The new Justice League of America

[trelas.insanejournal.com]

As some of you may know, they showed the new line-up for the JLA under James Robinson in a recent ad and since I haven't seen it around here yet, so I thought I would share it and some thoughts I had about the new roster. I initially thought about doing at our sister site, as this post has a lot of words for a single image, but I also wanted to share the page as well. So I'm posting the page first before going to my thoughts on it. I would also recommend reading this Newsarama post, as it has great thoughts and comments on it: http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/09/17/hey-its-time-to-dissect-the-justice-league-roster-again/.

So, without further ado, the roster for the new JLA, sorry about the quality:



Now my primary reaction this is that I'm extremely confused on what DC is trying to achieve with this roster, and I'm not even being sarcastic with that comment. For those not familiar with the characters and who didn't read the Newsarama link above, the new League will consist of:

-Green Lantern Hal Jordan
-Green Arrow Oliver Queen
-Ray Palmer, formerly known as the Atom.
-Mon-El, a Silver Age character who recently returned to modern canon and can be currently seen in Superman instead of Superman. Yeah, it's a bit weird. Anyway a Daxamite, so he has the same powers as Superman, but has a deadly allergy to lead. Currently has a temporary immunity to it.
-Donna Troy. Not even going to try to explain her.
-The Dick Grayson Batman. Probably doesn't need explaining.
-Cyborg and Starfire, recently in Titans. Apparantely DC has decided to bury that book.
-Doctor Light, originally appearad in CoIE. Light-based powers, quite powerful.
-Congo Bill and Guardian, characters recently introduced back to modern canon from the Golden Age. Can't even begin to explain them, but Wikipedia can.

The reason for my confusion is that I'm truly having difficulties seeing how they are going to market/push this to a higher sales figure. The thing is that the JLA sales have always been uneven, with one approach peaking at a point, then declining as happens with every title until they manage to again find a new angle. However, even after all these years people often quite fondly speak of the League of Gods and I think it's partially because it finally kind of found a way to make JLA significant, to make it big and to give a clear position in the DCU. They became the big guys, they were the major leagues, the heroes who made the gods themselves cry. With the new League after OYL, they still clung that concept, but the team was clearly not those guys anymore. They had the power hitters, it wasn't that, but about half of the team didn't have the power level or the established to be there. This lead to the writers having the almost impossible of situation of trying to write those big threats, yet have the people who clearly didn't belong on that front line to be significant, to have a role in it. In short DC decided to try to push B- and C-level characters through the JLA. Now in itself that wasn't new, Morrison, Waid and Kelly all did that during their reigns with Plastic Man and, on a certain level, John Stewart being the most famous results. However what was different with them was that while those characters played a role, it was still clearly the League of Gods, with the pushed characters being on that power level and the main focus still on the interactions between the established characters. The OYL JLA instead became about the B- and C-level characters, their soap opera like interactions and really, really weird plot structures that almost always fizzled or led to other miniseries. Yes, there were reasons for that, some good and some bad, but the sales were continuisly sliding and it is hard to argue that the lack of significance or stability weren't hurting the title. These are of course simply my opinions, of course, as always.

So DC decides to go with this. First of all not only are there no members in the League presented here who were in the League of Gods, there are actually no members from the prior JLA it is replacing. It's a completely new roster with no legacy aspect, which is weird in itself. Secondly, I can only think of two members of the cast qualifying as big name draws: Dick Grayson and Hal Jordan. Now both are involved currently in stories that are selling pretty well, but neither has been tested as someone who can carry a team title. Although I am biased, I can see Dick Grayson being succesful on that front, especially since this is the first title to expand he's role as Batman on the superhero front, but Cry for Justice, which was marketed heavily as Jordan's JLA, hasn't had the expectional numbers the hype was going for, although sales were somewhat solid, so he is a bit of a question mark. Third, the roster sends a really mixed signal as it is clearly going for some sort of legacy/graduation wibe with the inclusion of the new Trinity and former Titans, but graduation by whose standards. Neither Jordan or Queen have been established as leader-figures in the superhero community and they sure as hell don't promote and acknowledge the next generation. There's no welcome from the previous generation, as they aren't included in the new roster. Besides, by including them and Palmer in to the current League, they basically push aside the legacy members they have. Fourth, there has been no build-up recently for Troy to be a credible successor for Diana and Mon-El is a really weird choice there, as if it is a legacy aspect, shouldn't it be Kara and not the guy whose sidelined even in his own title, sorry, the Superman title and who, at least based on what I've read, hasn't really set the fan community on fire as an independent character.

My main annoyance with the cast, however, is that of the eleven characters, Robinson is at the moment writing six, including the really weird choices to team, namely Congo Bill, The Guardian, Mon-El, Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen and Ray Palmer. Basically, this isn't the JLA, this is the Robinson League. Now it is justified to point out that Morrison and Meltzer did the same thing, but not to this extent or prior engagement with the characters. This is where editorial should have put their foot down and make Robinson to create a roster that can further expanded and continued by later writers instead of just giving him an opportunity to continue writing characters he already has a crush on and is already writing. I know this a matter of opinion and I am biased on this, but it just kind of irked me.

The truth is that in the end it is the sales which decide the fate of this team and Robinson's brave new take on the team and it is hard to truly speculate on it, considering the first issue hasn't even been published yet. Truthfully, I hope it's good, I would like to see JLA again rise to the prominence it once had, but this roster and Robinson's previous track record with big titles isn't filling me with a lot of confidence on the matter. So here I have babbled this far and shall end it now, if someone read it to here, I hope I wasn't too boring.

Comments

[mullon.insanejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they have a giant dart board that they use to figure out the roster, with Superman and Batman (or a Superman and Batman) being the biggest targets so thats a given. And being on a team makes your area on the dartboard larger as well.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Why can't Wonder Woman serve again?

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

I don't think that DC likes Wonder Woman very much.

Unless Gail said no, but I can't think of why she would do that...

[interrobamf.insanejournal.com]

The Guardian, not the Shield.

[trelas.insanejournal.com]

Fixed. Thanks, that was a bit embarassing.

[crinosg.insanejournal.com]

Wow, this may be the most random JLA team I have ever seen.

But it does what I think they should have done right after Infinite Crisis: allowing the classic teen titans team to finally grow up and take over for the JLA, with some old schoolers there to help out (of course in my version the old schooler was J'onn and Bart was on the team as the new flash, but you can't have it all).

[naebler.insanejournal.com]

Where are Roy and Garth damn it?

[cainofdreaming.insanejournal.com]

Congorilla. In JLA. Shark I dub thee "Jumped."

[mrbear.insanejournal.com]

Verily.

[book_of_daniel.insanejournal.com]

So sick of Hal Jordan...

[mrbear.insanejournal.com]

Motto.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

That's the Guardian not the Shield. Which I consider a plus, considering it gives me hope for where the Superman books are going.

I'm disappointed we're getting Dr. Light instead of Vixen. And I could do without Congorilla. But otherwise it's a good group I think.

[(Anonymous)]

Apparently Donna Troy is there to distract the heterosexual male villains and the alternate lifestyle female villains while the male heroes sneak up on them and hit them.

Starfire is there in case they fight more than one at a time....

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

And Dick's there to distract the homosexual male villains and heterosexual female villains. Hal's his back-up. It looks like we've finally established gender equality with this new league. :D

[pyrotwilight.insanejournal.com]

You know this is almost JLI level oddness for the team.

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

True. And if, you know, Giffen or another writer famous for their humor were writing this, I would totally be interested. But Robinson's level of funny tends to consist of penis jokes. Wacky team + unfunny writer = something that will probably make me hit my forehead. A lot.

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

I can personally say that I will not be buying the title. I have no real interest in any of the characters by themselves and I don't think I'll like them any more if they're placed together. (I will admit to having a slight interest in Green Arrow occasionally, but Robinson's already shown me that his Green Arrow is not the one I like, so...)

Secondly, I can only think of two members of the cast qualifying as big name draws: Dick Grayson and Hal Jordan. Now both are involved currently in stories that are selling pretty well, but neither has been tested as someone who can carry a team title.
Hasn't Dick carried several Titans books? I'm not really sure that would translate well to carrying the JLA, which has a very different feel, but I thought I should throw that out there.

[trelas.insanejournal.com]

I meant Dick Grayson as Batman, not Nightwing. As Nightwing he is quite accomplished in the team field and probably the biggest draw for the Titans, but the mantle changes things considerably.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

I see a LOT of death in their future.

[taggerung301.insanejournal.com]

50 bucks says that the monkey guy, Congorilla or whatever his name is, dies within a month or two

[ian_karkull.insanejournal.com]

There is not a single character here that i do not outright hate or am at least widely indefferent towards. It's like Robinson is actively trying to create the most unappealing JLA ever and squander all of his leftover goodwill from Starman while he's at it. With any luck, this whole thing will be gone in under twelve issues and shall never be spoken of again.

It is worst song, played on ugliest guitar.

[freddie_mac.insanejournal.com]

"It's like Robinson is actively trying to create the most unappealing JLA ever "

Worse than Justice League Detroit? At least Detroit was obviously J'onn training newbies (Vibe, Gypsy, and Vixen, IIRC)... But yeah, this just does nothing for me. I dropped JLA quite some time ago because I couldn't (and still can't) understand Ed Bennes' fascination with butt cracks. Umm, womens' butt cracks.

[mrbear.insanejournal.com]

This is... odd.

Aside from the Z-list heroes, no speedster on the JLA?

Doesn't matter anyway. When it comes down to it, if there's no J'onn, it's not the JLA.

[pyrotwilight.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, no speedster is a bit annoying. I mean with Jesse, Max and the rest you'd think at least one would join.

With J'onn gone you'd think the team would at least get another psychic on the team like Tomorrow Woman or Faith (she is a psychic right?)

Or a magic user.

[yaseen101.insanejournal.com]

Actually I quite like the idea of Legacy and one generation over the other. I think the Titans had this coming the moment Dick became Nightwing, Beast Boy became Changeling, Donna became..(whatever she calls herself, not really into Donna's continuity because of obvious reasons). I think Diana is out because of the current 'events' in her title (even though it's not a viable reason to keep her out of the title). In fact I was just thinking about that and when I found out about this and considered threatening to sue DC for somehow stealing my ideas, my roster consisted of Dinah, Barry, Dick, Roy, Donna, Kendra, Zatanna and John Stewart with Wally, Red Tornadoe and Cyborg as supporting characters.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Eh. It comes off as if Black Canary found Hal leading a team after he ranted about the JLA being useless and told him that he WAS leading a JLA version, and if he wouldn't support her leadership, she'd at least support his. Then all the regulars stayed away because Hal pushed them away at the very beginning of Cry.

I don't mind a second stringer group, I'm really tired of the same old line up of Gods. Shield and Cyborg are odd choices, tho.

And Hal looks oddly like Kyle here.

[trelas.insanejournal.com]

As I said, opinions vary. I guess that my problem isn't that they decided to go with another direction, it's that they are still contextually treating this as the big league, as the big guys, but they clearly aren't and can't handle threats that they did. It's basically DC trying to force together two versions of the League that don't mix instead of just clearly going with one version.

[mania21.insanejournal.com]

I don't think it looks that bad, it could possibly turn out interesting, we should at least give it a try.

[sistermagpie.insanejournal.com]

That is definitely a weird line-up.

[stig.insanejournal.com]

Oh, crawl off and die, won't you Hoshi?

And the hopelessly-out-of-date-golden-jumpy-boy. Bring back the Manhattan Guardian! Let's have a Guardian we can actually take seriously!

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

Isn't that the one that Morrison wrote where he fought bum pirates in the subways in New York?

If that's the case--MOTHERFUCK YES.

[yaseen101.insanejournal.com]

How has anyone not made some kind of slashy joke about how Ray Palmer is riding on Ollie's arrow?

[freeman333.insanejournal.com]

Say what you will, but I rather like the idea of the "substitute trinity". Similar in powerset to the classic trinity, but (as has been pointed out above) with some significant differences in specific powers and especially in past interactions. Dick and Donna have worked closely together for years, so one can expect them to get along well (past baggage aside) but Mon-El is pretty much an unknown quantity at this point, and with Kryptonian-level powers to throw around, I imagine it will be a high priority of the others to make sure he gets guidance. However, Dick is not nearly as stern and abrasive as Bruce was, so his style of guidance will be, presumably, quite different. I admit I know relatively little about Donna--given her past, how much can one really claim to know about her?--but I get a very different feel from her than from Diana; much less friendly/nurturing and also less of an utter badass (one of the great things about WW, especially in the JLA, is how well she captures both ends of the warm-fuzzy-good-listener who will absolutely kick your sorry rear to the fucking moon should the situation demand it--a role neither J'onn nor Clark have ever quite been able to pull off the same way), somewhat less sure of herself and a bit more volatile emotionally.

With Donna, Dick, Kory, and Victor all there (not to mention Ray, who kind of counts) this JLA feels more like another Titans team than anything else. And, of course, there are several unknown players--I don't know that Guardian or Congorilla have ever been part of a team (at least during the modern age) so it's hard to say how they'll contribute to the dynamic. Dr. Light, interestingly, is known to be a poor team player, and I wonder if she'll start off by treating Hal as if he were Guy--a mistake that won't be repeated twice, I imagine. I'm particularly interested to see if there are leadership squabbles between Dick, Hal, Donna, and Guardian (given his background, I'm imagining Guardian wanting to run the team in a more militaristic fashion, which probably won't sit well with Dick, Hal or Ollie, whereas Dick will want to be more friendly, which won't sit well with Hall, Guardian or Hoshi).

I'm a sucker for the JLA in any form, of course, so I'm committed to seeing how it plays out. I don't have a huge amount of faith in Robinson's team-writing skills after Cry for Justice, but maybe he'll surprise me. At least, I'm curious to see the debuts of Mon-El and Bat!Dick (don't take that the wrong way) in a team title. Only a matter of time before Diana, Arthur, or J'onn show up to set these whippersnappers straight, really, but in the meantime I'll enjoy the ride.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Oh, I agree. :) Dick/Nightwing/Batman led a grabbag JLA team when the Gods disappeared in ancient Atlantis, but I never really saw that as him being a true JLAer. He was the very definition of substitute there. I believe this will seem more like a real Justice League membership with Dick having to slog along in the regular team.

Dr. Light, however, was previously a member of Hal Jordan's Justice League Europe, along with Tasmanian Devil. She respected Hal distantly and they never clashed. As a leader, Hal isn't a guy who tells people what to do, he just charges in and does his job very competently and assumes you are too. That kind of thing was just fine for Hoshi. I'll be tickled if Robinson decides to do flashbacks..He was still leading JLE when he went all Parallaxy.

Robinson HAS mentioned somewhere there will be leadership squabbles between Dick and Hal. Dick has more ability as leader, but he's had years of seeing Hal as Bruce's peer, and will likely feel a touch self-conscious. Hal sees himself as the senior here (as well as the mover behind this version), and to him Robin will probably still seem like a talented kid.

It occurs to me that if the unknown speedster is Barry, this could be an attempt to see if the secondary trinity (Green Lantern, Green Arrow, and Barry-Flash) can make a team SEEM JLA-ish since that's what the primary trinity (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman) always did.

[jaybee3.insanejournal.com]

Once I saw the Guardian (which was obviously Robinson's choice as is Congorilla) the one thing that popped into my mind was once again we see how badly DC screwed over Dwayne McDuffie, the man who invented Static and was responsible for a big part of the DCAU. I'm not a huge McDuffie fan but you have to sympathize with a guy who made no bones about the fact that DC Editorial told him who he could and could not have on his JLA team, and that he had very little control (even Ed Benes had more control - he wanted to draw Zatanna, so he got Zatanna). The one time McDuffie was able to get rid of one of Meltzer's left-overs (Red Tornado), he was told later he had to write him back in to get his body back (for the present mini-series).

Meanwhile Meltzer had a free hand to do what he wanted (he even had what was clearly the orginal Aquaman - not Artie Joe - talking to J'onn after Orin had died) as did Morrison. And here based on the fact that half of Cry of Justice (Hal, Ollie, Ray, Congorilla) and two members of Robinson's Superman run (Mon-El and Guardian) are on the JLA tell me Robinson had more of a free hand to pick and choose as well. As for the others Dick and Donna are the analogs to their older counterparts and along with Mon-El is DC's attempt at having the Big 3 in the book without actually having them in the book. Starfire and Cyborg are going to the JLA and with the rumors of Beast Boy and Raven returning to Teen Titans, DC is basically saying that the Titans series has it was originally advertised is over. Dr. Light and Vixen (who Didio said would be on the team) are two retainers from the old era.

Sometimes, I'd really love to be a fly on the wall on their editorial meetings to decide how they do this.

[ashtoreth.insanejournal.com]

Worth noting that Robinson said that some of his Cry lineup was also editorially mandated.

[zordboy.insanejournal.com]

"Cyborg and Starfire, recently in Titans. Apparently DC has decided to bury that book."

My first and only response is, praise the Lord.

(then again, I give it 2 years before "The original Titans stand together again in a brand-new series!", maximum)

I'm a huge JLA fan. I agree with just about everything you said (particular how they've tried to keep the JLA as the DC's premier super-team, but filled it with Z-listers, and made the focus crappy soap-opera-esque plotlines that go nowhere).

I haven't touched JLA since OYL (aside from buying the JLA/JSA/Legion team-up. I don't regret buying that particular story, but it cemented my decision to keep skipping the JLA book). And looking at this, I'm not about to start. Either quite a few people here are likely to die, or else, the book's about to gain the infamy it had during JLI (or at least, try to).

But "Cry for Justice" has been bad so far. I like that Congorilla is there, but Dick notwithstanding, I don't care about any of those people. And if the title remains DC's editorial bitch, then yeah, I'll be passing on this.

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

"(then again, I give it 2 years before "The original Titans stand together again in a brand-new series!", maximum)"

Isn't that what Titans is supposed to be?

[schala_kid.insanejournal.com]

I know everyone is rawwwring at this title but I will give it a chance just cause it has Mon-El, Donna, Dick and Guardian in it! I don't care about the rest though.

[werehawk.insanejournal.com]

Now that Robinson did something bad to Tasmanian Devil, I'm jonesing. Can anyone post his small appearance in Detective Comics 852?

[kingrockwell]

You ask me, it looks like half of the team from Robinson's Cry For Justice, the stars of Robinson's Superman, and a bunch of former New Teen Titans. The only really inexplicable additions are Cyborg and Starfire, or perhaps its the exclusion of Raven and Gar I don't get?

Anyway, I'm bored by it already.

[starpiper.insanejournal.com]

I think Gar and Raven aren't here because they're going to be mentoring, or at least working with, the Teen Titans over in their book.