The Four Color Media Monitor

Comics Nexus has another article I can agree with for plenty of reasons, on why Geoff Johns is bad for the DCU, though there's a few things that fall short of the mark too:

Sadly, I think for the first time in my decades of collecting DC Comics, I’m beginning to get disillusioned with how things are being run. And I’m pretty sure it’s all Geoff Johns fault.

But let's be clear: it's not just Johns' fault. It's Dan DiDio's too, and there are several other writers, including Adam Beechen, who are at fault too. Even James Robinson has added himself to the list.

The following falls short:

Geoff Johns is one of the few hands guiding the DCU the past few years and in all fairness he’s been doing a pretty solid job of it. He started by bringing The Flash back to prominence. Then he went on to make the Justice Society not only viable but a darn near vital property in the DCU. Then he lofted Green Lantern and Teen Titans into the sales stratosphere. He even tried to get people interested in Hawkman and Superman. The guy knows how to create buzz and get his books attention.

Does he? I wouldn't go that far, and his work on the Flash stinks, particularly his second story there a decade ago, Blood Will Run. Ugh!

The following is a bit better though:

But lately he’s been busy retelling origins and retconning characters that it’s clear he’s working on a “master plan” of sorts. With his various “Secret Origin” stories and with The Flash Rebirth, Geoff Johns is packaging the mythos of these various heroes in nice easy to swallow capsules.

Not so easy to swallow, I'm afraid. And what master plan does he have other than the next crossover?

It turns out that under Johns:

Hector Hammond also happens to be a rejected suitor of Carol Ferris (sound familiar?)

Yes, and very, very tired.

Now it’s my understanding that when John Byrne was writing the much maligned Spider-Man: Chapter One, he tried to link events together because he felt it was absurd to have massive amounts of radioactive material floating around NYC. And in that regard I can completely understand the simplifying of origin stories.

But when Geoff Johns does it, it feels like he’s packaging the story so it’s easily translated to another medium. In a comic book, when you’re retelling an origin, you aren’t really pressed for space. In a comic book there’s no reason for all of these characters in Green Lantern to have their origins tied together. But if you were working on a feature film and you want to establish characters for sequels, well then you’d certainly want to tie as many origins in to the origin of the main character. This also makes sense if you’re working on a possible cartoon.

There was a point when I was a huge fan of Geoff Johns. But now his motives are suspect. I don’t believe he’s writing from his heart or for the fans. To me it feels like he’s writing for Hollywood and instead of them adapting comics, the comics are changing for them.

That just about sums it up. A note on Byrne's Spider-Man: Chapter One: though he wasn't trying to rework everything for the sake of movies, his job there was still pretty dreadful, taking decently written premises and making them into something far too problematic. I guess Johns has gotten to the point where he too is repeating a very sloppy mistake, all likely for the sake of the movie biz.

And the worst part is that it suggests editorial mandates could actually end up influencing any movies they make out of their comics stable, and undermine the scriptwriting badly. The same may soon be happening for Marvel, now that Quesada's been appointed to the same title as Johns has.

Johns must be stopped, and Quesada too.

Labels: bad editors, dc comics, dreadful writers, violence