The Justice Society of America has always been about legacy. The original DC Comics heroes, mixed with their children, and other heroes inspired by them has always lent itself to a heady mix of family drama and epic superheroics. And to hear incoming writer Jeff Lemire tell it, working on the new DC All In book JSA with that exact focus is a dream come true.
“There’s just something about those characters,” Lemire told Comic Book Club over Zoom. “Part of it was that the very first comic book I ever remember getting was a reprint of JSA by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton. So I mean, obviously, my whole love of comic books is tied right back to them.”
In the new series, Lemire isn’t just bringing in fan favorites and team mainstays like Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, and more… He’s also bringing in the characters from Infinity Inc., legacy characters who have to tackle threats to the world that perhaps even their parents and forerunners couldn’t handle. Plus, there are plenty of twists, turns, and surprises as fans will be thrust right into the middle of the action.
To find out much more about the book, as well as working with artist Diego Olortegui, how DC All In compares to the New 52, and also how working in the mainline DC Universe on JSA differs from his upcoming work on Absolute Flash, read on.
Comic Book Club: You’ve obviously done a lot for DC before and since, but I certainly associate your prime time there with New 52. What’s different about coming back to the publisher for the DC All In initiative, versus that?
Jeff Lemire: You know, it’s really different. I’ve been thinking a lot about the last couple days, because with New 52, what we did was kind of, we got a riddle. We got rid of a lot of the history and the legacy, and we started the whole universe fresh, in a way where, the JSA in particular, being kind of the centerpiece of that history and legacy, was gone, at least in the in the way that we were used to seeing them.
And it was all about reimagining these characters. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of similar to what we’re doing with the Absolute Universe, where you’re starting from the ground up, reimagining things without that history. And then coming back now, it’s my chance to be part of the DCU in the way that I remember it. As a reader, or when I was a kid and growing up, one of the things I loved so much about DC, and one of the things that always made me choose DC over Marvel, was that sense of the generational aspect and the legacy, which I felt made DC so unique. And to me, the DC Universe was always at its best when both the JSA and the Justice League were running concurrently and were both really strong. I haven’t really been a part of a DC universe that’s had that yet, as a creator. So this is really exciting for me to not only be part of the universe where that’s back in action, but to be writing the JSA, who have always been my favorite superhero team.
You put that quote in your newsletter when you were announcing the book… What is it about the JSA? Why are they your favorite superhero team of all time?
It’s kind of hard to pinpoint that exactly. There’s just something about those characters. Part of it was that the very first comic book I ever remember getting was a reprint of JSA by Paul Levitz and Joe Staton. So I mean, obviously, my whole love of comic books is tied right back to them. And then when I was a kid, one of the big, the prominent thing that really hooked me on DC was Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the original Who’s Who came out in the ’80s, I guess I was ’85 when I was, like, 10 years old. What those showed me was [that] the DC Universe was just so vast. It had so many different incarnations of the same characters, working and living together. And to me, that was such a rich tapestry of a universe… There was something about that that hooked me. And then there’s also, I gotta just say, there’s something about that pulp aesthetic of those original 1940s characters and their uniforms that I just I’ve always loved. So I guess it’s a combination of a lot of those things. I’ve just always loved those characters so much, and it’s such a joy to get to write them
On a thematic level, what’s the difference between the JSA and the JLA in your mind? Other than obviously the middle word.
Just the word. [laughs] I mean, if you just want to boil it right down, to me, the JSA is more of a family. it’s you have multiple generations of heroes living and working together and learning from each other. It’s not so much about fighting evil and going on missions. It’s more about that sort of day-to-day, cohabiting with one another, learning from one another, the mentorship, the legacy, the history, the passing the torch. Whereas the JLU or the Justice League is much more proactive… They’re a superhero team. They’re going to go on missions, are going to protect the world. Whereas JSA are still the JSA when there’s not a crisis going on. They’re cohabiting and living together and learning together, so it’s much more like a family than a team.
That’s a nice tee-up to talk about the concept of the book. You’ve got Infinity Inc characters. You’ve got the JSA characters. Obviously, the legacy aspect is interesting to you. But why this mix of characters in particular?
One of the more challenging things about the book is that the cast can be so huge, and it is huge, which is also really fun. But for me to be able to spend enough time on each character and give them their own story within the book, I need to split the teams up into factions, at least at the beginning. So what we see right away is that the original JSA — Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, Ted Grant, Hawkman, and a few others are missing, and the younger generation of heroes, most of whom were part of Infinity, Inc, are left holding its origin, trying to keep things going. So that set up this generational conflict within the group, where you had, within this younger generation of characters, you had two factions. You had Jade, who, for her, it’s all about keeping the legacy going, keeping true to what her father and the original JSA members did and that’s what the JSA should be to her. And then you have her brother Obsidian, who is very much about “No, let’s make the JSA modern. Let’s have something that reflects the world that we’re in now, not 1945, and let’s be much more aggressive and proactive.” So that’s at the start of the book, that’s the central conflict that we see, and things kind of spin from there.
Just on a process level, because, like you’re saying, you have all these characters, they all have to have individual arcs… You have to have villains. You need to set up both team’s arcs as well, and you only have 20-ish pages to do that. So how do you as a writer approach that? How do you break that down?
I mean, it’s complex. Writing the JSA is kind of like, workload-wise, the equivalent of probably writing two books. It’s a lot. It’s a lot to juggle and a lot to plan and plot out. In the past, when I was at DC years ago and tried to do team books, it wasn’t always the most successful stuff I did. Coming back now and getting a chance to do this, I really wanted to do right by it and try to do something really special. And what clicked for me was, I stopped thinking of it as a superhero team book, and started thinking of it as an ensemble drama. The key was just remembering that every issue, not everyone needs to appear. Not all 25 members of the team need to be in every issue. It’s okay if you have an issue that just focuses in on two or three characters, or one or two characters for a month. And then obviously all these individual storylines need to build towards something cohesive where it does come together as a team, but it allows you to focus in on individual stories. And of course, that takes a lot of work too. I’ve done a lot of TV writing in the last decade or so, and it’s taking a lot of what I learned there into this where you’re breaking down individual character arcs on the board each day, on the whiteboard, and tracking them across issues. It’s approaching it in a different way than just a big superhero punch-up every month, really.
Is there a character or characters that you find as your window character, the one that you’re drawn to, to show off this world?
It’s not just one. I mean, it’s a big cast. But Jade and Obsidian are the central characters of the first few issues. They were really cool to me because they literally represent the generational aspect, with Alan Scott being their father, and they’re brother and sister. So you have this family within the family. And then of the older generation, Jay Garrick has always been, in my mind, the heart of the JSA, and Alan Scott is the head, the leader. Those two are key. And then [there were] some surprises. When I was started off, I didn’t think Doctor Mid-Nite, the Beth Chapel character, would be as important as she’s become. I liked her, but I didn’t see her role becoming as large as it was. But as I wrote her, I just really enjoyed writing her, and it’s spun new ideas, so she’s become a central character as well. Which is a nice surprise for me and someone I’ve had fun discovering and exploring.
What’s it been like working with Diego Olortegui?
He’s fantastic. I wasn’t super familiar with this stuff before I got asked to do JSA, and they showed me the Jay Garrick miniseries he had done previously, and I really loved that. So I knew right away he was someone that would be great at action and would have these really energetic, kinetic layouts. But I was really surprised by how great he is at the character stuff as well, so that’s really allowed me to not hold back, and to be able to write all the stuff I want to write, and know I have an artist working with me who’s going to be able to render it and articulate it in a really wonderful way. So it’s been a great collaboration so far.
This is a little similar to the process question earlier, but dovetailing off of that and skirting spoilers, in the first issue, you’re thrusting us into a situation in progress. Relationships are in progress. There’s tension there. It almost feels, and I say this complimentary, like a second issue in a certain way. How much groundwork, and how much backstory was involved in getting there for the first issue?
I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s exactly what I wanted. I wanted to throw the reader right in, as if the book has been going for 30 issues, and you’re like, “What are all these dynamics?” There’s a crisis already underway, and then hopefully the reader will want to figure out what the hell is going on and what the hell happened. There was a ton of groundwork. I could have started it in a different way, where you see those things happen from the ground up, but this felt more exciting to me, and more intriguing in a way where you have some mystery. And then, of course, in the second and third issue, we do start to have fill in those blanks, and you see what got us there. But yeah, there was obviously a ton of groundwork that had to go into it. I had to know where I was going. You can’t just make that stuff up. So, yeah, I had the 15 issues pretty tightly plotted by the time I wrote script one.
You’re also writing Absolute Flash… You’re playing in both sides of the universe, the DC Universe proper, and in the Absolute Universe. I understand every book is different, but is there any different approach there? How, how are you tackling these two different sides of the DC Universe?
I mean, they’re completely different. They’re almost the opposite, these two books, which is really fun, because you don’t want to just write the same book all the time. With JSA, you have a massive cast of characters and the central element of this whole book is the sense of history and legacy that comes with them. And then with Absolute Flash, you have a brand new universe. There’s no legacy, no history. You’re starting from the ground up, and you’re focusing in on one character. So it’s a completely different beast and a completely different way of approaching the storytelling. We can’t talk too much about Flash yet, but one of the big things we’re doing is cutting that sense of legacy that comes with being a Flash. In the regular DC Universe, Wally West is part of a lineage of Flashes that starts with Jay Garrick and Barry Allen, Wally West, and then onward. Whereas in Absolute, he’s the first Flash. There have never been Flashes before, so it’s a new thing to him. And he doesn’t have that tether that the Wally of the DCU has had. So yeah, [they’re] very different books. They’re nothing alike, really, even tonally, they’re very different. So it’s fun to be able to go back and forth because each one offers me something different creatively, as well.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
JSA #1 hits comic book stores on November 6, 2024, from DC Comics. Check out covers for the issue below, and click for larger versions.
Comic Book Club Live Info:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.