to, but...

I'm excited by the prospect of Geoff Johns writing it again...but then again, I always find when a writer returns to a series after a decade or so it's usually not as spectacular as their initial run.

https://www.cbr.com/geoff-johns-write-new-jsa-comic/

[Jekyll]

I've begun to wonder if the Second DC Implosion means we will not be getting a JSA book after all. Or at least not for several more years.

This will be the likely scenario because DC has no F***ing idea on what to do with properties that do not include Batman.

[ComixMaven]

DC has no F***ing idea on what to do with properties that do not include Batman.

Certainly seems like it. Also seems like they have to force Diversity on us with a capital D whether it is appropriate or not.

Amazing-Man in the JSA is fair game - Roy Thomas created him for the All-Star Squadron because of the lamentable absence of "superheroes of color" during the original Golden Age.

Moving Black Canary and Wonder Woman back to the beginning of the Golden Age is also fair game -- WW only needed to be bumped back a couple of years, Dinah a few more.

There are limits, though, and DC doesn't seem to recognize this. If you want to write about a closeted gay hero in the 1940s - especially with stories set IN the 1940s - the first thing you should do is check the existing characters to see who would be best suited to this kind of reimaging. NOT just grab and snatch and twist a Big Name who has an 80-year history of being flagrantly heterosexual! (There actually is a genuine Golden Age JSA member who has been practically begging for "outing" right from the get-go: Charles McNider, the original Dr. Mid-Nite. But for some unfathomable reason DC not only Won't Go There, they have more than once vehemently shied away from the very idea. I think Roy Thomas considered it, changed his mind, and forgot about it - how else explain his latter-day befuddlement over a line he wrote in Doc's Secret Origins story?)

I think, if Nodell and Finger had any idea how grotesquely their setup for Alan Scott's origin would be warped and distorted, they would have scrapped it and come up with something else. It's bad enough that way too many people think Alan was a railroad engineer, not a civil engineer - but we have now drifted so VERY far away from the 1940s milieu that nobody understands any longer why a white-collar guy would want to "get his hands dirty" on a test run over a bridge that he designed and his construction company built. I wouldn't ordinarily recommend this, but - pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged. Read the section where Dagny and Co. are taking the first test run on the John Galt Line. That is what Alan Scott was doing there - not "running away from" anything.

[sifighter]

Just going to leave the link to the new Hawkman preview.

https://aiptcomics.com/2020/09/04/dc...ew-hawkman-27/

[Johnrevenge]

Just going to leave the link to the new Hawkman preview.

https://aiptcomics.com/2020/09/04/dc...ew-hawkman-27/

I've liked Hawkman's series so far. Wonder how Venditti will write the other members of the JSA (but he seemed to be a fan, judging from Carter's perspective). I think that if DC decides to make an ongoing of the group after the Death Metal, Venditti could be a potential writer for the team.

[achilles]

Not sure...what that is in reference to, but...

I'm excited by the prospect of Geoff Johns writing it again...but then again, I always find when a writer returns to a series after a decade or so it's usually not as spectacular as their initial run.

https://www.cbr.com/geoff-johns-write-new-jsa-comic/

A good point. Case in point, Paul Levitz. I don't know what happened, but the creator of Helena Wayne/Huntress, and a guy who wrote many of Power Girl's earlier appearances, somehow got them totally wrong when he revisited them in Worlds' Finest (nu52). It probably didn't help that Eric Wallace got his hands on Power Girl first, and used her as arm candy for Mr. Terrific, both characters he didn't understand. The smart thing for Levitz to have done would have been to ignore Wallace's efforts with respect to Power Girl, but he didn't, and wrote her and Hunts just...wrong. In PG's case in nearly every way.

OTOH, Power Girl's creator, Gerry Conway, wrote her again shortly before Flashpoint as part of "The League of Titans", a future team comprised of a combination of League people and the Titans, set in the near future, in "The Last Days of Animal Man". And...he wrote her perfectly well, given that she didn't actually do much except talk. But it was all in character at least.

Why some people can come back decades later and still do a good job on some characters, and why others swing and miss is something I don't really understand.

Of course the JSA need a title of their own, but it really has to be someone with a great idea for them, a great understanding of all the various characters and their relationships and powers/skills of the characters, and the ability above all to execute the series well. And that seems to be a bit of a crapshoot. Not totally of course, a guy like Johns, (notwithstanding his inability to write Power Girl in character or sypathetically since he doesn't really like her), still has a better chance of writing a good JSA than a random writer, but...there are others. The guy who wrote JSA vs Kobra, to my mind the best JSA story in nearly two decades and whose name I can't recall at the moment, Gail Simone could probably do a good job, Robinson, provided he agrees to abandon all elements of the nu52 "JSA" (in name only) could too.

[dr-brainwave]

How about James Robinson? or Roy Thomas?

[achilles]

How about James Robinson? or Roy Thomas?

Sure, but as I said, Robinson has prove himself again.

[Factor]

I honestly don't want any past writer near the JSA's relaunch. I think it's time we got new takes.
Or else we'll be always depending on the return of Johns or Robinson or Levitz and so on. The same guys responsible for the current situation the team is at.
Johns has been stalling the JSA's return since forever due to his Rebirth/Doomsday Clock plans.
Levitz wrote terrible versions of PG and Huntress and hasn't written anything truly good in years.
Robinson was the writer behind the New 52 Earth-2 book (plus tons of terrible JL books before that).
I think they've all had their chance and now we need someone new for a change.

[sifighter]

I argue for Gene Luen Yang or Robert Vendetti. Vendetti would be the obvious choice given his work on Justice League and Hawkman, but Yang has shown me in his work that he can handle classic iterations of characters like with Superman vs the Klan but also handle fascinating characters (new and old) with a lot of fun elements like the Terrifics or the New Super-Man.

[CaptCleghorn]

How about James Robinson? or Roy Thomas?

For ANY JSA series, there should be some sort of mention of Roy Thomas, even if he's not a creator. The JSA owes so much to Roy that honoring him with something would be a class gesture respecting history. And history is why the JSA is a franchise we love. I say this without reducing the immense importance of Gardner Fox.

[DrNewGod]

For ANY JSA series, there should be some sort of mention of Roy Thomas, even if he's not a creator. The JSA owes so much to Roy that honoring him with something would be a class gesture respecting history. And history is why the JSA is a franchise we love. I say this without reducing the immense importance of Gardner Fox.

You know, somebody should do a JSA story set at Rutland, Vermont's Halloween Parade, and featuring a Thomas cameo.