Geoff Johns = ________
Steve: I’m just gonna come right out and say it, knowing full well that Andrew’s going to have a totally different reaction – for my money, Geoff Johns is the pre-1990 George Lucas of comics. Like the Lucas of old, Johns work is respectful, almost reverent of the past and at it’s best can instill a genuine sense of wonder and awe in the reader.
It’s not a perfect analogy – Lucas tends to write his riffs on pre-existing archetypes and story tropes, while Johns has worked almost exclusively with the originals themselves. However both men share the ability to convey to the audience a sense of grandeur you don’t often achieve in movies or comics. It’s also kind of interesting that when people go back and look at their bodies of works, both creators are likely to be remembered most fondly for their epic space sagas – Star Wars and the Green Lantern Corps, the former reinventing the space opera for moviegoers, the latter reinvigorating a stale concept for a stale company and a jaded audience. For both gentlemen, that’s not exactly a bad legacy.
Duncan:I’ve honestly never read all that much Johns, so I really don’t have too much to say. What I have read reminds me mostly I suppose of Brian Singer, another likeable and successful geek-friendly creative personality who’s entirely capable of spinning a good yarn, but tends to take his subject far too seriously and compromises his instincts and talent by being far too concerned with pleasing “fans.” I don’t like the X-Men movies, but they’re not garbage — they’re merely excessively, frustratingly mediocre: predictable, ordinary, lacking in tension and artistry, laughably self-serious, and eager to please to the point of distraction. And so it is with Johns’s comics. The most recent I read of his was the first issue of the latest JSA series from a while back, and that was like flipping through 23+ pages of DC-fan porn. Was it complete crap, though? No.
As with Steve’s comparison last time, the George Lucas connection I don’t see whatsoever. No matter what he’s become, Lucas once accomplished big things: changed the course of an art form, helped invent the modern blockbuster, concocted one of the top three Global Nerd Obsessions, etc. Johns has written some ok superhero comics.
