How Geoff Johns is ruining DC Comics

You [k]now, maybe it's because of my strange upbringing in the backwoods of New Hampshire, but I always had a soft spot for Captain America. I remember buying a bunch of his comics back in the early 90's and enjoying his fights with the Red Skull. But, I was always disappointed by his constant working for the government, and constantly being in New York (yes, as a good New Hampshire boy, I was ardently anti-government, and as a good New Englander, I was ardently anti-yankees [yankees suck!]).

I can't say I'm surprised by this development. Comics have been extremely liberal since, well, probably the 70's. I remember one writer in particular would go on these long screeds about Bush being the devil, and horribly damaging America in the world. He said he was an Army Ranger and he personally saw the atrocities, and still knew many people internationally that hated the country. Turned out, he lied about rh whole thing. He was never an Army Ranger, and didn't even have a passport. Wish I could remember that guy's name.

I always liked the staunch anti-communism of the early 1960's Marvel stories. And of course, they kept a fairly black and white DC universe until the dreadful, terrible geoff johns took it over. The last comics I remember really enjoying were Grant Morrison's JLA from the 90's. No politics, no breast-beating, or self-introspection about what;s "really" right "really". Just good guys beating the crap out of bad guys. Good stuff.

Geoff Johns' Green Lantern comics is not about good vs. evil?

I'm not a rabid Johns fan, but his "Sinestro Corps War" storyline was an unapologetically pro-liberty/anti-terrorist as a superhero comic can get.

It's possible, I haven't read Johns in probably close to a decade. I've always despised his writing. At first, it was because everything he wrote seemed to be dependent on me reading some obscure Infinity Inc. comic from 1983, and was filled with way too many continuity winks to the audience. After that, he just became way too violent and misogynistic in his writing (and people complained about Ron Marz because he killed off Kyle Rayner's girlfriend). It's possible John is currently writing a anti-terrorist story as you say, but I'm sure he's filled with all kinds of extreme violence (and not the normal comic book violence of people punching each other, I mean stuff like having a woman get a pike run through her gut, as I understand happened recently).

Plus, a multi-colored Lantern Corps is just lame. Even for comics.

Well, I can't argue with you about the violence in the Sinestro Corps War.

I'm very glad to find another conservative who feels the same way I do about Geoff Johns's writing. I stopped reading his books at least 5 years ago, along with many other DC/Marvel comics, because they were becoming increasingly gratuitous and unpleasant, and if he has any sense of humor, even that falls flat. The Flash was decidedly where he really mishandled things. He implied that the Mirror Master was a sexual harrasser and the Turtle was wiling to stoop to child rape, among other serious problems. Not exactly what I'd call appropriate for a book that was built on an optimistic view like Superman. But you know what the straw was that broke the camel's back? It happened in the miniseries called Rogues' Revenge, if you want to read this page on Inertia at the Titans Tower and what he did to the son of the Weather Wizard. After what Johns depicted happening there, I will never read his future output again, and feel embarrassed that I ever thought he was anything great years before.

Incidentally, Johns also wrote at least one story for Marvel that could be considered leftist in the Avengers in 2002-2003 (I think it was called "Red Zone") where the Red Skull infiltrated the US government as a defense secretary anagramed as Dell Rusk (same initials as Donald Rumsfeld?), and it featured the Skull on a splash page cliffhanger saying "I love America", in a way that could've been meant as an insult to American patriots. It was truly awful. I have no intention of wasting time on the relaunched Flash series where Johns brings back Barry Allen, and I won't be surprised if it turns out to be a distorted reflection of the Barry I once knew in my childhood.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read Brightest Day after that clap trap that was Blackest Night. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Man, I can literally feel your anger about these books coming off the screen. I’m not saying that as a bad thing, just that it’s very obvious how strongly you feel about this stuff.

I’m in general a Geoff Johns fan. I’ve for the most part enjoyed his Green Lantern run, after having never cared about the character before. I thought his Hawkman run was great. I also really enjoyed his work on the Flash and JSA. But I also realize that the people that don’t like him have some valid points, and it seems that lately I’m agreeing with them more and more. I’m still enjoying GL (I thought his work during Blackest Night on GL proper was much better than on the actual BN series itself) but the navel gazing and over the top gore and arm-severing is getting tiresome. And this is from someone who considers Garth Ennis as one of his top 5 writers(not that Ennis overdoes the navel gazing thing.) But man, there honestly was no reason whatsoever to bring back Barry Allen. And if Brightest Day still has the level of “super-kewl” gore that Johns and DC seem to think they need in their comics, they really just don’t get it anymore.

Let me join the chorus of Geoff Johns…dislikers. I have to say, I, personally, view johns as the single worst thing that ever happened to comic books in general and DC Comics specifically (well, one of the two, the other being the Didiot). I keep wondering who it is that Johns has incriminating photos of. Or how he got popular in the first place. I remember reading Day of Judgment back in the day and saying to myself “This is the most poorly written comic, I’ve ever read, and that includes all the indie comic crap about unsociable loners whom normal just don’t understand because the loner is “special” in some way (God I HATE Ghostworld!)”. I mean, Alan Scott supported Hal becoming the Spectre because and I quote “it feels right”. Yes, let’s just give the power of God to a mass murdering psychopath who had to be reminded that racism was bad back when he was sane. And then his Teen Titans where every issue basically amounted to 22 pages of “Hey do you guys remember the NEW Teen Titans? Wasn’t book awesome? Isn’t it this just like it? Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” I gave up after 6 issues, and haven’t read a johns comic since.

If you ask me, and you didn’t, there are really only two or three writers who really understood what made the Silver Age great. AS stated before by Karsten and Tim C, it has nothing to do with the characters who were wooden, interchangable, one-dimensional goodie-goodies. The big appeal was the constant stream of new ideas and new characters. In my opinion the only people that ever understood that were Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, and Tom Peyer on the criminally underrated Hourman book. These guys kept expanding the mytholiges of characters and giving us new takes on old concept, and brining in completely fresh concepts (speed force, time prison, and god only knows how many crazy things Morrrison came up with). Every time I picked up an issue of Flash, JLA, or Hourman, I knew I was going to get something I’d never really seen before. It was awesome!

To me, the worst part of Johns writing is endemic of all of what’s ailing DC comics currently, which is this bizarre combination of self-referential nostalgia and incredible, explicit hyperviolence. The whole thing seems to be “Remember Barry Allen wasn’t he awesome? Well, now he’s super badass cuz he rapes kittens and then pulls apart dead bodies and drinks blood. Super-kewl, man”. And it’s not superkewl, it’s a symptom of an inability to create a new idea and tell it in a story.

Sorry for the length of the rant, but Chris’s review just got me thinking. Great review Chris, and I second that general Johns review.

Long time reader, first time poster.

I seriously think that Johns will be infamous some day as the guy who killed DC comics. You can’t devote most of your career to rendering things out of continuity just because you didn’t like the stories, or changing characters back to how they were circa 1983 without ruining some of the things readers liked about DC’s shared universe in the process. Which probably helps explain why a lot of “popular” DC books sell about like stuff that would have been cancelled back in 2002.

Johns has done a lot over the past ten years to drive away people like me who had no major beefs with DC’s status quo before the year 2000, when he and Judd Winick and Greg Rucka started deliberately messing things up in preparation for Infinite Crisis. And for what? To add a few more members to the JSA? To make Green Lantern one of the only titles that gets decent sales? To bring back Barry Allen?

Now, the “DC Nation” that DiDio used to talk about all the time is basically the fifty or sixty thousand people who still like reading Geoff Johns comics. If those are the only people you can count on to buy your stuff on a consistent basis, you might as well throw in the towel and admit you just publish comics as a way of keeping the rights to the characters. In which case, they might as well just reprint old comics from the Eighties instead of paying Johns all that money to write new ones. They can stick some fresher pop culture references into old Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans comics and call them “Titans Reborn” or something.

I predict that promoting Johns will turn out to be a really, really dumb move. He and DiDio probably won’t ever figure out that most people don’t like the Johns formula of mixing pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths nostalgia with Miracleman-style violence any more, so that means they’re screwed unless Jim Lee somehow manages to save their bacon.

I feel that Geoff Johns’ writing kind of symbolizes eveything right AND wrong with modern DC comics. I am, however, seeing his promotion to chief CREATIVE director as kind of a red flag. Being CREATIVE isn’t the guy’s strong suit.

The original Captain Boomerang is a cooler character, even in spite of his horrible costume. They probably brought him back as a bone they could throw to people who didn’t like Identity Crisis. Also, it helps make DC in 2010 a little more like DC in 1983.

The one I don’t get is bringing back the original Hawk. Also known as Extant. The guy Johns had the JSA and Metron basically murder in cold blood as revenge for stuff that happened during Zero Hour. The guy Johns then went on to replace with a new Hawk. Who was the never before seen or mentioned estranged sister of the female Dove.

I don’t see Johns as being self-aware enough to realize that introducing the never before seen or mentioned estranged sister of the female Dove was a mistake. So what’s the deal? Did he finally notice how weird it was to have the JSA murder a guy and then basically let Atom-Smasher take all the blame for it?

Yes, I know the story where Extant died in a plane crash so that Atom-Smasher could rescue his adoptive mother without causing a time paradox was Johns’ way of dealing with the death of his sister, the inspiration for Stargirl. That was still a weird comic.

So… Is Hawk going to be evil now? Is he going to become Extant again? Or was Johns or somebody just feeling nostalgic about the Karl Kesel series?

Just imagine how awkward it will be the next time Hawk sees the JSA. “Hey there, guys. Remember how I killed three of the coolest members of your team for stupid editorial reasons during Zero Hour? And then you let Atom-Smasher and Metron kill me so Johns could put how he felt about that into continuity? Let’s just let bygones be bygones, huh? Call it even? Wait! What if I said Parallax the evil space bug made me do it? Please don’t kill me again, Alan! Jay? Ted? Okay, I can probably take Ted… Not in the face! Not in the face!!”

Well, I’m tremendously nostalgic for the Karl/Barbara Kesel “Hawk and Dove” series, but even I have to admit that the character has been wrecked so badly that nothing short of a truly ****ing hellacious retcon can fix him.

DiDio is going to be known as the other guy responsible for the death of DC’s mainstream comics line. The guy has done almost nothing to justify why some people think he’s doing a good job, other than smoothing things over with Grant Morrison that one time he threatened to take his ball and go home.

DiDio called Countdown “52 done right.” That right there should have been a huge red flag.

DC’s successes under DiDio’s tenure mostly seem to boil down to ol’ Dan getting out of the way when Johns or Morrison want to do something that sounds cool. And for this he keeps getting promotions?

Even back when I was basically a Johns enthusiast (because of JSA and Hawkman), I always disliked his work on Flash. Seemed to me like he broke Wally West, after Waid had done such great work for so long developing him. And what he did with the Rogues was my first hint about what was to come: “all character development since 1986 should be undone, so that everything’s like it was in the Bronze Age, except with a nasty edge and a bit of the old ultra-violence.”

I don’t actually believe that he deliberately broke Wally in order to make him unusuable in order to get the chance to bring back Barry. But it kind of amuses me to pretend to believe it.

I’m fine with saying: Barry could be interesting. But Wally already *was* interesting, and Barry made a better dead patron saint than he had ever made an actual character. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through, for no particularly good reason.

I want to echo what [name withheld] said above. I love DC’s characters. I grew up in the comic book Bronze Age, but thanks to 80-page giants and 100-page super spectaculars I was pretty well-versed in the rich history of the company. I knew the difference between Earth-X and Earth-S.

For me, Barry Allen will always be THE Flash. While I don’t dispute Chris’ argument, the truth is that none of that matters to me. I’m the guy who wants things to be the way they were when I was a kid.

And yet, I have no intention of reading the new Flash series. Nor do I read Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern or any other current comics featuring these beloved characters.

Why? Because I find it pointless to read the monthly adventures of heroes who live in a constant state of universe-shattering crisis, where Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again. And again. Where icons are butchered to slake fanboy bloodlust, then resurrected to play their part in the next cosmos-overturning, year-long crossover. (And they said that the multiple earths were confusing.)

I briefly bought Detective Comics when Paul Dini was writing it and it wasn’t part of some multi-title story arc. Because I like Batman, and I want to read stories about Batman (preferably Bruce Wayne) being Batman.

I was thrilled when I heard the multiverse was back. But rather than spend some time exploring the ramifications of that “new” reality, DC immediately set to destroying most of the revived earths. Then there was a “final” crisis (which I did read, but still don’t understand), followed immediately by everyone becoming a zombie power ring-wielder, followed immediately by whatever the hell Brightest Day is.

So, instead of buying current DC Comics, I watch “The Brave and the Bold” and revel in good stories, well-told.