Geoff Johns is a name people equate to DC, comics and all. He certainly has a lot of time on his hands; between juggling his jobs as writer, editor-in-chief, and chief creative officer. But all of those responsibilities is a lot to handle at once so he decides to do what he does best. As a writer, he distills the messy bits of comic continuity into something compelling. Or at least leaves a lot more to be desired.

How Did Geoff Johns Get the Jobs?

Aside from Johns’ obviously impressive narratives, like everyone else he starts small. People always want to find out what they’re good at and it’s comics for him. After his education, Johns takes a chance to do work in Los Angelos in 1995. With the 90s being the time of art exemplified by the Helter Skelter event, it was the perfect place to start. Johns was lucky enough to find work in movies.

By pure chance Johns gets an internship with Richard Donner and makes a big enough impression to be an assistant. Donner introduces Johns to crime drama through Conspiracy Theory. Given that film’s nonlinear storytelling, it could very well be an influence on Johns’ work. It mostly has to do with how Johns approaches character histories, no matter how convoluted. Especially if that means he gets to work with some childhood memories.

The Legacy Days

Fun fact: Stargirl is based on Johns’ sister

Geoff Johns’ comic fandom pushes him towards quite a number of personnel from DC. Perhaps the biggest is James Robinson, who for the first years at the company serves as his mentor. He’s the one to convince Johns to stay and do comics as a regular anyway. It’s during this time that Johns writes Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. which is his own big tribute to the Golden Age. The characters are legacies from the characters Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy while tributing his late sister. Eventually working in JSA alongside his mentor, Robinson both in-universe and out gives Johns the means to create his own legacy. First by having his character Courtney inherit the Starman mantle and Robinson giving Johns the full reigns of JSA. If only things went better for Robinson after this…

Titans Together!

At this point Geoff Johns puts a lot of focus into legacy characters. Johns becomes writer to his favorite superhero, The Flash. Which Flash you ask? Well two but let’s focus one first. Wally West is practically the blue-collar self-made man that Johns built himself up to be. He even makes Keystone City look more like his hometown Detroit complete with heavy industry autos. But why stop with one Titan? During a brief stint with Beast Boy Johns dips his toes into the world of the Teen Titans. After a lackluster career at Marvel, where he gets tired of the decompressive writing for trades, he goes all in.

Teen Titans is where Marv Wolfman’s generation provides the bridge for Peter David’s Young Justice. These generations of young heroes collide to guide newcomers into roles they have to find on their own. It’s almost like Geoff Johns despite having accolades and backing from DC alumni, he still has a lot to learn. Which might show up in his Hawkman run where he does a brief session with Robinson again. Even his Superman runs were hits or misses.

Child At Heart Vs. Man-Child

Geoff Johns really wants to live up to the legacy of his peers by following up greater storylines like Crisis On Infinite Earths. For Johns this was an attempt to work with peers of his generation for a great tribute. Ultimately however both Countdown and Infinite Crisis drove the comics community in half. Heroes became shells of their former selves like with Batman becoming paranoid to the point of spying and Wonder Woman killing in cold blood. Nobody embodies the outrage generated than Superboy-Prime.

Older fans like Johns grew up on the Silver Age with peers like Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, and Greg Rucka wanting to modernize Silver Age elements. Unfortunately Superboy-Prime founds his identity on the Silver Age after the loss of his Earth and family. Without that sense of surreal oddities, Prime has nothing. Without any proper guidance and people to keep him grounded, Johns might’ve ended up like Superboy-Prime. The only good thing to come out of this is the fallout of Infinite Crisis getting more legacy characters out. Characters like Jaime Reyes and Renee Montoya.

It might also be why Johns’ Booster Gold run is actually real decent. While Boosty’s still the goofball, his friendship with Ted Kord taught him humility. It might’ve been the disaster that is Infinite Crisis that set both Boosty and Johns straight. The old days are gone and it was time for each to cement their own legacies.

Geoff Johns: The Legacy of Legacies

Johns might take these arguments to strange levels that bring back two of his favorite superheroes. Listen this was before the Crisis and it does affect things in the long run but pay attention. The Flash: Rebirth reintroduces Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash. Barry represents a legacy of optimism that continues throughout time, even when he gets a tragic origin. Because the best thing to do in a tragedy is have hope that things can be better. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for an infamous Flash storyline.

I Thought The Point Was Not to be Pessimistic

Flashpoint takes the Booster Gold storyline of trying to fix past mistakes up to eleven. It’s an exercise in futility in trying to change things to suit an audience. When Barry tries to undo his tragic origin, things only get worse. The world becomes so bleak that characters become dark reflections of themselves. Wonder Woman and Aquaman are going to war and Superman is a malnourished captive. How does saving one woman from being killed do all of this? Turns it doesn’t:

Flashpoint is merely a byproduct of corporate mandate and Johns taking on too great a responsibility. What was supposed to be just a way to tell fans that the old backstory of the Flash was gone (come on an evil twin and his dad getting possessed); became a gigantic mess. Because what better way to show your new job as Editor-In-Chief besides giving into corporate overlords? One where Johns’ recycling idea becomes WB’s excuse to reboot DC for a modern audience. Even Johns himself isn’t too big fan of this as his Green Lantern run suggests.

Geoff Johns Paints The Colors of the Rings

Green Lantern was Johns’ big break in DC; highlighting the return of Hal Jordan. Now remember that point above of making convoluted points relevant? That’s what Johns does with Hal and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps. Prior to this there are a number of things about Green Lantern that don’t make sense. From the weakness to the color yellow, and if there can be a yellow ring can’t there be more colors? Then there’s retconning a crucial part of Hal Jordan as a character. When his home town of Coast City is destroyed, Hal fittingly loses his mind. It didn’t help that his bosses, the Guardians of the Universe are buttheads about it. In his state of hopelessness and madness, Hal murdered them and the entire Lantern Corps. In this state, Jordan renames himself Parallax.

So to make something new of what came before, Geoff introduces the Emotional Spectrum. This retroactive perspective pays tribute to what comes before and allows what didn’t work to iron out. Now the yellow color represents the fear that can overcome the will that powers Lanterns. The reason Hal became Parallax in the first place is because he was possessed by the spectrum’s embodiment of fear. Which to be frank doesn’t make as much sense if you think hard about it. Hopelessness isn’t fear it’s emptiness. Thankfully the rest of the spectrum makes up for it.

Get Angry, Get Hopeful, Just Live

The other pieces of this rainbow of emotions reveal depths that fit rather well with Hal and the corps. From how people view the Corps as less of law enforcers and more like an army. As well as how other Corps form in reaction to the Guardians. Rage, Avarice, Compassion, and Hope give way to corps that make the DC universe feel more lively. All of which culminates in the dual event Blackest Night and Brightest Day. This zombie apocalypse is actually Johns’ way of getting back old characters for a new chance. Again, Flashpoint’s reboot was not Johns’ idea.

When Flashpoint does happen Johns chooses not to change his Green Lantern. He brings Hal Jordan back to the front while exploring the spectrum with more depth. Among them is also how the Guardians operate; long story short, tyrannically. But instead of just reusing older concepts, Johns also makes use of his own mythology. It’s not enough to just reuse concepts, Johns has to make his own stuff.

Change for the Better

While Geoff Johns wouldn’t let anything happen to disrupt his flow on Green Lantern; that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have ideas to implement. Shazam for example gets a fresh identity after DC finally finds a way to dance around copyright lawsuits. For every character he couldn’t change post-Brightest Day, Johns has ideas for them. In the Justice League series, Johns sets up a new DC universe that makes the characters interesting enough to follow.

It’s actually good the movie isn’t as serious

Aquaman is probably the most famous for tearing apart the public misrepresentation of being a joke character. He’s a truly interesting character when it comes to understanding his struggle to accept his role as king of Atlantis. Especially when Atlantis and other undersea kingdoms gets a better depiction in terms of culture. Johns also re-explore older concepts in tribute to legends like Grant Morrison like with the Crime Syndicate. But maybe that’s why he doesn’t know when to stop and a take a breather.

Geoff Johns: Carrying the Weight of Prime Earth

Pretty soon the EIC becomes company president with Johns gets more deeply involved in other parts of DC media. By all accounts, Johns already had plenty of leeway in these fields with how he sneaks Stargirl into numerous shows. He eventually takes on the role of Co-Chairman of DC Films. After numerous critical and financial failures like the Justice League movie, the WB needed somebody who probably had a better head on their shoulders. The problem was Geoff Johns puts too much on his shoulders. In addition to his time at DC, he also owns a comic retailer, and made plans for some comics at this time. Perhaps this is best on display in Doomsday Clock, the finale of DC’s Rebirth era.

Someone needed a looser schedule

Doomsday Clock’s purpose was to apologize for longtime fans for bringing back much more negativity. Something that many fans argue begins in the Iron Age of comics with Watchmen. The revelation that Dr. Manhattan is the one who actually causes these changes to the metaverse is testament to this. But even this series is subject to the issues of what comes before.

A Delaying Countdown

With Geoff Johns having so much time on his hands with so many projects at once, he often misses intended deadlines. Due to these delays and a general lack of communication/management, Doomsday Clock and its effects fumble about. Wally West in particular suffers the most out of it in filler mini-series Heroes in Crisis by Tom King. Johns tries to express himself in the pages of Doomsday Clock through parallels to his own history that he was set up to fail. But whether that’s a fact or an excuse is up to the reader. Johns afterwards tries to fix his mistakes with the creatives at DC.

Sharing The Bounty

After stepping down from his pedestal, Johns decides to take his responsibilities in strides. Rather than just try to control everything he can, Johns entrusts the people around him. In retrospective, Johns is taking the lessons from some of his earlier comics and sharing the burden with friends. Teen Titans, Booster Gold, Batman: Earth One, even several of his Superman-related stories talk about this. There will be times when people get the story wrong but there are always other sides.

Geoff Johns is a great writer that people can aspire to. But he’s not some pinnacle of greatness. He’s a human being that realizes after such a long time sometimes it’s better to ask for help. Because while times change and reflect the world around people, you can still find the optimistic times to be something to strive for. Realism isn’t necessarily reality, darker and edgier can be just as suffocating being what defines the New 52 reboot. Respecting the older days is great and all, just make sure you leave enough room to make affordable mistakes. Otherwise you’ll overburden yourself.

Thanks for coming and as always remember to look between the panels.

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