geoff johns – PopCult Reviews

Comic Book Review – Superman by Geoff Johns Part Two

Superman: Escape from Bizarro World (2008)
Reprints Action Comics #855-857, Superman #140, DC Comics Presents #71, and The Man of Steel #5
Written by Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Otto Binder, E. Nelson Bridwell, and John Byrne
Art by Eric Powell, Wayne Boring, Curt Swan, John Byrne, and Dick Giordano

Superman: Secret Origin (2009)
Reprints Superman: Secret Origin #1-6
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Gary Frank

Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes (2008)
Reprints Action Comics #858-863
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Gary Frank

It was Escape from Bizarro World where I started to think Richard Donner wasn’t as involved in Geoff Johns’s Action Comics run as suggested. Something about the story beyond Eric Powell’s art makes me believe The Goon creator had more of a hand plotting the story. It makes sense because his tone to Bizarro’s cube-shaped version of Earth feels very similar to his cult-hit comic book series. The Donner involvement was likely little more than he and Johns talking on the phone over coffee about plots, which generally served as a good marketing tool to bring readers to Action Comics at the time.

Comic Book Review – Superman by Geoff Johns

Superman: Up, Up, and Away (2006)
Reprints Superman #650-653 and Action Comics #837-840
Written by Geoff Johns and Kurt Busiek
Art by Pete Woods and Renato Guedes

Superman: Last Son of Krypton (2013)
Reprints Action Comics #844-846, 851, 866-870; Action Comics Annual #11; and Superman: New Krypton Special #1
Written by Geoff Johns (with Richard Donner)
Art by Adam Kubert, Gary Frank, and Jon Sibal

Geoff Johns had his plate full in 2006. He was the top writer at DC Comics, having just penned Infinite Crisis and writing one of the best Flash runs ever, and was helming Green Lantern. He was also writing Teen Titans, having led a reboot to introduce a new generation to the book. Toss in 52, which he co-wrote with three others and other event books, and Johns was quite busy. Amid this, he picked up Action Comics and worked on a soft reboot of Superman that sought to fold back in elements from the Silver Age that had been removed following 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Comic Book Review – Blackest Night/Green Lantern: Blackest Night

Blackest Night (2010)
Reprints Blackest Night #0-8
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis

Green Lantern: Blackest Night (2010)
Reprints Green Lantern #43-52
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke, Ed Benes, and Marcos Marz

Geoff Johns’s run on Green Lantern was intensely inspired by Alan Moore’s work on the title during the 1980s. The short story “Tygers” was most influential, which mentions the rise of the Guardians of the Universe’s greatest threats in the form of Ranx the Sentient City and the Children of the White Lobe, both of whom had shown up as enemies early in Johns’ run. In these Green Lantern Corps short tales penned by Moore, he introduced the prophecies of a Blackest Night. The details of this weren’t fully developed, but Nekron, a cosmic god of the dead, was involved. As Johns loves repurposing bits of DC Universe history, he devoted a large chunk of this run to the build-up of Blackest Night.

Comic Book Review – Stargirl and The Lost Children

Stargirl and The Lost Children (2023)
Reprints Stargirl Spring Break Special & Stargirl and The Lost Children #1-6
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Todd Nauck

Geoff Johns is in his third act, and it’s not going great. Act one was his rise to prominence as one of DC Comics’ best writers in the 2000s. This was followed by a transition into DC’s films division, where he oversaw what I consider some of the worst superhero films of all time. He would still dabble in comics occasionally, but once he stepped down from his role in the movies, his output increased. The word that comes to mind when discussing this second shot at comics writing for Mr. Johns is “delays.” Not just a month, but multiple months on books that are already limited series. Why DC doesn’t require X number of issues in the bank before beginning publishing remains a mystery to me. It is an excellent strategy to ensure distribution goes smoothly and your readership stays happy.

Comic Book Review – Justice Society of America: Black Adam and Isis

Black Adam: The Dark Age (2008)
Black Adam: The Dark Age #1-6
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Art by Doug Mahnke

Justice Society of America: Black Adam and Isis (2009)
Reprints Justice Society of America #23-28
Written by Geoff Johns, Jerry Ordway, and Matthew Sturges
Art by Jerry Ordway, Dale Eagelsham, and Fernando Pasarin

Before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson desperately tried to carve out a niche in the superhero franchise landscape, Black Adam was just one of the villains in Captain Marvel, aka Shazam’s rogues gallery. Like many villains, he served as the shadow to the hero, a dark version of that main character. When the Shazam franchise was revived in 1995 via Jerry Ordway’s one-shot graphic novel The Power of Shazam (followed by an ongoing series), Black Adam was brought back with more nuance than you would expect with modern comics. He would eventually become a member and then enemy of the Justice Society during Geoff Johns’ first round with the book, a character arc that has permanently redefined how readers view Black Adam. In Johns’s final (at the time) arc on JSA, he brings some closure to Adam and the corner of the world he occupies in the DC Universe.

Comic Book Review – Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come

Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come Part One (2008)
Reprints Justice Society of America #7-12
Written by Geoff Johns & Alex Ross
Art by Dale Eaglesham, Fernando Pasarin, and Alex Ross

Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come Part Two (2008)
Reprints Justice Society of America #13-18, Annual #1
Written by Geoff Johns & Alex Ross
Art by Dale Eaglesham, Fernando Pasarin, and Jerry Ordway

Justice Society of America: Thy Kingdom Come Part Three (2009)
Reprints Justice Society of America #19-22, Justice Society of America Kingdom Come Special: Superman, Justice Society of America Kingdom Come Special: Magog, Justice Society of America Kingdom Come Special: The Kingdom
Written by Geoff Johns, Alex Ross, and Peter Tomasi
Art by Dale Eaglesham, Nathan Massengill, Jerry Ordway, Bob Wiacek, Alex Ross, Fernando Pasarin, and Mick Gray

Geoff Johns has always reached deep into continuity for his work at DC Comics. It’s why he was such an excellent fit for the JSA, able to draw on decades of stories & characters and build upon them. When the Justice Society had a revival post-Infinite Crisis, I was among many people hyped to see the writer continue with these characters. However, the longer this new book went on, the more it felt like Johns was stretching out a small number of storylines for two years. The most egregious example of this is Thy Kingdom Come. It’s one of a few sequels written to the prestige 1996 mini-series Kingdom Come.

Comic Book Review – Justice Society of America: The Next Age & The Lightning Saga

Justice Society of America: The Next Age (2007)
Reprints Justice Society of America #1-4
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Dale Eaglesham

Justice League of America: The Lightning Saga (2008)
Reprints Justice League of America #0, 8-12 and Justice Society of America #5-6
Written by Brad Meltzer & Geoff Johns
Art by Shane Davis, Ed Benes, Fernando Pasarin, and Dale Eaglesham

In 2007, Geoff Johns was pretty much the top dog among writers at DC Comics. He’d just finished up one of the Flash runs of all time, authored the company’s most recent crossover event Infinite Crisis, co-authored the follow-up weekly mini-series 52, was in the middle of a Green Lantern run that reinvented the character and was also writing Teen Titans, Booster Gold, and Action Comics. This was all prelude to him getting the job as Chief Creative Officer for DC’s film ventures in the 2010s. I argue that was the moment Johns began to decline. While this Justice Society of America run is good, it is not as strong as the previous JSA series.

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Part 7

JSA by Geoff Johns Part 7
Reviewing JSA #73-87
Written by Geoff Johns, Keith Champagne, and Paul Levitz
Illustrated by Don Kramer, David Lopez, Jim Fern, Dale Eaglesham, Rags Morales, Luke Ross, and Jerry Ordway

The issues in this final batch are only partially written by Geoff Johns. Keith Champagne (normally an inker) and Paul Levtiz (an icon at DC by this point) cover a couple long arcs while Johns was writing Infinite Crisis (and Green Lantern and Teen Titans and the weekly 52 series and something else I’m probably forgetting). This also isn’t Johns’ final say on the Justice Society. He’d write the first twenty-eight issues of Justice Society of America, the follow-up ongoing to this one. Johns currently writes two JSA-related mini-series: Justice Society of America and Stargirl & The Lost Children. Because these are in a period of somewhat confused continuity right now, I don’t get the feeling he’s folding in everything that happened way back here in JSA.

Comic Book Review – JSA by Geoff Johns Part Five

JSA by Geoff Johns Part 5
Reviewing JSA #46-58 & Hawkman #23-25
Written by Geoff Johns & David Goyer (#46-51)
Art by Sal Velluto, Leonard Kirk, Keith Champagne, Don Kramer, Wade von Grawbadger, and Rags Morales

I just got impatient. It has been 2 ½ years since JSA by Geoff Johns Book Four was published. After I decided to do this series, I read that DC was publishing Book 5 in March, but I simply didn’t want to wait an indeterminate amount of time for the rest of JSA to be reprinted. Watching that atrocious Black Adam movie made me realize I missed the JSA of the 2000s, so I figured out a way to split the remaining issues into three clusters and read through them. One of my biggest takeaways was how the JSA was unlike anything else at DC Comics. The Justice League are big movie blockbusters (or they should be when written correctly), while the JSA is much closer to Claremont’s X-Men, a story about a diverse family of superheroes, they have their own lives, and these personal elements often intersect with the team’s adventures. I even found myself getting teary-eyed a couple times reading these issues because Johns finds a way to make the most obscure DC superheroes extremely human & so their losses hurt, or when we have to say goodbye, it is bittersweet.

Comic Book Review – Aquaman by Geoff Johns Omnibus

Aquaman by Geoff Johns Omnibus (2017)
Reprints Aquaman #0-19, 21-25, 23.1, 23.2 & Justice League #15-17
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis and Paul Pelletier

In 2011, DC Comics took a bold move by relaunching its entire comics line under the banner of the New 52. Geoff Johns was already one of the people creatively at the company’s helm, so he could keep his Green Lantern run going pretty much intact. In addition, he was given the prized title of Justice League to revamp and then took it upon himself to also try and reignite enthusiasm over Aquaman. Over the preceding decade or more, Aquaman had been relegated to a joke character. In shows like Family Guy or Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken, if the character was referenced, it would be to state how useless his power set was compared to the more “impressive” heroes in DC’s catalog.