Last week, DC announced that Christopher Priest’s Justice League run would be coming to an end in late spring and there will be an event followed by a reboot of the title. Per IGN:
“Following the events of Metal, which ends on March 14 with Issue #6, there will be a four-issue weekly miniseries that kicks off on May 9 called Justice League: No Justice co-written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, and Joshua Williamson with art by Francis Manapul. Upon concluding, ‘No Justice’ will set the stage for a family of Justice League comics starting in June, with the flagship title being written by Snyder and the others by Tynion, Williamson, and more. No artists have been revealed for any of these titles.
“We thought we knew the entire map of the DC cosmos,” Snyder said in a statement given to IGN. “We thought we had explored all there was to explore. But now we know that all this time the Multiverse was nothing but a fishbowl, and now we’ve been dumped into the ocean, unleashing terrifying new threats, and wondrous new possibilities. Metal opened up channels of storytelling that Francis, James, Joshua and I are excited to explore in a big way. When we’re finished, fans will never look at the Justice League in the same way again.”
The League inflating it’s ranks with Teen Titans and anti-heroes when there’s plenty of heroes that could benefit from a raised profile seems like a lost opportunity. The teams make sense with the exception of one, Team Flash. Currently Priest is building Cyborg to lead the League which is another reason this announcement is a bit ill timed. One would assume he would be leading one of the squads for this story but instead he’s on Barry’s team, the one character who shouldn’t be leading anything. Despite the drastic switch, Priest’s run is a total of twelve issues. He’ll still continue his work on Deathstroke and we still have the recently announced Deathstroke vs. Batman to look forward to.
Another issue with this is the timing is very suspect. Marvel recently launched their weekly Avengers book called Avengers: No Surrender. The similarities did not go unnoticed by some fans, and a few creators even commented on it. Also the premise itself seems very reminiscent of Jonathan Hickman’s Marvel run; A single Avengers event which resulted in Avengers and Avengers World books being released on an almost weekly basis. Snyder’s best work at DC was the first arc of All Star Batman and Superman Unchained, but DC seems to be content with having him do work that’s inspired by Morrison and Hickman.
This news also highlighted the weird relationship between readers and the big two. Overall, fan reception of this news is extremely positive. Mind you, the same group of people were complaining about the number of monthly titles Marvel and DC were releasing. Readers often complain about publishers insulting their intelligence but that goes out of the window in some cases, this being one of them. Copying has always been a game the big two have played with each other, but to this degree and with this timing is unusual. And a family of team books revolving around a single team has always been a Marvel thing. If readers want the books to get better they have to remain consistent and actually support the best work. There’s no reason for Black Bolt and Mister Miracle to not hit 100,000 every month.
