Somehow my child has ended up with a copy of Justice League Adventure: Friends and Foes. It’s a 2003 digest size softcover collection of comics based on the Cartoon Network JLA series (I guess..it’s got some cartoon network affiliation.) Anyway, my son likes it, so I’ve read it a couple times, and stored up a fair bit of bile.
Here are some questions for the creators (of whom there seem to be an inordinate number.)
1. Why are you so obsessed with continuity? This is a book for kids right? Why do you keep throwing in plotlines that make only minimal sense if you haven’t been following the DCU for the past ten to fifteen years? One story centers around the Green Lantern Corps being mind-controlled by Braniac, without making anything but the most passing effort to explain what the Corps is, or who Braniac is, or why we should give a rat’s ass. Another is built around the Martian Manhunter’s backstory, but it’s just kind of assumed everyone knows all about the Martian Manhunter’s backstory already, because, hey, you’re eight, why wouldn’t you have already memorized the derivative tragedies of a thousand Superman knock-offs?
2. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have the super-heroes be heroic? The writers seem to have a weakness for having our hero team stand around like douchebags while some hapless semi-civilian martyrs him/herself for the good of the universe. I think there are five stories, and this happens twice; once a tween super-hero loses all her powers to *save the universe*! and once a brain-washed Martian baddy gets religion and sacrifices himself to *save the universe*! That’s a pretty lousy record, is all I’m saying. If you were a super-hero team and you had to martyr a vaguely innocent bystander on 40% of your adventures, you might want to find a different line of work, no?
3. What the fuck is up with the erotic subtext? Not one, but two stories here have this squicky erotic mind-control element. In one, a semi-nude Poison Ivy forces a magic potion on a compliant and semi-nude Aquaman; in the other the Psycho Pirate causes a bunch of erotic hijinks, including an old white geezer who gets it on with a hot minority chick and some Batman on Wonder Woman action. Again I ask; is this what the under-8s are clamoring for? Really and truly?
Geezer on girl action, because that’s what the kiddies want. Jason Hall’s the writer and Rick Burchett’s the illustrator.
As I’ve mentioned before, Marvel really seems to have figured out how to do entertaining, cleverly-written, all-ages titles. DC…well, at least on the evidence offered here, not so much.
Update: A couple of folks, including Heidi at the Beat have pointed out the contradiction in my saying my son liked the comic and the rest of my post. I should have explained better, no doubt. Short clarification; he likes everything with super-heroes, but on that scale he wasn’t really all that into this. Longer explanation in comments, if you care to scroll down.
“My son likes it.”
So I’m having a hard time understanding your criticism of this kids’ comic. Apparently your son isn’t bothered by the obscure continuity, etc. Did he come to you complaining about the failure of the writer to adequately explain the Green Lantern Corps? Did he express dismay that 2/5ths of the issues had non-JLA guest protagonists? If it only failed on your how-an-adult-thinks-kids-superhero-comics-ought-to-be terms, I’m not sure it failed. What did your son like about it?
When I was a kid reading comics in the 1970s, every reference I didn’t get was an opportunity to find something out–a glimpse of a world bigger than what was in the pages of any one comic. Far from being a problem, it’s half the fun. Especially when you’re too young to know how stupid most of it is.
Yeah, I should have been clearer about that.
If it’s got super-heroes in it, my son likes it. However, he likes some things more than others. I think we actually have read this, like, once, (maybe two times…I can’t remember for sure.) He sat quietly enough, but didn’t express any real enthusiasm; no laughing till he nearly chokes as he often does with the Jeff Parker Marvel titles. He seemed pretty bemused overall, and somewhat fidgety, even though I skipped large swaths of prose. The whole Martian Manhunter backstory, for example; just jumped over it. And he hasn’t been clamoring for a second run at it, which is unusual.
He’s much more interested in Spider-Man J, a japanese version of Spider-Man, which is, as it happens, also terrible, but much more geared to kids.
Comics in the 1970s weren’t in general as continuity obsessed as comics in the oughts are. Some continuity can be okay; it is possible to have too much of a mediocre thing, though.
Every week my ten-year-old asks if there are any new Jeff Parker comics coming out. That guy knows what he’s doing.
I have to imagine DC assumes most readers of their TV show tie-in comics are familiar with the continuity of the shows–and that most of them are actually adults. Whether those are smart assumptions is another story.
Yeah, Jeff Parker is great. I’ve got an essay about him here…
You should check out some of DC’s current kids comics. My son’s a couple of years younger than yours, but he enjoys BILLY BATSON, DC SUPER FRIENDS, and TINY TITANS as much as he does the MARVEL ADVENTURES stuff (which is considerably). And none of those have the problems you mentioned with this one.
Hi, just saw your post from Heidi’s link. My 6-year-old loves the new Super Friends comic. Can’t get enough of it. One character called the other a “show-off” and my son asked why a super-hero would say things that weren’t nice. That’s awesome.
My gripe with Tiny Titans is the same as you’ve expressed here with the CN Justice League book – why do we have to explain why Terra is making a rock fly at someone’s head? “Because in the grown-up comic book 25 years ago she had underage sex with the Terminator and betrayed her teammates, so the creators want to show her as mean”?
The new Supergirl book is pretty good too. My 3-year-old daughter likes having something to look at to keep up with her brother.
Tiny Titans does have a LOT of continuity references. Enough, in fact, that I was getting tired of it and considering dropping it, but my son gets so excited about it that I can’t. The continuity’s frustrating me, but it’s going right over his head.
That’s two recommendations for the new Super-friends; I’ll have to check them out.
I have one of those Teen Titans ones; it looks pretty awful, though I haven’t been forced to read it yet…
I think Marvel’s FIRST CLASS series and the MARVEL ADVENTURES do a decent job a crafting fun adventures that a kid could pick up, easily.
However, I agree with you on the continuity issue. Also, I think y’all are hard on Noah and his son, here. I mean, the dad’s into comic books; it’s no secret his kids are into it too. But for kids not indoctrinated in such a background (such as kids in my wife’s grade school), they easily lose interest if a story becomes too convoluted, no matter how excellent adults may find it. Case in point: after Free Comic Day, kids were more eager to get their hands on the one shot Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Hulk issue than the Grant Morrison Superman issue (even though both were kid friendly). Media saturation of the Marvel guys may have had something to do with it, but I suspect that the Marvel comic was just much more fun and less portentous.