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Underground > Comic Books >

The politics of Geoff Johns

11:09 / 05.12.06

I've been feeling a bit twitchy about this subject for some time now. Here's a smattering of evidence to get the discussion started:

- Richard Donner and Geoff have just set Ursa firmly in the het camp by making her the mother of Zod's child
- Geoff is currently writing a book about an international treaty busting American superhero, who's just trying to do some good in the world
- Said American regularly battles against fear (and sometimes, perhaps, terror) - much is made of this in the comic

There's a lot of other stuff, much of it fairly nebulous and difficult to draw conclusions from, like his apparent obsession with continuity and tradition.

What say you lot?

11:47 / 05.12.06

He has a lot of ground to catch up on if he wants to replace Chuck Dixon.

13:50 / 05.12.06

Richard Donner and Geoff have just set Ursa firmly in the het camp by making her the mother of Zod's child

Had there been earlier suggestions in the comics that she wasn't in "the het camp?"

14:38 / 05.12.06

No one in comics is firmly in the - ahem - het camp. Behold, the power of slash! And shipping. And annoying fandom daydreamy wishing.

And Geoff Johns tends to write just a bit too much, too strongly, in a head-to-the-golden-past vibe. It's his niche, whether it's personal politics or whatever.

But people love him. It's true. And I've never really understood why.

16:10 / 05.12.06

Cause he sings all the old songs well, I expect. And there's nowt wrong with standards really. I've enjoyed many of his stories. Off hand I can't think of any that were less than average and a few that are more than above. But he's the comics equivalent of...I dunno Jamie Cullum, maybe. Mainstream, retro-ish, unlikely to create anything memorably spectacular but unlikely to crash and burn embarassingly.

I suppose, cause it's barbelith, I should give a Grant Morrison example as comparison. Grants...David Bowie. Genius, eccentric, moves with the times...but when he produces a stinker it's worse for being in the wake of past glories. Rebel Rebel, Life on Mars...that drum n bass crap from the 90's.

16:46 / 05.12.06

Ursa hasn't actually been in any comics to the best of my knowledge, but in the film there's a strong suggestion that she likes the ladies, or at least hates the men, which sadly in the popular imagination often amounts to the same thing. I'm pretty sure the script for Superman II is fairly explicit about her lesbianism.

At the very least she comes off as sexually ambiguous.

18:13 / 05.12.06

I've only heard this secondhand, but I believe when he was writing the Flash, Wally West (who went from golden-boy living-in-a-mansion public superhero to blue-collar Midwestern mechanic with secret identity during his run) turned out to be pro death penalty. Feel free to correct.

19:57 / 05.12.06

Damnation. Posted a long post on this and it's vanished.

Anyway, I was reading it then and don't remember Wally being explicitly pro-death penalty but Barry was definatley. And that seems right to me.

As Barry is the father figure for Wally you'd expect him to be influenced by this, though tortured over it as a modern man.

Anyway Johns wasn't responsible for the change of Wally from playboy to working man, that was the various writers over the years of volume 3.

15:58 / 06.12.06

I've never liked his stuff - it's far too conservative. I felt that he had not moved a character forward in any way shape or form, quite the contrary in fact. I'm not sure about his politics, but would say that the fact that Guy Gardener seems quite bland under him seems to suggest that maybe he missed the point of that particular character some what.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:22 / 06.12.06

It's interesting to look at him in the context of, say, Darwyn Cooke (as he's in the zeitgeist at the moment with the Spirit), who's explicitly quite antiquarian in his design sense and choice of subject matter but still comes on as being quite progressive if you think about the subtext and even the plain old text of what he's saying. Thinking about his work with Wonder Woman in The New Frontier specifically.

Johns by contrast seems marked by his desire for stasis. I read the early issues of his Green Lantern for the Carlos Pacheco artwork and there's this desperation to get everything back to the way things were and handwave away the unpalatable bits, like the not-terribly-subtle adjustment of Hal Jordan's relationship with Arisia because it (*shock*) doesn't fall in line with the two-fisted, square-jawed Hal we're supposed to be seeing. The Arisia storyline was always inappropriate or at least on the verge of being so, but why not ignore her altogether and let her stay dead if you don't want to bring up Hal's seedy past?

16:53 / 06.12.06

Good comparison, Papers - even the smaller detail of, say, the explosion in space causing something to crash leading the Hal getting the ring in Frontier - linking the Golden Age and Silver Age in a hand-over moment, just generally smacked of progression of character - everything that Johns has done seems to come from a sense of 'how dare you change things from the memory of my old collection!'. I just get the impression that he is the type of writer that thinks that changing a costume is a big character arc, but would be scared to even do this.

16:55 / 06.12.06

And have we all noticed the sexy ladies in GL? They're nipples are erect and you can see their fanny bulges and everything!

Now, while I know there is almost certainly editorial policy at work here, I can't help feeling that some of this stuff is prompted by the script.