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.
The next major era of the Justice Society is here, shepherded by writers Bill Willingham and Lilah Sturges. The good news is that Sturges and Willingham find a way to focus on more characters. The bad news is, at least in this first arc, the writing suffers considerably from the first two years of this title.
Written by Bill Willingham and Lilah SturgesCover by Jesus Merino
Illustrated by Jesus Merino
Colored by Allen Pasalaqua
Lettered by Rob LeighWriters Bill Willingham (FABLES) and Lilah Sturges team up with artist Jesus Merino on a new era for the JSA. The team battles a monstrous army of villains who’ve declared war on them to collect a mysterious bounty in this collection of JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #29-33.
It’s interesting, or lazy, that the JSA has had two major splintering moments in the last year of this comic. First, it was Gog that tore them apart, and now it’s the same idea that tears apart superhero teams all the time, including the Justice League the year before in “Cry for Justice.” The idea of ‘are we doing enough?/are we proactive enough/are we prepared enough?’ is almost always met with a ‘no, but there is good reason why we aren’t,’ and while it is too early to definitively decide the case here, it seems like that’s going to be this verdict, too.
And look, I understand the argument: if the team had their shit together, Mister Terrific wouldn’t have died (and been resurrected, but still) and some of those villains wouldn’t have escaped. But the charge is being led by Magog, who is quite literally trying to make them into a paramilitary operation. He makes Hawkman look nuanced and pacifistic. It’s very odd that this was happening in 2010, as this is after the Bush years of war hawks being the norm in the United States. The book feels anachronistic now, but looks like it would’ve felt similarly out of place in 2010. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but it’s just an interesting choice.
Jesus Merino does a perfectly cromulent job with these issues, which feature a ton of characters, heroes and villains, and Merino, more or less, captures them well. His villains look a little goofier than you’d expect, but that’s not a terrible thing, as they’re all somewhat C-listers who are hired by a secret mastermind. The doofier visuals just hammer home how unacceptable it is that the JSA almost falls to these clowns.
On the heroic side, Merino does a good job at giving the various heroes personalities that match their characteristics. Magog is always veins out, angry as fuck. New, and obnoxious, character King Chimera walks around looking like he’s above all of this. The older characters look old, which is a pleasant change from how they are often presented. They should look old!
These issues are a little clunky from the dialogue standpoint, and while it is easy to blame that on the co-writing leading to neither writer having a distinctive voice, there’s also a fair amount of plot that needs to be accomplished in these five issues, and it is very oddly paced. So much time is spent on the less significant parts of the story, while the actual split of the team seems like a bigger priority than four pages it actually gets.
I’ll reserve judgment for how the teams actually break down once we get to the issues of the team split, but some of the choices seem really odd to me. Specifically, Stargirl joining the more militaristic JSA All-Stars seems like a weird move but, again, I’ll let Sturges sell me on that idea in that title.
The Johns era of this title is considered the, pardon the pun, Golden Age of Justice Society stories in the modern era, and it is abundantly clear that Willingham and Sturges agree, and want to instantly shake things up and make them darker. Darker isn’t always better, so let’s see how next week shakes out.
