I just read Justice League of America #31.
It is truly remarkable. I don't know that I've seen a book, a book which should be the flagship of the DC universe, destroyed so thoroughly so quickly by outside editorial interference. At this point, I would advocate the summary dismissal of the entire editorial staff responsible.
I have no words to express the degree to which my jaw dropped at how comprehensively this book was dismantled. There is a foul taste in my mouth. They've just driven this book back to the depths it was before Waid's Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare and then Grant Morrison revived the book as DC's legitimate "World's Greatest Heroes", and for the same spine-crushingly stupid reasons.
Plus, page one panel 4 clearly shows Diana, Wonder Woman, but Zatanna is addressing Dinah, Black Canary.
Also, Dinah engages in spousal abuse, which has its own special kind of distaste.
Bah.
I were Dwayne McDuffie, I'd be disappointed, but ultimately not unhappy at being fired from such a weak second sister destined to be clusterfucked.
I were DC, I'd start getting my resume in order.
Posted by Greg at June 27, 2009 8:03 PM
The Hal Jordan thing is particularly vexing because it happened in JLA a few months ago, but the Cry for Justice mini (which is where the "proactive JLA" story will be told) doesn't come out until next week. Because nothing says "proactive" lie quitting the JLA months before your new team is up and running.
Anyway, I wanted so badly to like the McDuffie JLA because McDuffie is just an outstanding writer, but it was just such a fiasco (almost entirely, I hasten to point out, for reasons entirely beyond Dwayne's control).
The sad thing is that I am such a sucker that I will no doubt give the Len Wein JLA a try simply because it's Len Wein, even though I have every expectation that it will be screwed up just as badly by editorial interference.
What also troubles me about the entire Hal Jordan thing is also that it's the same kind of talk he was coming up with as Parallax. So if I were the JLA I wouldn't be on his side - I'd be, at best, very nervous, and at worst, figuring out how to fit him with a strait jacket.
J'onn was killed, depending on which answer from DC you want to believe, to either give meat to Final Crisis or give Blackest Night a really important Black Lantern. Neither is an acceptable reason for killing off a character beloved by much of the core DC readership.
I'm less disappointed by Superman's absence from JLA as I am his absence from his own title. Robinson is doing some very capable things with Mon-El that I'd be happy to read in a Mon-El or Streets of Metropolis monthly, but I find myself asking, "Why is this in Superman?" every issue.
Wonder Woman is off the team because Gail Simone is taking her in An Exciting New Direction[TM]. This new direction no doubt involves her breaking ties with the Amazons, losing her powers, and/or being replaced.
Hawkman was a member of the JSA, and I daresay the JSA has a better claim on the Hawks.
I'd date 'J'onn as heart of the team' forward to the early nineties (sometime after the Giffen run was well-established.) During the Detroit run he was just another 'new' member (having appeared in, what, one JLA story (and one issue of DCCP, and I think that's it for total appearances) since the late sixties prior to the 'hey, there's a big Crisis going on/about to happen, but let's destroy the iconic JLA satellite in a completely unrelated story' business that brought him back in.) Aquaman, and to a lesser extent Zatanna, were the legacy/continuity/heart characters during that phase.
I'm beginning to think that in the modern environment, you can't really have a 'real' JLA book without turning it into 'Perpetual Crisis'; something that drives the continuity of the entire DC universe; something where every other book needs to adjust to its needs rather than the other way around. [Which is what the Avengers have turned into since they became the equivalent sort of team under Bendis].
J'onn as heart I'd say is JLI 7, where Batman basicly declares him to be so.
JL: An exciting new direction? Is that what it is? I've been waiting over half a year for some Olympian to get around to rising. This is why the Jews went with Matzah.
(having appeared in, what, one JLA story (and one issue of DCCP, and I think that's it for total appearances) since the late sixties
Do you count appearing as a statue (and in an associated reprint) in the Super Friends tabloid? On the one hand, it's pretty marginal. On the other, that's where I first discovered J'onn, and I'd guess I wasn't the only one. It's probably the only reason I cared about his reappearance in the 80s-- it was an example of the sense of history with depth that drew me into DC continuity in the first place.
(Of course, that's back when having been gone for a mere decade give or take seemed like the mists of history, whereas these days nothing post-1985 at the latest feels that way to me. :-) )