Earlier this week, Dwayne McDuffie told Newsarama that his Justice League roster is “pretty much set for the time being, with two exceptions, both already in the works long before I came on the book.” This isn’t going to be a who-are-the-exceptions post, although I want to touch on that a little.

First, the “in the works for a long time” phrase immediately makes me think of Wally West. However, with Wally rejoining the League thirty seconds after his dramatic reveal, the lawyer in me says he’s grandfathered in as part of Meltzer’s roster, and therefore not one of the “exceptions.”*

From reading McDuffie’s Wizard interview, my colleague Lisa Fortuner thinks his first new Leaguer is Green Lantern John Stewart. That’s entirely possible, and I certainly wouldn’t have a problem with it. John is one of DC’s most criminally under-used characters. His appealing personality and relatable approach to super-heroing (overshadowed in recent years by the more no-nonsense attitude of his animated counterpart) make his absence from the main stage even more frustrating.

However, I think the current Firestorm, Jason Rusch, could be McDuffie’s other “hire.”  I base this mostly on Dan DiDio’s recent comments, first that Firestorm would be “joining one of our teams very soon,” (the JLA makes the most sense) and then praising McDuffie’s short stint closing out the latest Firestorm title.

That series was guided mostly by two writers, Dan Jolley (13 issues) and Stuart Moore (19). McDuffie wrote the final three-issue arc, a New Gods crossover that likely leads into Countdown and/or maybe Justice League. As a fan of Firestorm from the Fury Of… days, I liked Jason a lot, and I especially liked Moore’s tenure. His take on the characters really felt right. Nothing against Jolley, certainly nothing against McDuffie (he co-created Static, so he can surely write Firestorm); but Moore, along with artists Jamal Igle and Keith Champagne, produced a very engaging superhero series that I was sorry to see cancelled.

And that, so deep into this week’s offering, gets to the heart of what I want to talk about. If and when Dwayne McDuffie writes Firestorm again, presumably in Justice League, he’ll basically be picking up from where Stuart Moore left off, just as Moore picked up from Jolley. That’s the way corporate superhero comics roll, and it is news to none of us. By using Firestorm in the Justice League, McDuffie also won’t have to compete with a solo Firestorm title, so he’s that much more free to develop the character as he wishes. Without reading too much into DiDio’s aforementioned remarks, putting Firestorm in the JLA would be a good way for him to get some exposure and then spin off into his own series. It worked for his predecessor, after all.

The JLA title has never been above such marketing, of course. As DC’s de facto permanent crossover title, Justice League’s existence is based on the conceit that if a handful of characters are popular enough on their own, their communal adventures must be exponentially more popular. The creative people behind any JLA title must therefore take others’ creative choices into account when planning the League’s stories. (At one point, Grant Morrison was using both the Electric Superman and Hippolyta’s Wonder Woman.) Indeed, the team’s all-star nature makes it dependent on the solo titles for its existence. Essentially, shepherding JLA is like competing on “Iron Chef” — make what you can out of the ingredients you’re provided.

There’s good and bad in that. The good is that Justice League, as DC’s de facto permanent crossover title, should showcase how well not only the characters, but the disparate sub-genres from which they’re derived, can work together. The bad is that a certain homogeneity — a smoothing of the rough, individualistic edges – more than likely results from such synergy. I’d like to think that, good and bad, JLA is basically DC in miniature: the melting-pot theory applied to fannish team-up impulses. 

And speaking of impulses … I also don’t want to make this a continuation of last week’s Flash marathon, but Bart’s death reminded me of his early days outside the superhero mainstream. When Waid and artist Mike Wieringo introduced him in the pages of Flash, Impulse fit within those mainstream parameters.  For Bart’s own series, though, artist Humberto Ramos took Bart away from the mainstream through a more “cartoony” and manga-influenced style. Impulse crossed over with Flash soon enough, but Ramos’ depiction of the Flash characters was similarly distinct from their “normal” appearances. The story flowed from one series to the next, and the writer was the same throughout, but the art made a big difference. As I said last week, Bart had to go through some pretty drastic changes to fit into the mainstream DC line.

I didn’t stay with Impulse much after Waid and Ramos left, because the series just wasn’t the same. Other creative teams have inspired similar loyalty. If DC decides to bring back Team 13 with a different set of creators, it’ll have to be pretty darn good to make me forget Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang. Likewise, I can’t imagine a Nextwave revival without the team of Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. Gail Simone has become so identified with Birds Of Prey that Sean McKeever will have a hard act to follow; and McKeever leaves Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane in a similar position.

The current crop of Justice Leaguers don’t come from quite the same idiosyncratic places as, say, Team 13 or Nextwave, but McDuffie will be using Busiek’s Superman, Johns’ Green Lantern, Simone’s Wonder Woman, Waid’s Flash, etc.  It’s a particular challenge which doesn’t quite apply to any other big super-team book — not even Avengers, I would argue, because Marvel doesn’t have DC’s Microsoft-like history of corporate-character integration.  McDuffie managed a lot more characters on “Justice League Unlimited,” though, for the most part pulling fan-friendly characterizations out of each.  He’s gotten a lot of goodwill out of that experience, and I certainly trust him to manage the idiosyncracies of the various creators primarily responsible for the characters on his League.

* Yes, dialogue in the Sinestro Corps Special notwithstanding.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Comic Books, DC Comics, Grumpy Old Fan, Version 1.0 Blog@. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.