Justice Society Returns/All American Comics

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Hi Mr Marz,

I pulled out my trade of 'The Justice Society Returns' Event/Mini that you were a part of to re-read on my way to and from work, and a couple of questions I was wondering about.

I was just curious how much imput you got on the issue you wrote for the story.
Did they just give you the characters and say 'go wild' or was it a pretty tight brief, and you basically filled in the gaps?
I'm guess I'm curious because you, and the other talent involved, all did a really good job, and all told rather different stories, in somewhat different styles (ie you had a bystander as a narrator, Waid had the Flash as a narrator, Robinson And Goyer had a third non-superhero in the action narrating - also some focused on fighting, others character building etc).

Normally I dislike cross-over events, but this one had the vibe that everyone was having a good time working on it - even though they all had to have the same ending and such ( so there obviously some mandate).

Also, how was each team chosen for each book?
Did you get the story with Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder because of your association as THE Green Lantern writer of the 90's, or somthing else?

Anyway, it was a great issue in a great event (which had a great use of Johnny Thunder!), so any insight you could give as to how it was made would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

[Ron Marz]

Glad you liked the issue. That's on that I'm fond of as well.

As I recall, like most crossovers projects, there was a framework in place that described the characters each team would be using (in my case, Alan Scott and Johnny Thunder). And, even though I don't recall the specifics, I'm sure there was some framework in place in terms of each's issue's setting and the "goal" that needed to be accomplished. Again, in my case, protecting the "Big Three" conference.

The specifics of the issue in terms of how the story was told, etc., were up to each team. I wanted to tell the story from a "regular" soldier's point of view because we were dealing with a historical event where real people had performed heroically and died for the cause. I didn't want that to be lost, even though we were telling a story with superheroes. I was probably sensitive to that because my father was a World War II veteran, a tail gunner in a B-24J Liberator bomber.

And yes, they offered me the GL issue since I was "the" GL guy at the time.

One more note. As I recall, this is a crossover that didn't have a huge amount of lead time. We got the assignment and had to go right to it. Sometimes those workout well.

[FunkyGreenJerusalem]

Glad you liked the issue. That's on that I'm fond of as well.

As I recall, like most crossovers projects, there was a framework in place that described the characters each team would be using (in my case, Alan Scott and Johnny Thunder). And, even though I don't recall the specifics, I'm sure there was some framework in place in terms of each's issue's setting and the "goal" that needed to be accomplished. Again, in my case, protecting the "Big Three" conference.

The specifics of the issue in terms of how the story was told, etc., were up to each team. I wanted to tell the story from a "regular" soldier's point of view because we were dealing with a historical event where real people had performed heroically and died for the cause. I didn't want that to be lost, even though we were telling a story with superheroes. I was probably sensitive to that because my father was a World War II veteran, a tail gunner in a B-24J Liberator bomber.

And yes, they offered me the GL issue since I was "the" GL guy at the time.

One more note. As I recall, this is a crossover that didn't have a huge amount of lead time. We got the assignment and had to go right to it. Sometimes those workout well.

Pretty amazing stuff, especially if you were all shooting from the hip, so to speak, as every issue was A-grade.

If every crossover, or event, was this good, I think everyone would like them a lot more.

If I can ask another question, did you know who the artists were when writing the script?
Although I like most of the artists involved (and those I didn't like before hand was mainly due to lack of exposure), none of them are really big draw card names, more just solid story tellers, they all match up to the story perfectly.

[Ron Marz]

Obviously the artists pulled in to the crossover books were guys who were available to do one-off issues -- in other words, guys who weren't tied down to other projects.

As I recall -- and my memory could be faulty -- I didn't know who the artist would be when I started the script. That's not ideal, as you want to write to your artist's strengths. But I think by the end of the scripting I knew that I'd be working with Eduardo Barreto.

All credit to editor Peter Tomasi -- incidentally, a big World War II buff -- for pulling everything together.