Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: "During the days of World War II, a group of costumed mystery men gathered to form the first and greatest super-hero team of all time: THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! Now, fighting side-by-side with the surviving original members, a new generation of heroes has been born, promising to uphold the legacy their predecessors created--while inspiring today's heroes the world over. The J.S.A. lives again!"

09 October 2023

"During the days of World War II, a group of costumed mystery men gathered to form the first and greatest super-hero team of all time: THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA! Now, fighting side-by-side with the surviving original members, a new generation of heroes has been born, promising to uphold the legacy their predecessors created--while inspiring today's heroes the world over. The J.S.A. lives again!"

The end of the 1999-2006 JSA ongoing was not the end of the JSA. A few months after that title's cancellation, it was reborn as Justice Society of America (the third comic of that title from DC). Geoff Johns returned as writer to launch the new comic, alongside artists like Ruy José, Fernando Pasarin, Rodney Ramos, and Dew Geraci. The new Justice Society embraced the "legacy" stylings of its predecessor very explicitly; the JSA was reformed in order to find and mentor new heroes, especially new heroes with some kind of Golden Age link. While original-era members like the Flash, Green Lantern, and Wildcat stayed on, as did preexisting legacy members like Stargirl, Power Girl, and Hourman, they were also joined by a mix of preexisting legacy characters that hadn't already been JSA members like Liberty Belle, Damage, and the Starman of the Legion, and totally new legacy characters like a new Mr. America, a new Amazing-Man, Cyclone (carrying on the legacy of the original Red Tornado), and even a guy who is descended from President Franklin D. Roosevelt (not a member of the JSA but arguably its founder).

This seems like a good premise, but it's difficult to tell, and to the extent that I can tell, it didn't work for me under Johns. Geoff Johns writes (or cowrites) most of the series's first twenty-six issues, plus some specials and annuals. One big problem is that there are simply too many characters, and the series never stops adding new ones; it just gets exhausting, and you never get to know any of the new characters because new new ones are constantly being added. I like the idea of mentoring, but we rarely get to see it in action in a meaningful way.

The other problem is that Johns's run is mostly in service of a couple big events after the opening arc, which prevents us from actually seeing the status quo in action. The opening arc (issues #1-4) is typical Geoff Johns, in all the worst ways: not much meaningful character stuff, lots of gratuitous violence, just unpleasant to read. Lots of references to old comics without understanding what actually made those old comics enjoyable to read. I would have very happily found out what, for example, Len Strazewski (writer of volumes 1 and 2 of Justice Society) might have done with such a premise, for example.

Once this comes to an end we plunge into The Lightning Saga (issues #5-6), a crossover with Justice League of America which is pretty bad: basically the JSA and JLA wander around aimlessly for five issues while the Legion of Super-Heroes carries out an overcomplicated plan that they don't explain for any readily apparent reason. We then get a small breather, which contains one of the two good issues of Johns's run, #8, where we see what married couple Liberty Belle and Hourman (their whole romance happened between JSA and this book unless I missed something) get up on a day-to-day basis.

But after this the comic becomes virtually unreadable, as it becomes tied up in a storyline of eighteen issues! No idea is worth taking over a comic book for eighteen issues, and this one certainly isn't. The basic premise is a decent idea: a sequel to Kingdom Come. The book posits that the events of Kingdom Come (which I have read, but evidently did not write up on this blog) came about because they took place in a world with no JSA to mentor the new heroes. The Superman of Kingdom Come arrives on the JSA's Earth and in the JSA's time, and has to watch as what happens on his Earth happens all over again... can the JSA head it off? A cracker of a premise, but it totally falls flat in execution.

There are two main problems. One is that instead of a gradual moral deterioration of heroes, what we mostly get is a big giant being (supposedly a god) being discovered in Africa and walking around doing nice things. There's no sense of threat, and of course he turns out to be bad, and of course he gets stomped down. Using the myth of Gog and Magog tries to make this apocalyptic, but it does not come across as high-stakes at all.

The other is that the JSA divides into two groups over this: ones who support Gog, and ones more skeptical of him. This is repeated from the Black Adam story in JSA, and moreover, Johns repeats one of that story's principal weaknesses: the only characters who support Gog are new characters who are clearly in the wrong. Wow, we have Green Lantern, the Flash, and Stargirl on one side... and the new Wildcat, the new Amazing-Man, Citizen Steel, and Mr. America on the other? Gosh, who could be the group who is in the right? It's all so obvious and dull. Its main saving grace is a one-issue special written and illustrated by Alex Ross about the Kingdom Come Superman; on the other hand, a brief story about Power Girl going to Earth-Two and meeting the pre-Crisis Infinity, Inc. is terrible despite Infinity, Inc. penciller Jerry Ordway on art.

Johns's other good story is a cute Stargirl tale (#26) about her birthday party. If he wrote more stuff like this, and less stuff like Thy Kingdom Come, I would have enjoyed his run a lot more.

Once Johns leaves, the series never settles into a new regular writer for very long. We get runs by Jerry Ordway (#27-28), Bill Willingham and Lilah Sturges (#29-33), Bill Willingham alone (#34-40), James Robinson (#41-43), and Marc Guggenheim (#44-54), taking us right up to Flashpoint and the obliteration of the JSA from DC history. (Well, until whenever they bring it back... they probably already have.) Ordway's story is decent, but for me the only one of these to actually be successful was Willingham's.

In its phase being cowritten with Sturges, it's dragged down by having to set up a very stupid split of the JSA into two different ongoings. This comes right after a story about the JSA almost splitting, so it feels repetitive, and it all seems vaguely misogynist, in that no sooner does the JSA get its first female leader in Power Girl than it falls apart. (Meanwhile, over in JLA, it also got its first female leader in Black Canary, and it also falls apart!) But aside from that (obviously editorially imposed), Willingham's run is quite fun. Good character focus, good jokes, clever storytelling. If only it had lasted longer; I particularly enjoyed his two-part Doctor Fate story, and I liked how he actually made something of the relationship between Green Lantern and Obsidian, which most JSA writers have mangled and/or ignored. Unfortunately, he left the book rather than have to write a JLA crossover... and indeed, James Robinson's JLA/JSA crossover The Dark Things is so uninteresting I can't even be arsed to explain why. (But why does Liberty Belle revert to her Jesse Quick identity?)

There's some potential in Guggenheim's run, but unfortunately 1) it sees yet another status quo change, with the JSA moving yet again (they previously moved from New York to Happy Harbor in Willingham's run), to Monument Point, a DC suburb, and 2) things start changing a lot, with the members who left during the split returning with no explanation, and a bunch of random new people joining the team, like the Blue Devil. Plus, the story clearly got wrapped up quickly to make way for thew New 52, and it doesn't really follow up on anything set up by Willingham or Robinson. (Also why does the original Liberty Belle suddenly show up?)

And that was it! Then the "New 52" came along, and the new continuity—where Superman the first superhero had debuted five years ago—had no place for the JSA. DC erased one of its most distinctive features. But that's not it for me, I have a few more things to read before I'm finally done with the Justice Society...

This post is forty-fourth in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers the Justice Society of America 80-Page Giants. Previous installments are listed below:

All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)

The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)

All-Star Squadron (1981-87)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)

Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)

America vs. the Justice Society (1985)

Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)

Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]

Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)

All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)