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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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!)