There are several signposts along my journey as a reader that I've thought about on the occasion; this post is the first in a series (planned to run 10 installments) in which I'll be processing those thoughts.
Operating from chronological order, I begin with Justice League International#11.
Written by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis; art by Kevin Maguire and Al Gordon.
JLI#11 was not my first comic book, but it is the earliest comic where I can recall criticizing what I was experiencing. I was nine years old at the time and while most of my knowledge of the Justice League of America was based on the Super Friends animated program, I had read a few issues of JLA earlier on. They really didn't prepare me for the JLI.
Giffen & DeMatteis' JLI is looked on rather favorably by today's fans, but I can only imagine what regular readers of the JLA thought at the time.* There were two things about JLI that I recognized as being very different:
- The absence of big names; Batman, Black Canary & Martian Manhunter were all in this issue, but the remainder were heroes I had never heard of; Rocket Red? Booster Gold? Captain Atom? Mr. Miracle? Blue Beetle? And their Green Lantern (Guy Gardner) wasn't the one I had seen before; he had a stupid haircut and a goofy personality. Who were these people and what happened to the real Justice League?**
- The humour. I was accustomed to finding humour in Archie or Star comics, not in my super hero books.
The second point was the one I felt most strongly about. As a childhood Star Wars fan I accepted comic relief characters existing side-by-side an otherwise serious story, but JLI#11 was levity through-and-through. Everyone, with the exception of Batman, was there to crack or be the foil of jokes. I think Guy Gardner was the one I loathed the most; I learned many years later that this issue came during a subplot where Guy's personality had been altered to (it says here) humourous effect, rendering him docile as an inversion of his customary obnoxious behavior. Knowing none of this, as my introduction to the character I was immediately put off. In JLI#11, Guy is incompetant, Booster Gold is airsick, Rocket Red talks in a "humourous" dialect. I cringed. This is the Justice League? The greatest super heroes in comics?
I couldn't fully articulate what upset me about JLI#11 at the age of nine, but on some level it offended me. I felt that the creators were mocking the super hero comics that I loved, portraying super heroes as bumbling idiots existing just to set up gags. It made me feel as though my taste in reading material was being ridiculed by the very people who fabricated it.*** About a decade later I would become a huge fan of the Tick which did a similar thing to super heroes; the difference being that the Tick himself was created as an act of satire. The presence of the words "Justice League" on the cover severely tested my tolerance for the buffoonery.
And so, my critical faculties were unleashed on a comic book for the first time. The result? Before long I abandoned DC Comics wholesale, throwing all my dollars to Marvel Comics. I'll get more into that during the next two installments, but for years afterward I would spy the JLI (or Justice League Europe) on the stands and sigh, seeing that nothing had changed; JLI#11 informed my opinion of DC Comics for the next decade and it wasn't the least bit favourable.
My concerns as a nine year old probably seem small to you if you have some knowledge of the comic book market today. There can't be that many nine year olds reading comic books in 2010 and reverence toward the protagonists isn't the biggest issue keeping kids away.
Some years ago I revisited Giffen**** & DeMatteis' work as an adult and found it more palatable, but I wonder how many kids in my age range were driven away from the League - or comics - by this creative direction. I have not purchased a Justice League comic since the 1980s.
*"Well, it still beats the Detroit League!"
**In fact, the opening scene has the JLI's company man Maxwell Lord becoming upset that none of the heroes who aided the JLI in a recent crossover were sticking around. Max, we were on the same page.
***I felt that way again the following year when I watched the Superman 50th Anniversary special on television, which made ten year old me grind his teeth and fluster, "Don't they know Superman is fictional?" In retrospect, I think the makers of the special were hoping to produce a riff on This is Spinal Tap.
****Not long after JLI#11 I discovered Giffen's Ambush Bug and enjoyed it immensely - that series, where the humour was completely off-the-wall mental, didn't seem to hold its audience in contempt. Would that I felt the same way about the recent Ambush Bug: Year None mini-series, which brought back JLI#11 flashbacks in the worst way.
It truly is a shame that was your introduction to Guy Gardner. You missed out.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're a kid, there are characters you love and characters you hate, but you don't grok characters you're supposed to love to hate. Guy is a character best enjoyed by older readers.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely despise Guy Gardner regardless of media. Is he supposed to be Scottish? Dreadful era for the Justice League but back then Super Friends probably disaffected many of us from the similar JLA. Justice League Unlimited was an amazing show with many bit characters and Justice League was pretty good too. Jon Stewart really carried those Justice League extended series from about 20 years back.
ReplyDeleteDC continues to crush Marvel in terms of animation which in many ways, I prefer to "live action" CGI effects. The first Spider-man comic series was excellent and very true to the character and most of the villains. There was a later series on for several years with some excellent story arcs marred by a bizarre old female seer. She had nothing to do with anything except to give advice. Madame somebody.
One advantage DC has is that Warners censors far less its shows than Fox did/does. I remember one of the creators of the 90's X-men show, which was decent, remarking that Fox edited the hell out of the scripts while Batman the Animated Series got away with much more violence and adult themes. B.A.S. is so incredible in terms of the scripts and vocal talent that I barely watched the X-men. S.A.S. was really good too and had several updated characters and it was the John Byrne limited Superman that was featured.
The Batman was another excellent version in animation and the Batman Team episodes were campy fun like from the early 60's. Marvel had several simply horrible animated hero series in the late 60's with a look much more like a motion comic. "Doc Bruce Banner belted by gamma rays, turned to the Hulk, ain't he" (inaudible at the end but maybe ain't he on gamma rays. Ever lovin' Hulk. Hulk! The had a Submariner one, snooze, just as bad. There were a couple of others but we used to watch these in re-runs during study hall and that Hulk song is hard to forget. There have been some amazingly bad and stupid FF animations but above all, the one with the robot instead of the Human Torch, so children shouldn't try to light themselves on fire at home.