Levitz on JSA

[TELLE]

Having been alerted to George Perez doing a turn on this month's JSA, I resolved to march down to my local Android's Dungeon and buy my first new Perez comic in 20 years (I bought Busiek's Avengers years after they came out).  I still fully expect to do that tomorrow when it comes out.  Even though it ties into IC and I expect to be confused and left with a cliff-hanger.  This is the way I learned about comics as a kid --one disconnected comic at a time.

Anyway, the writer of the new JSA arc is Paul Levitz, DC head honcho and former Legion and 1970s JSA writer.

The New York Times (of all places) has a puff piece about Levitz's return to scripting today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/07/books/07levi.html?ex=1296968400&en=ab03cb0f1b1190d0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

The piece is criticized by Tom Spurgeon at Comics Reporter:
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/nyt_another_early_valentine_to_dc/

DC Comics, writer George Gene Gustines and the New York Times continue their romantic media entanglement with yet another soft, gosh-wow profile article, this one on Paul Levitz's return to comics writing. I'm interested in the subject matter here, as it occurs to me seeing the subject header just how much of what DC does through titles like JSA reflects the basic approach to the material the DC's President and Publisher pretty much embodied as a full-time comics writer two and more decades ago. That's not always the case with the seemingly endless series of these relatively unsophisticated DC-focused articles at NYT. I wonder if when these pieces appear someone at Marvel ends up snapping at the folks from Motley Fool for no reason, then apologizing.

[DoctorZero]

I have one problem with Paul Levitz, which is he created the one big problem which has plagued the JSA for years now.  That is, he permanently established the JSA's origin to have been at the start of WW II.
Previously DC only said that the JSA had been around 20 years before the JLA.  But by tying the characters into the WW II era this meant that they had to age while every single DC character on Earth 1 didn't.  

Later on Roy Thomas had to explain that the JSA had special chronal energies which enabled them to be active despite their advanced age.  Other writers came up with othe explanations as to why certain JSAer's were still younger than they should have been.

I'm certain it seemed like a good idea at the time, but it led to a lot of the JSA having to be eliminated later on.

[Johnny Nevada]

I dunno, figure the real-time-aging on Earth-2 (and tying the JSA to a historical event), comic-book-time on Earth-1 was a way of satisfying both the "they should be aging in real time" fans and the "don't age them" fans...

Pointless tidbit: A coworker of mine at my job (where I'm the only one who reads comics) noticed this story in the New York Times, saying he read something about "some guy who used to write comics for them and something about superheroes called the Justice Association or something..." (to paraphrase).  Heh... :-)

[nightwing]

Picked up the issue this week.  Didn't understand a single thing in it, but I couldn't pass up a book with George Perez on E-2 Supes and Bats.  

On what Earth are Power-Girl and Ma Hunkel?  Does Ma remember Lois as a young woman from the 30s (as she implies at the end), or does she only know the version that's young now (as she implies at the beginning)?  What was Gentleman Ghost after and what happened to him? I'll never know unless the next issue has Supes, Bats and Perez too, and they already said it wouldn't.  Hello and goodbye.

Oh well, pretty pictures are better than nothing, I guess.  Also gave in and picked up A*S*S #2.  Liked it better than the first issue.  Quitely's growing on me (or at least his colorist, who seems to be doing all the heavy work on this series).