31 Days of Scans, Day 7: Favorite Team/Corps/Family (Main Post)

[aeka]

IF you've been following me all of this week, you know where this is going!

The Original Earth-2 Justice Society



I've said it before, I'll say it again. There was nothing wrong with the original concept of Earth-2. There was nothing about it that needed fixing other than just having it take place in a more modern setting.

What made the Justice Society so appealing to me wasn't just the fact that it was decades old and was comprised of different generations of superheroes. It also wasn't just the fact that each of these characters were married, had families of their own, and still had personal lives. It was also the fact that in addition to all of these wonderful things, the Justice Society was family. Each of these characters looked after each other as much as they looked after the world.

I don't know what DC Comics was thinking when they rebooted Earth-2. In particular, I'm not sure who they were trying to appeal to by going the direction they went in. Maybe they assumed that modern DC readers didn't have a clue about the Justice Society or its respective mythos on Earth-2, or they assumed we wouldn't care about this world because it wasn't 'the main DC Universe' and they could therefore do whatever they wanted with it.

But here's what they completely disregarded: the original Earth-2 and the Justice Society DO have fans. Some of them are old enough to remember reading these comics in the 1970s and 1980s. Others are as young as me and did actually read these older comics and became really invested in this world.They also completely disregarded the fact that nearly all of us have access to the internet and could look all of this information up.

Either way, a good opportunity was greatly wasted in the New 52. In an attempt to appeal to a singular demographic (in this case, the white straight male with a cynical outlook on superhero comics and internalised misogyny), they alienated the fans of this respective universe and did nothing to make it feel more inclusive of a wider, more diverse readership, even though it has a more racially diverse cast than the mainstream Earth-1 universe.

Despite the problems with misogyny and ageism since the first issue of Earth-2, sales for this book were strongest when the book focused on the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, and Doctor Fate as the newer generation of superheroes following the loss of the Earth-2 Trinity in the Apokolips War. The book gradually lost sales as time went by, but the decision to shift focus away from the Justice Society characters in favour Thomas Wayne as an Usurper Batman taking on a Bizarro Superman did not increase sales for this title.

By the time the World's End story arc began, Earth-2 sales were below 40K and the first issue of the accompanying weekly comic only sold at just above 40K, which sold well below the 60K+ and 80K+ for the first issues of Worlds' Finest and Earth-2 respectively. The weekly comic sold even lower than the 70K+ and 90K+ of the other two weekly comics Batman Eternal and Futures End respectively.

Here are some charts for visuals:





Hopefully Convergence sells so well (or rather, outsells the New 52 titles), that it leads to a soft reboot of sorts and reinstates the recognisable versions of characters and mythos we love and does away with all of the bad that came with the New 52. (But this being the Dan DiDio era, and the man is not a visionary, that sounds highly unlikely).

That being said, here are the Earth-2 Convergence titles I'm picking up next year:



ACTION COMICS
Writer: Justin Gray
Artists: Claude St-Aubin and Sean Parsons
Colorist: Lovern Kindzierski
Superman teams up with Power Girl, but can they stop a nuclear strike from Lex Luthor and Stalin of Red Son Moscow?



DETECTIVE COMICS
Writer: Len Wein
Artists: Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz
Colorist: Felix Serrano
Helena Wayne and Dick Grayson fight side by side in memory of Bruce Wayne as they decide who will become the next Batman.*

*DC clearly missed the point of Adventure Comics #462, which addressed this already. (And something I discussed here.)



INFINITY INC.
Writer: Jerry Ordway
Artist: Ben Caldwell
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
The young heroes of Infinity Inc. must choose between the path set for them by their parents or the one they’ve set for themselves as they face post-apocalyptic Jonah Hex.



JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Writer: Dan Abnett
Artists: Tom Derenick and Trevor Scott
Colorist: Monica Kubina
Older and in full retirement under the dome, members of the Justice Society get the chance to regain their youths to stave off forces from the Qward Universe. But the promise of youth comes with a deadly price.

Comments

[night4345]

Why would Alan Scott care about youth (depending on Hawkman and Doctor Fate this doesn't make sense either)? Alan's body is just Starheart energy that looks like Alan Scott.

[icon_uk]

That's a very late addition to Alan's mythos, these issues are, IIRC, looking at the Pre Crisis on Infinite Earths Earth-2 where he was not the Starheart.

[night4345]

Ah. Ignore me then.

[ozaline]

Ugh.

I'm a few issues behind on my pick-ups and I didn't even realize that World's Finest was not about Powergirl and Huntress anymore, guess I'll be dropping it too. I liked the idea of the pacifist Superman, and how he was able to win out over the Apokolip's robot, but Thomas Wayne isn't a great character and also the idea that the only story worth giving the ladies a team-up book was getting home is a little baffling.

I liked a lot of the ideas in the the new version of Earth-2, Green Lantern's power coming from the Green? Neat. And he's gay, neat-o. (Though it'd be nice to see him get out and date someone new). The idea of the gods literally passing on their power was nice and thematic.

I didn't think Powergirl ever came across as a "dumb blonde," (quoting from your website rather than your post) in Levitz run, but I might have wanted it to be superb, and choose to read her as sex positive rather than anything mean spirited, but saw her as still the determined CEO who was actually quite single minded in her goal. I also did shelve some issues without reading them, including the Batman/Superman crossover, because I ended up behind and not having the time to read them.

I might have missed some of both of these book's issues, but I think when I turned away they went to a place I can't follow and am going to have to drop them.

I don't know that I'll ever like the run on Powergirl that Amanda Conner's art accompanied *oh let's have a paramedic oggle her comatose body! That's classy!* *Let's pull out an obscure non-gender conforming Wonder Woman character and kill them while laughing at their "gender issues," cause fuck trans people!*

But I can get behind the classic characters returning, the pre-crisis comics *meaning published before the Crisis, not a lot of the revisited ones* I have read I do like.

[aeka]

I didn't like many of the changes they made to the Earth-2 mythos, but I still felt the New 52 version had strong potential to be something good, but it was sadly squandered on yet another doom and gloom story. And for what exactly?

On Power Girl, there are far better ways to characterise her as sex positive and still staying true to her raison d'être. What Levitz accomplished in writing didn't do that. Instead he completely scrapped all of the developments that made her an interesting, nuanced character, and reduced her to the dumb blonde/party girl stereotypes, thus making her one-dimensional. He additionally wrote Helena Wayne as incredibly slut-shaming of her, which is very out of a character for a woman who was established as feminist.

The problems with Worlds' Finest in my opinion boil down to lazy writing. Levitz himself admitted at a Baltimore Comic Con that he has always been a 'fast writer, but not a meticulous writer.' It honestly showed. Many of the problems with the writing were easily solvable through careful planning and execution--two things he didn't do. Many of the problems with characterisation could've also been easily resolved by considering his decisions carefully. In my opinion, Helena Wayne makes more sense as the character to write as sexual since this was a development that's been with her since the beginning. The Earth-2 Kara Zor-L, however, has always been characterised as not interested in romance or sex but was capable of falling in love and having sex.

There was honestly no reason to change these two women the way they were in the New 52 since they were already interesting characters in their previous incarnations and still had more story potential.

[ozaline]

I do have to agree on the wasted potential

Three unlikely friends rebuilding a damaged world... except there was never much downtime for the friendship part, or much rebuilding.

I'll have to re-read Levitz's run with a more critical eye and see how it stands up.

[jaybee3]

I just don't know he had to change their characterizations at all. It's most of my problem with the DCnU, from relationships (Jay/Joan in Earth-2, Barry/Iris, Clark/Lois replaced by WW/Supes), personalities (Black Canary) and backstories (Wally West) to dread awful costumes replacing iconic ones (Zatanna, Harley Quin, and I really do believe that within five years Wonder Woman will be back to gold, red, white and blue). They felt that even what WORKED needed to be changed (unless your names was Batman or Hal Jordan).

Levitz could easily just as kept Helena and Karen's personalities as they were the last time he wrote an Earth-2 story (which was just a little before the reboot) and yet...no. And there's no valid reason why.

[aeka]

I don't either, though I do find myself asking how much of these changes were on Levitz and how much of them were on editorial. I heard from friends who have met him that he wasn't happy with the current state of affairs either. But then I find myself asking why he didn't actually challenge these bad ideas.

[jaybee3]

I realize it comes from Editorial. I'm pretty sure every change in the DCnU started with Didio, Lee and Harras. But Levitz should at least come up with some authority to be able to challenge the smallest of things (he did used to be their boss after all). DC allowed Levitz to pretty much do what he wanted with LSH after all.

The thing is I'm not sure WHY Editorial thought Power Girl needed a personality transplant. There was a time period before the reboot where she was headlining THREE books (Power Girl, JSA and JSA: All Stars) and had been a major player in what Didio referred to as one of the most definitive DCU events (Infinite Crisis).

The Power Girl in those titles was distinctive - not for her costume (which was plain), not for the boob window (which was overplayed and some artists didn't make much of it) but because of her personality. What IF Supergirl was still Supergirl but had arrived in a different way and a different place? Power Girl was the anti-Supergirl because she was in essence, alt-Supergirl. Occasionally they started to play with this - such as Greg Rucka's Supergirl/Power Girl team-up back when SG seemed to be editorially mandated to be unlikeable but also chickened out at exploring the ramifications of having two version of the same person living on the same world and not just temporarily. I remember during the whole "World of New Krypton" era (which turned out to be a disaster where Didio basically told the writers to commit genocide on New Krypton and every man, woman and child on it so they could start the JMS Superman run) he wanted Power Girl to be part of that storyline becuase she was ALSO a Kara from Krypton who had parents Allura and Zor-L and was from Argo. It seemed natural to him that she would have thoughts on the matter. Didio nixed and according to Robinson Power Girl was specifically not to be mentioned in connection with the Superman books while this was going on. Even though she was Kryptonian. The closest they got was when the JLA/JSA confronts the Argo survivors at their colony and Power Girl fights them thinking all the while: "These are not my people. These are not my people" and she is never seen again. Apparently that was enough for her. But even then at least DC recognized they had to make Power Girl Kara a distinct character from Supergirl Kara.

I don't get that feeling in the new 52. So she's been given a personality that is basically...generic and seems to closely resemble the pre-DCnU Supergirl!

[jaybee3]

Imagine if THIS set of titles with the solicits was how they had kicked off Earth-2 when the DCnU started? That would have been sooooo good.

I agree. Didio is not a visionary and I don't see Convergence as anything than a one-time (or maybe annual, if it succeeds) sop to the fans. Having said that I dearly hope it outsells the regular "new 52" titles.

[aeka]

I would've bought a DC Comic every week if these were the solicits. That's for damn sure.

Also with you on hoping this will outsell the current New 52 titles.

[q99]

Team is really hard :) Legion, maybe one of the young-hero Marvel teams (New X-men, perhaps. Or Runaways!)

Family I'll go the Diggers family of Gold Digger.


And Power Girl is great ^^

[kd_the_movie]

My first exposure to the Earth 2 mythos was through the Goyer/Johns JSA and its one of my favorite runs of all time.

I never delved deep into the pre crisis stuff but fact of the matter is that it was Earth 2 that really established the "Passing on the Legacy" precedent that was huge part of the DCUs appeal and a huge reason why i LOVED JSA.

Which is why the DCU's reboot hit me really hard. All of those lovely character connections and deep history just gone....