Justice Society of America by Bill Willingham / What is Your Verdict?

[sabongero]

I've read the Geoff Johns run of JSA. It's great. The relaunch of Justice Society of America started good too. I haven't read anything new on the series recently. How was Bill's work on this? Is it the same direction Geoff went with the team, or did he do something different?

[Gryphon]

I liked it.

[Jimmy Bond]

I'll go with 3 stars. Good characterization, but the stories were not that exciting.

[titanfan]

Too short to really tell. Started off pretty atrocious with the Mordru storyline, but got better at the end.

He might be better suited to a Mr. Terrific mini-series as he has that character nailed well.

[Paladin King]

Pretty atrocious, honestly.

The first arc was a mess, the last arc was dire purely for the sake of being dire and was generally pretty pointless and uninspired. The short middle arc with Mordru was just okay.

Dialogue was also a big problem. Many characters' voices felt samey or off in some way, and every issue had at least a couple of truly cringe-inducing lines.

It was awful. I really wanted to like it. I like the JSA and I'm a big Fables fan, but this was awful.

[The Crime Dentist]

I was a diehard fan of the Johns run, but I dropped this a couple of issues in. I liked Merino's art and appreciated that they were going for a fun old school feel, but the dialogue was not my cup of tea at all.

[TonyStark1012]

I think it's been frigging awesome! He has Mr. Terrific who is the reason I buy the book in the forefront where he belongs, but that's not the only reason. In the begining I thought what he was doing was intresting. With introducing Chimera and the whole plan to infiltarte the league using Kid Karnevil was great. The whole future storyline to me was incredible. To be honest I'm very sad to see him leave. I like Guggeinheim, but I am a little worried with a new writer coming on.

[paulski]

I'll go with 3 stars. Good characterization, but the stories were not that exciting.

Yeah, me too. Somewhere in the middle.

Although I thought he just never got a few of the JSA guys quite right.

[the4thpip]

I found the last storyline too close to "Days of Future Past", just with Nazis thrown in. All in all, there weren't enough original ideas in there. He brought in one of his pet characters (Kid Karnevil) whom I found very annoying in Shadowpact already. I didn't find the run horrible, but pointless, and I was close to dropping the book when the new writer was announced. I'd certainly have to think hard about a weaker run on DC's Golden Age heroes. Maybe a few of the JSA Classified arcs.

[paulski]

I actually didn't mind Kid Karnevil - I thought he was one of the few good points in his run.

[the4thpip]

I actually didn't mind Kid Karnevil - I thought he was one of the few good points in his run.

Kind of telling, then, that a transplant from his previous DCU series was what worked best for some people in his JSA, no?

[Talisman]

I kinda wish he would have developed Dr. Fate a bit more. But I enjoy everything that Willingham has done thus far.

[gwydion]

IT was better in terms of story than the last run, with its plodding KC/Gog story. It really didn't have some of my favorite JSA characters, and it's own big story, the WWII thing didn't do much for me, so I largely gave it a miss after the first couple of issues.

Personally, I think it was a mistake to split the teams, and now that the main reason for the split is gone, (Magog), I think they should merge them again, and pare the roster down to the JSA essentials, with the others serving as occasional guest stars/reserves.

[marvelprince]

I can't say that the run is bad, but I just didn't find it compelling. I think I had dropped it at the end of the first arc. I'm only picking it up now cause of the crossover and cause I know Robinson writes a kick ass JSA.

[brundlefly]

I was a diehard fan of the Johns run, but I dropped this a couple of issues in. I liked Merino's art and appreciated that they were going for a fun old school feel, but the dialogue was not my cup of tea at all.

Agree with this. I loved Johns' run on JSA, but I dropped out of Willingham's right after the "Disassembled" arc (or whatever that was called) where he destroyed the brownstone and split the team. The dialogue and characterization in the arc were both terrible, imo. I skimmed a few of his followup issues but it did not seem to improve, so I stayed away and got my JSA & Mr. Terrific fix through the vastly superior JSA vs Kobra mini instead.

[Retrodork]

I've enjoyed Willingham's work all the way back to Elementals and Ironwood, but this run hasn't exactly been all that memorable to me. Not bad, but not fantastic either. Honestly, I always enjoyed his artwork more than his writing, though I never thought he was a bad writer per se. I just wasn't overly impressed with this particular example.