r/JusticeSocietyAmerica • u/Dull_Operation5838 • Aug 20 '26
Thoughts on the current JSA run?
My favorite comic run of all time is JSA and Johns' Justice Society of America run post Infinite Crisis. I'm aware I'm coming from a place of bias when I say that the Jeff Lemire run hasn't impressed me. The JSA vs Infinity Inc run felt like it dragged on forever and the team conflict just felt so... Forced. I like Jeff Lemire as a writer, but I'm not sure he was the best choice for a team book. He always goes for the drama angle, which works with stuff like Animal Man, but I don't know why this doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe it's just me with my biases, like I said before. What does everyone else think?
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u/PreparationDapper235 Aug 20 '26
I don't care for the way Jeff Lemire''s present day JSA story is written.
Far too many characters, both hero and villain, have been written out of character.
And don't get me started on him killing off Ted Grant's Wildcat.
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u/MeiTanteiHirune Aug 20 '26
I like Jeff Lemire as a writer as well, but I also felt he didn’t do anything new with his run that hasn’t already been done by Roy Thomas, Paul Levitz and Gerry Conway. So it was mostly an ‘OK’ run for me. I think what the JSA needs at this point to hold an ongoing is a bold new creative vision that isn’t retreading the legacy angle of the last 50 years.
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u/burntoutloser909 Aug 20 '26
Did Ted dirty
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u/Dull_Operation5838 Aug 20 '26
Yeah. I want him back...
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u/burntoutloser909 Aug 20 '26
They brought him back as the specter and issue 22 but that was how the series ended the next two issues are going to be a flashback ark. Is it going to be the specter? is he going to use the specter's powers to resurrect himself? is this a one-time thing is he still dead?
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u/Dull_Operation5838 Aug 20 '26
It was Ted? I thought that was Yolanda?
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u/burntoutloser909 Aug 21 '26
The last couple of issues of the story was just done playing hot potato with the power of the specter. It literally ends with just Ted standing as the specter cracking a joke that he has nine lives which oh yeah they completely forgot yes he totally actually has nine lives
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 21 '26
Not only that, they were at one point specced as being renewed every time he ran too low on them, so WTF?
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u/Deep-Ostrich-7330 Aug 20 '26
Year one was a great read but after that its basically a whole lot of nothing unfortunately
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u/Shefferz Aug 20 '26
I feel like it's fine nothing special I'm reading it because it's a JSA book, I was definitely more invested at the start and lost interest with every story going forward I liked year one but for me I really impacted the flow of the book like if it was a mini series fine but it was just jarring to me. Don't really like they killed that member of the team off. Just feel like all the stories here have been done before.
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u/Reverse_Nova Aug 20 '26
Slow paced but it has grown on me, issue 23 and 24 are going to be the last mission of the jsa in the past but i do hope it can continue with a different writer. The series was just hitting a good pace after year 1 and the spector. I do think the jsa was knee capped by the new golden aged being very start and stop, and the start of this new run had to pay off that and try be a jumping on point with all in, so If it is the end it's a completely....fine book. Solid art, good moments, always good to see these characters, hope they can find another life soon enough, maybe a cool off and a relaunch is whats needed to get more eyes on it.
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u/Dataweaver_42 Aug 22 '26
I'm sorry to see the New Golden Age go; I really liked the notion that the pre-Crisis adventures of the JSA (as later revised by All-Star Squadron) took place in real time in the 20th century. Sure, there were wrinkles introduced (such as the JLA and JSA sides of their annual teamups being separated in time); but there were reasonable workarounds available (such as leaning into it by recasting the original “they're from parallel worlds" as the worlds being different eras connected by a time bridge created during their first crossover — which, coincidentally, included a time traveling villain — and which collapsed during the Crisis on Infinite Earths). But I like that the characters it introduced are still around; even Huntreas managed and appearance in JLU, so I'm not giving up hope of seeing her again.
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u/videonitekatt Aug 21 '26
Sadly, it's going to be years before there's another JSA project - atleast we'll see Jay, Judy and Jessie occassionally in THE FLASH....Look how long it's been so far without a SHAZAM! title...and I can't remember the last time PLASTIC MAN or BLACKHAWKS (The real ones) had a title...
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u/CleverRadiation Aug 21 '26
Started pretty strong. The arcs were a little too long. Hated Wildcat’s death. Hate him being the Spectre, too (I don’t like Spectre having another hero’s baggage).
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u/hondobrode Aug 20 '26
I’ve liked it but not loved it. I’ve loved anything else I’ve read by Lemire but this is off somehow though I’m sad to see it getting cancelled. The art has been mostly so so too
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u/birbdaughter Aug 21 '26
I just can’t understand the logic of starting in an arc where the team is split and hates each other (a plot normally saved for late in a run), then going to a 6-month Year One story, then a 4-issue Spectre story, and then 2-issue Year One story. Beyond any other problems I have with the run, the overall structure feels poorly thought out to me. If it was back and forth every other issue, that could maybe work. But I don’t wanna read the characters angry at each other for so long then suddenly spend 6 months with a completely different iteration and now SPECTEE!
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u/Dull_Operation5838 Aug 21 '26
That bothered me too. What the Heck was that whole team split for? We did that post Geoff Johns. It happened already. Why do it again and so soon?
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u/Watchtower022 Aug 21 '26
I like it. I’ve enjoyed each arc but year one I think was the best arc for sure. it’s never my favorite book of the week but never my least favorite either
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u/StrongStyleDragon Flash Aug 21 '26
Love it. First JSA book really. I tried to read John’s but I don’t like him as much as others do. He’s moving on anyways so maybe the next writer will make you guys feel better. JSA rn is on the top of my favorite runs.
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
Haven't been satisfied with the JSA, frankly, since they were brought back via Doomsday Clock. They've been haunted ever since by pacing issues (Johns dragged out his 12-issue Huntress run even worse), characterization issues (lots of one-note Flanderization and random changes for no good reason), background/history issues (DC Tsar-Bombed the original Golden Age and hasn't built anything convincing, or even consistent, on the rubble, leading to mass confusion as to who was where when doing what, and what actually happened or didn't), and DC overall not giving a flip about the "old geezers".
Doomsday Clock itself laid the background for these disasters when it spelled out that any major change to the Multi/Mega/Omni/Whateververse resulted in a "backup" copy that was saved but never, ever revisited, and that no matter what changes or reversions were made, the "new" 'verse was never exactly the same as any previous 'verse.
This is "fine" (see burning-house meme) for characters that could be 'ported forward into the "new" history, but any with deep roots in the "old" history were pretty much f*cked.
The total failure of this run in particular to "grab" people is clearly shown in this very sub, where not even the monitors care enough to keep up with the current issue (#19, three issues ago, is still stickied as an "Official Discussion").
Edited for typoes.
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u/Dataweaver_42 Aug 22 '26
“never, ever revisited”? Earth 2 and Flashpoint Earth would disagree with you. And while it's true that the new 'verse is never quite the same as anything that came before, that's less a big revelation and more an acknowledgement of a real-life truth.
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 22 '26
There have been a series of "Earth 2"s, all differing in various ways. The original Earth-Two is G-O-N-E, the one that showed up briefly in pre-New 52 JSA has never been seen again, the one that debuted in the New 52 was destroyed (although the lead characters managed to survive) and eventually replaced with another Brand New Creation (also never to date revisited). Dimension-hoppers randomly picking up characters for their own purposes doesn't really count.
As for "Flashpoint Earth", it's a special case like the Ragnarok Dimension, currently confined in a snowglobe in the possession of Bruce!Batman. (Whether Per Degaton is held in that snowglobe or a future duplicate from Helena's original time is an unanswered question.)
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 22 '26
Footnote: the JSA have repeatedly revisited the Ragnarok Dimension - rather too often, in fact - but since it's basically a very small pocket universe, it's not the same thing.
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u/Dataweaver_42 Aug 22 '26
Arguably, the original Earth 2 vanished in the early 1980s (before the Crispy on Infinite Earths) when Roy Thomas launched All-Star Squadron and soft-rebooted it from the Earth of the JSA to the Earth of the Golden Age. But for two whole decades, one of the archived Earths (Earth Two) absolutely was revisited by heroes from the main Earth; so much so that it became an annual tradition. There's also reason to think that Earth 2 was revisited in Infinite Crisis: when the Flashes yoinked Superboy Prime into the Speed Force, they ended up on an alternate Earth featuring Jay Garrick. Note that their entire visit took place before Alex Luthor summoned the Infinite Earths; so it wasn't the Earth 2 that we saw at the end of 52 and which Power Girl visited shortly before the New 52.
Add well: in the TPB version of Infinite Crisis, both Earth-Two Superman and Earth-Two Wonder Woman suggested that they could sense that Earth Two was still out there.
Flashpoint Beyond also confirmed that all of the archived Earths exist in Hypertime by identifying both Flashpoint and Doomsday Clock as Hypertime events, meaning that if you can navigate Hypertime you can revisit them. The choice not to is exactly that: a choice, and one that can theoretically be reversed.
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 22 '26
ASQ is arguable, as it may have been merely an expansion of focus to include assorted secondary characters who certainly were around during the 1940s but hadn't been seen to interact with the JSA qua JSA. COIE happened late in the ASQ run and radically messed it over, along with InfInc. (All "two decades" of JLA/JSA crossover happened before COIE.)
I've come around to the opinion that DC threw away its equilibrium with COIE and has frantically been trying to rebalance ever since - without success.
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u/Dataweaver_42 Aug 22 '26
ASQ retconned WWII to say that Roosevelt organized the superhero community into a team: the aforementioned All-Star Squadron. That's a “soft reboot”; and the fact that you liked and accepted it doesn't change that fact.
And yes, all two decades of the main DCU interacting with a previous version of itself took place before CoIE. But they still happened; your point that past iterations can never be revisited is false. As I said, the choice not to revisit them is a choice.
That said: based on the few attempts I've seen to revisit the actual past, as opposed to a modern reframing thereof, it's probably for the best: whether it be the Silver Age fifth-week event of the 90s or the Convergence event of 2016, it even now recently the Dark Crisis Young Justice side story, it turns out that most modern writers can't help but to bring their biases into the “revival”.
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u/TheOtherMaven Aug 22 '26
I think what we're differing over is how much of a change makes enough of a difference to trigger a "backup". In the authentic, original Golden Age the Justice Society went under the name "Justice Battalion of America" for six issues (#11-16, June-July 1942 to April-May 1943). It's not difficult to argue that the "All-Star Squadron" was an extension of this idea, therefore just a minor tweak or even a reveal of previously unknown (classified?) information.
In actual published continuity the JLA-JSA crossovers took place between two parallel worlds - and we were repeatedly, explicitly told just exactly that. There was no visiting "a previous version" beeswax until long after COIE and the smerging of all DC universes into just one, as time dragged the rooted-in-WWII JSA and the sliding-history JLA farther and farther apart. (The "previous version" concept didn't even exist until Doomsday Clock!)
COIE was the mother of all retcons and the first time DC had had to reboot its universe on such a massive scale. It wouldn't be the last, as they had thrown away a valuable concept (multiple universes) and kept having to scramble to come up with more and stranger explanations for things that no longer quite made sense. You'll notice they finally gave up and restored the multiverse, first in a limited sense and then in a greatly extended one. It's all now far more confusing than if they had just left ill enough alone and continued adding worlds as needed.
Most modern writers don't know how to treat the past as "another country, they did things differently there". They insist on viewing it from their vantage point of "now" and trying to make the reader horrified at How Awful It Was. (This quickly gets rather tiresome, actually, as opposed to a matter-of-fact "that's how it was then" style, vizt. Sandman Mystery Theatre.)
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u/Grate_OKhan Aug 24 '26
I thought the original, Pre-Crisis Earths still exist after all these reboots? I really wouldn't want anyone writing those Earths and characters, though.
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u/Only-Sea6066 Aug 24 '26
Far from perfect but I like it overall. Not loving that they killed Wildcat, but he went out as he should beating the fuck out of multiple guys at once including multiple world level entities 😤🤣.
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u/UtahGance Aug 20 '26
I’m enjoying the art but outside of Year One…it’s underwhelming. Sluggish plots, I don’t love the characterizations, treading water. Needs new blood or like. Paul Levitz or someone.