Welcome back to the Society Pages, a column that looks back at the ‘modern’ history of the Justice Society of America. The main thrust of this column is to look at “JSA” and “Justice Society of America,” two ongoing series, written for most of their runs by Geoff Johns.
We take a detour this week that really should’ve been part of my ‘Chronicles of Shazam’ series, but since this story is about the resurrection of Black Adam, and Black Adam was a JSA member, it seemed relevant to discuss.
Written by Eric WallaceCover by
Fabrizio Fiorentino
Penciled by Fabrizio Fiorentino, Mike Meyhew, Sergio Ariño, Cliff Richards, and Travis Moore
Inked by Fabrizio Fiorentino, Mike Meyhew, Sergio Ariño, Walden Wong, Cliff Richards, Philip Tan, and Jack Purcell
Colored by Hi-Fi Design
Lettered by Travis Lanham and Steve Wands
Let me set the stage here for a moment: this is a very poorly thought of comics run. It was unnecessarily grimdark, it killed a beloved character for no reason at all, and wallowed in the worst ‘serious’ comic tropes imaginable. Its art style has not aged particularly well, and much of the dialogue seems totally out of place for the type of book this is.
Pretty much the only thing going for the book, both when it was coming out and re-reading it a decade later, is that Eric Wallace seemed to have a pretty good beat on who Slade Wilson is. His Deathstroke reads relatively consistent, and allows the book to have some semblance of continuity with the overarching DC Universe.
OK, with that out of the way, this run blows. Like, incredibly bad for reasons that don’t even need to be remarked upon. Want some poorly handled addiction chat? We’ve got that! Want over-sexualization for no reason? Come one down! How about some bad characterization of well established characters? That’s a bingo!
The run kicks off with a one-shot, “Titans: Villains for Hire” #1, and in that issue, the team kills Ryan Choi, the Atom, for basically no good reason. There’s never a compelling reason given; this very much reeks of the ‘let’s kill someone…who is redundant?’ line of thinking that plagued DC at times under Dan DiDio’s leadership. DiDio was always looking to shake things up, which I think is an admirable trait, but it oftentimes came at the expense of beloved characters/status quos.
I’m covering this because Black Adam is either an active part of, or the spectre that hangs over, a lot of the Geoff Johns JSA run. Osiris, his brother in law, was one of the resurrected characters from “Blackest Night,” and a good chunk of this run deals with him trying to resurrect both Black Adam and Osiris’s sister, Isis. I really have to wonder what the meta-narrative for bringing back Osiris is here, because his story is relatively uneventful. Yes, he resurrects Isis, but just for her to lead Kandaq a few issues before a line-wide reboot. Nothing that happens here sticks, at all, but more than that, it takes everything interesting about both Isis and Osiris and flushes it.
Coincidentally, the best piece of this entire run is the “Shazam” #1 one-shot that tied into this, which featured the Marvel family in an extended role. Wallace wrote them far better than any other non-Deathstroke character in this, although it still left a whole lot to be desired. It seemed like Wallace had a better handle on writing heroes than villains, and so maybe that’s why this issue stood out?
Osiris comes off like a sniveling shit, and Isis, when not straight up evil for a spell, is as milquetoast of a character as you can get. I recognize that when these plans were hatched, the New 52 wasn’t yet a ‘thing,’ and so no one could’ve known about or prepped for that eventuality. But given that kicker to this story, it just makes the entire run feel more pointless.
The whole thing is extra muddled because Osiris’s whole mission of resurrecting Isis was given to him by the White Lantern, and he basically has to de-power Captain Marvel in order to do so. There’s no reason or logic given, it’s just a weird bit of storytelling that doesn’t seem to make a lick of sense.
Continued belowWallace’s writing would hit its nadir with the New 52’s “Mister Terrific,” but here there’s a lot to dislike. I have to say, some of the issues went down smoother than I remember, but the plotting and overarching story is somehow worse than I recalled. On top of that, the book’s art feels out of place on a superhero book and is oftentimes lumpy, smudgy, and generally unpleasant to look at. That said, the art is relatively consistent across multiple artists, with the book feeling very cohesive. That’s a thing, I guess?
The long and short of this is that the book ends without a resurrected Black Adam, and the post-Crisis DCU ends in the same way. This book feels like the worst of the New 52 a year earlier, with a writer trying to ‘shake up’ a property that could’ve simply used a break or an interesting story. Instead, we get a deconstruction of what “Titans” means, for no good reason, and the book’s (deserved) reputation means that almost no one actually goes back to read this stuff.
I could keep going, but I won’t.
Next week, back to the honest to goodness JSA stuff. I promise.
