Crossing the Line

 Geoff Johns has crossed the line.

Actually he crossed a line in Justice Society of America #11. Right here:

It reputed that it was Stan Lee who said, "Every comic book is someone's first."  

And who am I to argue with the creator of Stripperella?

It's a simple principle. You have to write comics with that in mind.  Otherwise, they become soap-opera fortresses guarded by impenetrable lore, 70 years thick.

Now, I love the world-building aspects of comics.  I like that DC is "a universe" not just a bunch of separate lines of comics.  But you shouldn't have to know all of it to understand any of it, because then every year, each issue, you necessarily shrink the pool of people to whom your stories--your PRODUCT--is meaningfully accessible. 

And when you author a page that is based on knowledge of Solaris The Tyrant Sun, a character whose significant appearance was in the DC One Million crossover, which was 26 years ago, you have clearly lost that concept.

He/it also appeared in All-Star Superman, but that's, you know, just an Imaginary Story. It's not REAL.

At the point, you clearly care more about your own ability to yoke the power of more original writers, like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, to your own wagon.  About your using your own encyclopedic knowledge of DC lore as a gatekeeping tool. About connecting your moments and concepts to pre-existing cool moments and concepts in the hope it makes yours cooler.  

And are SO eager to do this, that you ignore the fact that Solaris doesn't EXIST until the 25th Century.

This line -- forgetting, or simply not caring that every comic book should be able to be someone's first --  is bad enough.  But in the very next issue, Justice Society of America #12, Johns crossed the next line, a line of no-return.

Because this comic is nothing AT ALL but Stargirl's graduation speech.

Because OF COURSE Courtney Whitmore is valedictorian, cuz she shits marble.

It's nothing but a sappy graduation speech with 47 double-splash pages of thousand-character fight scenes (all with Courtney as a centerpiece, of course, because Courtney is the center of the DCuniverse).  I kept waiting for The Story to start; there wasn't one.  Just a series of splash pages with dotted with treacly pap from Courtney.  

I want my money back.

I should not have to pay for story-less comics that Geoff Johns is clearly writing not for readers but simply for himself so he can pretend his sister is still alive as the Mary Sue center of the DCU.  That's a line no writer should cross and I'm not joining him on the other side of it.