...And I'm no longer a fan of Geoff Johns
0 Comments Published by Avi Green on Thursday, May 11, 2006 at 10:46 PM.
Infinite Crisis #7 made its debut this week, and reading reviews like this one from Comics Should be Good certainly sums up some of how I feel about him, certainly now. Yes, he's a hack, and he certainly descended into being one. Or, put another way, he prostrated himself to the editors' will.
When he first began his career in comics back in 1999, I will say in fairness that some of his stuff was pretty good. And while the violence he put into the scripts in the Flash was disturbing, taken with a grain of salt, the first half of his run there was good. It was in the latter half on that title that he began to self-destruct, as supporting characters like the police officers Fred Chyre and Jared Morillo were slowly but surely phased out of use, till they became almost entirely irrelevant. But what really irritates me is that...what was the whole point in putting Wally and Linda through all that neo-Reverse-Flash nonsense for at least a year before getting a much more satisfying ending? Did we have to go through with all that? Exactly why, when I thought it over, I felt so annoyed that I sold off the issues I had from the latter part of Johns' run (only two are left). He's got no real sense of characterization or development, and seems to have used the Zoom story as an excuse to cover for that.
There have been some arguments lately, some justified, that too much attention is being given to the villains in movies and comics, and in the pages of the Flash, Johns did admittedly seem to be heaping more attention upon the crooks than the heroes. But while it may be possible to root for ones like Captain Cold, what's interesting about his take on the Rogues' Gallery is that, he first built up sympathy for some of the villains, then later on, he destroyed it. With the new Mirror Master and certainly Zoom, this was actually a good thing to have happened, since how exactly can one sympathise with one who targets someone else's wife, and another who's a hired gun? But when it came to Captain Cold, I did not appreciate it when this was done at all.
And while I never read the old storylines of "Heatwave Plays it Cool!" and "Heatwave's Blaze of Glory!" from 1978, I highly doubt they were as creepy as what Johns prepared for Mick Rory last year, when he depicted him as something akin to a born vandal (hence, that issue was among those I decided to sell off). And if I'm not mistaken, Johns actually managed to confuse logic when he showed Mick wearing winter coats on his way to school! The part about his being locked in the freezer by a bully was told about after that part, making for some incredible confusion.
On JSA, the first title he wrote regularly, with David Goyer, he did well at first, but then, as of last year, he stopped writing stories that were enjoyable, prostrating himself almost entirely to what grew out of Identity Crisis.
Hawkman was probably his strongest work, and I figure it's a good thing that he left after 25 issues. Yet that he went along with the implications that IC made against Carter Hall implies that he didn't care that a character he presumably likes was being cheapened.
Teen Titans suffers due to the fact that it seems to have been launched in Young Justice's stead as part of all the plans to do Identity/Infinite. I do own the first three TPBs of this, but seeing that the fourth one contains the issues with Dr. Light in his revealed-as-rapist mode, I won't be getting that.
As for Green Lantern? Well, it's great to have Hal Jordan back, but with the way that Johns descended into such catastrophe by now, it's going to be very hard deciding if I should get it.
It's a good thing I haven't read Infinite Crisis, because, judging from some of the dialogue offered in the synopses, it's apparent that there's some kind of attack going on against Superman, right down to making the Golden Age Man of Steel a baddie, and later killing him off in bloody fashion. And any part about Earth-2? Abandoned as quickly as it came. Whatever this miniseries is trying to retcon (at face value?), it's apparent that it won't last long, yet it wouldn't surprise me if Johns himself isn't asking anyone to accept it either. He's clearly ruined his credibility as a writer deliberately, doing things that noone asked for, and now that he's ascended the rank of an editor, why should he really care?
So I'm no longer a fan of Geoff Johns, because it's apparent that he's no different from a lot of other hack writers with questionable devotion and dedication to comics and what makes them work today.
When he first began his career in comics back in 1999, I will say in fairness that some of his stuff was pretty good. And while the violence he put into the scripts in the Flash was disturbing, taken with a grain of salt, the first half of his run there was good. It was in the latter half on that title that he began to self-destruct, as supporting characters like the police officers Fred Chyre and Jared Morillo were slowly but surely phased out of use, till they became almost entirely irrelevant. But what really irritates me is that...what was the whole point in putting Wally and Linda through all that neo-Reverse-Flash nonsense for at least a year before getting a much more satisfying ending? Did we have to go through with all that? Exactly why, when I thought it over, I felt so annoyed that I sold off the issues I had from the latter part of Johns' run (only two are left). He's got no real sense of characterization or development, and seems to have used the Zoom story as an excuse to cover for that.
There have been some arguments lately, some justified, that too much attention is being given to the villains in movies and comics, and in the pages of the Flash, Johns did admittedly seem to be heaping more attention upon the crooks than the heroes. But while it may be possible to root for ones like Captain Cold, what's interesting about his take on the Rogues' Gallery is that, he first built up sympathy for some of the villains, then later on, he destroyed it. With the new Mirror Master and certainly Zoom, this was actually a good thing to have happened, since how exactly can one sympathise with one who targets someone else's wife, and another who's a hired gun? But when it came to Captain Cold, I did not appreciate it when this was done at all.
And while I never read the old storylines of "Heatwave Plays it Cool!" and "Heatwave's Blaze of Glory!" from 1978, I highly doubt they were as creepy as what Johns prepared for Mick Rory last year, when he depicted him as something akin to a born vandal (hence, that issue was among those I decided to sell off). And if I'm not mistaken, Johns actually managed to confuse logic when he showed Mick wearing winter coats on his way to school! The part about his being locked in the freezer by a bully was told about after that part, making for some incredible confusion.
On JSA, the first title he wrote regularly, with David Goyer, he did well at first, but then, as of last year, he stopped writing stories that were enjoyable, prostrating himself almost entirely to what grew out of Identity Crisis.
Hawkman was probably his strongest work, and I figure it's a good thing that he left after 25 issues. Yet that he went along with the implications that IC made against Carter Hall implies that he didn't care that a character he presumably likes was being cheapened.
Teen Titans suffers due to the fact that it seems to have been launched in Young Justice's stead as part of all the plans to do Identity/Infinite. I do own the first three TPBs of this, but seeing that the fourth one contains the issues with Dr. Light in his revealed-as-rapist mode, I won't be getting that.
As for Green Lantern? Well, it's great to have Hal Jordan back, but with the way that Johns descended into such catastrophe by now, it's going to be very hard deciding if I should get it.
It's a good thing I haven't read Infinite Crisis, because, judging from some of the dialogue offered in the synopses, it's apparent that there's some kind of attack going on against Superman, right down to making the Golden Age Man of Steel a baddie, and later killing him off in bloody fashion. And any part about Earth-2? Abandoned as quickly as it came. Whatever this miniseries is trying to retcon (at face value?), it's apparent that it won't last long, yet it wouldn't surprise me if Johns himself isn't asking anyone to accept it either. He's clearly ruined his credibility as a writer deliberately, doing things that noone asked for, and now that he's ascended the rank of an editor, why should he really care?
So I'm no longer a fan of Geoff Johns, because it's apparent that he's no different from a lot of other hack writers with questionable devotion and dedication to comics and what makes them work today.
Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, moonbat writers
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