Geoff Johns, C/D?

maybe I meant S/D, but whatever.

S: the middle of his Flash run, from 201-about 214, very good straight-up superhero stuff; Green Lantern: Rebirth, which was a lot of fun; current Action Comics, esp. the Legion stuff, esp. the Legion Epilog w/ Batman which managed to be a tremendously memorable issue despite really, really awful art; Titans of Tomorrow in Teen Titans, where the Teens meet grim, gritty & grown up versions of themselves

D: his pet villains, esp. Zoom and Superman/Boy Prime, both of whom are transparent, hit-you-over-the-head stand-ins for Major Superhero Themes. Zoom = tragedy makes heroes "better". Superboy = change-resistors

His JSA reboot and run was really solid! Really old school, satisfying on a consistent basis when not rammed into a random crossover.

Teen Titans... yeah, most of that was really not so great. Rebirth was kind of fun, but... with so many Green Lanterns already, was it really that necessary to bring Hal Jordan back? I'm still not really convinced it's not just better to let him go altogether, but I guess also because he's my least favorite GL.

Somewhere in the middle: that Blade TV series. Pretty mediocre, but it's kinda sad, because it improved a lot between the pilot and the final episode - definitely had potential there.

Both of those villains (Zoom and S-P) kind of represent the need for everlasting superheroes (in the real world) to be constantly mired in old and new traumas, never really making progress, which by concept is somewhat annoying. I don't think either is really an awful villain though.

"Rebirth was kind of fun, but... with so many Green Lanterns already, was it really that necessary to bring Hal Jordan back? I'm still not really convinced it's not just better to let him go altogether, but I guess also because he's my least favorite GL."

Ultimately, Hal Jordan is the one with the origin story. All of the other Green Lanterns on Earth, except Alan Scott are tied to Jordan becoming Green Lantern. It is the same reason that Barry Allen is coming back, if they ever want to make a movie about the character, they have to the main dude.

That being said, I think Johns did a pretty good job with Green Lantern: Rebirth. I don't know what they were smokin' back in the 90s, but making Jordan the Spectre was just a really weird idea and anything that gets rid of that is a good thing.

Infinite Crisis was all over the place and very forced to me. It is probably better than some of these big series, but that is not saying much.

I liked his run on Action. I figure that the delays are because of the artist. Overall, I'd say that Green Lantern and Justice Society of America are OK super hero comics. I don't think they are nearly as great as some attest, but they are all right.

I've said it before, but I think from reading this and Green Lantern, Johns' comic books to me seem like a total throwback to someone like 80s John Byrne. That being said, I don't know that Johns at his best is any better than say John Ostrander or Doug Moench or some other big company super hero comic book writers at their best. Johns definitely has not created the characters or original series that some of those guys have.

I used to really hate him but either my standards have lowered considerably (I can never discount this) or he's improved or most likely we've met halfway. I think he's OK now. He tells simple stories well, and there's usually room for that. Byrne before he lost it is a decent comparison.

The critical wisdom on him seems to be that he's some kind of custodian of continuity, whether negatively (finikity silver age bore) or positively (finds the true meaning in the character). I'm not sure - outside his JLA stuff - this idea really holds up. Look at his "repair jobs" on superman villains, for instance - both Toyman and Brainiac boil down to "oh those other guys were robots", straight reboot jobs. (Simonson tried a similar thing on Dr Doom in the early 90s iirc, but it didn't take). Zod doesn't even acknowledge the "other guys"! (not saying it should, film Zod is why anyone cares anyway).

On Green Lantern it initially looked like he was taking a pragmatic, most famous guy gets the name, approach, but what he's actually done is the biggest in-continuity reboot on a character concept since, god, Swamp Thing I guess. The rainbow corps stuff is in no sense "the essence of the character" unless you believe the colour green does indeed have a mystical link to willpower. He's irreversibly shifted that character's concept, very radically. I personally think all the different coloured lanterns etc is a shite idea, but it's obviously struck a big chord and fans are accepting it.

What else? Agree with Huck on Zoom and Superboy Prime, both of them are one-note nutters whose notes get wearing fast. Infinite Crisis: rubbish, but not his fault. Booster Gold - again, it's not him finding the core of a character, more like completely changing the character concept, but since the concept of yuppie-with-a-heart-of-gold wasn't interesting anyway I've no problems there. The Rogues? I like them every time he talks about them - "blue collar supervillains" etc. - but I thought they were a lot more interesting to read about under Messner-Loebs.

I guess my main problem with his storytelling is its predictability. I can't remember the last time a GJ comic surprised me. That Superman and The Legion story - good set up and then a steady trundle to an anticipated resolution. Same with the Booster Gold storylines. As a plotter, he's interested in moments but not twists (unless the twist is "those other guys were robots"). Again, that's to some people's liking.

It took me a long time, but I'm a convert and I think that he and Grant Morrison have made the DCU a much, much better place. I love his Action Comics with Gary Frank and Green Lantern. His Teen Titans run was good, although it kinda went off the rails around the time Infinite Crisis came around. (Not a big Infinite Crisis fan at all.) I am very, very excited for Legion Of Three Worlds and his Flash reboot.

I'm not sure if Geoff is really writing for old school DC fans, even though he's old school DC fan #1. I think the goal of his writing is often to convince his reader that the characters are really awesome. He's good at zeroing in on the good stuff, and he's better than anyone else in comics right now at getting the reader to those "fuck yeah!" parts. He's not too invested in anything very deep, but that's totally fine because he delivers on the exciting bits, and his books aren't dumb, just simple and easy. He's a very good entertainer.

Like, if Grant Morrison is Radiohead, he's Basement Jaxx.

More like Girl Talk :)

He definitely knows how to locate the DC fanbase's G-Spot. He's their biggest asset right now, a LOT more than Grant M though I prefer Grant by miles.

Infinite Crisis: rubbish, but not his fault.

Explain yourself!

I guess my railing on about GJ being a continuity cop (in conjuction with his CRISIS / 52 involvement) comes from my associating him w/ JSA, where he walked that beat (cf. trying to make sense of what was done with Hawkman), but that's a 70-year-old franchise he's messing with, the viability of which is founded on the efforts of King Kon Kop Roy Thomas, so I guess it's part of the job. He does have a penchant for unearthing & pointlessly "sexing up" old villains, tho -- I'm not sure what he's done w/ DC guys, but I know for damn sure that during his blessedly short Avengers run, he turned a perfectly forgettable B-level cypher like Whirlwind into a Wasp-obsessed sexual-assaulter.

Also, that AWFUL Lantern Corps ROYGBIV refurbishment sounds like a ropey proto-Silver Age notion, which then loses whatever charm it might've had on the surface because of these colors being tied to emotional states? Violet = love? Indigo = compassion? If he opens up his box of Meaningful Crayolas and offers up a color for "apathy," maybe I'll get back on board.

And, sure, he has some great "fuck yeah" moments (the end of his JSA association w/ David Goyer was full of these), but in the past these moments are often waylaid by some supposedly heartfelt moment of conscience, or some leaden piece of mid-pow exposition that explains how EMOTIONAL and MEANINGFUL these punches are going to be, because these aren't just superHEROES, they're superPEOPLE -- the latter half of Rebirth was ruined for me by this sort of shit, what with Hal Jordan showing how awesome he was because of his awesome willpower and wow how awesome that he's fighting Parallax which oh by the way is FEAR INCARNATE or some garbage.

Which is to say that Johns hasn't convinced me in the slightest that his characters -- either characters he's rejiggered, or charcters he's inherited -- are worth a wet fart. If this has changed over the past few years, it's news to me -- maybe the FINAL CRISIS minis he's penning will win me over, but as for his regular work, I ain't touching that any time soon.

Has he curbed his ultra-violent tendencies (cf. the splort-heavy Black Adam arc in 52) any?

(xpost, which I think is an inadvertent summary of my anti-Johns bitchin' from various ILC threads)

OK it was partly his fault I guess! I think with Infinite Crisis there was a lot of "well we need it to do this and this and this" from editorial, and the fact it read like a huge mess was down to that as much as anything Johns did. That's guesswork though.

Yeah, that's what I figured (and given Dan Didio's awkward omnipresence regarding all things DC, I wouldn't be surprised).

For my money, I think I'd rather see Johns in Didio's position (setting agendas, offering ideas & maybe story beats, overseeing things, and not writing much @ all).

I think there are rumblings that Marvel wants to woo Johns away from DC once he's a free agent (in 1-2 years?), which would infuse me w/ Perpetua-like X-rage if it happened.

B-b-b-but David don't you want to see the Y-Men, the Z-Men, the Q-Men, the B-Men...? It's an obvious and great direction for the franchise! I'm amazed nobody's thought of it before.

Only if the letters correspond to Oblique Strategies!

X-Men: Legacy - "Honour your mistakes as a hidden intention"

That should be printed on the No-Prize.

Surprised no one's repped for the Johns / Busiek "Up, Up & Away" 8-parter -- definitely one of the more successful One Year Later stories, and downright enjoyable in its own right (tho that might be because J & B eliminate each other's negatives).

Geoff Johns really makes no sense at Marvel. His taste and aesthetic really doesn't mesh with Marvel, especially not contemporary jock-tastic Marvel.

And yeah, Geoff is a bigger asset to DC than Grant. Geoff Johns writes three or four of their biggest selling books, whereas Grant is a lot more hit or miss, and the audience seems to be turning against him lately.

I'm going to regret asking this, but do you mean "jock-tastic" in terms of laddishness, or in terms of stench?

How about both?

My friend made a really good point last night: How can Marvel possibly get X-Men right when the entire company is overrun with people whose personalities tend toward jockishness? Of course they can get the Avengers franchise right, that makes perfect sense, but we're dealing with a corporate culture that does not comprehend the appeal of its best characters.

Saleswise, this isn't quite true for Morrison. Batman RIP has been a big sales success - it's selling much higher now than Green Lantern is. Final Crisis has been a big disappointment saleswise, though I wonder to what extent the blame for that can be laid at Countdown's door.

I think the Sinestro Corps thing has gone into history as a bigger blockbuster than it actually WAS, because it was a rare success in critical and commercial terms during a frankly awful year for DC. The biggest selling issue of that event sold around 90,000 copies, which is great by recent DC standards but not as much as RIP, or any big Marvel book, or McDuffie's wholly buzzless JLA.

Hmmm...that would account for their amazing ability to get Spiderman wrong, too.

xp

xpost

There's always been that element in Marvel culture I think, that slight cooler-than-thou ness. I see your point though, it shows in the handling of Spider-Man too.

haha double xpost to Oilyrags

Uncanny 500 was absolutely rotten, btw.

How can Marvel possibly get X-Men right when the entire company is overrun with people whose personalities tend toward jockishness?

Dude, please inform your friend (and I guess yourself as well) that MOST OF THE DAMN INDUSTRY is, and HAS BEEN, a gussied-up boys club for almost half a century, if not longer! And god forbid they employ creative talents whose mindsets don't synch up w/ the characters they're working on, because that's never happened before w/ any degree of success.

Your strawmen are smoldering, Matthew.

I don't think that's really true, David. Yes, it's a boy's club, but there's different types of boys.

Yes, Batman RIP and Final Crisis are big sales draws, but JSA is DC's second best selling title after JLA, and Action is going very strong. It's more about the volume of sales. Grant certainly has more things in his past that qualify as flops.

I think Morrison's comics sell by and large where people expect them to sell - aside from Final Crisis it's hard to think of anything you'd call a "flop" in that sense. But he does more low-selling stuff, for sure.

I am always amazed at how well JSA does!

I used to really dislike a lot of Johns' stuff. But over the last year or so, I've found myself enjoying his writing more and more--he's got a kind of grand enthusiasm that I can get swept away by really easily. And as a Green Lantern reader of close to 30 years' standing (yikes), I totally love the rainbow corps idea.

Johns' Booster Gold was fun, for unabashedly blatant continuity porn. But that last issue was wretched- less of a resolution than a sudden realization that, oh shit, I've run out of pages. And the resurrection of Booster's sister, where Johns seems to be expecting a rousing chorus of HURRAHs from the reader for reintroducing a minor character that hasn't been seen in what, ten years or so? while simultaneously violating the "you can't change history" thing with the most weaksauce excuse ever: "Oh, she's from The Future, so it's okay." WHAT DUDE NO.

Oh, and the DC 1 Million tie-in that consists of like three pages of a cutesy Booster Gold imitator called "Peter Platinum" and has no bearing whatsoever on the plot, serving only as an excuse to slap "#1,000,000" on the cover like the Zero Hour issue earlier in the run? Weak. So very, very weak.

I keep forgetting that Johns wrote JSA for years. Reading his new Justice League I felt like, geez, all he writes is two-character stories. It's GL and Flash hanging out in a graveyard, GL and Green Arrow in field somewhere, GL and Guy Gardner on Hoth, GL and Batman tryin' to be buds. OKAY, so he's constantly shoving GL into bromantic encounters. His Teen Titans issues were also all about MALE BONDING. OH boy.

If the question is c/d or s/d, the answer is the same. D. D. D. Forever D.

here's the thing that bugs me the most--and reading former DC editor KC Carlson's blogpost on first issues kinda crystallized it for me--Geoff Johns comics are never about anything other than comics. If they even reference something outside of comics, it's an action movie 9 times out of 10. The Justice League first issue says nothing about anything other than Batman and Green Lantern. No world exists beyond them. I think of how many GJ comics take place in empty outer space or between dimensions. Nowhere! What I loved about the old Green Lantern Corps back-ups wasn't so much the fantastic and weird aliens, but the fantastic and weird places. There are no places in Geoff Johns's DC Universe. It's the Phantom Zone.

forgot to link to Carlson's post http://comicsworthreading.com/2011/09/01/what-makes-a-good-first-issue-guidelines-for-superhero-comic-origins/

Not much to add, but, yes, that's one mighty dead-on description of most every Geoff Johns comic I've ever read.

I think of how many GJ comics take place in empty outer space or between dimensions. Nowhere!

Flashback to every Blackest Night comic I read when the library got 'em. I can't remember a damn thing about it beyond thr repeated image of two or three dudes floating in space and shouting the same point over and over ad infinitum.

http://images.tcj.com/2013/06/tcj_0009.jpg

I was blown away by this page of praise for Geoff Johns, who has been writing these Green Lantern comics since 2004, and who can attribute the lion’s share of his initial success to the fact that he was able to convince a large segment of the comic reading population to take Green Lantern so seriously that they’d go so far to dump millions of dollars into making a movie out of the character despite the fact that he’s a drunk fascist who dresses and behaves like a cosplay MASH character whose only power comes from A) having a green ring and B) being a huge fucking asshole all the time. Johns built his career and set the mold for contemporary DC Comics with the way he took Green Lantern’s entire stupid, shitty history and turned it into one long nasty, blood soaked epic laced with heavy dollops of Joseph Campbell and wish fulfillment audience worship, turning an obnoxious and unpleasant comic book into an obnoxious and unpleasant Saga of Graphic Novels, and now, for the final bow of a nearly ten-year run, the best the guy can muster is an eight-dollar comic that resolves almost nothing but includes a page where his personal assistant and his boss tell him he’s special? That’s awesome.

man, no one likes this guy in the industry, huh

but includes a page where his personal assistant and his boss tell him he’s special?

hes like the go-to Green Lantern Guy right? is he actually good, or is he just the only dude who cares about the character enough to write him for a million years

he's competent and fun, don't go in there expecting Morrison or anything though. i liked his early 2000s JSA run too

he's atrocious, and turns children's characters into torture porn

He's not the worst thing about DC these days. Which is kind of staggering.

I don't know - his JL books are really amazingly (and not interestingly) terrible.

I am enjoying his JL books but I wouldn't really say they were "good"; the best thing about them so far have been the backup strips, particularly Shazam

he's atrocious, and turns children's characters into torture porn

the one Geoff Johns GL TPB I read confirms this

Now with vibrating Hank Pym action!

Yeah, I have absolutely nothing positive to say about Johns' work. I mean, sure, blood-vomiting hate-powered space cats are okay I guess. But besides that? Nope.

I saw the page that introduced that character recently and it was one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen

Which? Red Lantern Kitty?

Yes, it was so completely ludicrous!

And yet so totally serious all the way to the bone that all I could do was be astonished.

Parts of his early run on the Flash were genuinely great, haven't read any of his JSA. DC game him free reign to indulge the worst of his fanboy tendencies and he never looked back.

what is this torture porn you speak of? i haven't read the last couple of years, but up until New 52 it just seemed like standard superhero stuff (with the exception of Blackest Night with was just stupid in a lot of ways, but not THAT much more than most of these giant crossover events)

I just read a blurb of Dex-Starr's origin story and I can't believe someone would write that straight-faced

it really isn't that straight-faced

I wouldn't strictly call it torture porn, but he strikes me as the sort of child who probably enjoyed pulling legs off insects

hence all the superheroes pulling people's arms off as blood sprays across the panel

He's definitely of the "things matter more if they happen in a gratuitously gruesome fashion" school of comic book writing.

Which? Red Lantern Kitty?

― Matt M., Tuesday, June 18, 2013 11:04 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, it was so completely ludicrous!

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 11:05 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

wait, what

lol is this it

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs34/f/2008/305/4/4/Dex_Star_the_Red_Lantern_by_coda2curse.jpg

actually it was this:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_loa3t17V6P1qhjqz9o1_500.jpg

classic

lol

I got to say the scene where Black Hand kill's himself is pretty freakin' gory for a mainstream DC book that isn't listed as for "mature audiences only".

It's the effect he's had on other comics as well - I was reading a sweet-natured Val & Franklin story in Hickman's FF run, and even tat ended with a woman's head being punched off

you can blame the entire 1990s of comics for that though, tbh, though i see your point. forgot about the Black Hand thing. i guess i'm pretty desensitized to all the dismemberment and violence

Who wrote the GL story with the little kid's head popping in the vacuum of space? DeMatteis? I think that goes back to the 80s iirc.

hardcore old school DC fans of my acquaintance bemoan how their beloved childhood hero characters have been bespoiled by violence and cynicism. i wonder if fans have always complained in this way - or, if it is a relatively new phenomenon, when the complaint was first aired?

to be contrary, as a horror comic fan, and a marvel comics fans, i don't mind the horrification of boring DC shit like green lantern, and i loved the first kirkman-written marvel zombies. this stuff is really a continuation by other means of the market-chasing horror comics of the fifties, which are of course now safely enshrined as classics. plus, teenagers dig things in bad taste, so i can totally understand why timewarner or disney are chasing the few bucks left in comics with ugly meanspirited grave pissings.

but just to be clear, geoff johns is really no more interesting a comics writer than i dunno tony isabella and his massive success really really puzzles me!

my guess: politicking

but that's my bias, i feel like most of the settled establishment writers and Marvel and DC got there that same way

oh for sure - and seriously, i'm sure it's quite a professional challenge/accomplishment to please and prosper within the tightly regulated world of corporate comics - but i really meant his apparent success with readers more than with his bosses

eh, he's competent and puts out a crazy amount of work on a consistent basis and on-time; that's more than enough to garner a fanbase these days

also he introduced a kitten that vomits napalm blood on its enemies

One kind of weird thing about Geoff Johns for a guy that seemed to come from Hollywood into comics is that he hasn't done much at all for projects except super hero stuff. Pretty much all of the other popular mainstream comic writers got some other type project, even if it is just other types of super hero stuff.

Wasn't he attached to the GL-movie? And that might be why he hasn't gotten anything else...

There's varying reports on that. GL had been in production for a very long time. It's believed that he was brought in 11th hour style to try and shore up things, which is possible, but tough to tell. However, GL was seen as sort a referendum on the newly-corporatized DC comics as movies because of the timing. Which is kinda silly, since the train had been rolling for some time before DC got brought back into the Warners fold more formally.

And honestly, are there any comics writers who really have made the jump from comics to big-time Hollywood blockbuster writing? Bendis has tried for a long time at Marvel and never gotten traction. Loeb has bounced between the two (but started writing screenplays way before comics).

when the superhero movie trend kicked off i thought hwood was crazy not to throw some money at g-mo and have him write a few, but at this point the template for them is probably too calcified for his weirdness (even when he's working in commercial mode) to fly

still sad we never got to see that We3 movie

I'm probably wrong, but I've just assumed that people got so much more money from writing film or tv than from comics, that it was still a pretty big bone to throw to the writers, to have them help with writing a few episodes of Smallville or Spectacular Spider-Man or what-have-you. Like, they don't need to write anything big-time, it's still a career step-up.

hwood was crazy not to throw some money at g-mo and have him write a few

afaik Moz tried super-hard to break into film screenwriting, but it hasn't worked out.

ever since that "the Matrix ripped me off" bit, G-moz has been up on breaking in

Ha, didn't the RZA buy rights to Happy?