Monsters—from the Id!

While recording the Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode this week, we brought up the current Justice Society of America series that Geoff Johns is writing and talked about having a Legion series written by Johns. This led down a rabbit hole where one of the guys (ironically the one who complained about how much time we’d spent on the subject, though he certainly helped keep it going) said I was “hating” on Johns because I don’t like his Legion work and that “90 percent of writers” write the same kind of work Johns produces.

Well, here are reasons I’m not a fan of Geoff Johns’s work, not in any particular order.

• He ignored the character development that Bart, Cassie, Tim, and Connor went through in Young Justice for his version of the Teen Titans—which, except for the addition of Superboy, mimicked the initial Wolfman/Pérez lineup of Changeling (except, of course, suddenly he’s Beast Boy again), Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Robin, Kid Flash (because Bart couldn’t possibly still be Impulse), and Wonder Girl.
• He brought Barry and Hal back when Wally and Kyle were doing just fine as the Flash and Green Lantern.
• Although Mark Waid reinvented the Legion of Super-Heroes twice, Johns ignored everything that had happened since roughly the end of the Magic Wars (thus ignoring pretty much everything from LSH v4 on) to make his own version of the Legion (the Retroboot).
• He also tossed Waid’s Superman: Birthright right out of continuity. I know that move is just as much DC editorial’s fault as anything Johns might have been involved with, but honestly, I probably wouldn’t have been so irritated if Superman: Secret Origin weren’t sometimes so slavish to Superman: The Movie.
• Infinite Crisis was supposed to make the DCU a brighter place. Never happened.
• Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds felt like even his own Retroboot LSH were guest-stars in a series that should’ve been about them because the big deal of the series was the return of both Superboy and Kid Flash.
• At times he’s treated Stargirl like Ron Marz treated Kyle Rayner (the greatest hero but they just don’t know it yet). I get that he created her in memory of his sister, but it sometimes felt a bit much.
• He’s terrible at deadlines, which I find to be very unprofessional when it happens on a regular basis. If his work were truly that great, I might find the inability to hold to a deadline worth it, but I find most of his work to be no better than other writers (and not nearly as good as some who can produce their work on time).
• I don’t think he handles continuity as well as someone like Kurt Busiek or even Roy Thomas (even though I feel Thomas let himself get dragged down rabbit holes sometimes).
• Overall, a large chunk of Johns’s work seems to be a rehash of 1980s/1990s, like he thinks “I can do a better, modern take on this material” when other writers had moved on.
• The rainbow of different Lanterns and that whole “emotional spectrum” thing. I mean, “willpower” is now an emotion?

That said, I’ll give credit where credit is due.

• The idea of the Metaverse as explained in Doomsday Clock is a good way to tie everything back to why Superman’s so important to DC.
• Johns’s Stargirl TV series reminds me of why I like John Byrne’s Superman & Batman: Generations: When he’s given his own playground and set of toys, Johns can produce work I can get behind. It’s when he’s supposedx to be playing a shared sandbox with shared toys that I think his work suffers.
• Despite my dislike of the Retroboot LSH and Superman: Secret Origin, I did like that Johns tied Superboy back into the LSH by simply saying Clark was Superboy, but only when he was with the LSH in the future.
• I’ll also say that neither of Waid’s Legion reboots would’ve worked with the “Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes” arc or the subsequent Legion of 3 Worlds miniseries.
• And despite his insistence on bringing back Barry Allen, he had a good run writing Wally as the Flash.
• The post-52 version of Earth-2, which didn’t show up past his use of it in Justice Society of America (that I can recall), was well-done, especially in that it was even clearly still in the mid-1980s, not long after Crisis on Infinite Earths ended.
• The idea that traveling through time can also involve traveling across the multiverse (which basically builds on the 30th/31st-century Time Beacon Levitz introduced around the time of the Great Darkness Saga in LSH v2).

I don’t believe 90 percent of writers do even most of what Geoff Johns does, and even if they do, they aren’t hyped as the greatest thing since sliced bread (which, of course, is the greatest thing since Betty White). Johns is a decent writer, maybe a bit above average, but I still think he’s overrated. And if he’s only doing what 90 percent of other writers do, then I have yet to see what makes his work superior to the rest.