We all have our favorite runs on “Justice League” – some love the ‘bwahaha’ Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire period, others the cerebral Grant Morrison run, still others the generational approach that Brad Meltzer brought to the book. However, I don’t think anyone could argue that any one creator has put the team through as many knock down, drag out battles back to back than Geoff Johns has since coming onto the book in 2011. For “Darkseid War,” the arc that begins in earnest with today’s “Justice League” #41, he is again joined by artist Jason Fabok, who is proving himself to be genetically designed to draw big event books. I got to chat with both men last week about the arc, Mister Miracle, and the idea of a timeless Justice League.
Special thanks go to Vince Ostrowski and Zach Wilkerson for help preparing these questions
I just want to start off by just complimenting Jason for a second. This is an incredible piece of work. You did a really, really great job with it. It is by far the most dynamic and epic work I’ve seen from you. It’s fantastic. Good job, man. I really like it.
Jason Fabok: Thanks, man. That makes me feel good.
Geoff, this is a story that has sort of been percolating since the beginning of the New 52, it seems like. How long in advance have you been plotting to do the ‘The Darkseid War?’
Geoff Johns: First, I want to echo your compliments to Jay because when he thankfully accepted the assignment in coming on as my collaborator in “Justice League,” it was really important for me that we develop a strong creative relationship. We’ve become really good friends and stuff over this too, but the skill level that Jay brings to it — I couldn’t do this storyline without him. It just wouldn’t — you see that work on the page and he both does these really cool, intriguing, intimate and sometimes frightening and exciting character interactions, and then the scope of it all! There’s so many different things he can do, and the amount of detail he puts in every panel, it’s unparalleled.
I’m very, very grateful for his partnership on this, and I give him a lot of credit for the continued inspiration he gives me when I sit down to write the scripts, because it’s really that visual execution and manifestation that gets me motivated to try and do the best possible script I can; and I can go places that, I can do anything, I can make a very intimate conversation or I can go very big and have a dark anti-god war. I give a lot of credit for that to Jay, and I thank him for that. I’m glad you noticed that right off the bat because I think it’s super impressive and I can’t wait for people to see this. Our collaboration on ‘The Amazo Virus,’ that was really just Jay getting warmed up. This is his opening salvo, I think, announcing him as one of the modern day greats when it comes to superhero epic story telling.
From day one, I wanted Darkseid to return, and the first time I had him in “Justice League,” it made sense for a being as powerful as him to be kind of the catalyst for these guys to get together. I wanted them to come back and face him again, and I always envisioned Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor in a brutal war together, and what the Justice League would have to do with that. So it evolved from that. The first time they faced Darkseid was more about the team, and this time we’re going to see more of Darkseid’s inside, of what he’s up to and who he works with and the characters from his universe. Which has been a lot of fun! Particularly, you already saw Mister Miracle, Kanto, and a few others in its opening issue. It’s been a lot of fun to dive into those characters, as well as getting more in the Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor.
Obviously there’s a huge Jack Kirby influence on the book, just with the characters and such. This is a question for both of you: what is it about Kirby’s work that you’re trying to bring to this particular project?
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GJ: I have to say on the writing side, it’s really just the stakes, the scale, and the characters. They’re much larger than life, but still very, very human. They’re relatable. Like, Mister Miracle, I find extremely relatable. Even Darkseid to an extent. He’s beyond a lot of us, but there’s a scene in issue two that I just really think is a great scene. It’s very inspired obviously by the creations of Jack Kirby, the New Gods, and the scope and the scale of that. We’re trying to, again, do our own take on it and Mister Miracle; we’re all training a little bit, and we’re just kind of get more into his history and what motivates him, what drives him. For me, he’s really become the perfect protagonist to Darkseid’s antagonist by being this person who’s enslaved, who’s now fighting for his freedom and his escape and if there’s anything Darkseid dislikes more or has trouble understanding is somebody who escapes his will.
JF:I’d have to say from the visual side of things, I’m trying to pay homage to the legacy that Jack Kirby has and the characters that he created, but at the same time I’m trying to take them forward and bring them up to date in a lot of ways. Some of these characters, like Kanto, the way that the character looked in the past, both of us really couldn’t see him operating in 2015 the way he looked. It was like, let’s stick to the overall design, the overall shape of the costume, but let’s just give it a tweak, let’s give it a twist — but let’s still keep that legacy there.
Same with Mister Miracle. We threw around a couple of different designs. One that was a little different and kind of a little bit more out there, and then we eventually settled on, “Hey, let’s go back to the original design,” but I tried to look at it like “If they were going to make a New Gods movie, how would Mister Miracle appear on film?” That’s kind of the way I went about his costume. It’s the same color breakdown as the original, but I added some grays and I added some different… almost like his suit is made up of different pieces of armor or something that’s on there, but it’s all lightweight. He can move around really quick, and his mask is kind of alien, but it’s got some design into it that gives it a different kind of look, and some texture.
It’s all about going back and looking at the legacy that Jack Kirby laid and the groundwork that he laid, but also trying to put yourself into those characters, putting your own designs into those characters. Hopefully, I think fans will really like it. We’ve had really good response to Mister Miracle’s look and I think as we go through the story you’re going to see different designs for these characters, but you’ll still recognize them, you’ll still know who they are, and I think fans will be happy with all that.
GJ: I will say, Kanto – we’ve talked about him a couple of times, in interviews. Again, I don’t know why, but when I read Jack Kirby’s original story with Kanto, his backstory was really fascinating. I think at first glance people might write him off. You look at Darkseid’s assassin through, and after he’s spent a lot of time on Earth during the renaissance era, he was yanked back to Apokolips and it’s about surviving. He’s got a very interesting perspective on everything and for me, I just gravitated towards that character immediately.
It’s interesting when you talk about all these stories kind of bubbling up in your head because when you’re looking at this issue in particular, it feels, in a lot of ways, like the natural culmination of a lot of the work that you’ve been doing, Geoff, since your time at DC. You know, you’ve got Green Lantern there, you’ve got the Flash there. You also have characters like Shazam and Cyborg — all these different little tendrils of your writing career coming together in this event right now.
Continued belowI guess my question is, of those past works that you’ve done, which is the one that you feel is most connected to this one? Which of your past works do you feel like this is evoking the most?
GJ: God, which it’s most applicable to? I wouldn’t know. I can’t really say. I’ve never really done a story with the New Gods. It’s just a very different story that I haven’t done before. You know, Jay and I talked a lot about “Blackest Night,” and just how big the scale of it was, and that was really fun. But it’s a different type of story, and it’s focused on a different scale. I mean, it’s a Wonder Woman story at its core, and I think that alone makes it different than anything I’ve done before.
I mean, my favorite thing in the world — and it really truly is — is taking characters that are slightly off the beaten path or have been forgotten for a little while and trying to get inside them and represent them, whether it be the Rogues from the Flash, or Aquaman, or Mister Miracle. Even in my own head, Wonder Woman for me right now, she’s become such a huge focus on this book, and I can’t tell you how much I’ve grown to love her working on the storyline and working on her with Jay. It’s just a revelation for me, and so I don’t know what I can apply this to other than I love taking characters that, like Hawkman, or the JSA, or Mera. I love taking characters that I feel have so much potential that’s just waiting to be unlocked.
I’ve really enjoyed doing that throughout my career: Booster Gold or the Teen Titans. Cyborg has always been a favorite. I’ve been working on Cyborg since I was on “The Flash.” I brought him into that book as a supporting cast member. Then I brought him into “Teen Titans,” and now “Justice League” because I’ve just always loved that character, and I think the potential for that character is just huge. I guess I like taking characters and concepts and trying to polish them up, because if somebody walks away from this issue and goes, “I never really cared about him before, but now I love Mister Miracle,” I think Jay and I would be really, really happy.
I think we’ll be really, really happy with that. All I like to do is create new fans of characters, or maybe get people to think about Aquaman a little bit differently than they had before. Also, at the same time, I like to create new characters like St. Walker, or whoever. I really like and enjoy just the process of expanding the mythology and rebuilding its foundation, and that starts with the characters, specifically. For me, the inside to New Gods was through Mister Miracle, and once I really got interested in that character, I went to Kanto and everybody else followed from that. I really need a character to tap into before I can start to look at the mythology a different way [and that was Mister Miracle].
In terms of scale, it is certainly big like “Blackest Night” or “Sinestro Corps War.” But hopefully it remains as personal as these stories should be and have to be. I think it’s very easy to kind of highlight the epicness of it, but “Sinestro Corps,” at its core, was about how Jordan finally overcame the fear that he had, and Coast City kind of manifested that at the end.
My favorite scene in “Sinestro Corps” is the final scene when everyone lights up the green light in Coast City and re-inspires Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern to keep fighting, despite him being afraid. He’s relearning his own confidence, and who he is. That’s what that story was really about: his own fear, of himself and his past. This storyline is very much a storyline about the Justice League as a team, but there are very personal storylines for everybody, especially Diana and Scott, and some of the other major members of the Justice League.
Continued belowIt’s really not for me to say what this story is reminiscent of. It’s tapping into my love for the DC Universe and that love goes to every single corner. There’s not a character in the DC Universe I don’t absolutely love and I wouldn’t love to write; from Metamorpho to Zatanna. I just think they’re all awesome, and I’ve loved them since I was six.
My first ever comic was “Justice League [International]” #1, the DeMatteis, Giffen, Maguire book. So Mister Miracle was part of the first comic I ever bought. This is right up my alley.
GJ: I read that book, too. I hadn’t written a whole lot of Mister Miracle until we started working on this, but he’s a character that we both have just really embraced and hopefully people like him. Our take is a little bit different, but I think it still stays true to the DNA of who Scott Free is.
Absolutely. It’s interesting you mentioned Sinestro Corps and Blackest Night because both of those books were handled differently. You know, Sinestro Corps War happened within the pages of “Green Lantern” for the most part, whereas “Blackest Night” had a mini-series that was focused on the event itself. When you’re planning a big storyline like ‘Darkseid War’ is there a difference between plotting it as part of the monthly Justice League book, or keeping it as its own separate thing?
GJ: You know, when we did “Sinestro Corps” I remember I actually was very conscious to keep it in “Green Lantern,” and then “Blackest Night” — they wanted it to be its own mini-series, and, quite frankly, I had so much story that it would have ended up being a 15 issue mini-series. It made sense for me to break it out, and it really became a limelight event. What Jay and I want to do – our goal – is to put the focus on “Justice League” 41. It’s not a number one, it’s just issue 41; make the book the event. Making it all about the story and the art, and not about covers, or a flashy number one. We really want to make our book special and make the monthly book the event. Like, that’s the book you want to buy, and that’s the book that’s exciting. Also, you can read this issue and not have to read eight other things. That was always a very conscious goal of ours.
Jay mentioned on this a little bit beforehand, and so did you, Geoff, about the re-design, the remaking of Mister Miracle, a little bit differently. Jay, I want to start with you. When you’re redesigning a character, when you’re updating a look, where do you start from? Do you start with the classic look and then work forward? Or do you start with something brand new and then try and tie that to what’s been there before?
JF: Yeah, I think I look at the classic look and then start kind of moving in different directions; see where it kind of goes. I’ll probably post it sometime soon, but originally I had this idea for Mister Miracle where we’d get rid of his cape and he would have kind of like a big trench coat kind of jacket thing that had a really high collar. Kind of pulled that together, but I wanted him to look more … maybe I had just seen Guardians of the Galaxy or something, so I really liked the whole trench coat look that Star-Lord had, and stuff like that. I originally tried that. I thought this is the way to go. It’s different. I really wanted something new. I wanted a brand new take on the character. But then we discussed it and Geoff felt that, you know, let’s go back, let’s look at the original character design and let’s see what we can do with that.
I started diving into a lot of the old Mister Miracle stuff that Jack Kirby had drawn and looked at his original designs that he had, where Mister Miracle is actually blue and yellow, and I tried that on for a design. I really liked that look. It was different. I find that when you got characters that are red ad yellow and green, those are kind of weird colors, you know; they clash with a lot of things on a page. In the end we found where we needed to go with the character. If you match it up with the original Jack Kirby design it’s pretty much all there. It’s the same color breakdowns that the original design had. I added some grays so the character doesn’t look too cheesy and too bright. I wanted a little bit of darker tones, darker hues to the character. In the end I really just felt like we hit the right look for the character.
Continued belowWe’ve done that with a bunch of other characters throughout the story. A lot of times it’s just I just go with my gut feeling on how I’m inspired by that character, and then move in different directions and see where it falls. Sometimes you hit a character design on the first take. Other times it takes you three or four times. Sometimes if you look at my work, I change the way I draw characters from book to book sometimes. Sometimes I’m not happy with the character’s belt or something and I’ll update that. Or the lines that are on a character, like Flash, or something. I see it as a constantly an evolving process in trying to find that character, trying to find how to draw that character and to do it justice. You know?
Geoff, when you’re looking to sort of take a character into a new direction, where do you start with that? Is it more, how would this character better fit this story? Or is it trying to find a certain truth of the character that maybe isn’t apparent on a quick read? How do you go about re-invigorating a character?
GJ: I think it’s all subjective, right? Everyone has their own view of the characters. What I try and do is really get inside the character and think, emotionally, what intrigues me about this character? What makes me want to write about this character? What does this character want? What motivates the character? What’s special and unique about the character? What can they do that nobody else can do, both mentally and physically. And where do I want to take the character? Which is really important. We always have to know. I mean, Jay and I know the last scene in ‘Darkseid War.’ We know exactly how it will look, and how the storyline ends. We know literally panel for panel, I know that. It’s really important to know the journeys that I want to take the characters on.
For Mister Miracle, it was reading all his comics again. I read most of them before, but I read them all again. Then I took a lot of time to just think about them and live with them. What role he could play and what he was. There were things that became very apparent. There’s stuff that’s very easy because it’s on the surface, and there’s other things that I think are more subtle. Then there’s things that I want to create or add to the character. I had read a lot of the characters within it, and there’s one issue I read where he was actually he was trapped, handcuffed, and somebody else broke him out. I felt that felt so wrong to me because the one thing that Mister Miracle does is he escapes, and that for me is both he had to escape in his own mind and physically escape.
What a personification of escape is Mister Miracle! He’s escape on every level. I think there’s a lot of things we all want to escape from, and for me Mister Miracle became about the embodiment of that freedom. Like I said before, he is the perfect character to go up against Darkseid because he believes in freedom so much and he had so much that was taken away. I start there, and from there I just start to tell the story and it builds and adds on, and characters organically connect to Scott and I talk a lot about him in issue 41. Characters are important to him and we’ll meet some of those characters. Characters that are a threat to him, or her perceives as a threat to him. That’s really where I start. I start at the very core of the character when I look at it and have to decide what that character is to me, and I really got to pick a lane and go down and commit to who that character is in my mind.
Again, my take on Mera, probably a lot different than other people’s takes on Mera, but it’s a take that I commit to and gravitate towards and try and execute the best way it possibly can. Just like I do with anybody else, but it all starts with, “Why do I even want to bother? Why do I want to spend some time with this character?” Once I can answer that question, then I have no problem with it. It probably comes pretty quickly.
Continued belowGeoff, your job obviously crosses platforms into multimedia stuff, and, Jay, you mentioned going to see a movie from a rival publisher – whose name I will not mention – and drawing inspiration from there. As these characters branch out into other media and other experiences, is there a temptation either on the writing or the art side to bring the comics closer to the other media?
GJ: The temptation of..?
To visually make the Batman in the book more like the Batman people are going to be plunking down ten bucks to see next summer in Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice.
GJ: I can say from my point of view, not really. We don’t really talk about, “Hey, let’s do it like the movie.” Or do it like the TV show. I think our conversations are always like, this is the comic book side, we do the best version of the comic book version of the character.
JF: From my perspective I’m really inspired by the designs that these film-makers are coming up with in these movies. A lot of the times I sit there and I look at these designs and go, “These are great! Why aren’t we thinking about these designs in comics? How come we didn’t think of that first?” I have to say, it’s really cool to see that Ben Affleck’s Batman costume looks like it does in the comics. It’s taking its cue from the comics, you know? So I made a joke on Twitter that I’d been drawing Ben Affleck’s Batman for the last three years. I draw this guy with a giant chin in a Batman suit.
We came up with our Wonder Woman design, and a lot of people would think that our Wonder Woman design is based off of the movie Wonder Woman, but actually it’s based off of an old drawing I did five years ago that Geoff found and really liked. So we used that as a costume. Then it just so happened that, “Oh, Cool! There’s a Wonder Woman costume that kind of goes in that same direction!” I think with the comics, visually, we want these characters to look as classic as possible. The more classic you make your characters look, the longer life your book has. It can transcend time. It’s not stuck in a time period where it’s, “Well, remember when they did that?” It’s these characters are in their classic looks.
We really talked about that because we want this book to be as big as possible. We want it to be as timeless as possible, and we want fans to come to our Justice League to see the characters in their classic designs, and just dive into the story and go from there. We want to deliver the best visual and story book that we possibly can. We want you to feel like you’re getting your money’s worth with these books, every single month. That’s our goal.
Somewhere Blue Electric Suit Superman is crying, Jay. Just so you know.
GJ: Never say never.
