scans_daily | NS: The Geoff Johns allegations

lucean posting in

Earlier this week Hollywood Reporter ran an interview with Ray Fisher, where he detailed his own experiences with Joss Whedon and Geoff Johns during the Justice League reshoots. However, the perhaps meatiest part of the article, especially considering there's already been a lot of the reshoot issues themselves, concerns further allegations of concerning Geoff Johns specifically. Actually, but the absolutely baffling responses from Johns's representatives. While they to deal mainly with Johns's actions in a role of producer, considering that he has a huge impact on the current state of DCU, I felt there is a valid discussion to be had on it in light of the alleged revelations.

The more explosive additional allegations crome from the filming of Krypton, a show that Geoff Johns was a producer on. Below is the claims and defenses listed:

-The biggest one that has gathered most attention is that the show was originally to cast Rege- Jean Page as the lead of the show and Superman's grandfather, but Johns overruled decision due to his ethnicity. Something that makes it even odder is that Johns's represented admitted this, but they clarified that Johns had felt that the audience would expect the actor to look the same as Henry Cavill. The reason this is such a strange defense is that not only does Krypton not take place in the Snyder-verse, but they cast Colin Salmon, a Black actor, as General Zod, who does not look anything like Michael Shannon.

-Connected to this, an African American producer tweeted after the initial allegations came out that she had not spoked with Johns since they had an argument where Johns, and this is quoted, tried telling her what was and wasn't a Black thing. It was specifically about one of the characters having different hair in different scenes. The producer, Nadria Tucker, had tried to explain to Johns that Black women do change their hair frequently and Johns had responded that no, they don't.

-At this point, we go back Johns representative defense, which started by pointing out that he is Lebanese-American, and I will just quote it directly here: "What were standard continuity notes for a scene are being spun in a way that are not only personally offensive to Geoff, but to the people that know who he is, know the work he's done and know the life he lives, as Geoff has personally seen firsthand the painful effects of racial stereotypes concerning hair and other cultural stereotypes, having been married to a Black woman who he was with for a decade and with his second wife, who is Asian American, as well as his son who is mixed race."

-The representatives also point out how Johns "had evolved traditionally all-white DC properties like Shazam, Justice Society of America and others into diverse groups of heroes". This was an odd response, because while it is true that on his work on Shazam did inroduce minorities as members of his adoptive family, which is also in the movie, Billy Batson is caucasian as are his two primary siblings Mary and Freddie. I'll actually come back to this at the end, as it reflects a bigger aspect that I was thinking on, although the Shazam continues to be odd when considering that there much better examples there. I will give credit, though, as the defense points out that Johns was responsible for bringing Cyborg in the Justice League, but it does ignore something else while making that claim.

-Then there is the claim that Johns had nixed the idea of making Adam Strange gay or bisexual on the Krypton show. This is another point where his reps' response goes to a crazy direction as they don't dispute it, but they claim that Johns has been LGBT inclusive in his work. Which is true to a degree, but the example they chose to give was that was a co-writer on the series that introduced Batwoman. Which is technically true, and Batwoman's Wikipedia page does list him as a co-creator, but the series in question was 52, where they had four writers all working on their parts. Based on every report and interview I've read, Batwoman was Greg Rucka's creation and even the reps' statement is careful to specify being a co-writer on that seires. So in an effort to deflect blame about turning a character gay, Johns defended himself by implictly trying to take credit for another writer's work. Which is really because he could have used Aqualad or someone there as an example. Although that raised the question why didn't he.

-Two more little notes, neither from the article, but I've seen them raised. First, Momoa has spoken that Zack Snyder is the reason that he is Aquaman and I've understood that there was actually a fight at the top with Snyder's insistence on the subject. With these new reports, it feels fair to suspect that Johns would have been one of those to oppose the casting. Second, Johns has writing credit on Wonder Woman 84, but not on the original Wonder Woman. This isn't to state that he is at fault for the choices in that film, it is foremost a Patty Jenkins film, but there are certain elements that seem to fit with other work he has done in the comics.

The reason I was so fascinated wtih these details and claims is that over the past few months, I've found myself thinking a lot about the Didio/Johns era, partially because it is now a little over a year since Dan Didio left his position seemingly not by his own choice. Additionally there's been several signs that Johns influence over the product has been dramatically over the last couple of years and, as such, it is intriguing to look at the current direction of the product now that they are no longer there are the primary editorial drivers while also understanding that the current product is their legacy. And the thought I keep coming back on is, as crazy it sound considering they took over in the truly woke era of represenation in the early aughts, that how much they managed to reduce diversity in the product.

Now I don't think this was due to blatant racism, I didn't before the report came out, but rather that they were so committed that the characters had to be their original iteration, down to their appearance, which in turn meant that everyone ended up being mainly white dudes with a white women scattered around. Not only that, but the product heavily focused on promoting these initial central heroes in their big stories, which turned by about white guys as those were the characters Geoff Johns was devoted to making the most important people. As a consequence, while there were efforts to introduce diversity, those characters almost always ended up being side characters who were did not rise to the central role, at least I would argue so. Cyborg turns out to be an excellent example of this. Yes, it was Johns that brought him up the Justice League, but it was after they had made Hal Jordan the main Green Lantern there again, replacing John Stewart. And while working on the book, it's not like Johns really focused on making Cyborg feel ilke one of the big characters of the DCU as Cyborg never came across as one of his favorites.

This lack of diversity weirdly even reflects to the biggest and messiest change, which was the return of Barry Allen and Johns casually erasing Wally West from existance which was still one of the most astonishing creative favorites moves I've seen. Now I'm not arguing for red-head representation, but rather that during the Wally West run, there had been groundwork done to set up that his daughter would be the next Kid Flash, that she would be the continuation of the legacy, but there was no attempt to address that. Instead while they brought in an African-American Wally West, which was a character set up to fail from the start, they also asserted Bart Allen back as Impulse in a sense of natural order. I would argue that you go back and look at almost every other character that was reworked over the period and find similar stuff. Hell, Johns was so bothered by Aquaman having a beard that he wrote a dumb scene mocking it. While it is minor, in retrospect especially it does say a lot of his view on the characters.

That was a lot of rambling words and I apologize to anyone who read this far. Now my attempt wasn't trying to be woke police over the past work, but I do think that it is important to realize that the current state of a lot of those main characters is affected by Geoff Johns and Dan Didion. And while I previously thought it was just an unintended consequence of their Silver Age obsession, which in itself isn't a defense, these new allegations manage to cast it even in a harsher light where this just refusal from Johns to even consider alternatives. That Johns did in a way realize the DCU he was creating, just didn't care.

At this point I finally end and ask the question that what are others' reactions to these allegations? Do they make you look differently on the Johns/Didio era? Do you think the gathered conclusions here are too harsh on Johns?

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From:

tinygaylaura

Geoff Johns had absolutely nothing to do with Batwoman's creation or her character. Much like how everything else he has written in his career from beginning to present has done jack shit for queer women

Even Chuck Dixon has written more queer characters than Johns has.

Also "Has evolved JSA into a more diverse property"?

He added two characters who weren't white and absolutely no characters who aren't straight or cisgender. There are writers who have written a single story in an anthology comic with more diversity in in it than a hundred issues of a series Geoff Johns worked on had in it

From:

dianakingston

You don't have to burn crosses or wear white hoods to be racist, though. The statement Johns' work makes is "I only want to write about straight white men, so straight white men are all I'm going to write about", and that's what he did. Like you point out, even when he was obviously aware of the visuals, it's not like he crafted stories for black characters or any other minority that gave them the kind of impact and weight he gave Hal Jordan and Barry Allen when their crusty asses had been dead for over a decade.

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Bringing the crack since December 2003

NS: The Geoff Johns allegations

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