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Oddly enough, this used to be John Byrne’s schtick too.

11) He brought back Blue Beetle…although they’re letting that be vaguevaguevague…

Boy, reading this makes me wonder why I read comics. It makes me hate Geoff Johns and DC even more. Sigh. How about he create some characters rather than returning old ones to a state where, according to him, they were perfect?

Also: “grey”? What are you, British?

Yeah, it’s called the “characters ought to be exactly the way they were when I was 13, now you damn kids get off my lawn” school of writing.

Why create new characters when there are great characters that aren’t being used? That just creates unnecessary copies, watered down copies at that. Geoff just scraped the barnacles off these characters and made them viable again.

Am I the only one who doesn’t think Johns’ revivals were that good? I think they were well received because readers wanted those characters back, regardless of how. He gets praised for Hal Jordan’s return by just doing another “possessed” story and returned Hawkman but just using reincarnation! What is so spectacular or original about either of those!? I don’t get it. I won’t deny that Geoff Johns is a great writer, he’s just definitely not one I “get.”

” Yeah, it’s called the “characters ought to be exactly the way they were when I was 13, now you damn kids get off my lawn” school of writing. ”

To be fair, when a new direction isn’t working commercially or creatively, going back to basics isn’t always a crime. Cases like the resurrection of Hal Jordan or the retconning of Xorn/Magneto are the ridiculous extremes that get associated with the ” fixing ” trope, but who here misses such good ideas like the 19-year-old Iron Man, Bart Allen as Flash, the John Byrne Doom Patrol, Noseless Pirate Wolverine, any number of Teen Titans series between Marv Wolfman and Geoff Johns, and everything associated with Heroes Reborn?

At the very least, Johns is a good enough writer that his regressions aren’t so egregious.

Brian:

When Johns had Jericho *finally* return, he was back to being mute. Since he was reborn in a new body, I’m sure he could have easily been given vocal chords, but when Johns goes for classic, he goes for classic.

I’m of two minds about what Johns does. While I agree in part with Greg that it’s overkill to return almost every character to his or her “classic” status… Bart had no business being Kid Flash… the truth is that the “classic status” of these characters did very well at one time, and not necessarily every change made to characters in the 80s/90s was a GOOD change. Alan Scott IS Green Lantern… why bother with this Sentinel crap? Guy Gardner is ALSO Green Lantern… why bother with this “oh I just discovered I’m an alien” garbage? Fans are smart enough to distinguish between multiple earths, they should be able to handle a half dozen main “Green Lantern” characters. Frankly nobody here complained when Morrison returned to a “classic” Superman for All-Star Supes… it’s not like Johns doesn’t at least attempt to take the characters in new directions (Hawkman/Hawkgirl love cycle broken, Rose Wilson as Ravager, Black Adam as anti-hero). Sure, Morrison’s better at it, but that’s because he’s Morrison

What Johns, Busiek, and now Robinson are doing on the Superman books is a great example — pulling various threads from throughout the character’s history to tell stories that are free from the mid-90s “oh you can’t do that… it’s not in continuity!” problem. Who cares if Steve Lombard wasn’t in the Byrne revamp? He’s good for a one-page run-in with Clark Kent in the Daily Planet every few months. And why does Krypto have to be an alternate Jor-El’s dog from an alternate Krypton that was made up by someone trying to confuse Superman about his past? Why can’t he just be Superman’s pet? And why do we have to have six General Zod’s with six wildly different origins? Why can’t there just be one who is actually Kryptonian? There shouldn’t have to be a Wikipedia page explaining the convoluted origins of all these concepts.

As for other good Johns returns… Cyborg Superman is all kinds of awesome now. He also brought back “classic” Raven, Sinestro, Kid Devil, and MA HUNKEL! We’ll see what he does with the Legion…

Of course, he will always have the black mark of “Superboy punched the wall of reality,” though…

From what I’m given to understand, Johns didn’t initiate the idea of turning Bart into Kid Flash, it was forced on him.

McK is right with the above posts - don’t blame Johns for returning characters to their classic state, blame the people who screwed them up in the first place.

The Superboy wall punch was Judd WInick’s excuse wasn’t it?

Basically Johns’ approach is “that never happened” and “we will never mention it again.” Guy Gardner is example number one. As far as I know it has never been explain how or why his alien dna just disappeared. I didn’t even know about that Cyborg stuff. “Naaa naaa naaaa! That never happened! Naaaa naaaa naaaaa”

Nitpick on Cyborg: Freezing him in his classic appearance and having the gold changed to silver actually happened simultaneously. The color change was identified as a symptom of the freeze.

Hmm. I’d be interested to see a ratio of characters Johns has brought back versus established characters he’s killed.

12. There was only the original Toyman: the rest were robots and in particular a robot killed Adam Grant. (I’m not going to get into the Hiro issue here.)

13. He made Power Girl a Kryptonian cousin of Superman again

14. I don’t know if this is covered in the “Superboy punch” comment, but he reverted the Doom Patrol back to their familiar continuity and status after the Byrne reboot, which inexplicably decided that the Doom Patrol had never existed or been heard of before now.

And while Superboy punches in general are a lame way to change things, I think in some instances it was a case of “who cares how it gets done, as long as it gets done.” Doom Patrol is a good example of that. I think that type of thing was discussed recently with the revivals of Spoiler and someone else, where the explanation for them being alive was pretty bad, but since most everyone just wanted them back, no one really cared how it happened.

I care how it gets done. If it’s not a good story, they shouldn’t do it.

15. In DC 1st Superman/Flash, Abra Kadabra was returned to his classic magician look, and not the creepy bald design of the Waid years. (Personally, I think this change was for the better.)

16. In The Flash, Heat Wave’s reform was revealed to have been a consequence of a Zatanna-esque mindwipe. Heat Wave was then reverted back to being a criminal Rogue.

17. Also in The Flash, James Jesse’s reform was also revealed to have been the result of mental manipulation. He left his job with the FBI, put back on his classic silly-looking Trickster costume (i.e., not even the modernized version from Underworld Unleashed), and returned to being a villainous Rogue.

18. Also in The Flash, Johns did perhaps his biggest return whammy on the Top (who was, incidentally, responsible for both of the above mental shenanigans). Prior to Johns, the Top had died and had been reincarnated into the (powerless) body of a U.S. Senator. First, Johns had his spinning power return to him, but he was insane. Then Johns had him put back on his original costume (i.e., not even the one Kolins designed). Then Johns had him regain his sanity, as well as the high intellect he’d had prior to his death. To top (ha!) it all off, Johns actually established in one issue that the Top’s new body had changed its own DNA and fingerprints to match the Top’s original body. And then he finally killed the Top again.

I say this as someone who vastly prefers Johns’ work to Loeb’s: That retconning of Loeb’s Toyman just seemed disrespectful as hell. It would’ve been so simple to do that exact story but leave Loeb’s version out of it.

The Superboy wall punch was Judd WInick’s excuse wasn’t it?

It appeared in the Infinite Crisis Secret Files, written by Wolfman, Batman Annual #25, written by Winick, and the above mentioned Teen Titans issue that restored the Doom Patrol by Johns all about the same time. I don’t know who exactly was responsible, but it was a pretty poor explanation when Johns could’ve done away with it by saying “the upcoming Crisis caused time ripples… ” or something. Instead of a stupid explanation, just gloss over it.

And I think that even though Johns is praised/demonized (depending on your own opinion) for being too much of a “Continuity Cop,” it’s clear from some above examples that he’s just as willing to gloss over random blips in continuity if he feels the need. Another recent one is Jimmy Olsen learning Superman’s ID in the Countdown series and Superman giving Jimmy Krypto … which has since been totally unmentioned by Johns (but not by Busiek).

I say this as someone who vastly prefers Johns’ work to Loeb’s: That retconning of Loeb’s Toyman just seemed disrespectful as hell. It would’ve been so simple to do that exact story but leave Loeb’s version out of it.

Given that’s Johns’ Toyman is very clearly insane, it’s quite possible that Toyman made a robotic copy of Hiro and convinced himself that the copy was the real Hiro. I have no problem ignoring the retcon with respect to Hiro, and the retcon is written in such a way to allow this interpretation.

Johns is doubtless one of the greats of this era.

Count me in as someone who (usually) likes Johns’ ‘fixes’. He’s ultimately a caretaker of other people’s intellectual property, so making them over to resemble their most popular incarnations isn’t a bad idea.

My favourite Johns fix was Coast City. I’d never given any thought to the place before Johns’ run - it didn’t seem to have much personality or uniqueness beyond ‘that place the Cyborg destroyed’ - but it really shined in the arc he laid out from ‘Rebirth’ through to GL #25.

My dog died a few years ago, and Geoff Johns wrote that I got a new dog, then I got amnesia and thought it was the old dog. Now no one mentions it, and we’re all happy.

19. Hal Jordan’s hair . . .

The majority of this list just makes me . . .not sad, exactly, but . . .like if ennui were more forceful and had stubble. Sure, some of the changes he undid were unsightly or poorly-thought-out. A writer with some real creativity could just take that and either do something with it that was interesting, or continue to move forward until the idea got better. I mean, really . . .Cyborg has to look exactly like he used to? CYBORG?!?!?

Not all of Geoff’s ‘fixes’ are regressive, though. Some of them do move things forward. The Coast City example I mentioned above, for example, could easily be seen as a standard Johns do-over (the city was literally destroyed and fixed), but he’s since given the city a personality and a point of difference it never had before.

Similarly, the way he restored Hal Jordan - for all the message board flak it received about ‘yellow fear monsters’ and so on - has ultimately led to a vast expansion of the GL universe with regards to the ‘emotional spectrum’. Likewise, he gave Cyborg Superman a new motivation after rescuing him from obscurity that has made him a much more interesting villain. Clearly, he’s pushing the GL mythos forward.

Geoff Johns cleans up messes.

After all, if the reboots and earlier changes had been successful, he would’t have to clean ‘em up.

For the most part, his stories are entertaining and that’s the bottom line.

Remember, they’re COMIC BOOKS.

(Shhhh!)

“Jazzbo”, don’t say “revert BACK”, please; that’s redundant. Just say “revert”; that means “turn back”. And for that matter, people, don’t say “report BACK” or “reflect BACK”. Please.

And speaking of Superboy-punches, I thought it was idiotic that in the “Teen Titans”/”Infinite Crisis” tie-in he could PUNCH his way out of the Phantom Zone! I mean, come on.

I’m going to start saying ‘revert back’ in day-to-day conversations now, loudly emphasising the ‘BACK’, just to see if R.J. Sterling magically materialises to chastise me for it.

“He’s ultimately a caretaker of other people’s intellectual property”

Except when he’s mutilating or killing characters. Or both. That’s the perverse thing — for all of Johns’ running around trying to reset everything to where it was when he was 12, he’s got a really strange propensity for displays of ultraviolence. It’s like he’s still trying to prove to some cooler kid on the playground that comics aren’t stoopid: “I’m gonna bring back the Superboy of Earth-Prime! And have him rip this guy’s arm off and punch off this other lady’s head!” I’m not sure “pathetic” describes it fully enough.

21) Has anyone mentioned the Legion re-re-reboot? I’m not sure it was numbered anywhere. Anyway, the original Legion is back, and Superman has all his memories of hanging with them as a kid.

22) I also don’t think anyone mentioned the return of the Green Lantern Corps. Kyle Rayner is now no longer the sole Green Lantern, but there are now twice as many as there used to be!

23) Magneta is evil.

24) The Spectre stopped being a force of destruction and again was bonded to a slain cop, this time Crispus Allen. I know Rucka was behind it, but it was in Infinite Crisis, so Johns actually wrote it.

He brought back a Teen Titans lineup that included Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven.

It´s funny the “oh i hate him why doesnt he create something new”.

Well, how many comics with new characters have survived in the last 20 years?

We, the readers, want to read the same old storied all over again, with the same characters we read as kids.

It´s our fault for not supporting new characters, not John´s.

Richard Pachter- If his stories but actually were entertaining, you might have a point. The returns schtick wouldn’t be so bad if Johns’s stories had anything else going for them. You take away the “mess-fixing” and you’re left with poorly paced retreads of the same storyline interspersed with overly padded boring as hell “character” pieces. He doesn’t write very memorable dialogue, his plots aren’t all that interesting- the reverting characters back to their 80s status quo is the only that’s drawing the fans in. It’s hacky.

@DanLarkin

Of course you’re right. But so am I.

“Entertaining” is surely subjective. I enjoyed his Legion arc in Action Comics, for example. The thing he did with Donner, not so much. The GL thing is fine, too, though the original Emerald Dawn sufficed for me, though that was 15+ years ago (yow!).

But I think we can all agree that the punching -through-dimensions shtick is mega-dopey. Not even debatable, right?

Except when he’s mutilating or killing characters. Or both. That’s the perverse thing — for all of Johns’ running around trying to reset everything to where it was when he was 12, he’s got a really strange propensity for displays of ultraviolence.

Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs…

Actually, in all seriousness, I think the “Geoff Johns enjoys ultra-violence” argument draws on examples that are few and far between. The Superboy-Prime and Black Adam slaughters stand alone as some of the more gruesome displays of comic art in recent memory, and aside from that I can only think of some gruesome displays in 52 and the Blue Beetle exploding head — and both of those were written in collaboration with others.

I’m not saying Johns hasn’t included graphic scenes of violence in some of his books, but it proves how effective these scenes actually are when a half-dozen examples of ultra-violence throughout his 10 year career remain memorable.

Anyway, I’ve been defending the guy too much, but I just find it aggravating that so many readers will dismiss Johns as a “bad writer” for reverting characters to former states when you have other writers completely ruining characters like Batgirl and Supergirl with poorly thought out, unnecessary changes to characters.

It´s funny the “oh i hate him why doesnt he create something new”.

It´s our fault for not supporting new characters, not John´s.

Precisely. And there’s another aspect that goes overlooked when people complain that Johns and his peers should be creating brand-new characters instead of retooling old properties: today, a comics creator would have to be STUPID to introduce a truly good brand-new character in either Marvel or DC comics. Today, a comics creator who has a good new character idea can introduce him in a creator-owned book such as Invincible, Noble Causes and Hellboy. If Mignola had introduced Hellboy as a DC comic, today he wouldn’t be cashing into his creation’s movie career - he would be headbutting the wall as DC cashed in on his idea.

Nowadays, I’d question the intelligence of any creator who introduced a really good new character in a “Big Two” book. And that is why DC and Marvel have to retool their old properties and character concepts over and over and over again, and as a consequence most of their “new characters” are new versions of old names, like Ravager and Kraven.

But as Derick pointed out, that grim commercial reality is made even worse by the “Big Two” readers’ own unwillingness to read about new character concepts, especially if these new concepts happen to replace older characters. Nobody was interested in Speedball, but as soon as he was transformed into Penance a loud howl of indignation was heard across the Internet. Armor from the X-Men “is no Kitty Pryde”, according to many X-fans who resent seeing someone new on the X-books’ “apprentice” role. And the new Supergirl isn’t as much of a Good Girl as Linda Danvers used to be!

Meanwhile, good books filled with interesting new characters, like The Order and X-Statix, sell poorly until they’re cancelled. Marvel and DC readers don’t WANT new characters, that’s the sad truth. And Marvel and DC creators are absolutely right to keep all their original ideas for creator-owned projects.

“The majority of this list just makes me . . .not sad, exactly, but . . .like if ennui were more forceful and had stubble. ”

This sums it up for me. Explains why I find myself buying fewer and fewer comics every month.

Loren, DanLarkin, stop saying “revert BACK”. It isn’t good English. Rohan Williams, yes, I will materialize, SCIENTIFICALLY, not magically.

For me, Geoff Johns never quite seems to get into what makes the characters live and breath… seems more worried about the look of them.

Contrast that with the sort of stuff Greg Rucka has done on series like Gotham Central, and Queen and Country. For me, Greg R cracks out much more engrossing stuff… but Geoff seems to get many more plaudits from the fans. Its all about opinion… but the strong reactions Geoff J provokes mystify me…. to me he’s neither outstandingly good or bad.

” For me, Geoff Johns never quite seems to get into what makes the characters live and breath… seems more worried about the look of them. ”

Actually, I found it was the opposite; of all the writers who fetishize the traditional versions of the characters, Johns has one of the best understandings of why. Plenty of writers could have brought back Hal Jordan, but Johns is doing an exceptional job with the new series of arguing why there should be a Hal Jordan. He doesn’t write Hal as a cardboard cutout, or even as the conservative ignoramus to Green Arrow’s Mary Sue version of liberalism. He writes Hal as a conservative, but a heroic one– like a classic Western sheriff.

Basically, Johns’ Hal is one of those rare cases of a character who has been successfully remade to work in a modern era without deviating from his Silver Age roots. Writers who address national political issues by turning, say, Tony Stark into a Nazi strawman could learn a thing or to from this.

I think all these claims by fans likening Tony Stark to a Nazi or fascist are a little overdone. What he’s talking about is not really all that different than handgun registration and gun control, something I’m sure most fans support.

The version of the Legion that appeared in Johns’ writings is not the original Legion no matter how many times people say it is.

This is getting off topic, but to respond to T’s statement, the registration act is not the same as handgun registration or gun control. Because you choose if you buy a gun or not. A lot of the heroes, or super-powered people, didn’t choose to get those powers. Granted, no one forced them to put on tights and fight crime, but in comics like Gaiman’s Eternals and a few others I can’t remember off the top of my head, Stark made it clear that simply having powers meant you had to register. So even if Spider-Man decided to quit being a hero, since he still had the powers, he would need to register. So it’s really more like a military draft.

“… Bart had no business being Kid Flash”.
So you wanted him to stay as Impulse for the rest of his life?