A Year In The JSA: 2008 (issues 7-12)

[knight_moves]

Having finished with the massive crossover of The Lightning Saga, it's time for... another massive crossover, with Kingdom Come. The fact that it's with 1-2 characters from that story, and it's one of the most iconic stories the DC has, does make it a bit more tolerable. But here's where Johns really starts to get jiggy with the new kids.



There's Nate Haywood, soon to be Citizen Steel, who is one of those tragic "I'm a superhero because I can't lead a normal life" types. And, for good measure, he's one of the few survivors of the Nazi massacre from the first arc. Uhhh... do I want to know how he pees or poops while totally encased in metal?

(On the bright side, he's about to get into an online controversy over how big his dick is, so...)







There's Superman from Earth... Kingdom Come happened, or I guess a slight variant...



There's also Starman, who is basically a low-key version of Deadpool. I can't speak to his characterization in LSH, but it seems a bit irresponsible to have a guy whose relationship to reality is cordial at best on the team. Especially since it seems like he could be cured if he just went back to the 30th century, but the JSA ain't really encouraging him to do that or get better in any way... I don't know, I think sensitive portrayals of mental illness went out the window after DC decided they kept wanting to use 90% of Batman's rogues and, hell, I think it's pretty dumb that Jessica Cruz gets to be a Green Lantern because she's as brave as war hero John Stewart for leaving her house when she's so so scared... but this kinda strikes me as a weird, "what are we trying to do here, Geoff Johns?"



There's a new Judomaster in town. I appreciate that as silly and one-dimensional as the Nazis were in the first arc, there's a whole group of blazingly insensitive Japanese stereotypes too. Now Johns just has to have an evil gang of Italian stereotypes show up. "Ho ho! I make-a da pizza! I kill-a da hostage if you don't-a pay the money! Mamma mia!"

Judomaster herself can't speak English, and for some reason super-genius Mr. Terrific can't just task a T-ball to follow her around and translate for her, since she's decided to join/been adopted like a stray cat. Effectively, she's a hot Asian chick who does kung-fu and is mute--sorta like Cassandra Cain minus the depth and nuanced exploration of her disability.

I'm pretty sure The Boys was already mocking this character type with The Female, so I don't know what Johns was thinking here. Especially since he could've just had Cass join the team... she could've used the exposure and, y'know, the non-evilness.

I'm gonna stop, because this could be a rant, but WHY WOULD YOU BENCH A POPULAR CHARACTER JUST TO CREATE A NEW CHARACTER THAT'S ESSENTIALLY A SHITTY VERSION OF THE CHARACTER THAT FANS ARE BEGGING no, no, not gonna rant. Let's move on, let's move on.







There's the new Amazing Man... should I be asking why DCU America can't rebuild New Orleans as fast as they did Metropolis or Gotham after the rampage of the week, or asking why DCU America isn't declaring New Orleans a No Man's Land like they did Gotham?... anyway, I'm sure this was well-intentioned enough, if maybe a bit derivative of some of the characters Christopher Priest added to Captain America... it just seems a little... Geoff Johns, you already have twenty characters or so to write, I'm not sure you need to speak directly to the black experience when there are already a couple characters on the team who are just black and it's not a big deal. Was anyone asking for Geoff Johns' idea of a character who is really, really black and a role model and has something to say about how black people should act in America?





Case in point, here's Super Sonic, I MEAN Lightning, another legacy character of Black Lightning.







Then there's Lance... I think that's his superhero name... and I think you can see my point when I say it's odd to do a big push for diversity, then say the handsome white guy is the most important legacy character.

Also, the US military having hundreds of metahumans in the ranks seems like an odd plot point to gloss over. It makes sense, yeah, but when government superheroes show up in the DCU... like the Ultramarines back in Morrison's JLA... it tends to a big deal and presented at least somewhat cynically, so for Johns to present it as fait accompli seems like a failure of imagination to me.

And both Lance and Amazing Man strike me more as checking boxes... "we should try to do a Civil Rights Movement superhero? What about a superhero who Supports The Troops?"... than organically fitting into the universe.



Lastly, there's the New New Mr. America, and this one seems like he's going to stick around.

I don't know, guys, I think this wants to be like something between the Gay Olivia Wilde And A Bunch Of Other People arc on House and a series like Avengers Academy or Young X-Men, but throwing in every rookie superhero Johns can think of and every JSA mainstay he doesn't want to ditch... and maybe this was supposed to be buttressed by having a second title like JSA Classified going at the same time... it just seems like Johns took it on himself to invent a bunch of cannon fodder for the next big DC event (and the one after that and the one after that).

Comments

[scorntx]

The ol' scattergun approach to introducing characters.
Fire off a dozen at once. Some of them are bound to catch on!

Oh goody.
David Reid.
Sure hope he doesn't die and get resurrected as some edgy anti-hero, then later co-opted into the next writer's obnoxious pet character.
That'd be a shame.

Starman.
Who has travelled back to the 21st century on a secret mission (which involves some mild grave-robbing), because his schizophrenia - or what the writers are calling schizophrenia - prevents him from getting his mind read.
As opposed to Brainiac-5 using that genius brain of his to, I dunno, find some way of just preventing people reading his mind? Maybe?

Judomaster - replacing the old Judomaster who got his spine broken by Bane in Infinite Crisis.
(Because, y'know, that's what Bane does right? Just breaks spines, says "I must break you" and occasional say a few words of Spanish?)
Mostly she just seems to do a lot of jump kicks.
That's how judo works, isn't it? Well, if it isn't, I see no reason to check.
Oh, and her father was a gangster. Naturally.

Lightning, demonstrating that sometimes overly literal interpretations of Alex Ross designs do not work...

[thanekos]

As Dan Slott wants to be John Byrne, so does Geoff Johns want to be Roy Thomas.

[mazway_75]

Yep, this is where the book started to lose me, tossing in way too many characters to the point of getting a second title but somehow losing the magic with more added on.

[mastermahan]

When Judomaster first appeared, in Birds of Prey, she could speak excellent English, well enough to crack double entendres about Big Barda's Mega-Rod. She also used, you know, judo, rather than generic martial arts and a very un-judo power of an 'attacks miss me' field.

But no, apparently we needed a hot mute Asian girl whose main contribution was being lusted after by Damage.

[numeronone]

Darnit ya beat me to it.

[mastermahan]

It's hardly the worst example of Johns's tendencies, but it is a very clear example.

[scorntx]

Crazy theory: Judomaster doesn't speak Japanese. Any she does know she simply got from the internet, and is just pretending to be mute so as not to be found out.

[numeronone]

She's a boo-a-weeb!

[beyondthefringe]

I liked most of these new characters, and I like the idea of legacy heroes. But I don't necessarily think -everyone- who threw on a mask in the Golden Age needed a heroic legacy. I mean, there are a lot of heroes who just didn't need to have a modern inheritor... And not every neat Alex Ross design from Kingdom Come needs to be turned into a full-fledged character.

And while I liked some of what was going on here, the Justice Society was quickly becoming more like a Justice Crowd Scene with too many characters and not enough space for them all to get proper development. And the spinoff title(s) that we'd later see come into existence to split the teams were not all that strong.

Also, the introduction of Lance with the express intent of turning him into Magog and introducing Gog and... sigh. Kingdom Come was an epic story but DC's slow creep towards bringing more and more of it into mainstream continuity was not a good plan. Because in the end, KC is a story where hundreds of superhumans die horribly along with the Kansas disaster and Metropolis Incident and other assorted Bad Things.

I can vaguely believe in the idea of the US armed forces having lots of enlisted superhumans given the way metahumans pop up with such frequency, and sure, I can believe there are a lot with low level powers who'd rather get paid to serve their country rather than fight crime (or do crime) and honestly? I'd LOVE to see a series about the metahuman equivalent of Easy Company or Seal Team Six if it was done right because I'd have so many questions about how it worked, how they were used, what did other countries have in response, who would be in it-- but sadly I don't have faith in most comic writers to handle it properly. It's either Ennis doing "hard men do hard things and people die a lot" or someone doing "MERICA FUCK YEAH ARMY GOOD" propaganda and there are REASONS there hasn't been a decent long-lasting war comic in decades (and I grew up on Sgt Rock and G.I. Combat...) and even DC's latest stab back in the early days of the New 52 didn't work out too well. (And I'm STILL bitter that Paul Jenkins' All-Winners Squad was cancelled two issues before the end.)

Digression over. So, yeah. Great new characters to add to an increasingly bloated cast. :) (And in turn an increasingly crowded universe...)

[shakalooloo]

Just have Captain Atom set by the government to train up superpowered servicemen. Boom! Easy.

Unfortunately, all DC government plans seem to involve clandestine attempts to undermine their own allies or else coerce criminals into working for them.

[thanekos]

The thing about " the metahuman equivalent of Easy Company or Seal Team Six " is that, if you don't write them with the understanding that they will inevitably be the villains of someone else's story, you'll never do anything significantly better than " propaganda " or " pity the hard men ".

[icon_uk]

John's writing Cass Cain would probably have ended... badly, since he was the one to introduce her into the Teen Titans as a villainous member of the Teen Terrors, or whatever that dull "Anti Titans" team was called.

I suspect that was at least partly because of John's obsession that "evil is hereditary" and her parents being David Kane and Lady Shiva ensure she'd always be trying to overcome her innate evillitude.

[scorntx]

Was it Johns who established Cass had turned evil due to Slade's evil drugs, or was that Adam Beechen?

[icon_uk]

Having double-checked, the Terror Titans were a Sean mcKeever creation in Teen Titans V3 #56

Cass was in Titan's East, organised by Slade Wilson, and from a Geoff Jones story in Titan Titans V3 #43

[blueprintstyles]

The backstory crammed in here for Amazing Man could have been made into a great mini-series. Instead he's a blip to provide 'color' for the book and quickly moved past. This is why I'm afraid to try any of Johns' new comics like Geiger or Redcoats.