Dark Nights: Death Metal - Legends of the Dark Knights #1

[cyberghostface]

Comments

[strejdaking]

Has Geoff Johns EVER actually lightened a tone of anything from before? Not everything he writes is darker than it was before him, but I can't recall any single property he worked on that became more lighthearted or less violent and serious/dark after he came along.

[deh_tommy]

Rebirth and the DCEU spring to mind.

[silverhammerman]

His influence on the DCEU seems to have been largely positive, though his insistence that the Flash movie adapt Flashpoint, which is what held that movie back for years. I think Grant Morrison mentioned it in a recent interview, though I don’t have the link offhand.

Rebirth, I think is him in classic preaching mode. Lots of “aw shucks, what happened to FUN?” That never really works as a mea culpa for the New 52’s flaws because he made the bizarre choice to bring in Watchmen and essentially blame Alan Moore. On top of that, I maintain that while the Rebirth era was good, the New 52 had finally found its footing with DCYou and didn’t actually need to be relaunched. In any case, as a one-shot Rebirth was a perfect platform for Johns to trot out his disingenuous nonsense about how it’s someone else’s fault that the comic universe which he’d steered for the past decade was dark. Just contrast Rebirth with the projects he did before and after: Darkseid War and Doomsday Clock, neither of which is all that representative of the “classic fun” Johns pretends he wants to get back to.

[deh_tommy]

I thought Darkseid War was pretty good and even fun.

[silverhammerman]

Yeah that’s fair, Darkseid War is hardly the nadir of his career. It’s over the top and has some fun designs and the tie-ins are quite good. That said, it’s still an overblown event comic with some bizarre lore (remember the introduction of Mobius, he of the Mobius chair, and Grail, daughter of Darkseid?) where a bunch of Justice League members get “corrupted”.

It’s not bad, fun even, but it’s not exactly reconstructed superheroics.

[strejdaking]

1. Only thing AFAIK he was writing was Shazam, which he made lighthearted and fun again, after HE made it darker and edgier.

2 The closest thing you could consider the "main" book of New 52 was his Justice League, so again, him gracefully saving us all from himself.

3. One of the first things was Jon in his introduction burning his cat alive. Other things Rebirth brought to us was a sequel to Multiversity killing off a gay character made to subvert killing off gay characters and turning Bizarro into a child abuser and, regardless of its quality, Metal, King's Batman, DCeased, Black Label, Heroes in Crisis ect. If he deserves credit for Rebirth, it can't just be the good shit (which he also didn't write).