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When I first saw that cover I thought "Vixen is drawn way out of proportion compared to the Trinty" then I looked closer and realised I was dumb.

That is a pretty unimpeachable creative team. Nice save from the debacle of the McDuffie termination.

God awful inks on that, in my opinion. Mark's stuff is supposed to be clean and open, not chock full of scratchy hatchlines. It's almost as though the inker was trying to turn it into Jim Lee art.

Don't worry, Dean. DC'll find some way to screw everything up. Where is your faith, brother?

I see that most of the League's unconscious again. I guess it's another Tuesday night in the Hall of Justice.

Wow! another cover with a bunch of dead superheroes littering the ground. Pure genius! One can only hope that rape, murder and perversion ensue!

Robinson’s an excellent comic book writer - I hope his upcoming Justice League of America run shows that.

You act as if there's a change in the writing staff or something. There's not. Didio was writing the book before and he's still writing it now. It will suck. Didio will make sure of it. Enough with the irrational optimism in Didio's oversight (although in his defense, all the Bat-books were good this week).

Vixen, Red Tornado, Plastic Man and Zatanna? Can Vibe be far behind?

Yeah, if Robinson is ALLOWED to write it, it should be pretty good... But if he was allowed to do write without interference, would he be using a cast off Justice League? Maybe what we really need now is another Giffen written League?

So, this is, what, the 8th JLA cover this run to feature the majority of the team lying in heaps on the ground.

If the frame is tilted, why is the painting currently straight-on?

I know others have said it, but I feel I must chime in and reiterate that Robinson is amazing, but McDuffie is also a solid writer. JLA will only not suck if they actually let him write it. They should get Nicieza to write it. The guy managed to create good comics in Harras-era Marvel. He knows how to deal with ridiculous editorial edict and still produce something reasable.

Not that it SHOULD make difference, but Robinson is a much "bigger" name than McDuffie (in the world of comics) so I expect Robinson to get the Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison treatment. In that Robinson will be allowed to write the stories he wants relatively unhampered.

One thing I don't get about the big three leaving the title though: I understand why Superman and Batman are out of the picture, but why did Wonder Woman have to leave? Isn't she still on Earth?

So I'm the only one who has found Robinson to be consistently over-rated? (Here comes the heresy) Starman, in retrospect - over-narrated and over-wrought, Batman - , Superman - routinely out-written by Rucka and even Johns, JSA - same. The Golden Age is okay, but no great shakes, and the reveal is pretty cliche'.

But, as someone from my hometown used to say before he turned all libertarian/right-wing, "Of course, that's just my opinion; I could be wrong."

Should be a (yawn) after Batman above, didn't realize I was using html formatting in my choice of brackets.

Once again, I'm baffled that people actually seem to like Mark Bagley's art.

@s1rude:

So I’m the only one who has found Robinson to be consistently over-rated?

James Robinson is one of the first comic writers to actually follow Stan Lee and really find their own "voice". You know what types of themes you are going to get and have a sense of how they might handle the characters they have been given. Because it is rare, it tends to get over-praised.

By virtue of having his own voice, it means that you can also say that it isn't to your taste. Maybe you aren't interested in the life or cities, nor how the past is prologue. That is why DC was historically reluctant to hand guys like James Robinson and Grant Morrison the keys to proverbial family car. So, I am always excited to see guys like that get big gigs.

I don't care much for Bagley but I'm heartened by the Robinson announcement. Like Morrison and Waid, I find Robinson a consistently good, consistently entertaining writer who can produce more than just your average comicbook adventure.
That being said, I still am disappointed at DC's treatment of Dwayne McDuffie. Looking back on his run it really is so absurd. Hiring McDuffie, who brought the Justice League to life on television, to write the comicbook was a great match. And yet over and over and over his creative hands were tied and his efforts on the book undermined by forced tie-ins and, frankly, even the announcement of Robinson's Justice League mini.
Can you imagine? You've been hired to write the flagship title, the very people who hire you don't allow you to do your job, and then they go out and, just to add salt to the wound, decided to "break-up" the team and draw even further attention away from your issues with a mini-series about the break-up by a higher profile writer.
I don't "hate" Didio. The guy's running an entire company and trying to manage fictional universes. He allowed Grant Morrison to write a crazy Crisis, gave the green light for 52, helped to get Robinson back into comics after Starman, brought John Ostrander back for a Suicide Squad mini, and convinced the Justice League International team to write a Metal Men feature.
But there is a part of me that looks at the McDuffie situation and has a hard time not seeing Didio as this absurdly inconsistent boss who lauds McDuffie's arrival at one point and yet allowed it to get so screwed up.

They wasted McDuffie and Robinson's original JL plan didn't go as planned and honestly I am waiting for them to throw Robinson under the bus and screw this book again. But maybe they've actually learned their lesson.

don’t “hate” Didio. The guy’s running an entire company and trying to manage fictional universes. He allowed Grant Morrison to write a crazy Crisis, gave the green light for 52, helped to get Robinson back into comics after Starman, brought John Ostrander back for a Suicide Squad mini, and convinced the Justice League International team to write a Metal Men feature.

Don't forget All-Star Superman and bringing James Robinson and Gary Frank aboard the Superman titles (albeit separately). The first tour of duty Grant Morrison had on Batman had some real highlights prior to R.I.P. I know folks love the Geoff Johns GL. DiDio has put out some good and even great books.

What is frustrating about DiDio is that keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Once or twice, you can excuse. However, the pattern adds up to poor stewardship of the line as a whole. To me, those mistakes are:
1. Having a weird nostalgia for the Bronze Age. The period from the Death of Gwen Stacy to Crisis on Infinite Earths was probably the greatest disparity in quality between Marvel and DC. The majority of the output by DC was stale at best. There were notable exceptions (i.e. Wolfman-Perez on "Teen Titans", Moore-Bissette on "Swamp Thing"), but as a general rule you were much better off as a Marvel Zombie from the end of 1973 until the start of 1985. DiDio has a personal attachment to that period which blinds him to the reasons everything got revamped at the end of it. Hint: it wasn't the Infinite Earths as a concept.
2. Treating characters who are not currently being used as though they are disposable. The list of characters who have killed and/or brought back to replace their successors is so large it is comedic. The death of any DC character has become the equivalent of the death of a Red Shirt on the old "Star Trek". It is predictable and pretty well meaningless.
3. Not bothering to match the tone of the stories a character is used in with the tone that works best for that character. Ted Kord, Ralph and Sue Dibny were essentially light comedic characters. There are lots of different types of light comedy. Dan DeCarlo's Archie was light comedy, but so was Wally Wood's "Sally Forth". Steve Gerber's "Howard the Duck" was light comedy, but so was Carl Bank's "Uncle Scrooge". Jack Cole did light comedy in "Plastic Man" and in Playboy magazine. Mad Magazine was light comedy and so was National Lampoon. Rape and graphic murder are not funny except to truly warped people, so it inappropriate to include light comedic characters in those types of stories.
4. Treating creators who are outside his inner circle as though they don't have anything valuable to contribute. Around the time of the Infinite Crisis that circle included Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Somehow, Waid found himself on the outside looking in and is throwing a truly epic temper tantrum (HELLO ... Irredeemable). However, that doesn't make it smart to have freelance writers dictating the direction of titles they aren't currently ... you know ... writing. Don't hire Dwayne McDuffie to write the JLA if he isn't one of the 4-5 people in the room deciding where that title can go. If you want four people directing the DCU, then have them working on your eight biggest books.

My hope for Robinson on JLA stems from my belief that he has replaced Waid at the table with Johns, Morrison and Rucka. Robinson works well with Johns, who appears to be the first among equals, so maybe he'll get some freedom to tell his stories.

?Yeah, if Robinson is ALLOWED to write it, it should be pretty good… But if he was allowed to do write without interference, would he be using a cast off Justice League? Maybe what we really need now is another Giffen written League?

We ALWAYS need another Giffen-written League.

DC's output from Gwen Stacy's death to Crisis wasn't entirely terrible-- O'Neill and Adams on Batman, Maggin and Swan on Superman (especially inked by Murphy Anderson and Al Williamson!), Wein, Wrightson, and Redondo on Swamp Thing, Englehart and Rogers on Detective, Levitz and Giffen on Legion of Superheroes, Grell and Cockrum's Legion art, Aparo on Brave and the Bold and The Outsiders, Gene Colan -- especially on Nathaniel Dusk, but also Night Force and Detective, the ridiculously underrated Moenech and Mandrake Batman run (which, granted, ran concurrent to Crisis), Englehart on JLA and Green Lantern, Gibbons and Staton on GL,Camelot 3000, Ronin, Kirby on The Demon, Omac, and the Demon, Alfredo Alcala and Jose Luis Garcia Lopez on anything, Dick Dillin's 12 year JLA run, Gil Kane on Action Comics and Sword of the Atom, George Perez on Justice League of America Kurt Schaffenberger on Shazam!, Superboy, and Action Comics...

Heck, I even liked the Detroit League.

It's true, DC churned out a lot of crap during this era, but there were no shortage of diamonds in the rough.

@ Adam Weissman:

I did not mean to imply there was nothing worthwhile at DC between '73 and '85, just that it was a period when there was vastly more interesting stuff at Marvel by comparison. By contrast, I would rate the Silver Age DC as about equal to the Marvels of that period and even a little under-rated.

Well, it's kind of unfair to McDuffie, that even the "fill-in teams" get to use the big 3 and he doesn't.

Hell, Robinson even gets to use the big 3,

... well sort of; but having Captain Marvel, Supergirl and Batwoman is like having the big 3 of the Future. You know, Justice League Beyond.

I think McDuffie got royally screwed and he didn't deserve it. He's a stand up guy that was there for the long haul. Meltzer and Johns are just drive-by writers who basically "set-up" the comics they want to read; but don't actually write them.

As for Robinson... I still won't buy the book. At least not until I know it's any good.

Basically, I haven't been impressed with his stuff of late (as others have mentioned).

And I don't think he's there for the long-haul. I mean, if memory serves me right; Cry for Justice was supposed to be an ongoing series. Plus, he was fired and re-hired from the Superman titles over "a misunderstanding". Yeah, right! The fact of the matter is Robinson and Didio are going to clash; so the former might not even get to finish his first arc.

Just a thought.

So, I'll take that as a "yes" on my Robinson question. I'll say that I don't dislike him (and, in particular, find the city-building stuff fascinating), just that I wouldn't classify him as a Great writer.

Anyway, not a big Bagley fan either. I appreciate that he's fast, and think his work on Spiderman is okay, but I really can't get used to his drawing DC's big three. Looks pretty amateurish, too me, anyway.

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