My knee jerk is to label the Marvel Family and Black Adam stuff from Justice Society of America kind of corny, but once it sinks in, it occurs to me that’s how these characters work best and few get them better than Geoff John and Jerry Ordway.
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Jerry Ordway adds so much to this big Black Adam story in Justice Society of America, from beautiful art, especially in the flashbacks, but also to really blowing out the Shazam mythology.
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Jerry Ordway joining Geoff Johns to script the comeback for Black Adam while also providing pencils is perfect as no two creators have greater affection for the character and have done more to advance his case.
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Revisiting the Kingdom Come coda that Alex Ross helped Geoff Johns cook up in Justice Society of America many years after the fact has painted the story in quite an impressive light for me. The epilogue is insane wish fulfillment with peak Ross painted art.
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Gog ultimately comes off a little ham fisted and ultimately forgettable, so Justice Society of America No. 21 focusing on him so heavily isn’t the best, but the moments surrounding his stuff are a ton of fun. Dale Eaglesham and Jerry Ordway both contribute great art to this climax.
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The Kingdom one-shot makes a strong case for why JSA could have been a neat sort of anthology title as Geoff Johns jumps around across his immense cast with a series of quick but compelling vignettes. Fernando Pasarin draws the brief battle really well to get us where we need to go.
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One of the big lifts in Thy Kingdom Come has been transforming Magog from a one note allegory to a realized character, and I would say the results have been mixed. A hard lean into real world events is a choice, and one I’m not sure ages.
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The existence of JSA Kingdom Come Special: Superman, a prequel and sequel to the seminal original written as well as drawn by Alex Ross as recently as 2008, feels like a historical anomaly. Like most of this run, it’s quite good, as Ross feels too strongly about this character to play games.
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Justice Society of America No. 20 breaks from the Gog story for a moment to resolve Power Girl’s multiverse adventure and balances the bonkers continuity of DC with genuine emotional beats. It’s also really fun vacillating between art from Dale Eaglesham and Jerry Ordway.
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Justice Society of America No. 19 amps up the internal strife among the JSA and it’s here that having such a large, diverse cast really starts to pay dividends. Dale Eaglesham is working overtime with so many characters and tons of action, but he makes it look effortless.
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One World, Under Gog is getting to the point I remember it dragging a little bit, but, to the credit of Geoff Johns and Alex Ross, they’re playing up the internal JSA ethical conflict to keep things interesting, albeit a little slowly.
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One of Geoff Johns’ great strengths as a writer is how he wears his fandom and enthusiasm on his sleeve, and Justice Society of America Annual is very much a fun love letter to Earth-2. It’s a joy to see Jerry Ordway crushing it on these pages with characters he has great affection for.
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I’m really quite pleasantly surprised by how strong across the board the Justice Society relaunch has been. Reading in retrospect also makes me wish some of the newer characters like Cyclone and Citizen Steel had longer shelf lives after they were outside of Geoff Johns’ stewardship.
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I like the combination of Geoff Johns and Alex Ross as writers on Justice Society of America as I think it takes their alchemical creativity to combine Kingdom Come with the New Gods in Gog’s origin. I also think Ross’ pages in Issue No. 16 are particular standout works of art.
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Justice Society of America No. 15 is a great chance for Dale Eaglesham to show off his action chops with a big battle. I continue to be impressed at the way Geoff Johns and Alex Ross balance the tasks of a worthy Kingdom Come sequel with not losing the JSA in the process.
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If I recall correctly, the Gog that appears in Justice Society of America No. 14 is a somewhat clumsy attempt to bring Kingdom Come to the then current DCU. That the creative team attempts to course correct this speaks to how bold and in tune they were.
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Time and space management with Justice Society of America continues to impress as issue No. 13 is very much a Superman issue but checks in with everyone else enough to keep them top of mind and continually emphasizes the stature and value of the team.
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I keep anticipating Justice Society of America collapsing under the weight of its enormous cast, but Geoff Johns is juggling it like vintage Legion of Super-Heroes on steroids. A lot of credit needs to also go to Dale Eaglesham for stealing precious moments with sight gags and facial acting.
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Geoff Johns and Alex Ross are pouring everything they have into Thy Kingdom Come—a tribute to a seminal story that doesn’t lose character moments along the way. Dale Eaglesham and the art team do a nice job moving the action along and spotlighting new additions.
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Thy Kingdom Come from the start is an impressive storyline as it’s not just a gimmicky sequel, but an attempt to say some really relevant stuff about Superman and the Justice Society along the way.
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Justice Society of America No. 9 is where Geoff Johns’ vision for the series seems to crystallize—all of the new characters have purpose and the team is coalescing. This is also Dale Eaglesham’s strongest outing yet, which is saying something.
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When Geoff Johns and company relaunched Justice Society of America and expanded the roster, I wrote off the casting of Liberty Belle and Hourman as the perfect couple, but issue No. 8 with intense focus on the former Jesse Quick corrects any error.
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Citizen Steel is a neat concept with an almost Silver Age Marvel tragedy aspect who I think demonstrates Geoff Johns’ big, novel ideas but may have been a casualty of trying to do too much at once in Justice Society of America. As is, it gives us a very strong standalone issue.
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As I’ve said throughout The Lightning Saga, the passion of these writers for the material, particularly Brad Meltzer on Justice League of America, is both undeniable and contagious. Revisiting the super hero pageantry through this story has been fun.
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Dale Eaglesham’s art on Justice Society of America No. 6 is remarkable as he keeps track of three massive teams with the able assistance of Ruy Jose and particularly Jeromy Cox who has a vast array of colors to work with.
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Brad Meltzer writes with such charm and enthusiasm that you get caught in the fun of ideas like Wildfire having the same body as Red Tornado. The art on Justice League of America is next level—Ed Benes does not get enough credit for this run in terms of how motivated he was.
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One of the things I liked about when Geoff Johns wrote the Legion of Super-Heroes were his attempts to integrate them not just with Superman, but the larger DC Universe, which was on full display during The Lightning Saga.
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Every time I take a fresh look back at Brad Meltzer’s brief run on Justice League of America, the genuine enthusiasm and affection shines through a bit more, and nowhere is that more evident than during The Lightning Saga.
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Dale Eaglesham has always been good, but Justice Society of America is a great book for him to really stretch on and display his full storytelling capabilities. The villains of this arc are hit or miss as Vandal Savage has never done it for me and the Fourth Reich is over the top.
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The revitalized Justice Society of America is really a tale of two comics as the character work is charming, particularly with the newcomers, but a lot of the violence goes way over the top. Dale Eaglesham is delivering though. Jeromy Cox also brings range and depth to the coloring.
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