Does the Justice League really "work" as a group?

Here's what I mean by that:

Thanks to this wiki, I have realized a problem with League stories in general; the individual members were not designed for working as a group, so they have multifaceted personalities in their own books.

When the individual members come together as the League, much of the dimensions to their personalities are stripped away so that each member can be "different" from one another. In reality, most of the League's members are Capes, with only Batman standing out as The Cowl. And even then, Batman's idealism about his cause is often stripped away to make him dark and broody when he's with the League.

No one will deny that the League's individual members are awesome. However, the League as a whole tends to flanderize each individual member to make a group dynamic. So does this mean that the League is only awesome as a team-up concept but not as a vehicle for storytelling and character interaction?

When the individual members come together as the League, much of the dimensions to their personalities are stripped away so that each member can be "different" from one another.

I don't think this was actually true for most of the Post Crisis DCU, at least until the nuanced characterizations returned to the Silver Age one-dimensionality, but with 'Onedimensionally conflictive and passive-agressive' replacing the Pre-Crisis' 'Onedimensionally bland and agreeable'.

JLA: Year One is my favorite Justice League story for that reason - I felt that the characters bounced off one another very well.

Wasn't the Post Crisis League initially comprised of almost completely different people?

Morrison's JLA is a pretty good example of just how well the Justice League work together. The DCAU is pretty good at that too.

I'd say only Wonder Woman feels really out of place in those team ups, probably because most JL writers have no idea how to handle her.

The League works best for me when it focuses on big threats. It's not a concept in my head that really thrives on character interaction or development.

The point about the characters being solo players as opposed to the more character-driven books like Fantastic Four or X-Men is 100 percent astute. That's why I think the best run was probably Grant Morrison's. There was some character work with Kyle Rayner but for the most part the focus was on these god-like beings fighting insanely massive threats none of them could handle on their own.

The differences in team comics generally comes, in my opinion, with how they're conceived. If its a group of characters who previously existed and band together to fight a threat, or is it a bunch that had been created to be a group from the start. You see a lot of team books (or at least you did in the 90's, when super hero team books were frickin' everywhere) with characters who could simply not stand on their own (as far as being interesting characters — I'm sure a lot of them could, you know, fight villains on their own). I do get really sick of super-hero teams that seem to be made to function like video game/ rpg adventuring parties, with specific "roles" like "healer" and "tank" and "blaster" etc.

I strongly disagree. I think otherwise you end up with a situation where you have a lot of repeating powersets that ends up making certain people look redundant. Heck one of the reasons they started downplaying Martian Manhunter's strength in favor of his shape-shifting and psychic powers was because they felt he was too similar to Superman.

... wait, they've been playing up the Manhunter's psionic abilities? Has he ever actually... y'know, 'successfully scanned a villain's mind, or even found the villain with his telepathy? It seems like every time he tries, he just ends up toppling over, clutching his head and screaming something about 'horrible, overwhelming power' or such.

I'm not sure that the League is Flanderized, exactly, at least under a decent writer. It's more like... well, people tend to behave differently when they're with co-workers than they do with family, and differently again when they're with friends. When the JLA is together, they can relax in a way they often can't in their own books, although it's probably 'office party' relaxation, rather than the out-with-friends type. And they can talk shop, which is probably a bit of a relief for those who tend to be mostly solo acts.

This is one of the reasons JLI (the Post-Crisis version, anyway,) is my favorite incarnation of the League. I can get why people like Morrison's JLA so much, for reasons stated in this thread, but it's because of those reasons that I just don't care for it. When I read Morrison's JLA, I had read hardly any of the Solo's of the characters involved, with my only major exposure to them being the DCAU, and because of that, the book felt lifeless. Sure, it was a wild, epic ride, but because there wasn't any real Character Development in it, it felt devoid of substance, much like Hickman's current Avengers run. It's just plot&action, and that's it. But speaking of Avengers, I felt that Buseik's run, which was around the same time as Morrison's JLA run, was actually much better, because it actually had a lot more Character Development in it, and in turn, a whole lot more substance. I also didn't feel like I needed to read a bunch of different books to 'get' all of these different characters. (Another reason why I'm turned off by Hickman's current Avengers run.) Sure, you had the Big Three, but most members didn't have their own books at the time, which worked out for the best.

Now, Justice League International was quite a bit different than any version of the League before or since for a multitude of reasons, not the least-which that it only had a few of the bigwigs, and because of this, could have a lot more character development. And because of that, it had actual substance, and the humor didn't hurt matters. When reading it, I didn't feel like I had to read 7-8 different books to better understand these characters. (I read the Showcase volume of Booster Gold, but that was it.) Most of the character's development happened in JLI and JLE, and so it was just so much more enjoyable compared to Morrison's run, as well as some runs afterward. (I also plan on rereading JLA:Year One, after finding that I barely remember what happened in it, so I'll see what I think of that.)

edited 11th May '14 10:33:34 AM by kkhohoho

Morrison's JLA is an absolute treat.

@Robbery: But then what about the Avengers? They came together for much the same reason as the JLA, and they all had their own titles before being Avengers. I guess maybe part of it is that some characters like the Pyms and Hawkeye are mainly seen as Avengers because they don't have their own series, while the JLA mainstays, (Supes, Bats, WW, Flash, GL,) all do. That, and I feel like Cap and Iron Man are, in-universe, inexorably connected to the Avengers, while Superman or Batman are often written as more independent and don't really hang with the JLA outside of JLA stories. Or maybe I'm completely off-base, I don't know.

The major difference is that the Avengers never really had a set roster in the same way that the JLA did. They only got to 15 issues before everyone but Cap quit and they brought in Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, and Quicksilver. And then over the next few years Black Panther and Hercules as well. So from (relatively) the beginning, the Avengers had a mix of big guns and lesser known characters who didn't have their own books and thus could be prone to character development.

Sorta like how the New Avengers had these mega-level A-listers like Wolverine and Spider-Man but by far the two heroes with the most focus and character development were Spider Woman and Luke Cage.

Avengers has also had significant periods where none of its characters had solo books - most of Roy Thomas's run, for example, revolved around Pym, Barton, Wasp, Black Panther, Vision, Black Knight, and other "secondary" characters, and Thomas was the guy who really defined the Avengers after Lee got the ball rolling. Furthermore, even since the Cap's Kooky Quartet days, the Avengers were always known for having internal character arcs (like the relationship between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, or any of Pym's development, or Ultron's various personal grudges with the team).

Hell, the Vision was the team's mascot and most effective member for much of the 70's - the book has always relied on having characters exclusive to itself.

I can see the "power-niche" type of team if the team has been specifically assembled as a strike force, or whatever, for a specific purpose. If the team came together organically ("Hey, we all need to team up to fend off Darkseid/Galactus!") then it comes off feeling very artificial. I won't go into the whole "over-specialization breeds weakness" argument. Both can be written interestingly. Hell, you could have a team made up of Superman, Shazam, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, and Power Girl, (Or Batman, Nightwing, Katana, and Green Arrow) and it could work fine if the writer wasn't a hidebound twit.

Honestly, I think the World's Finest is a better vehicle for storytelling and character interaction than the League is. Though it's probably because that team is only made up of two people.

The Avengers were not a forefront team for most of their existence (hence the lack of set roster). Heroes wanted to be in the Fantastic Four or X-men and Marvel did not really have a Justice League equivalent for a long time. The closest thing was probably the Defenders, and only in that they were a semi regularly meeting group of big names. They were never a cornerstone of the brand nor a particularly functional group in story.

Or to put it another way, could you imagine if the Justice League had a "Big Blue Boyscout" that wasn't Superman? Because the Golden Avenger wasn't Thor for a long time, despite him being a founding member. As to whether the League works, yes, New 52 notwithstanding because I have not read it. The heroes generally get along or at least tolerate each other, the members tend to all have specialized uses but still be able to stand on their own. I think sometimes the group's super powers get overblown (Fire and turn on fire, and fly and turn intangible-Plastic Man is immune to Circe's curses and mind control and everything-The Flash can steal and lend speed, pass through solid walls and strike with infinite mass-the martian manhunter can create ice cream with his mind...okay we get it, Superman does not completely overshadow everyone) but that's an issue with DC as a whole than the league in particular.

Not really, no. You could only get into the X-Men if you were a mutant in most cases, and the Fantastic Four was mostly a family group; hardly anyone could get in, and when they did, it was only a matter of time before the original roster came back. From my reading experience, everybody who was somebody in the Marvel U at least thought of joining the Avengers. They may not have big outside of the comics, but in-universe, they were the bigwigs.

They may not have big outside of the comics, but in-universe, they were the bigwigs.

Hey, even in real world terms, moving from the X-Men to the Avengers was seen as a huge step up for the Beast by the readers. But then, that was during the pre-Claremont period when the X-Men were mostly an afterthought.

edited 12th May '14 2:09:28 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Nah, Spider-man wanted to join the X-men, and lamented that he couldn't and was kind of bitter about the Fantastic Four for a while too. He was comparatively amicable with the knowledge that he would not work out with the Avengers. The Four were the original big Marvel team up until the X-men's popularity had an unexpected takeoff (and Wolverine started showing up everywhere) and the Defenders were the "everyone's been a member once". It wasn't until about 2002 that it was decide the Avengers were super special among Marvel teams and still 2005 before they were the best thing ever that everyone had to be a part of.

It was part of why New Avengers weren't particularly well received (among other things, Disassembled and The Sentry, not saying it was the only reason). Might not matter to some, it is 2014 so those dates might incorporate your entire comic reading history. Ghost Rider being in an Avengers group might seem natural now, traditionally being an Avengers foe(Why would they allow it) with his own team that had a run for over a decade(why does he even need to be an Avenger?), being part of the Fantastic Four before, those might not have much impact now, but it is still against the longer trends and all feels really forced if you know them (and Marvel will helpfully direct you to essential collections so you can find out yourself, multiple sites documenting every last storyline they have done will be a road map through them).

That is an advantage DC has with its reboots, that period where it was the Justice Society or Super Friends, anything rather than the Justice League can be overlooked or reworked with little problem. If you want to change the team dynamic, or core members or universal importance, blank slate. The DC setting in general is a little less slapdash than Marvel's as a whole, even before considering oddities still in continuity (the dubious case of Spider-man via one more day aside) described above.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. From my experience, the Avengers were always, in-universe, the 'big team', whereas the Fantastic Four was, while still important, not 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'. Just IMO.

I agree with you. In-universe, the Avengers were always the ones with government clearance, the relative adulation of the public, and the first line of defense for threats to Earth. You had Avengers Day parades, press conferences, PR debacles, and all kinds of other evidence that the Avengers were a big deal to the Marvel universe public. It's just that their relative lack of marketing success meant that they were shoved to the side.

Basically, the Watsonian and Doylist angles clash in weird ways with the Avengers' status as Marvel's premier team.

To be fair, Spider-Man always was such an outcast, even joining a team of borderline outlaws like the X-Men looked like a PR step up from his perspective.

Back on topic (as far as I know): Does the Avengers do a better job as being a vehicle for storytelling and character interaction than the League?

I think it was more of a storytelling problem. Reading the old comics for both series, I think the Avengers just had better storytelling. You could make the Justice League work but the comics just treated them like tools to solve a problem. The formula was problem rears its ugly head. 6 leaguers are available to solve it but to solve it the league must split into teams of 2. Somehow the villain of the month has figured out the weeknesses of the heroes going into each encounter prior to knowing who would show up. Problem is solve bad guy is punished. Snapper snaps his fingers and spouts 50s slang.

The Avengers felt like an ongoing narrative with each character dealing with his or her own problems along with the villain of the month. Reading both of them now I feel more invested in the Avengers than the Justice League.