Comic Book Resources

It IS a great concept, so I hope Robinson has a slant on it that escaped the others who’ve tried it.

What an eclectic line-up, though. Never thought I’d see Mikaal Tomas & Congo Bill in a Justice League.

The problem with the idea is guys like Superman and Green Lantern on the team. When you have a proactive group including players like those, it becomes perfectly reasonable to ask why they haven’t bothered to fix things like war and hunger.

Only one that I think has addressed the idea very well is Authority.

He had me at “Congo Bill.”

Of course, he lost me at “Hal Jordan, Supergirl, Batwoman, and Freddie Freeman,” but whatever.

The Authority is an odd case: there were plenty of brief asides in Millar’s run about the team knocking out dictators and so on, but all of the main issue plots were still reactive. “The team is assaulted and JQ kidnapped by Krigstein,” “the team must battle a renegade Doctor,” and “the team is assaulted by Seth and must battle him and the replacement Authority” make up the main plots of the three arcs of Millar’s run.

And the finale seemed to suggest that the superheroes might as well sit out to force the common man to step up, which amounted to a noninterventionist policy rather than anything else. Though I suppose taking over the USA under Brubaker was fairly active, it didn’t last and wasn’t all that well-received by the readership. (I refuse to use the clunky back-formation “proactive,” which is simply a word invented by stupid people who add syllables to words in an effort to sound smart.)

The main problem with active rather than reactive superheroes is that they end up raiding supervillains or knocking out tyrants with largely the same outcomes and action as the reactive superhero plot. It’s got the added disadvantage that villains caught with their pants down look rather unthreatening and the heroes start to seem as if they lack real opposition.

A solo hero trying to take an active approach can work quite well; there are more than a few Batman stories that take this tack. But as Ryan points out above, when you’ve got organized powerhouses you either end up in territory where the genre stops working entirely or you give up eventually on the activist take.

I liked Joe Kelly’s take on this basic concept, both in his JLA run and in JUSTICE LEAGUE ELITE: The world is a very complicated place full of very ambiguous, difficult situations, and League-scale superpowers only change the scope, not the complexity–especially if you want to have functioning social instutions. He very effortlessly handled issue after issue of extremely potent supercharacters who desired and attempted to change the world for the better–often proactively–by not losing sight of the implications of it, or the fallout from it.

Of course, then he brought in Manchester and the Worlogog and the whole thing fell apart. But damn, that first half or so of JLE was great comics.

is it wrong that the part i found most exciting about that article was the idea of Darwyn Cooke drawing Jonah Hex?

Considering what he did with Starman and the JSA, I’m all aboard for Robinson’s Justice League (although, considering I’ve read every other JL series, even the Gerard Jones stuff and Extreme Justice, it’s more or less a given for me). The presence of Supergirl is a downside (unless it’s the Linda Danvers version, but I’m not holding my breath. DC isn’t going to to backtrack when they can continue shoving Loeb’s angsty naked chick down our throats), as is Winick’s bastardized Captain Marvel, but the rest of the line-up sounds solid. After all, how can you go wrong with Congo Bill in the roster?

“Additional members of the new Justice League team include Ray Palmer — not The Atom, but Ray Palmer. He still shrinks, though.”

A size-changing scientist who’s given up his former costumed identity but continues to work with his old team. Where have I seen that before? Think he’ll go by “Dr. Palmer”?

Of course, that’s one of those things that’s so specific it can’t possibly NOT be a concidence.

I can see it actually being a coincidence. Robinson probably wanted the Atom, but wasn’t allowed him, because there’s a new Atom, so he used the next best thing, just Ray Palmer.

Admittedly it appears to be a very different book but isn’t the new X-Force a more “active” team. ( I didn’t want Omar to think me stupid).

The difference is that they got the drop on the bad guys and then proceeded to chase them. Thats it, thats the whole difference. It sounds more significant than it ever actually ends up being. They should have just given Robinson JLA.

The new X-Force is actually a pretty reactive team.

They’re constantly reacting to the changes forced on them by the main X-Men titles.

X-Force are interesting in that their apparent brief is to act as a hit squad. That said, I’m not sure that going after the Purifiers immediately after Messiah CompleX isn’t a retaliation attack rather than an active approach.

Oy, vey!

This is just… a bad idea.

Isn’t there some sort of rule against Green Lanterns getting proactive and interfering in local affairs and shit like that?

Whatever.

So am I supposed to go “Yeah! Proactive!” and not wonder why Hal Jordan, active Air-Force Pilot who has flown missions over Iraq, has not bothered to use his Magic Ring to locate Osama Bin Laden!?!!?!?

Let me guess… Osama has the Spear of Destiny!!!

Oh wait, this one is even better!

Osama Bin Laden took a page out of Batman’s playbook and painted all of Afghanistan yellow!!!

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

I think that this thread has really got to the root of the problem. The Suicide Squad were another proactive group that worked very well, but Captain Boomerang couldn’t erradicate Afghanistan’s poppy crop with the blink of an eye. Deadshot couldn’t create safe havens in Dafur or Rick Flagg find a cure for AIDS.

Agreed, Bernard. The DCU world is supposed to reflect our own. If the heroes all decide to, say, end worldwide famine, they could probably do that. They’d be glorified delivery drivers, nto really fighting anyone, but they could do it. And all of the sudden the DCU is a world where everyone has enough to eat.

There are plenty of stories to go on from there, but they’re not superhero stories per se. Peopel complainign the food they’re eating doesn’t match up tot heir religious affiliation, or is making them gaint oo much weight, or isn’t healthy enough, or is being susidized byt he wrong people. Unless someone slipped some Food of the Gods in a bag of rice. Which, hmm, would be something new: 50-foot-tall starving people.

Why do they always have to come up with some unique identity for spin-off books to give them some sort of reason for being? Isn’t “James Robinson wanted to write JLA, but someone was already doing that, so we created a second JLA book for him to write” a good enough reason? “Proactive” superheroes are lame.

Robinson—–”This team will go after the equivalent of the FBI’s most wanted list, sometimes in different countries, sometimes through time….. Robinson said with Justice League, he’ll be dealing a lot with villain characters, and hopefully making them as interesting as the heroes.
”

I don’t think this is about them trying to end world hunger or bringing Osama to justice. I think it will try to go after the worse supervillians on the loose (Black Adam, anyone?). From the tidbits I’ve read about this book nothing in it suggests they will be tackling real world problems. I think this will be a superhero book.

However the way they said “Hal decides he wants a more proactive team” makes it sound an awful lot all those other books. I think they should have just stuck with “FBI Most Wanted” line.

This is better than Robinson writing the main JLA book because I think he’ll be able to do more with the characters here.

With that eclectic team, under the pen of Robinson, this is bound to be an interesting and strange series. Even if it tanks after 12 issues, it will still be one hell of a run, I’m sure, and the collected version will be a cult hit. But honestly, if done right, and if anyone can do it right, Robinson can. I’m looking forward to seeing just what threats he throws them against, and if they’re new, or some messed-up obscure villains last seen in 1971 or something.

I’ll buy it for the writer and the character lineup, and I’m sure it’ll be more coherent than JLElite ever was.

Congo freaking Bill. Right on!

Wasn’t Winick’s Outsiders and Dixon’s Batman and the Outsiders supposed to be proactive? Never read either, were either able to stick to the mission statement very well?

I was just thinking the same thing-isn’t the current Batman and the Outsiders DC’s “proactive team?”

Is there just going to be two such teams now? Can there be that much “proactivity” to be done without addressing issues that would drastically alter the DC world (i.e. real world socio-political issues)?

I think there’s a difference. The Outsiders, like the Elite, are supposed to be more of a “black ops” type team. They get their hands dirty and not everything they do get publicized.

This looks more like Tommy Lee Jones’ team in The Fugitive. They operate above board using their abilities to locate the villains before they commit more crimes.

The reason I think this approach usually fails is because if they’re not killing the villains, they’re just going to be back on the street the next time someone wants to use them. It’s like the fact that Wolverine can only really kill a few dozen anonymous ninjas, but can’t kill anyone Marvel would want to use again. The concept of the character or team is cheapened by the revolving door.

Another problem is that every issue has to be treated as someone’s first. You have to give new readers information on why the villain is so bad that he/she/it deserves to have a mob of heroes beating down on him/her/it. To set up the drama, the villain has to do something bad. The only other way is to start every arc with a “Mission:Impossible” type setup that explains who this week’s bad guy is and why he’s so bad that he deserves the above mentioned beat down.

I’ve always thought that a truly pro-active team should be more investigative types then the “X-Treme” heroes we generally associate with the phrase. Instead of going and finding badguys and beating the crap out of them, they should be laying their ears low to the ground and finding out their plans early.

Something like discovering the would-be evil warlord’s robot army while they’re still setting up the factory. Figure out where Arcade is buying up land to build his latest giant pinball machine or discovering whether its Killer Frost, Mr. Freeze or Captain Cold that’s buying up large amounts of refrigeration supplies for some nefarious purpose. Or just figuring out where Joker is holing up now that he’s broken out of Arkham yet again instead of waiting for him to commit a mass murder spree.

I think that would be a fresh and interesting, using brains to stop the badguys ahead of time instead of the usual vagueness where being proactive somehow means punching things a bit more often then the heroes who being reactive.

Why do they always have to come up with some unique identity for spin-off books to give them some sort of reason for being? Isn’t “James Robinson wanted to write JLA, but someone was already doing that, so we created a second JLA book for him to write” a good enough reason?

This is one of the stupidest complaints I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know that it’s one of the stupidest complaints I’ve ever seen. Didn’t Marvel do the same essentially the same thing with “adjectiveless” X-Men? There’s countless vanity projects floating around out there (New Avengers AND Mighty Avengers, Bendis?), it’s just that this one sounds a LOT better. Mikaal Tomas! Yay!

Except New Avengers and Mighty Avengers have distinct reasons for being. Like any good series should.

Remembering you and grimacing, New Excalibur.

Eh. Does Astonishing X-Men really have a distinct reason for being other than “it’s Whedon and Cassaday (or Ellis and Bianichi) doing X-Men”? Does it need another reason?

This is one of the stupidest complaints I’ve ever seen.

Are you serious? It makes a lot of sense actually.

(I refuse to use the clunky back-formation “proactive,” which is simply a word invented by stupid people who add syllables to words in an effort to sound smart.)

I disagree. Active and proactive are not necessarily the same thing. Being active just means you’re doing something. If you are being proactive you are being active, but if you are being reactive, you are still being active. The term active covers both proactive AND reactive behavior. PROactive just means you are being active first rather than being active in response to something.

I just read an interview with James Robinson about this book. The team is formed in response to a murder. They’re already being reactive in the first arc.

As I stated above, a problem with the “proactive” team is that if you stick to that definition, you lose the “villain bad” moment. If the point is to get the bad guy before he does something bad (again), then how do you build up the threat, especially when the heroes should have the element of surprise on their side.

I’m reminded of the Manhunter series starring Mark Shaw. The first issue showed that he was different. He was a bounty hunter. He waited for the Penguin to get into the bathtub and arrested him there. No fight. No henchman. It was just a good plan based on a simple idea with the goal of avoiding a fight. Of course you never saw him doing anything like that in any other issue.

You could show the villains as dangerous or evil within a proactive approach by simply having the heroes, after locating the villain, finding that s/eh’s in the middle of some grand plot. For example, the League travels through time looking for Chronos, who’s on the run, and discover him in the middle of a takeover of the Roman Empire.

Yeah, every time someone tries to do a proactive team in the DCU, sooner or later the question comes up “Well, if they’re so proactive, why don’t they just kill the Joker before he escapes from Arkham Asylum for the bazillionth time?” Proactive is extremely hard to pull off in a shared universe made up of ongoing serial titles with a set status quo… and it becomes doubly difficult when a lot of your characters make more money via licensing than they do from their actual series.

Osama Bin Laden took a page out of Batman’s playbook and painted all of Afghanistan yellow!!!

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Okay, I almost fell out of my chair when I read that one. Too funny

Are you serious? It makes a lot of sense actually.

Are YOU serious? You’re saying that it makes a lot of sense to create a spin-off book simply to house a particular creator, and specifically NOT establish any sort of style or motivation for the book beyond it’s own existence?

Maybe it makes marketing sense. It doesn’t make creative sense, though. To borrow from Seavey, that would leave the book without a storytelling engine. That’s the kind of book that turns into fan-fiction style writing very quickly.

I can’t believe that anyone would complain about DC and James Robinson establishing a reason for the book to exist. God forbid a writer should bother with having a story to tell.

Does Astonishing X-Men really have a distinct reason for being other than “it’s Whedon and Cassaday (or Ellis and Bianichi) doing X-Men”? Does it need another reason?

Yes. Imagine how good it could be if it actually had something to say beyond “Here’s how I would do it!”

If I can be serious for a second…

It seems to me that All-Powerful characters like Superman, Captain Marvel and Green Lantern shouldn’t be proactive.

The moment a character becomes proactive, in the full sense of the word, they take away humanity’s right to Self Determination.

So basically, what that means is that Batman can bitch and moan about how big an imbecile Green Lantern is for not fixing the world; but everybody knows that the Dark Knight is the one that has all the Anti-Justice League gadgets and OMAC-protocols in case one of the big dogs starts “mind wiping” people or imposing their will.

That is all with respect to social and political issues.

With respect to crime, there are only two ways a Hero can be proactive.

He can look at a “Most Wanted” list and say… I’m going to go find Kobra or Black Adam. But then again, that’s their job.

In the case of Green Lantern, it’s actually pretty simple…

1- Use your ring to locate the villain
2- Use your ring to capture the villain
3- Bring the Villain to Oa to stand trial

The other way a Hero can be proactive is to go Undercover. That is, become friends with a potential criminal and gather evidence in order to prove that the criminal intends to commit a crime or is already guilty of commiting a crime.

Soooooo…

I don’t see Green Lantern, Captain Marvel Jr., Supergirl or Mikaal Tomas as being especially suited for this line of work.

The only way this could work is if we were talking about a Galactic Team. Like in the days of L.E.G.I.O.N.’89 and stuff.

But hey!!! It could still be good.

Besides…

You know what we say here in Sector 2814?

That’s right!

“There’s never a Green Lantern around when you need one!” That is, unless you plan on doing Warp 9 on a Warp 6 zone. Then they are all about being “proactive this!” and “warp drive kills that!”

Whatever.

PS: Thanks Ben Herman.

PS2: I think some books need a vision/mission statement. Specially if they are spinoffs. Otherwise they lose their way once their original writers and artists leave and become redundant. Which is what happens to a bunch of X-men/JLA/Batman/Superman books on a yearly basis.

I disagree. Active and proactive are not necessarily the same thing. Being active just means you’re doing something. If you are being proactive you are being active, but if you are being reactive, you are still being active. The term active covers both proactive AND reactive behavior. PROactive just means you are being active first rather than being active in response to something.

Exactly what I was thinking. The word “proactive” may (for all I know) be a recent invention and a crappy word, and there may be a better word with the same meaning, but I can’t think of one of hand and “active” certainly isn’t it.

If I were writing a project like this, I’d find it to resist getting all metatextual and having the heroes get really proactive by addressing the true roots of crime in the DCU at their source: bad baby names and poorly-planned museum exhibits.

“Mr. and Mrs. Jesse, we cannot allow you to name your son James; we calculate a 98% probability that he will become a criminal.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Morrow, by giving your child a name with the initials T.O. you’ve pretty much doomed him to being obsessed with the future. It’s likely he’ll become either a scientist or a time traveller. If he shows any signs of interest in mad science, please call this toll-free number.”

“Mrs. Cobblepot…we’re just going to put your son in foster care now rather than wait for the inevitable.”

“We regret to inform you that your plan to bring your travelling exhibit of valuable antique items related to jokes/playing cards/cats/twins/riddles/birds/umbrellas/calendars/etc. to Gotham is ill-considered, especially given that the centerpiece item of the exhibition includes a large diamond. Please remove these tour dates from your schedule; we recommend extending your stay in Metropolis instead.”

Regarding comment #39 from Doug Atkinson – Now THAT’S funny! How is it that in all these decades, no one ever thought, “yeah, maybe bringing this valuable museum exhibit featuring the number 2 to Gotham is a bad idea after all . . .” Absolutely brilliant.

@ Craig

Presumably, most diamond / treasure exhibits don’t get ganked, so people start to relax, then WHAM!

In the real world we have thousands of banks full of money but the vast majority of them don’t get robbed.

Plus, there are so many theme villains, you never know what will set one off.

Sometimes you just gotta get on with your life and accept the 0.00001% chance of having your Sumi-e exhibit attacked by the Brush Pirate. You have insurance, right?