JLA/Avengers
January 4, 2013
No, I am not talking about the early 2000s money grab from both DC and Marvel here. What I have been increasingly surprised at with the DC universe is that for most of the last 20 years, it seems like the Justice League book is almost an afterthought. One exception is the New 52 reboot where it launched with JLA, but as I read more and more of the “old 52(?)”, JLA really disappoints. Coming from my Marvel background, this really confuses me.
Basically since the death of the Heroes Reborn debacle, Avengers has been one of the best and most important books in the Marvel universe. Busiak’s run, which is still legendary, to Disassembled and then Bendis’ ownership of the Avengers properties have all been game changers. While not always good game changers, they were still the most important thing to read if you wanted to know what was going on in the Marvel universe.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is just different and has taken some getting used to. But it doesn’t seem like such a stretch to think that having the Avengers be a core part of the Marvel universe certainly helped when transitioning to a movie company. When they announced the Avengers, I thought of quite a few story lines that they could work with to make the movie. While the JLA movie keeps getting rumored and bandied about, there is no JLA story that makes me say “that would be a great movie!”.
I keep looking for the great runs for JLA, or for JLA to be important to what is going on in the DC universe, but I just cant find it. Maybe I am not looking hard enough, I would love some suggestions on issues to check out or thoughts disagreeing with my observations.